Monday Crime Report

There were some noteworthy items the Claremont Police Department's page on the city's website, beginning with a mini-property crime wave in Northwest Claremont and a strange attack at the Laemmle Claremont 5 Theatre:

Residential Burglaries in Northwest Claremont

Three residential burglaries took place on Thursday, August 7th, between the hours of noon and 7pm. Property taken included TV, Wii, laptop computers, jewelry, and musical instruments. The burglaries occurred:

* 2000 block of Cape Cod Ct.
* 500 block of Scripps Dr.
* 400 block Mt. Carmel Dr.

Just before the Scripps Dr. burglary, a male teen knocked on a neighbor's door asking for "Jessica", but no one by that name lives there.

Possible Suspect: Male white, slight build, 17 to 19 years old, 5'7" tall, short brown hair, wearing a striped shirt and dark colored pants. No vehicle was seen.

Residents are encouraged to call the Police Department immediately at 626-1296 if they observe suspicious activity.


Tires Slashed in Northwest Claremont

During the evening of Tuesday, August 5th, two vehicles were vandalized with single or multiple tires punctured/slashed while parked in the driveways of residences in the 1900 block of Lock Haven Way.

During the evening of Thursday, August 7th, additional vehicles were vandalized in the same fashion and in the same general area. There were four victims in the 1500 and 1600 blocks of Mural Dr., one victim in the 1500 block of Lynoak Dr., one victim in the 1600 block of Sumner Ave., and one victim in the 1200 block of Hillsdale.

The punctures/slashings appear to have been made with a knife or similar sharp object. The suspect is unknown at this time. The times of occurrences appear to be between 9pm and 6am.


Disturbance & Theft at Laemmle Theater Results in Arrests

On Monday, July 29, 2008 at about 7:02 pm, officers responded to a call of a disturbance at the Laemmle Theater, 450 W. Second St. Officers discovered that a male and female subject had been creating a disturbance in a theater showing the Batman movie by talking loudly and repeatedly walking in and out. The suspects then initiated an altercation with a couple sitting behind them when their chair was accidentally kicked. The suspects began to strike the victims, a 30-year-old female and a 40-year-old male, both Claremont residents, about the head with their fists. The female suspect then grabbed the purse of another patron, a 53-year-old female Upland resident, and the suspects fled in a vehicle.

A witness provided the description and license plate of the suspect vehicle. Officers located and stopped the suspect vehicle on Bonita Ave. near Towne Ave. in Pomona. Arrested for grand theft and battery were Marinus Rankin, a 21-year-old male transient, and Marissa Beale, a 19 year-old female San Dimas resident. The stolen purse was recovered and returned to the owner. The two assault victims sustained minor cuts on their faces and refused medical attention at the scene. Rankin and Beale are currently being held in the Claremont PD jail.

* Laemmle Theater Disturbance Press Release

Rest in Peace, Claremont Camera

Saturday marked the end of an era as Claremont Camera, closed three weeks ago, auctioned its remaining stock and fixtures.

After 30-some years in business the store could not withstand the shift away from film to digital photography. Everyman an artist.

Claremont Camera had a reputation that extended beyond Claremont. It was known for knowledgeable and helpful counter people who could guide the novice or make intelligent recommendations to the pro. And unless the customer was looking for something really exotic, the item was usually in stock.

It was a sober Joslyn Jane who joined the Internet sales people and eBay bottom-feeders at the auction preview on Friday. In the end we didn't even register to bid, and we didn't come back for the auction. Cases of assorted filters, various flash adapters, lenses, lenses, and more lenses, and some lots of used cameras including the venerable Argus C3 that we used when a little girl...it somehow just left a sour taste and held no attraction.

We heard that as the auction hour approached on Saturday the pressure understandably built, and the owner threw a guy out of the store. Probably the guy acted like he was buying retail instead of sweeping up the dust of part of a man's life.

Don't expect a chirpy notice in the City Manager's Update on this passage. Things like these usually are not recognized, especially when these things don't fit the narrative.

IE Weekly Commentary

Not to pick nits, but the Inland Empire Weekly article by David Silva about the fight between Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor and a local Girl Scout troop had a number of errors, as we pointed out a couple days ago. We didn't want to pile on, but we noticed a rather important one.

Silva criticized LA Times writer David Pierson, who himself had written an article about the Girl Scout incident that ran on 7/19/08. The Girl Scout incident got mixed up with a new door-to-door solicitation ordinance that the Claremont City Council happened to be approving around the same time the Cookie Monster furor was raging. Some of the Girl Scout parents objected to be singled out in the ordinance and thought the city was aiming it at them as some sort of payback on Taylor's behalf. (As we wrote back on July 1st, we didn't think this was the case.)

Silva indicated in his piece that he had read through the ordinance and had no idea where Pierson got the idea that the city had mentioned the Girl Scouts at all:

Pierson then helpfully brought up the council’s recent passage of a solicitation ordinance, under which commercial door-to-door solicitors must first get a permit from the city and undergo criminal background checks. While acknowledging the ordinance had nothing to do with the March 14 Scout incident—it had been in the works for years following two rapes by magazine salesmen—he wrote that its proximity to that event (the law was introduced April 22) caused some people to feel that it was aimed at the Scouts. Fair enough. But why would Pierson help further that false belief by stating, “the ordinance specifically cited Girl Scouts, among others, as nonprofit organizations that would need to apply for a permit if they go door-to-door”?

It does? We’ve got a copy of that ordinance, all 19 pages of it, and nowhere are the Girl Scouts mentioned. Not specifically. Not even obliquely. Which raises the question: Just where did Pierson get the idea that it did? We certainly hope not from the Insider, which ran several “reader comments” suggesting a link between the Scout incident and the solicitation ordinance.

Like Silva, we got to wondering where this idea came from in the first place, so we went to the city website's solicitation ordinance page. We've posted an image of the page on the left just in case the city should change the language after this is published.

