Alvarez, Again

Javier Alvarez

If you thought Xavier Alvarez's 15 minutes of fame ended long ago, guess again.  The former Three Valleys Municipal Water District board member was back in the news yesterday.  The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of U.S. v. Alvarez.

Alvarez, you'll recall, was convicted under the federal Stolen Valor Act for lying about having been awarded the Medal of Honor.  In August, 2010, that conviction was overturned by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the grounds that the conviction violated Alvarez's First Amendment rights.

Then, this past March, the full Ninth Circuit Court passed on rehearing the case.  The prosecution appealed to the Supreme Court, which will now determine whether the sort of lying Alvarez did was a criminal act or a protected form of speech.

The New York Times has an article summarizing the case to date:

The full Ninth Circuit declined to rehear the case. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski concurred, saying that a ruling against Mr. Alvarez would be “terrifying,” as it would allow “the truth police” to censor “the white lies, exaggerations and deceptions that are an integral part of human intercourse.”

In a dissent, Judge Ronald M. Gould said the “lack of any societal utility in tolerating false statements of military valor” justified the law. He rejected the slippery slope argument, saying that “making false statements about receiving military honors is a carefully defined subset of false factual statement not meriting constitutional protection.”

In urging the justices to hear the case, United States v. Alvarez, No. 11-210, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. argued that Congress was entitled “to guard against dilution of the reputation and meaning of the medals.”

Whatever the outcome of the federal case, Alvarez was also convicted in 2009 in LA County Superior Court in a felony insurance fraud case for lying about being still married to an ex-wife. Alvarez lied about that to get the woman covered under his Three Valleys health insurance plan after he was elected. He was removed from office after the conviction.

Xavier, Back in the News

Someone forgot to tell Xavier Alvarez (image, left) that his 15 minutes of fame expired long ago. The former Three Valleys Municipal Water District board member from Pomona made the LA Times last week after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District upheld an August 2010 ruling that the federal Stolen Valor Act, under which Alvarez was convicted for lying about being a Medal of Honor recipient, is unconstitutional.

According to the Times article, the court agreed that lying, however abhorrent, is protected under the First Amendment. The Times piece described the appellate court's reasoning:

It wasn't the only time Alvarez had traded in lies. According to an earlier decision in his case, he claimed to have rescued the U.S. ambassador during the Iranian hostage crisis (the reason for his fictitious Medal of Honor) and to have played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings. If Congress could punish misstatements about a military decoration, there would be no constitutional obstacle to criminalizing those other lies.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski made the point more pithily: "If false factual statements are unprotected, then the government can prosecute not only the man who tells tall tales of winning the congressional Medal of Honor, but also the JDater who falsely claims he's Jewish or the dentist who assures you it won't hurt a bit. Phrases such as 'I'm working late tonight, hunny,' 'I got stuck in traffic' and 'I didn't inhale' could all be made into crimes."

Although Alvarez's misdemeanor conviction under the Stolen Valor Act is in question, his LA County felony convictions for misappropriation of public funds, grand theft, and insurance fraud still stand. Alvarez received a five-year prison sentence for falsely claiming he was still married to his ex-wife in order to qualify her for his Three Valleys healthcare plan.

* * * * *

Here is the appellate decision in the federal case:

3-21-11 appellate decision


The U.S. Attorney's office isn't letting the matter rest there, however. On Friday, they filed a motion to stay the appellate decision for 90 days pending a petition for a writ of certiorari seeking to have the Supreme Court to review the case. The government's motion questioned the court's decision to annul a law enacted by Congress:

A circuit court decision holding an Act of Congress unconstitutional inherently presents "an important question of federal law," Sup. Ct. R. 10(c), in a petition for a writ of certiorari.

Here is the U.S. Attorney's motion to stay:

3-25-11 motion to stay mandate

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

Halls of Justice

Former Three Valleys Municipal Water District board member Xavier Alvarez made the news today. Alvarez, you'll recall, pleaded guilty last year to a charge of having violating the federal Stolen Valor Act by falsely claiming to have been a Medal of Honor recipient.

Alvarez has since been in court appealing the conviction on the ground that the Stolen Valor Act violated Alvarez's First Amendment rights. Alvarez's attorney argued that Alvarez's lies harmed no one.

Yesterday, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Alvarez in a 2-1 decision, saying the law is unconstitutional. A federal judge in Colorado made a similar ruling last month in another Stolen Valor case.

Alvarez remains in state prison on a fraud conviction stemming from false statements he made that allowed his ex-wife to receive health benefits while Alvarez was on the Three Valleys board.

Here is a copy of the opinion by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr., and the dissent by Judge Jay S. Bybee:

Uncommon Valor

Old friend Xavier Alvarez (pictured, right) is back in the news. Alvarez, the former Three Valleys Municipal Water District boardmember from Pomona, courtesy of Assemblywoman Norma Torres, was convicted in May 2008 in federal court for having lied about being a Medal of Honor recipient. For violating the federal Stolen Valor Act, Alvarez was sentenced to five months home detention. The conviction was a misdemeanor.

The Denver Post reported Saturday that a federal judge in Colorado has ruled the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment. In the Colorado case, defendant Rick Strandlof was accused of falsely claiming that he was an Iraqi war vet and that he had received a Purple Heart and a Silver Star. Strandlof had been soliciting donations to a charity he had created under a false name.