As you can see, under the heading "Definitions," the helpful page states:

Charitable

* 501(c)(3) Organizations - Boy & Girl Scouts, youth athletic clubs, etc. [Emphasis added -ed.]
* School clubs - public or private schools

So, although Silva is correct that the ordinance itself does not use the term "Girl Scouts," the official city webpage explaining the ordinance clearly uses those words in its definitions. So that's where the mix-up must have come. Silva, in his zeal to skewer the Times, the Girl Scouts, and the Insider and to buttress Taylor's and Councilmember Sam Pedroza's defense of Taylor's behavior, ignored some important, easily accessible evidence.

The article also failed to explain if Silva bothered to ask the parents of the Girl Scouts how they got the impression that the ordinance was aimed at their kids. So much for objectivity and balance.

* * *

We thought it odd that Silva would include the "aside" on page 14 about the elderly woman driving over the planter of the Wells Fargo parking lot on Sunday morning, July 20, during the Farmer's Market. We guess that was near enough Mayor Taylor's office--right across the street--to illustrate the danger of the corner. We suspect the public policy issues are very different for elderly women drivers than for girl scouts on sidewalks. Maybe 64-year old women should be prohibited from driving, but then that might take "Wrong Way" off the streets.

The picture right shows the tire marks on the edge of the planter and on the sidewalk where the car went over. It's left fender caught on a tree off the picture to the right, and caused the car to pivot to it's left and head down the sidewalk to the east (right in the picture) as you can see. (Click on the picture to enlarge)

For our money, though, the traffic situation Sunday morning with the Farmer's Market in full swing compared with a Friday afternoon in March would fall into the category of "not comparable".

* * *

We also had several readers contact us with complaints that Silva took a couple potshots at Claremont City Councilmember Corey Calaycay using more than a little of the innuendo and rumor-mongering that he accused the Insider of employing. Silva, who included a photo of Calaycay in his print article, apparently never bothered to interview Calaycay. An odd omission for someone writing about journalistic ethics.

* * *

Then there was this reader who had his own complaints about Silva's style and grammar:

Subject: i'm writing as bad as i can

Maaaaaan, David Silva is so far beyond awful -- I had to fight to make it beyond the first three error-ridden paragraphs:

"America’s second-largest newspaper..." Not even close -- by circulation, the LAT runs *well* behind USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the NYT. Did he just pull that factoid out of his ass?

"According to staff writer David Pierson, the incident began when Taylor demanded the Scouts, who had set up a cookie sale at a street corner a few feet from Taylor’s husband’s law office at Indian Hill Boulevard and Second Street, to move elsewhere." "Demanded the Scouts...to move." Somewhere a second-grader is wincing at that grammar.

And so on, until I arrived at, "But there were a few problems with the article, the most minor of which being it contained numerous factual errors."

"of which being it"

If you can figure out where this dude went to school, I'll demand at my child never of which being to of go there.

Base Line Road Work

The City of Claremont has been busy all along Base Line Rd. between Mountain Ave. and Monte Vista Ave. The street, which the State of California had owned and managed through Caltrans, was handed over to Claremont, along with $2 million to fix all those cracks in the road surface. Base Line has been a mess since before the 210 Freeway opened, and a makeover has been long overdue.

During the Glenn Southard years, Claremont fought Caltrans to try to get the agency to do all the road repairs prior to giving it over to the city. After Southard left, the new administration worked out the deal for the $2 million. The work's been going on for a few weeks now, but a reader noticed some problems:

Dear Insider,

As part of resurfacing and upgrading of Base Line Road (east of Mountain Ave.), new landscape medians are being installed. Sounds good except that the City has decided to install "half ass" patches of landscape medians which look silly - not the normal more complete stretches that include "finger" extensions at left-turn pockets as was installed west of Mountain Ave. The reason? "Lack of funding!" Yes, it is true that when Caltrans relinquished Base Line Road to the City, the agency gave the City about $2 million for repairing the road. The $2 million amount was apparently not enough to upgrade the road with full landscape medians - hence the patch work that is now underway. If our City Council was not busy expending thousands of dollars on frivolous non-essential items (Village trolley, Friends of the Library book cataloguing, etc.), may be we could have complete landscaped medians installed on Base Line Rd.

We were wondering about those medians ourselves. They look awfully funny, stopping short as they do before the left-turn pockets. On the other hand, no one important lives up there, so who will ever notice if we skimped a little or a lot on the road?

Senior Excursions

The city website had an announcement for some fun-sounding upcoming excursions for seniors:

Senior News
2008-2009 Senior Excursions Scheduled Announced

The City of Claremont Senior Citizens Program is excited to announce the new lineup of trips and tours for September 2008 all the way through December of 2009. These monthly trips focus on providing the older-adult community with a low cost means to discover the best of Southern California through it's cultural activities, captivating art, and rich history. These trips are a great way to meet new people or just enjoy the company of friends through thrilling adventures. Adults ages 50 and over are welcome to register at Joslyn Center located at 660 N. Mountain Ave. Pre-registration is highly encouraged as most trips sell out well in advance.

Upcoming Senior Excursions:

· Catalina Island - Thursday, August 21
· Temecula Winery Tours - Thursday, September 25.
· Haunted City Tour of San Diego - Thursday, October 16

For more information on any of these trips or to obtain the newest trip brochure, please contact (909) 399-5488.

* Download Excursions Brochure 08-09

There's plenty of other things listed in the brochure, including an October 15th trip to the Getty Museum from 9am to 5pm for $10. Don't know if this includes the Bernini exhibition that just opened, but we hear that's quite a show. The exhibition, called "Bernini and the Birth of Portrait Sculpture," opened August 5th to rave reviews and runs through October 26th.

_______________________

Hey, speaking of senior activities, the Claremont Courier had a letter last Wednesday signed by Janis Weinberger, Muriel Farritor and Kay Moore. The letter urged the city to not go through with switching the city's senior programs from the Joslyn Senior Center in Larkin Park to the Hughes Community Center:

Imagine the shock to learn last week that the daily luncheon program and many of the senior activities are probably being moved. Workmen were removing the sign, Joslyn Senior Center, from the roof while members of the Committee on Aging were holding their monthly meeting nearby—some learning about the move for the first time. Many had sold the bricks to build the patio floor, many names were inscribed on the bricks.

Were the seniors consulted about this move? Is it a done deal? Will the new location be near the center of Claremont or affordable housing, banks post office, shopping, bus routes, churches or schools? Most public services are currently located near the center of the city and errands can be combined in a single trip. Will the city hall services, museums, art galleries, the library, financial resources and other businesses by nearby?

The city responded to the letter with an informational notice on its website:

Joslyn Center/Hughes Community Center Changeover

The Human Services Department is currently studying the feasibility of relocating the City's senior programs to the Alexander Hughes Community Center and moving recreation programs to the Joslyn Senior Center.

The core of this study is to determine whether this relocation will better accommodate the City's growing senior population and meet the need for expanded senior services, while still serving the recreational needs of youth and families.

The facility change over concept is still in the conceptual stage. There will be a full community process beginning this fall to review the potential benefits and issues associated with the relocation proposal. Information on the community input process will be posted on the City's website as it becomes available. Click below to view the fact sheet for the facility changeover.

* View Fact Sheet (Adobe Acrobat, 21KB)

The Empire Strikes Back!

Well, the Claremonster Empire, never one to be content to take a media whuppin', has been fighting back on the Ellen Taylor front. First it was in the letters to the Claremont Courier, now in the Inland Empire Weekly, the free tabloid paper on newsstands in around the area.

(You may remember the IE Weekly as the paper that carried the ad last month for the guerrilla strip club event in Cahuilla Park.)

The IE Weekly's writer, David Silva, blasts anonymity and one anonymous blog in particular in a feature article titled "Anonymity Sucks, What really happened with the Claremont Cookie Monster..."

Silva's article takes the LA Times to task for some sloppy reporting by Times writer David Pierson, whose front-page article last month catapulted the Insider to new heights of digital popularity, according to Silva:

Pierson wrote in breathless detail how the story of the incident was broken by the Claremont Insider, which Pierson described as a “popular blog in town known for gossipy items and sharp jabs at local politicians.”

The tale wrapped up with Taylor publicly apologizing for the episode.

The article, the first sentence of which referred to Taylor as the “Claremont Cookie Monster,” was an instant media sensation. For more than a week after its publication, Pierson’s article was listed among the top five “most read” and “most emailed” stories on the Times website, and was picked up by newspapers and blogs across the country. In Claremont, it galvanized Taylor’s supporters and enemies like nothing else, resurrecting—again, the incident was three months in the past by July 19—what had become in many residents’ minds a dead issue. And it represented a major coup for the Claremont Insider, which until Pierson’s article was little known outside the college community.

But there were a few problems with the article, the most minor of which being it contained numerous factual errors. The biggest problem with it is what Pierson didn’t write: He ignored the very real possibility that, while Taylor’s run-in with the Scouts certainly happened, the creature known as the “Claremont Cookie Monster” is at its Scout-hating heart a creation of an anonymous blog—the Claremont Insider.

Do reporters have an obligation to pay extra attention to the motivations of the anonymous blogs they cover? And, while we’re on the subject of obligations: Just what ethical responsibilities, if any, do anonymous blogs bear themselves—particularly entities as prone to rumor mongering and innuendo as the anonymous site Pierson promoted to national prominence?

Silva touched on the "few problems" with the Pierson article, though he neglected to mention that the Insider was the first to point those errors out and that we took pains to note that it was the Claremont Courier's Tony Krickl who broke the story. That's the kind of thing that makes us wonder about Silva's own biases.

We found it curious, for instance, that the article seemed out of balance in its exploration of the issues. Silva starts out with the premise that "the creature known as the “Claremont Cookie Monster” is at its Scout-hating heart a creation of an anonymous blog—the Claremont Insider." Yet, as we've pointed out, not only did we not break the story, we didn't even apply the Cookie Monster tag to Taylor - the credit for that one has to go to the Foothills Cities' Centinel, another anonymous blogster! (Do we sense a conspiracy here?)

To prove his thesis, Silva relies primarily on interviews with Claremont Mayor and Scout-hater Ellen Taylor and Councilmember Sam Pedroza, himself a beneficiary of the largess of Ellen's supporters in his own election to city council in 2007.

It seems odd that in an article that starts out talking about the Girl Scout incident, Silva doesn't include any quote from any of the Girl Scouts' parents. He seems content to take Taylor's version of events ("I was concerned about their safety") at face value without any apparent attempt at interviewing the other parties.

Nor did Silva take the time to put the event into the context of Taylor's own public history - her arrogant behavior towards public speakers as a councilmember and mayor, for instance. Silva ignored our suggestion in response to his questions that he contact and interview people who've opposed Taylor and her supporters on various issues for their take on things. In fact, from the tenor of the article, we suspect that Silva simply tossed most of our answers to his questions in the circular file.

Silva seemed quite willing to buy into Pedroza's false claim that we are some sort of campaign blog, even though we've been at this regularly for a 1-1/2 years with no election going, and accused the Insider of being "prone to rumor mongering and innuendo." Yet, Silva failed to note that Taylor and Pedroza's supporters have made a regular sport of using rumor and innuendo time and again during city elections.

If he had actually interviewed people other than Taylor and Pedroza, Silva would have learned that in 2001 the Claremont 400 cabal that Silva dismissively pooh-poohs spread false rumors that candidate Llewellyn Miller was against inter-racial marriage. And four years later, the same group organized a very public "Preserve Claremont" smear campaign that ran ads using false information in an unsuccessful campaign to defeat then-candidate Corey Calaycay and to try to have sitting Councilmember Jackie McHenry censured.

The Silva article quotes Pedroza as denying the idea of a Claremont 400:

“This concept of a Claremont 400 has been a way to designate anyone involved in the community as holding all the power,” says Pedroza, who, next to Taylor and the League, has been the Insider’s biggest boogeyman. “I’m sure if you look at any city, you’ll find people who are more involved in their community than others. But what these bloggers do is point to these people, call them the 400, and if something doesn’t go the way the bloggers want, say, ‘Oh, that’s just the 400. Either you’re part of the 400, or you’re one of us.’“

Pedroza, never the sharpest pencil in the box, seems to forget that, like the Cookie Monster, we didn't invent the term "Claremont 400." That was was floating around years before the Insider ever came into being. The other thing Pedroza ignores is that it's not just that these are people who are "more involved in their community than others." It's that they actively exclude anyone not in their circle from having an equal say in things. That has been the real problem in Claremont. And Pedroza also knows that its quite different for people who control all the power in town to say either your with us or agin' us, as Pedroza's friend do, and another for a blog or anyone else who has no power over anything to point out the cliquishness involved.