Strandlof argued that the Stolen Valor Act was an abridgment of his right to free speech, and civil liberties activists filed briefs in support of Strandlof. The Post article quoted an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union:

Attorney Chris Beall, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the ACLU of Colorado, said the decision is remarkable.

"The First Amendment protects speech we don't like," he said. "We don't need the First Amendment for speech people like. The government cannot criminalize a statement simply because it is false, no matter how important the statement is."

Beall points out Strandlof wasn't charged with stealing money meant for the veterans group, adding that laws are already in place for those crimes.

"That's plain-old, regular-vanilla everyday fraud, and we do prosecute that every day," he said. "Congress does not need a special statute to prevent people from using false claims of valor in order to prevent fraud."

Here is Judge Robert Blackburn's ruling in the Strandlof case (Alvarez gets a mention):




According to the Post article, the precedent set in Judge Blackburn's ruling only applies to District of Colorado. Alvarez filed his own appeal in his Stolen Valor conviction, and that appeal is still pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

No matter what happens with Alvarez's appeal, his local felony convictions still stand for misappropriation of public funds, grand theft, and insurance fraud. Alvarez was convicted in September 2009 and received a sentence of five years in state prison.

Sunday Crime Watch

There's some truly odd crime news to report this weekend. First, the Daily Bulletin reported that early last Wednesday morning Pitzer College student and former Claremont High School wrestler Zack Lester and apprehended a stolen car suspect who was being chased by police.

According to the article, the sound of the police helicopter chasing the suspect woke Lester at around 2am. The suspect jumped into Lester's family's backyard and was trying to enter the main house when Lester caught him. Bulletin reporter Wes Woods II wrote:

"I ran outside and tackled him," Lester said. "We got in a brief fight, but I subdued him. He stopped fighting back. Then I told him to lie on his stomach and I twisted his arm behind him."

Police broke through the fence and ran in with shotguns drawn, he said.

"I held him until the cops grabbed him," he said.

Lester said he was later told by authorities that [suspect Gabriel] Acosta had a knife. That information could not be confirmed.

The article also noted that besides attending Pitzer College Zack Lester hosts the Lovelectric show Tuesday nights on the Claremont Colleges' radio station KSPC 88.7FM.

* * * * *

The Bulletin also had an article about a man who tried to commit suicide at a Claremont Police Department DUI checkpoint. The Bulletin said that the man, who was not identified in the article, was stopped at 8:05pm Friday night and was waved over to a screening area after Claremont police officers discovered the man had an outstanding arrest warrant. When police approached the car, the man started slashing at his throat with a folding knife.

The Bulletin article stated the unidentified man was taken to Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, but his condition was unknown.

* * * * *

Completing the odd crime news trifecta is our old friend Three Valleys Municipal Water District boardmember Xavier Alvarez. Alvarez, who is awaiting a June trial in Pomona Superior Court for felony insurance fraud and grand theft charges has already been convicted of a federal misdemeanor charge of lying about being a Medal of Honor recipient.

Meanwhile, since he has yet to be convicted of a felony, Alvarez continues to represent South Pomona on the Three Valleys board (thanks Assemblywoman Norma Torres!).

On the Bulletin's Claremont Now blog, Wes Woods II wrote about a run-in he had with Alvarez following a Three Valleys board meeting on May 13:

When I asked who his probation officer was, he said it's "none of [my] business."

Then he asked why I keep bringing up the Medal of Honor case. He said "nobody" wants to hear about it and if they did he would be getting recalled.

"Who cares? Nobody cares. You keep bringing up the past ... if they wanted me out, I'd be out."

I told him I get calls and e-mails about the case but he didn't want to hear it.

"What you write is a bunch of bulls***." I think he repeated this phrase, emphasizing "buuuuuulls***."

After this, he said I only wrote "negative" stories.

Then he said "you're full of s***" and that I had "s*** for brains."

The Xavier Alvarez Saga Continues

Our favorite local water official, Xavier Alvarez, has returned to the headlines the past couple weeks. Alvarez, South Pomona's representative to the Three Valleys Municipal Water District board, was back in Pomona Superior Court for a February preliminary hearing on felony insurance fraud, grand theft, and public corruption charges.

Alvarez pleaded guilty last year to a federal misdemeanor for falsely claiming to be a Medal of Honor recipient.

The current local charges stem from Alvarez's use of his Three Valleys health care benefits to cover his ex-wife, Juanita Ruiz, whom Alvarez falsely listed as spouse. The benefits to Ruiz amount to about $4,000, which put it at grand theft level.

The Claremont Courier's Tony Krickl blogged about Alvarez's defense at the February preliminary hearing. According to Krickl, Alvarez's public defender claimed that Alvarez was ignorant of what the health benefits application's definition of "spouse" is. If this line of thinking sounds familiar, you may recall that Alvarez's defense in last year's federal case was that lying was a form of speech protected under the first amendment.

Krickl wrote that Alvarez's defense did not sit well with the judge:

Despite the alleged confusion, Alvarez never bothered to ask the staff at Three Valleys Municipal Water District if Ruiz was a legal spouse or not, according to Three Valleys staffer Kirk Howie, who testified in court. According to testimony from Michael Holguin, a DA investigator working the case, Alvarez no longer lives with his ex-wife but maintains "a friendly relationship" with her, seeing her once or twice a month.