Finally, the Silva article notably lacked any direct quotes from the Girl Scouts or their parents. For all of Silva's complaints about the Times' Pierson and the Insider, and despite the claims of his article's title, Silva doesn't seem much interested in getting at the truth of the event or in placing it in proper perspective.

Yesterday, we wrote about the spin you can expect to see in Indio, where former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard is wrapped up in a fight over millions in uncollected taxes. What we're seeing played out with this Girl Scout business is the Claremont 400, Taylor, and Pedroza spinning their hearts out in a fight to regain a little bit of their lost credibility.

The fact that they have to resort to a story in the IE Weekly, as opposed to the Courier, the Times, or the Daily Bulletin, shows how much their reach has ebbed. As for the Insider, we'll continue to let the facts (and the events) speak for themselves.

We suppose we really should be flattered. The potshots from the Claremont 400 began in May, 2007, when former Mayor Diann Ring dropped some thinly veiled threats of lawsuits to silence the Insider. Then, in September, 2007, the Claremont City Attorney forgot she was in the United States and demanded that Google shut down our blog - over the City's mistake! Now comes the spin by Taylor, Pedroza & Co.

We suspect that at the end of the day we'll still be standing. Long time Claremont dissidents know: That which does not kill us....

The Forks Celebrates One-Year Anniverary

The Forks Chop House (formerly Three Forks) is celebrating one year in the Claremont Packing House this Saturday, August 9th.

The Claremont Courier had an ad for The Forks that announced The Forks' First Anniversary Champagne Celebration Saturday from 5pm to 7pm. The ad invites us to enjoy hors d'oeuvres and cool jazz at the restaurant Saturday night.

The ad also says that there's a $25 donation to get in. The donation goes to benefit the Children's Fund. Call the restaurant for more info or click on the ad image to get the contact information.

The Forks is also offering a Summer Games Special in honor of the Beijing Olympics. $88 per couple buys two four-course prix fixe menu dinners. Call for reservations.

The Forks Chop House
580 West 1st Street
Claremont, California 91711
(909) 625-3875

Desert Trouble's A-Brewin'

It's not often that a utility company can make a million dollar error in its billing, nor is that common for a city government to miss out on tax dollars owed to it.

Yet, out in the desert, in Indio, that's been going on for years it seems. The Desert Sun reports that an error in billing by the city's electrical utility, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), is much, much more serious than originally reported.

The IID had originally been suspected of having failed to bill about 4,000 homes and businesses for Indio's five-percent Utility User Tax. But at a closed session meeting on Tuesday, the error was disclosed as involving 8,000 homes and 650 businesses.

Indio City Manager Glenn Southard, who has been in that city for over three years now, was supposed to have been auditing the utility tax, but apparently was too busy fighting certain councilimembers to catch on to the fact that the utility tax was generating much less money than it should have been.

The city of Indio plans to conduct a “comprehensive” audit of the Imperial Irrigation District's tax collection practices after discovering that nearly one-third of Indio's households have not been paying a Utility Users Tax supposedly attached to their energy bills.

Now, to be fair, the billing and collection error appears the fault of IID. And the tax has been in place over 20 years, so there are plenty of other people in Indio's city hall who should have caught on to the missing tax income.

But you would think that a self-proclaimed genius such as Southard would have noticed immediately that the utility tax revenue was far short of what projections would have shown. Of course, as he did for years in Claremont, Southard was quick to shift the blame in Indio. It's the ol' misdirection again - something we're still seeing here in Claremont, even after Southard's departure in 2005.

Southard's threatening a suit against IID and distracting the community and the Indio city council from the city manager's own failure:

Failure to collect fully on the tax for more than 20 years has potentially cost the Coachella Valley's largest city millions in revenue — money that helps pay for city services, including police protection.

“We've been wronged and it's wrong,” said City Manager Glenn Southard on Tuesday at a special City Council meeting to discuss the matter.

“It's millions,” he said of the lost revenue. “It makes me sick to think about it.”

Indio has not ruled out a possible lawsuit against the district for non-collection of the utility tax, officials said.

Southard's great at creating a distracting enemy to focus on, and you can also count on him to have his staff spinning hard, coming up with handy statistics and graphs to show how none of this was His Southardness' fault. You can hardly blame him. He is, after all, spinning to save his job.

Expect the Desert Sun to lap up all those stats and graphs without much in-depth analysis, and look for Southard to cut a deal with IID that allows them to save dollars and face while keeping Southard safe from any blame.

It's instructive for us here in Claremont to watch and remember how he played these games. There's still a tendency among some of the Claremonsters in town to play the same sort of PR games (think Cookiemonster). But 17 years of Southardian excesses have sharpened our critical skills, so we're much less susceptible to manipulation politicking that comes with our friend Glenn, especially in times of crises.

We'll see what Indio's learning curve is. A word to the wise, Indio, from longtime Southard watchers: Watch out for the spitball.

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

Botanic Gardens Concert Tonight

The local classic rock band The Ravelers will play tonight at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens from 7pm to 9pm.

Our Ravelers' spam gives the scoop on tonight's event:

Hey Now...

The Ravelers are back to play an acoustic concert on a wonderful evening in the garden tomorrow. Since these shows are played "almost un-plugged", we call them the UnRaveled shows...

Thursday, August 7- UnRaveled Concert in the Garden!
Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens
1500 N College Ave (north of Foothill Blvd, behind the School of Theology)
Claremont, CA 91711
call for info 909.625.8767
The Ravelers play 7:00 to 9:00 pm.
RSABG members: free admission, $8 adults, $6 seniors (62 +) and students, $4 kids (3-12), Children under 3 yrs: free

These ladies have been at every concert since they started about 4 years ago...see the video clip by clicking the link...

Picnic dinners from GourmetGourmet, Wines from the Wine Merchant, cool creations from Bert n' Rocky's Cream Co.
Click here to see Hai get his ice cream treat...