Judge Charles Horan didn't buy into the defense's ignorance argument. "You don't need a legal definition or a bylaw dictionary handed to you to know what a spouse is," he said.

Alvarez doesn't seem to be in any hurry to strike a deal in the current charges. It may be because a felony conviction would result in his automatic removal from the Three Valleys board, a seat he seems to covet above all else. We're not sure what Alvarez has against Three Valleys, but he sure seems intent on showing up his fellow boardmembers.

Another factor in Alvarez's thinking may be the five years in state prison he faces, though dragging the public and the court through the spectacle of a trial in a matter that he's pretty much stipulated to doesn't really set him up for leniency should he be convicted at trial.

Alvarez certainly makes an easy target. He might as well be wearing a "Hit Me" sign on his back. The Courier's publisher, Peter Weinberger, even got into the act, chiming in recently with an opinion piece last Saturday titled, "I don't know why they don't get it."

Weinberger compared Alvarez's refusal to step down from the Three Valleys board to Illinois' ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich hanging on to his office after public sentiment turned against him. Weinberger called on Alvarez to spare himself and everyone else by stepping down from the water board:

We understand people are innocent until proven guilty, but with the case of Water Board Member Xavier Alvarez, his actions not only reflect on him, but the Water Board in general. Unfortunately, all the Board members can do is let this play out before they get rid of him.

Mr. Alvarez, you need to resign. Do taxpayers a favor. You rarely say anything at the board meetings, which makes us think you’re simply there to collect $200. Pay the fine, cut a deal and begin the rest of your life. You’d be surprised at how things can turn around over time.

Alvarez was back in court yesterday for an arraignment hearing, as the Daily Bulletin reported. A trial was set for 8:30am on April 29th.

LA County Superior Court Image

(Click to Enlarge)

David Allen's Election Observations

As we've noted in the past, Claremont is a small town. Claremont resident and Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen ran into a couple local personalities at his polling place at Sycamore School in the Claremont Village this past Tuesday.

As Allen's column reported, Allen spent a little time chatting with former Claremont Chamber of Commerce president Sonja Stump and current Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor, two of the people responsible for the Claremont Trolley, among other things:

On Tuesday, there was a line of a half-dozen people out the door and a full house inside. It's the busiest I can remember Sycamore in three presidential elections and numerous primaries and off-year balloting.

"We had 62 people in line before we opened at 7," poll worker Larry Clark told me. "I'm sure it will be a record."

By 9:25 a.m., 218 people had voted, with more streaming in.

"We've had days when we haven't had this many people all day," precinct captain Sonja Stump said.

Mayor Ellen Taylor cast her vote minutes after I did. (We canceled each other out on Measure R.) The mayor affixed her "I voted" sticker and said she was off to Starbucks to claim a free cup of coffee.

Earlier, Stump had demonstrated the Ink-a-Vote method to those of us waiting in line. This prompted an elderly Massachusetts transplant to say she preferred her home state's voting levers and curtained booths.

"No one here is going to look over your shoulder," Stump kidded her.

"And yet people in California are all about their personal space," the woman continued. "They want space all around them. No line in Massachusetts would be spaced out like this. People stand closer together."

Allen had a column in today's Bulletin recapping the election. Allen mentioned Pomona's John Mendoza, who was involved in not one, not two, but three contests Tuesday:

In Pomona, John Mendoza was all over the ballot. He ran for two offices: Three Valleys Water Board and City Council. He won the former and was runner-up on the latter.

Yet only 28 percent of voters supported a utility tax increase put on the ballot by, yes, John Mendoza.

I guess voters like Mendoza more than they do his ideas.

Alvarez Bio Deleted from Three Valleys Website

Will Bigham reports in the Daily Bulletin that Three Valleys Municipal Water District finally got around to deleting boardmember Xavier Alvarez's biography from their website. According to Bigham's article:

Army veteran Rees Lloyd, of Banning, sent the water district a letter Friday demanding that it remove or modify Alvarez's biography.

After much of Alvarez's biography was discredited last year, the district added a disclaimer that the information was provided by individual board members.

Lloyd felt the district hadn't gone far enough. The biography, Lloyd wrote, "brings discredit to the American Legion and damages our good name and reputation."

The biography also included a false claim by Alvarez that he earned a bachelor of arts degree from Cal Poly Pomona. The school has no record of him attending.

We mentioned the Alvarez biography back on July 21st. Here is a before-and-after comparison:

BEFORE

AFTER

We're Still Going to Have Xavier Alvarez to Kick Around

Xavier Alvarez "Remorseful"

"Rambo" Alvarez, the Three Valleys Municipal Water District Director who gained nationwide infamy for claiming to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor will not go to jail for his crime. Will Bigham, in a noon article on the Daily Bulletin website, reports that Alvarez will get three years probation, pay a $5,000 fine, and do one year community service (Hey! Does this mean the Water Board meetings don't count as service to the community?). More here at the KNBC website.

Judge R. Gary Klausner declined to impose a term of probation (presumably recommended by the federal probation officer) of 5 months home detention. Such a term would have in all probability allowed the Three Valleys Board to declare his seat vacant, which they would have done after 90 days and 1 second, and would have allowed them to appoint a replacement--probably Luis M. Juarez, whom "Rambo" edged out by a vote count of 3854 to 3804 in the November 2006 election.