Come enjoy a picnic dinner, some wine, ice cream, and fun music on a beautiful evening at the Botanic Gardens with your neighbors!

We will also have The Ravelers CD on hand to add to your music library...a collection of some of our favorites to play.

Claremont Is: Nuttiness You Can Savor

David Allen has a column today talking about last week's grand opening for the year-old Claremont Village Expansion.

If the timing seems strange, you're not alone. Allen shares your confusion:

PEOPLE CALL it the mall, or the Village Expansion, or Village West.

And now a new name has surfaced for Claremont's expanded downtown: Village Square.

That name was promoted last Friday at the formal opening of the development, which is bordered by Indian Hill Boulevard, Oberlin Avenue and First and Second streets and has a small hotel, restaurants, shops and a movie theater.

If the timing seems puzzling, that's because the first businesses opened in summer 2007. And yet no ribbon-cutting ceremony had taken place. How did we stand the suspense?

And so we gathered in the civic square near the Laemmle theater and Le Pain Quotidien for speeches, a stilt walker and free food.

This is the fourth ceremony I've attended related to the Expansion, my favorite being the one where they unveiled the sidewalks. As I've said before, Claremont will celebrate the opening of an envelope.

This sort of silliness is exactly what Claremont loves to do. Don't forget that we had two centennial celebrations twenty years apart, one in 1987 and another in 2007, so that Judy Wright could preside over her own town 100th birthday back when she was still mayor.

All you have to do to see the absurdity of this self-important town government is go over to the northeast corner of First St. and Oberlin and take a look at the commemorative plaque from September, 2003, that marks the "Village Expansion Infrastructure".

Yes, only in Claremont would officials erect a bronze monument to sewers and underground utilities. The plaque lists the two main architects of this Claremontian nuttiness:

Click to Enlarge

Oh, Shenandoah, I Love Your Bowers

Claremont, AKA Tree City, has a love-hate relationship with its woody friends. On the one hand, the trees gracing the Claremont Village and the various neighborhoods around town create an urban forest ambiance that makes for nice photos and summer evening strolls.

On the other hand, the city's trees - many non-native species - suck up increasingly costly water and wreck havoc on underground utilities. Citizens who've had a tree root from a city-owned parkway tree break a sewer line can attest to the troubles they have historically had collecting any compensation from the city.

Click to Enlarge

The residents of Claremont's Shenandoah Dr. area that surrounds the Claremont Club recently had to confront both aspects of our tree policies in trying to work with the city to deal with damage done to streets and sidewalks in their neighborhood.

Shenandoah Dr. and the cul-de-sacs that run off it were planted with Calabrian pines when the area was originally built. The trees have matured beautifully, but the pines turned out to be a poor choice for an urban area because many of their root systems have destroyed the curbs, sidewalks, and streets around them.

Shenandoah Dr. and Claremont Blvd. facing west.

Those uplifted sidewalks and streets have created a liability nightmare for the city, making for trip-and-fall hazards throughout the neighborhood. In April, 2005, the city put out to bid a three-phase plan to deal with the Shenandoah trees. Phase I called for the removal of 22 mature pines, the repair of the road, curbs and sidewalks around those trees. and the replacement of the old trees with less problematic species. The total cost of that first phase was $109,803.94. All three phases were expected to take six years to complete.

Phase I of the Shenandoah Tree Mitigation Project, as it was called, went through. However, a number of Shenandoah area residents, however, took exception with the destruction of the existing trees and sought to have the city implement an alternative plan to save the trees and rehabilitate the streets, curbs and sidewalks.

The residents who wanted the trees saved had a couple main arguments:

• They felt the city was looking only at the cost of infrastructure damage and litigation and not considering the value mature trees worth thousands or ten of thousands can add to property. Older, upscale neighborhoods (the San Rafael area of Pasadena, for example) often possess older, fully-grown trees that give those neighborhoods their distinct feel, as opposed to seemingly sterile neighborhoods - urban, industrial areas and newer, suburban ones -that don't have mature trees.
  
  
• Large, mature trees are more cost effective than small trees because they absorb moisture more efficiently, reducing soil run-off. Larger trees also contribute more to reduction of carbon dioxide and also save residents money by cooling neighborhoods with their canopies, leading to lower summertime electric bills.
  
  

The city, the argument went, should include the above savings and benefits in their cost analysis for the tree mitigation.

Shenandoah Dr. and Gettysburg Cir. facing south.

In response, the city came up with three alternative plans (Plans A, B, and C), and those were laid out in a city staff report on July 8th. Plan C was the original plan from 2005 that called for the removal and replacement of 66 trees. Plan B was a plan staff came up in response to Shenandoah area residents who wanted to see the area's trees maintained. It removed the fewest trees but was the most costly because it required narrowing the street and reconfiguring driveways and sidewalks. It also included a proposal to use rubberized pavers around that could be easily removed to inspect tree roots. Estimates for Plan B ran between $365,692 and $511,100, depending on if the pavers were used or not.

Click to Enlarge

In the end, the council unanimously selected Plan A (right), which would allow for most of the remaining trees along Shenandoah to be saved. The plan approved called for the use of the rubberized pavers but did not require any reconfiguration of the street. Plan A also calls for removing portions of the sidewalk and moving them away from the existing trees. Plan A was also endorsed by The Club Homeowners Association, the neighborhood's HOA, which seemed to be very much opposed to the more costly Plan B.

The approved replacement tree for the pines on Shenandoah Dr., according to the staff report, is the California Black Oak. The replacement trees will be in 24-inch boxes, so it will take quite some time for them to fill in. Plan A requires that in the future the city to have an independent certified arborist examine trees deemed candidates for removal to see if the trees can be saved.

Some called the compromise plan a "Band-Aid fix" according to the July 12th Claremont Courier (that article is not available online). The tree damage problem for Shenandoah will be back before the City Council in another 5-10 years, this thinking goes, and that's probably an accurate assessment.

The Courier article, incidentally, was accompanied by a a large photo of a pine that fell onto the street at the southwest corner of Shenandoah and Stanislaus Cir. the day after the City Council approved the tree mitigation plan. The photo may have been a bit misleading, however, because the tree appeared to be on private property. If so, it would have been up to the homeowner, not the city, to maintain that particular tree, which wasn't even listed as a candidate for removal on the approved mitigation plan.

It was still an interesting debate, occurring as it does at a time of municipal belt-tightening. The city had to conduct it's cost-benefit analysis, which was disputed by a number of resident who wanted an alternate plan.

This instance was really the perfect situation for an assessment district, a funding mechanism originally designed to allow neighborhoods who want specific improvements limited to their own specific area to vote to tax themselves to pay for those improvement. With the assessment district costs aren't bourne by an entire city, just by the neighborhood receiving the benefit.

Claremont, however, with its Landscaping and Lighting District (LLD) and the failed 2006 Parks and Pasture measure, abused that funding mechanism to the point that they've probably poisoned that well for the near future. And, in any case, the majority of homeowners around Shenandoah do not seem attached enough to their neighborhood trees to approve an assessment on their homes, so that possibility was never considered.

Claremont, the City of Trees and Ph.d's, will no doubt be wrestling with this one for a long time to come.

Shenandoah Dr. and Stanislaus Cir. facing northeast. The tree that fell and was photographed for the July 12th Claremont Courier is the one nearest the street corner on right side of the photo.

Medical Marijuana in the News

The debate over medical marijuana clinics in Claremont may be over, but the fight goes on across the state:

The Daily Bulletin had an opinion piece by registered nurse Lanny Swerdlow of the THCF Medical Clinic in Riverside. Swerdlow was responding to another opinion piece in the Bulletin and the San Bernardino Sun (one of the Bulletin's sister papers) by a Kevin Sabet:

The underlying fear that medical marijuana is the camel's nose under the tent of marijuana legalization permeates every word of Sabet's article. This is graphically demonstrated by his red herring that some people might abuse the medical access of marijuana. There is no demand for the prohibition of prescription pharmaceuticals even though people die from their abuse.

No one has ever died from using marijuana.

Sabet objects to the text of Proposition 215 which allows marijuana to be used for "any illness for which marijuana provides relief." He believes patients should take Vicodin or Percocet for pain with their debilitating side effects of constipation, respiratory distress, arrhythmias and liver toxicity rather than marijuana which has none of these life-threatening consequences. If a medicine works, it should be up to a doctor to decide if a patient should use it and not a government bureaucrat.

Showcasing Sabet's paranoid fear of legalization was his claim that "The Sun was scammed by the pro-legalization movement." Give The Sun some credit for being scam savvy. The real scam is being perpetuated by Sabet's organization, the Inland Valley Drug Free Community Coalition, which is so preoccupied with medical marijuana that it all but ignores the actually serious health threats to the community of methamphetamines, heroin, tobacco, alcohol and prescription drug abuse.

There do seem to be some notable problems with implementing Prop. 215, the 1996 California ballot initiative that legalized medical marijuana in the state. One is the law is unclear on the matter of growing cannabis. Consequently, large-scale growers who supply to medical marijuana clinics still have to worry about getting arrested. Also, there seems to be a conflict between federal and California law on the clinics, which is why the federal Drug Enforcement Agency keeps raiding clinics. In addition, the interpretation of the Prop. 215 varies greatly depending on the locality.

Medical marijuana was also the subject of an article by David Samuels in the July 28th New Yorker titled "Dr. Kush: How Medical Marijuana is Transforming the Pot Industry." Samuel's article explored some of these issues. The article seemed to take the position that medical marijuana may just be a back-door for legalization of pot, as Samuels wrote:

....As long as they had a California state I.D., those who received recommendations for marijuana could buy some immediately from the dispensary’s stock. Cindy told me that when she opened her shop, in 2007, she needed the same licenses that she would have needed to open a newsstand on the Santa Monica Pier: a commercial lease, a seller’s permit, a federal tax I.D. number, and a tobacco license (for selling rolling papers and pipes). She estimated that forty per cent of her clients suffer from serious illnesses such as cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, epilepsy, and M.S. The rest have ailments like anxiety, sleeplessness, A.D.D., and assorted pains.

Like many other dispensary owners I spoke with, Cindy derives particular satisfaction from providing medication to people who suffer from chronic diseases. Although she suspects that there is nothing seriously wrong with many of the young men who come in to buy an eighth of L.A. Confidential, she doesn’t regard marijuana as a harmful drug when compared with Xanax, Valium, Prozac, and other pills that are commonly prescribed by physicians to treat vague complaints of anxiety or dysphoria....

Coincidentally, the Samuels interviewed Los Angeles attorney Allison Margolin for his New Yorker piece. Margolin represented marijuana dispensary owner Darrell Kruse in his unsuccessful suit against the city of Claremont.

...I paid a visit to Allison Margolin, who calls herself “L.A.’s dopest attorney.” Her trade is a sort of family business—her father, the lawyer Bruce Margolin, is the author of the Margolin Guide, which enumerates the legal penalties for the sale and possession of pot in each of the fifty states. She works in a black-glass office tower on Wilshire Boulevard owned by Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler. On the walls in her office, a Harvard Law School degree is juxtaposed with a pictorial layout from the magazine Skunk, featuring her in a low-cut leopard-print dress. Margolin’s sexpot image is an advantage with clients, who, more often than not, are socially isolated men. Margolin has a reputation for getting cases dismissed, and for retrieving marijuana plants that have been seized by the police.

“The truth is, it’s very rare to get plants back,” Margolin said. Her long auburn hair was in a tidy French bun, but a few strands had been allowed to slip loose. Like many of her clients, she adopted a tone of adolescent vulnerability and outraged innocence when talking about the mean grownups who don’t like pot. “People are talking about how it’s being over-recommended and abused,” she said. “I mean, big fucking deal. It’s not toxic!” I asked her if she had a doctor’s letter, and she nodded vigorously, explaining that she suffers from an anxiety disorder.

She said that courts are sometimes sympathetic to her arguments about the relative safety of pot, but most judges and prosecutors seem to have only a glancing acquaintance with the case law since the passage of Proposition 215. “I’ve gone to court, like, several times where the judge has read only the first half of the case, which talks about how dispensaries are not legal according to Proposition 215,” she said. “I think it’s just intellectual and physical laziness.”