It is now apparent that the voters of Division I (South Pomona) will have to make the effort to recall Alvarez, or else suffer representation by this "remorseful" buffoon for another two and a half years.

Every area has it's own cross to bear: Claremont has Mayor Taylor of the Porcelain Convenience and South Pomona has Xavier Alvarez.

For your edification, we provide Xavier's official biography from the Three Valleys website. (note the disclaimer at the bottom which was placed on all directors' biographies after Xavier's prevarications hit the press).


(No word yet on whether the LA County District Attorney is going to pursue fraud charges against Alvarez for the some $4,000 he claimed for medical insurance for his former wife. He says he paid it back, so no harm no foul.)

Towards a Sustainable Claremont

Claremont's draft Sustainable City Plan is posted on the city's website, for anyone interested in reading it.

The city's Sustainability Task Force came up with the plan, led by folks like former city Planning Commissioner and former Claremont League of Women Voters (LWV) president Sharon Hightower. Former Claremont Traffic and Transportation commissioner Tim Worley is also on the task force and, with Hightower, was a task force co-Vice Chair.

Worley works for the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy (RMC) as their director of water policy. He also used to work for the Metropolitan Water District and for Three Valleys Municipal Water District. RMC, his current employer, is a quasi-public state agency in a position to toss a good deal of money over to Claremont and to Three Valleys as well.

Hightower was also chair of the city's Affordable Housing Task Force. Apparently, the Claremont 400's bench is getting a bit thin. Should they be the Claremont 40? The Claremont 4?

As with most of these sorts of things, there are a number of good ideas, along with some self-interest and a dash of hypocrisy built in. And blindness. A good deal of hubris-driven blindness as well. Can you find those things?

The city is taking public comment on the draft plan over the next few months. The city informs us:

The public is invited to review and comment on the draft plan at any of the following six City commission meetings:

July 23, Architectural Commission
July 24, Traffic and Transportation Commission
September 2, Planning Commission
September 3, Human Services Commission
September 4, Police Commission
September 11, Community Services Commission

All meetings will begin at 7 p.m. and are located in the City of Claremont Council Chamber, 225 Second Street. A copy of the document is available for review at the City Hall public counter at 207 Harvard Avenue, and may be downloaded by clicking on the link below. For additional information, contact the City's Senior Planner, Christopher Veirs at (909) 399-5486.

http://www.claremontonline.net/download.cfm?ID=25468

Sunday Alvarez Update

Count on our old friend Xavier Alvarez for some interesting non-mayoral news.

The Daily Bulletin today has an article by Will Bigham that says Alvarez, who represents South Pomona on the Three Valleys Municipal Water District board, will be sentenced in a Los Angeles federal court tomorrow after taking a guilty plea for a misdemeanor charge of falsely claiming to be a Medal of Honor winner.

Bigham's article gives the backstory to Alvarez's conviction. It turns out the the story first came to light back in June, 2007, during a VIP trip sponsored by Southern California Edison to a hydroelectric facility in Big Creek, CA.

Bigham tells us that the event planner, Melissa Campbell, heard Alvarez say he was a former Marine and a Medal of Honor recipient:

Campbell's 10-year career as a Marine ended in 1996. She went to college and raised children before returning to the work force full time with Edison in 2004.

As part of her duties as an event planner, she would frequently accompany elected officials and community volunteers on trips to the utility's hydroelectric facility in the Sierra Nevada mountain town of Big Creek.

In June 2007, one of the guests on the trip was Alvarez, who seven months earlier had been elected to his seat on the Three Valleys water board.

He introduced himself to Campbell as a former Marine and a Medal of Honor winner, and Campbell says she was overwhelmed with excitement at being able to meet someone she initially believed was a highly decorated war veteran.

She contacted her husband at home in San Clemente to share the news, and he searched the Internet to find information on Alvarez's medal.

His searches were fruitless. He notified Campbell she was dealing with an apparent fraud.

The article said Campbell and another Edison employee later started questioning Alvarez's claims, and their questions apparently prompted Alvarez to complain to people higher up in Edison chain of command.

Just to show that no good deed goes unpunished, Edison suspended Campbell without pay two weeks after the Big Creek trip. Two weeks after that, Edison fired Campbell, citing performance issues. Edison claims that Campbell's termination had nothing to do with the Alvarez incident.

Right.

please click on image to enlarge

Sinking into the Swamp

Our thanks to the readers who waded through all this information and distilled it for us and to the Insider Hydrology Institute, which vetted the piece.

CLAREMONT LOGIC

As we noted last week, the Claremont City Council Tuesday night voted 5-0 to dedicate $25,000 to a League of Women Voters (LWV) project dedicated to buying the area around Thompson Creek Dam and turning it into a park with cienegas (or marshlands or fens or bogs or fever swamps), a wooded area, and about 50-60 acres of endangered Riversidean Alluvial Fan Sage Scrub (RAFSS).

The LWV has applied for a $7.6 million grant through the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that takes state bond money and distributes it to local projects throughout land drained by the San Gabriel River - a very wide area that runs from the mountains to the sea and which encompasses large sections of Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

Our previous post on the subject included the observation that the there was some hypocrisy implicit in the LWV grant application. For instance, the argument that the project is needed because it saves 50-60 acres of endangered RAFSS is specious given the fact that the city of Claremont is also applying for another grant of $1.5 million through the same Conservancy for the Padua Sports Park. That project will destroy 10 acres of the same, precious RAFSS habitat.

So, if the habitat is so rare that we should spend $7.6 million to save it, why are we also asking for $1.5 million to bulldoze it? And why are we asking a land conservancy for that money? The answer is that it depends on a good deal of Claremont logic: The habitat is good when we want it to be and bad when we don't want it.

The irony is you have the same hypocrites on the City Council, on city commissions, and in the LWV pushing both projects. Leave it to City Councilmember Sam Pedroza (AKA, WJM's Ted Baxter) to sum it up perfectly as he did in his rush to show his support for the LWV project: "This is a no-brainer."

We couldn't agree more.

(To be fair, the city's evidence for removing the stuff on the sports park site was equally stupid: They hired a so-called "biostitute" with a Internet-ordered Ph.D in theology to write the biology report that supported their park project.)


THE BASELINE BARRIER WELLS WILL SAVE US!

It's truly remarkable how poorly conceived the LWV project is. One the other concerns we raised previously was the question of where does all the water they intend to spread around the site go? The area sits above the Canyon Water Basin, an underground aquifer that will take the water and carry it to lower, downslope areas. Add water and away it goes. So, how do you keep the water in the project area without having to constantly add more. How do you do that in dry season when the creeks dry up?

Also, what do you do about the water that seeps away? Cienegas are wet places where the area's geology is such that water pools underground and comes to the Earth's surface, sometimes via artesian wells. One such place called the Martin Cienega existed around 6th and Harrison in the Claremont Village near Pilgrim Place until pumping of the groundwater lowered the water table so much that the cienega ceased to exist.

Presumably, the geology remains in place, so if groundwater were to rise high enough, water would once again spout forth in the Claremont Village and in a number of other areas of town. Claremont's Human Services Department would no doubt put a happy spin on them and call them "Water Play Features."

In any case, in order to quell any questions about downslope artesian wells, the LWV grant application refers to a 2006 study by a consulting company called CDM Engineering. The study was commissioned by Three Valleys Municipal Water District and is titled "Mitigation Alternatives to Rising Groundwater Study." It turns out that Three Valleys needed the study because they want to increase the amount of water spread on the San Antonio Spreading Grounds below the San Antonio Dam.

Of course, the LWV grant writers likely did not bother to read the study all that carefully and certainly didn't cite any portions of it in their application. Nor did they attach it to the grant application. For the sake of their project, it's a good thing they didn't. What the CDM study found was that water springing up in Pilgrim Place need not be a concern, provided we're willing to spend $24.4 million to build the "Base Line Barrier Wells" protection system.

That's right - $24.4 million.

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

The barriers wells are just what the name implies: a network of six wells drilled along Base Line Rd. and connected by many thousands of feet of underground pipes that would act as a sort of wall to block groundwater from turning 6th and Harrison back into a swampy bog.

And there's more! Three more wells in Mallows, Larkin, and Memorial Parks to protect Pilgrim Place.

And how will we pay for this all? To begin with, the study says, $12 million in bonded indebtedness. And then another $12 million and change in - you guessed it - more grants! Federal and regional grants that flow as easily as aquifer water into Marilee Scaff's Pilgrim Place home.


MOVE OVER FLORIDA

We couldn't help but think about an article we read recently in the New York Times. The article discussed the state of Florida's buyout of United States Sugar and Florida's takeover of 187,000 acres of land south of Lake Okeechobee in the Everglades Agricultural Area.

The purchase will allow Florida to restore a large swath of Everglades land without having to install much of the huge network of pumps and piping that a year 2000 plan to maintain water flow had called for. Instead, the state will be able to rely on the natural water flow, the Times article said:

The impact on the Everglades could be substantial. The natural flow of water would be restored, and the expanse of about 292 square miles would add about a million acre-feet of water storage. That amount of water — enough to fill about 500,000 Olympic size swimming pools — could soak the southern Everglades during the dry season, protecting wildlife, preventing fires, and allowing for a redrawing of the $8 billion Everglades restoration plan approved in 2000.

It would essentially remove some of the proposed plumbing. Many of the complicated wells and pumps the plan relied on might never have to be built, water officials said, because the water could move naturally down the gradually sloping land.

Kenneth G. Ammon, deputy executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, which would assume control of the land, said it would be a “managed” flow-way, with reservoirs and other engineered mechanisms to control water flow. David G. Guest, a lawyer for Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, joked that he might have to go to blows to keep the area all natural.

Whereas Florida is able to utilize nature to its advantage in moving and storing water and restoring wetlands, the city of Claremont and its agents, Marilee Scaff and the League of Women Voters, want to spend fistsful of money to create a cienega where none existed historically. As a result, all the water they pour into the ground will seep downslope to the heart of the Claremont Village, requiring the construction of a system of wells and pipes to catch that water before it can burst up out of the ground.