Apparently, the Pomona Courthouse, where the Kruse lawsuit was heard, has some of these lazy judges.

Both Samuels and Margolin were on KPCC 89.3FM's "Air Talk" last week and were interviewed by host Larry Mantle on the July 30th show. You can hear the interview here. In both the article and the interview, Samuels describes the medical marijuana movement as creating a market demand for higher quality, decently priced varieties of marijuana that can be purchased without having to go to a street drug dealer.

Wine Walk Set for Sept. 12

The Claremont Chamber of Commerce's Village Marketing Group will host the 7th Annual Village Wine Walk on Friday, September 12th, from 5pm to 9pm. Tickets are $30 per person and $35 on the day of the event. Check-in begins at 4:45pm.

Last year's event sold out, so you'll want to get your tickets early if you plan on attending.

Tickets are on sale at around 50 Claremont Village businesses. You can find a list of businesses selling Wine Walk tickets here. Part of the event proceeds will go to several different local non-profit organizations - Shoes That Fit, the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Gardens, and the Claremont High School Parent Faculty Association.

The folk music band Sligo Rags will also be on hand to provide music.



WINE WALK HEADQUARTERS:
AROMATIQUE SKIN & BODY CARE
319-A W. First St.
Claremont, CA
(909) 626-7422

Meanwhile, Down in Indio

News from the desert (since the Desert Sun has apparently lost interest in covering this bit of Indio news):

Crisis and strife seem to follow former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard from place to place. Southard's favorite sport has always been taking pot shots at councilmembers who don't tow the Southardian line and manipulating other councilmembers into granting lavish management pay packages.

As we saw during Southard's 17-year tenure in Claremont, high pay did not equate with high performance. Claremont nearly lost $5 million in the 1990's investing in the Orange County Investment Pool, which failed spectacularly. And the $17.5 million settlement paid out to Palmer Canyon residents for the 2003 Padua Fire was partly due to the failure of Southard's staff to fully implement the city's Vegetation Management Program to control brush in the Claremont Wilderness Park.

Southard's other favorite pastime is playing fast and loose with finding creative revenue sources, something Claremont is dealing with to this day. Currently, Indio's Utility Tax is being questioned. Indio has levied its Utility Tax for over 20 years the tax rate is currently 5 percent and generates about $6.8 million per year, according to a 7/18/08 Desert Sun article.

The Desert Sun reported that the legality of two percent of that Utility Tax is in question and that Indio is having to put the matter to a vote on the November ballot:

A handful of Indio residents gathered outside City Council chambers Wednesday holding large white posters in protest of the city's collection of the utility fee.

Despite the organized opposition, the City Council approved 4-1 a resolution that places a utility tax initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Voters will be asked to ratify 2 percent of the 5 percent Utility Users Tax being levied.

The tax on public utilities generates about $6.8 million a year for the city. If the 2 percent is not approved, the city will lose out on $2.7 million a year.

“It is not going to be passed. The citizens are not behind it,” said resident Richard Arnold, who helped organize the protest.

Councilman Mike Wilson voted against the measure because he wants the city to stop charging the 2 percent tax until it is approved by the voters.

City Manager Glenn Southard said it would have been too cumbersome to ask all the utility companies to remove the tax and then add it back again in November if the measure passed.

If the tax measure fails, then the city at that time will re-examine the budget, he said.

The city first began collecting the tax at 3 percent in 1985 and then in 1992 increased it to 5 percent.

There is also a second part to this story that may have Indio Councilmembers questioning that $318,000 per year they're paying Southard through 2011.

It turns out that Indio's electric company, Imperial Irrigation District Energy (IID), has failed to collect Indio's Utility tax from at least 4,000 businesses and residents (that number may actually be much higher). In Indio it is the duty of the tax administrator (his Southardness) to audit the city's Utility Tax annually. Because of Southard's failure to execute his audit duty, Indio potentially lost out on millions of dollars.

The current Indio council has generally had a 4-1 majority supporting Southard. Much like the situation in Claremont in 2003-05, Southard has butted heads with a councilmember who questions him. In Indio's case it's Councilmember Michael Wilson. Wilson suggested last month that the city suspend that extra two-percent in the Indio Utility Tax until it could be voted on in November. Makes sense - it were illegally implemented, why continue to levy it until voters can have their say? Southard would have none of that and got the Indio council to continue to levy that extra amount, saying it would be too much trouble to ask IID to collect lower amount until November.

Given the Utility Tax fiasco and with a council election coming up, some of Southard's supporters on the Indio City Council may be rethinking their support of their man. We're also hearing rumblings of a mutiny among some of Southard's department heads who appear to have seen through Southard's games.

The Indio City Council, which has August off, has had to convene a special closed session today at 4pm. The agenda lists two items, one anticipated litigation and the other an initiation of litigation. It's quite possible that Southard's job is on the line just as it was during the height of the Irvin Landrum crises here in Claremont.

If Indio brings in Southard's favorite consultant, Dr. Bill Mathis, to mediate, you know Southard's won this one and has once again saved his owned hide by flim-flamming a gullible city council.

Dueling Readers

The Cookiemonster saga of Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor has been playing itself out in the pages of the Claremont Courier's Reader's Letters section.

The Courier, incidentally, has posted the original story by Tony Krickl that first reported on the matter.

The initial salvo was fired off by people who sided with the Girl
Scouts, including this by Girl Scout parent Ray Garvin.

Taylor didn't receive much defense until very late in the game, but one of Taylor's fellow League of Women Voter members, Carlynne McDonnell jumped to Taylor's defense back on recent editions of the Courier carried one letter by a Lore Dormer and another by Upland resident Louise Bachman.

Bachman touched on Mayor Taylor's claim that she was merely concerned with the Girl Scouts' safety. Questions to Ms. Bachman: If Taylor were so concerned with safety, why did she force them off her property in the first place? Why not show some generosity and invite them to use her office building's parking lot? And, Bachman also forgot that according the Girl Scouts, Taylor came out and threw out her then-Mayor Pro Tem title in a way that sounded as if Taylor were trying to intimidate the girls and their leaders.