Instead of using the natural water flow and recreating a cienega somewhere they occurred in the past (College Park or one of the parks near 6th & Harrison), they want to spend a total of $32 million (before financing is figured in) to do what the state of Florida is taking pains to try to avoid: the creation of a costly, convoluted, over-engineered, Rube Goldberg system of wells, pumps, and pipes to mitigate a self-created problem. And the LWV can't even be honest with us about the true cost of the project!

Who dreams these things up, the witless LWV or the construction companies and consultants who'll be on the receiving end of all those millions?

Alvarez May Face Recall

The Three Valleys Municipal Water District yesterday approved a resolution calling on District I boardmember Xavier Alvarez to resign, according to the Daily Bulletin's Will Bigham.

The one "NO" vote belonged to Alvarez himself, who has faced ever-greater criticism since his guilty plea to a federal misdemeanor charge of lying about being a Medal of Honor recipient:

Alvarez has pleaded guilty to a federal charge connected with his false claim that he won the Medal of Honor. He never served in the military.

He also is being investigated by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office for the potentially criminal act of signing up his ex-wife for district-paid health benefits.

Despite the pressure to resign, Alvarez said he had no intention of leaving his seat. Alvarez was censured by the board in October after his alleged misuse of health benefits was exposed.

And it now appears that Alvarez will soon face a recall campaign in his south Pomona district.

The article goes on to say that former Pomona City Councilmember Marco Robles spoke at the meeting and announced the formation of a committee to recall Alvarez. The two have battled in the past, with Alvarez having tried without success to recall Robles.

Alvarez remains defiant as ever, accusing his fellow boardmembers of being drunk at water board meetings and accusing them of bigotry in their comments about Alvarez. Bigham's article said Three Valleys board president Bob Kuhn seemed to laugh off Alvarez's claims, calling them ridiculous.

Water Board May Call on Alvarez to Resign

The Daily Bulletin reports today that the Three Valleys Municipal Water District board will discuss a non-binding resolution call District I board member Xavier Alvarez to resign from the Three Valleys board.

Alvarez, who represents South Pomona, pleaded guilty in federal court last month to a misdemeanor charge of lying about having won a Medal of Honor. He also lied about being married to an ex-wife in order for her to get health benefits through Three Valleys:

Director Brian Bowcock, the board member who requested the resolution be considered, said he hopes a formal statement from his colleagues will convince Alvarez to resign.

"I'm hoping it does, because we're going to ask him in a public setting," said Bowcock, who represents La Verne and Claremont.

The resolution cites Alvarez's guilty plea to federal charges stemming from his false claim that he won the Medal of Honor. It also cites Alvarez's potentially illegal act of signing up his ex-wife for district-paid health benefits.

Alvarez claimed on the application that she was still his spouse.

"Director Alvarez has engaged in personal conduct that is neither befitting a member of the board nor consistent with basic public-service ethics, and which has caused embarrassment to the district and damage to the public's trust in its elected officials," the resolution reads.

If Alvarez refuses to resign, the resolution calls for outside legal counsel to be hired to determine whether there are grounds to force Alvarez from the board on the basis of his guilty plea or other alleged criminal conduct.

"We absolutely want it made clear to everybody, including Alvarez, that we want and expect him to resign," said board president Bob Kuhn.

Alvarez was censured last year by the water board, and the Bulletin article indicated that the Los Angeles District Attorney's office is still investigating the health benefits matter, which is a potential felony.

A Voter Writes

A reader, presumably from Pomona, wrote us in response to our posts on Three Valleys Valleys Municipal Water District boardmember Xavier Alvarez:

Dear Claremont Insider,

So many of us are disgusted with Alvarez. A recall would be the right thing to do but who has the time. You have to have 10 to 20 people who don't work to get a recall done. You have to file the paper work and write a statement. The city clerk probably won't like the first or second draft of the statement so you will be writing a third. Gathering signatures, my best guess is that 6,000 or 7,000 might be needed. Xeroxing and making sure the the signatures are truly registered to vote. (Notice I did not say legally registered to vote I just said registered to vote) If this was a city council race we probably could get more active but this slime ball will probably get to ride out his term.

Sorry

Well, no one said doing the right thing is easy. That's how voters get stuck with flim-flam artists like Alvarez or Congresswoman Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach). Richardson, a former Long Beach councilwoman who in eight years has gone from the Long Beach City Council to the State Assembly to the U.S. House of Representatives, partly on the strength of endorsements she earned from former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) for her work within the party.

If you haven't followed the Richardson story, she's been in the news lately because of her reputation as a deadbeat with a pattern of allowing homes she owns to fall into default and for failing to maintain her homes so that they become eyesores. A 5/31/2008 LA Times article gave the background on the Richardson story:

After telling a Times reporter she would be interviewed, Richardson declined the next day and instead offered two prepared statements.

"Earlier this year, I was notified that the mortgages on properties that I own were in default," she said. "At that time, I began continuous and ongoing discussions with the lenders to reinstate and modify these loans and to reinstate my ownership of the properties. Since those discussions were initiated, I was not notified of any preemptive sales of any of the properties."

She might want to tell that to James York, owner of Red Rock Mortgage, who bought the three-bedroom, 1 1/2 -bath Sacramento house at a public auction for $388,000 on May 7. He recorded the deed May 19 and has had a crew at the house fixing it up.

Richardson, who bought the house in early 2007 for $535,000, owed about $9,000 in property taxes. She owes Sacramento $154.03 after the city utilities department put a lien on the house for an unpaid bill.

Asked about the congresswoman's statement that she knew nothing about the sale, York said that's an excuse he hears all the time: "She doesn't know what happened, but she's an educated woman who hasn't made her payments for 12 months and she doesn't know why she lost her house? That's the joke."

Neighbors in the upper middle-class Curtis Park neighborhood said they were glad to see Richardson leave because she had let the house fall into disarray.

"I don't care who it is, that's irresponsible to let it go like that," said Sean Padovan, a retired Sacramento police sergeant who lives three doors away. "This is our neighborhood. It becomes personal when it's a few houses down and you're junking up the neighborhood."

Padovan, 61, said that when the grass grew nearly a foot high, he knocked on her door. "I finally went down there and said, 'Would you mind if I mowed your lawn for you?' She said, 'I've been awful busy. Sure.' "

Padovan said his hand mower could barely make it through the grass.

The Long Beach Press-Telegram, which has been on top of the Richardson story, reported this past week that Richardson is an equal-opportunity deadbeat. Not only did she fail to pay her mortgages while lending money to her various political campaigns, but she also failed to pay her auto repair bills, and then racked up over 30,000 in one year on city vehicle that was supposed to be used only for official city business - a vehicle she continued to use after she was elected to the State Assembly:

LONG BEACH - Car trouble takes on a new meaning when it comes to financially distressed Congresswoman Laura Richardson.

In 2005, when she was still on the Long Beach City Council, she left one mechanic in a lurch with an unpaid bill, then later had her badly damaged BMW towed to an auto body shop but didn't pay for any work and abandoned the car there, owners of the businesses said this week.

The next day, Richardson began using a city-owned vehicle - putting almost 31,000 miles on it in about a year - and continued driving the car five days after she had left the council to serve in the state Assembly, city records show.

....In October 2005, her 1999 four-door 740iL BMW had an odd vibration in the front, so she took it to Signal Hill Foreign Auto Service, according to Leo Labreche, the shop owner.

Mechanics there fixed the car and replaced some worn parts, but when Richardson picked up her vehicle, she said she didn't have the money to pay the $735 bill, Labreche said. Because Richardson was a council member, Labreche let her take the car, assuming that she was good for the money, he said.

"She had picked the car up and was going to come back and pay the bill, and she never did," Labreche said.

Labreche said he spent months leaving messages on Richardson's cell phone voice mail, then he got a collection agency involved, but still the bill went unpaid.

"I couldn't get through to her, and then when the collection agency couldn't do anything, I thought, `There's nothing I'm going to be able to do,"' Labreche said.

But on Tuesday, after the Press-Telegram requested an interview with Richardson to discuss the 2 1/2-year-old unpaid bill, she went to the auto shop and paid Labreche, he said.

Similarly, Richardson last week paid off a $150 printing bill owed to a local company following published reports about the debt.

Richardson also settled a bill Tuesday with another mechanic, Alvin's Auto Body in Signal Hill, only this time she came out ahead, in a sense.

About one month after Richardson had taken her BMW to Labreche for work, she got into a car accident that tore up the front left corner of her car, leaving it undriveable.

She initially had it towed back to Labreche for repairs, even though she still owed him money. But Labreche doesn't do auto body work.

So the car was sent to Alvin's Auto Body, which received the BMW on Nov. 17, 2005, according to owner Bob Lillegard.

But Lillegard never heard from Richardson or her insurance company, he said.

"I'd call her office, and they'd say she was too busy," Lillegard said. "I couldn't get through to her."

With Richardson, as with Alvarez, voters too lazy to look into the history and character of the person they're selecting just rely on endorsements from groups and people they trust. Because Richardson's district is safely Democratic, she only had to get her party's nod to win election to Congress. In Richardson's case, the endorsements came from Democratic Party leaders and from unions. If her district had been a Republican one, the endorsements would have come from that party's leaders, from business groups, and from fiscal and social conservatives (see Randall "Duke" Cunningham, former Congressman from San Diego). Same process, different party.

But then, to bring it all home, is that really so different from voters backing Pomona Mayor Norma Torres for the State Assembly's 61st District seat. Or Claremont voters backing an endless string of candidates like current Mayor Ellen "Cookie Monster" Taylor?

While it's true that neither Torres nor Taylor have sunk to the level of criminality of a Xavier Alvarez or the general irresponsibility of a Laura Richardson, they both exhibit the same sense of entitlement and privilege that comes with being elected on the strength of being a good party loyalist rather than having to earn one's position by being a strong, capable candidate concerned with the welfare of the people they're supposed to represent. With Torres, the party is a political one, with Taylor, it's a social network of Claremont power brokers. Either way, we get stuck with incompetents like Torres or bullies like Taylor, who seems to feel that rules only exist for her to apply to other people.

Voters, let's face it, before you start complaining about political gridlock, the liberal or conservative media, failed schools, taxes, affordable housing, or anything else, look in the mirror. All the information you need to make an informed decision in an election is out there. You may have to turn off the Laker game, get off the couch, and do some actual work educating yourself instead of relying on someone else to tell you what a good person that dead beat is.

In the end, dear voters, there's no one to blame but ourselves for the messes we find ourselves in.

Bowcock on Alvarez

Three Valleys Municipal Water District boardmember Brian Bowcock, who represents Claremont and La Verne, was interviewed by the Daily Bulletin's Will Bigham recently.

In the interview, Bowcock calls on his fellow boardmember Xavier Alvarez following Alvarez's conviction in federal court for lying about being a Medal of Honor recipient. Alvarez represents South Pomona on the Three Valleys board and was elected largely because of his endorsement by Pomona Mayor Norma Torres. Bowcock explained his reasons for calling on Alvarez to resign:

Question: Why did you decide to break your relative silence regarding Xavier Alvarez and call for his resignation?

Answer: I waited until the meeting following his guilty plea in the federal court system, to give him the opportunity to do the right thing - resign.

Q: Why do you think Alvarez [pictured right in full dress regalia ] should resign?

A: He lied on his initial statement for the ballot in November 2006, i.e. claimed he was an engineer. He lied, on his Web site, i.e. claimed he was an engineer and a graduate of Cal Poly Pomona and claimed to have earned the Medal Of Honor. He claimed to be married when he wasn't and fraudulently requested medical benefits (paid by district monies) for the woman he had divorced long before his election to the board. His long list of lies makes me feel that he cannot be trusted or taken seriously to make the right decisions while sitting on the board.

Q: What has been the day-to-day impact for you and other board members of the attention Alvarez has received for his medal claims?

A: It's been very time-consuming for staff and directors. Amount of time this takes under "public comment" every meeting. If this helps him make the right decision, great. The embarrassment he has created at ALL water functions attended by all directors and staff. It really takes away the time that our focus should be on the "major water crisis" here in our area and in all of California.

Q: What has been the public reaction since you called for Alvarez's resignation?

A: Overwhelming. From the veterans, parents of our service people serving right now, business people in the community, residents on the streets of my service area of La Verne and Claremont, when I go to the store and restaurants, so many e-mails through the district and to me personally from all over the USA. People tell my wife to thank me. I even received a small cake, delivered to my home from a business, with the owner saying "thanks for hitting a home run." His dad was at Pearl Harbor. Even when we go out of town, someone will thank me for "doing the right thing."

Q: As of May 30 no one has filed papers to recall Alvarez. Do you know of any pending recall campaign?

A: I hope the people of south Pomona will follow through. The day after the story broke I personally received 12 phone calls, eight were from residents of South Pomona. Someone hopefully will step up and do it. The problem is no one knows how to run a recall campaign, including myself. But I'm willing to find out and help any way I can.

Despite Bowcock's offer to help, Pomonans seem quite satisfied with Norma Torres' man, and there's been no groundswell so far to recall Alvarez. Pomonans also helped reward Torres' good judgment by voting for her in the recent Democratic primary for the State Assembly's 61st District seat.

* * *

Bowcock isn't the only one to call for Alvarez's resignation/removal. The Claremont Courier ran a letter from veteran Mike Massarro, who expressed his anger over the Alvarez affair:

As a veteran with several honorable discharges I am outraged that someone would claim such an honor as one bestowed upon our nation’s bravest soldiers, sailors and marines. Mr. Alvarez, according to the article, has not even served one day in uniform.

Now, more than ever, we need trust and confidence in our elected leaders and those serving the public trust. Mr. Alvarez’s bio on the Three Valleys website sites membership in the American Legion and American Veterans. His bio should be removed immediately until his credentials are verified.

Hey, Xavier, Come Back When You Can't Stay So Long

According to an article in the Daily Bulletin, the Three Valleys Municipal Water District board is putting pressure on Three Valleys District I board member Xavier Alvarez to resign. Alvarez recently pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge of lying about having been awarded a Medal of Honor.

Alvarez, who represents South Pomona on the water district board, was also censured by his fellow boardmembers last year after an investigation showed that Alvarez had falsely claimed that he was still married to his ex-wife so that she could qualify for health benefits through Three Valleys.

The Bulletin article indicates that at least some of the Three Valleys boardmembers are tired of being questioned about Alvarez's antics and are ready to be rid of him. The article quotes Three Valleys boardmember Brian Bowcock, who represents La Verne and Claremont, as well as board president Bob Kuhn:

Bowcock said he will urge Alvarez to resign after reading a three-page list of what he says are Alvarez's lies at this morning's board meeting.

If Alvarez refuses to resign, Bowcock said he will urge his fellow board members to approve a symbolic, nonbinding resolution calling for Alvarez's resignation.

Alvarez could not be reached for comment.

Bowcock, who represents La Verne and Claremont, said he has received "continued questions about why the board has not followed through and asked for his resignation publicly. And that is why I'm doing it."

Bob Kuhn, board president, said, "I think there's a strong feeling on the board that we're spending way, way, way too much time on this guy's misgivings."

In addition to calling for Alvarez's resignation, Bowcock said he intends to formally lodge a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission over Alvarez's false claim on the November 2006 ballot that he is an engineer.

He also said he will follow up with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office to inquire about its progress in investigating Alvarez's registration of his ex-wife for district health benefits.

The article goes on to say that Bowcock will call on South Pomona voters to recall Alvarez. The FC Blog also picked up on the story and is open to comments on their post, including this one from Miss Havisham:

He’ll just wear his mustache bigger.

Has the Mayor of Pomona made any kind of statement or demand to atone for her misguided endorsement of him?