Dormer criticized the Courier for devoting news space to something Dormer felt was non-news. Dormer was also critical of a certain blog that she said she never reads (we've heard this from a sort of thing from a number of people, including Queen Ellen - sounds more than bit like a Claremont 400 talking point!):

Not only has your paper become thinner and thinner, but your front-page as stale as the Claremont Girl Scout cookie sale. It happened so long ago that, apart from a blog I never read, we have other things to worry about: So the fate of the stores and the restaurants in our new Claremont West which opened too close to the general recession and deserve your continuing support in featuring and advertising them.

Dormer also brought up that non-Claremont residency of one of the Girl Scout parents, Maya West, as if that mattered to anything.

The pro-Girl Scout voices may have had the last word, however. Yesterday's Courier carried a letter by former Claremonter and former Courier reporter Chris Bray, who also sent the Insider a copy of the same letter:

Subject: deadly foreign cookies

Editor,

My thanks to Lore Dormer for putting the important facts on the table regarding Mayor Ellen Taylor's brave confrontation at the very gates of death with a group of Girl Scouts. As Ms. Dormer notes, the Girl Scout troop leader was a foreigner, having violated Claremont's sacred membrane to inflict her savage La Vernian ways on a noble and decent people. Did you know that Girl Scouts in La Verne punch bones through their septums, ululate over the bodies over their slain enemies, and believe that sheep are the only fungible currency? Commerce on the sidewalks, harrumph! It is not done this way in our town, indeed!

Also, what's this I hear about ladies wearing bloomers?

Chris Bray
The Far-Off Wilds of West Hollywood
(Claremont Missionary Traveler)

Where Are They Now?

Those of you who were wondering what became of retired Claremont Police Chief Roy Brown will be glad to hear that he's doing just fine, having traded one college town for another on the opposite coast.

The Daily Bulletin's Wes Woods II reports in today's paper that Brown has been hired as an assistant police chief for New Haven, Connecticut. Brown, the article says, wasn't picked out of the blue. Former Pomona Police Chief James Lewis (not the Jim Lewis who used to be Claremont's Assistant to the City Manager), hired Brown.

The article also says that Lewis is trying to recruit Pomona Police Captain Ken Gillespie and gave some background on the eastern migration:

Lewis said he thought of Brown and Gillespie when he learned the open chief position needed a team to deal with community and policy issues, auditing and internal affairs.

The Inland Valley police migration to the East Coast comes after an August 2007 Police Executive Research Forum report described how to improve the New Haven Police Department.

A federal indictment in March 2007 of two New Haven narcotics police officers suspected of taking bribes from local bail bondsmen and stealing money at crime scenes led to that report.

The report reviewed organizational structure, narcotics enforcement and internal affairs investigations.

Pomona has about 172,000 people while New Haven has about 132,000, Lewis said. But Pomona has about 190 cops and New Haven roughly 500.

Pomona has more foot patrols while New Haven has officers assigned to a post.

Brown wasn't necessarily popular within the Claremont Police Department during his years here. You might recall that Brown came to Claremont from Eugene, Oregon, in the aftermath of the Irvin Landrum shooting in January, 1999.

In the midst of the subsequent blow-up caused by the former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard's handling of the situation, then-Claremont Police Chief Robert Moody retired (and later took a job with the law firm that defended the city in the civil suit brought by the Landrum family).

Brown wasn't Southard's first choice for the police chief position. We tend to forget that Southard first hired Thomas Scheidecker, a former LAPD officer, who at the time was working for the police in the city of Ripon, CA.

Southard quickly dumped Scheidecker after news of an LAPD scandal involving Schiedecker became public. A 2/6/00 LA Times article summed up the matter:

A key figure in the Los Angeles Police Department spying scandal of the 1980s has been named chief of the Claremont Police Department–a force that is beleaguered over a controversial shooting of a black motorist last year.

Thomas Scheidecker, 55, who was temporarily suspended for lying about and mishandling confidential intelligence documents while he worked for the LAPD, is scheduled to take the reins of the Claremont department on Valentine’s Day, after Chief Robert Moody’s retirement for personal reasons. For the last eight years, Scheidecker has been police chief of the small San Joaquin Valley town of Ripon, near Modesto.

As an LAPD lieutenant almost two decades ago, he served as custodian of records for the agency’s Public Disorder Intelligence Division, which was disbanded in 1983 after revelations that it was spying on law-abiding citizens, including civic leaders, judges, police commissioners, clergy and actors.

A police probe concluded that Scheidecker had kept classified information at his Westminster home and had made false and misleading statements to investigators as to what that data included.

Because some of the information in Scheidecker’s home came from military sources, he was also investigated by federal and state agencies. He was never charged with a crime but was suspended for 15 days.

Scheidecker is on vacation out of state and could not be reached for comment. Claremont officials said they were aware that he was somehow involved in the LAPD unit but had not known about his suspension or his specific role in the controversy.

“The focus of the interviews were his performance as police chief,” said city spokesman Mike Maxfield. “That’s what he’s being hired for. That’s not to say we skimmed over the rest of his career. We were aware of his work in the [LAPD] unit.”

Needless to say, Claremont and Southard dropped Scheidecker, who had given notice in Ripon, like a hot potato, leading to another lawsuit, this time by Scheidecker, against the City of Claremont. Brown was then picked as Claremont's police chief.

At the time all this was occurring, the City Council and Southard took on the look of the Richard Nixon White House circa 1973. You could almost see the stone walls rising around City Hall, complete with arrow-slitted guard towers. It was the peak of the Claremont 400, which had complete control of the City Council.

And at the same time it was the council's lowest point, with them daily defending positions that were so obviously undefendable. The city council meetings were packed with citizens and students protesting the council's handling of the Landrum shooting, and a good segment of the population calling for Southard to be fired.

The fact that the council ignored those calls and allowed Southard to stay on five more years, seemed proof to a good portion of the public that the council and their supporters were terribly out of touch with the rest of the public. Two councilmembers who were most supportive of Southard, Karen Rosenthal and Al Leiga, lost their re-election bids in 2003, and were replaced by Peter Yao and Jackie McHenry, both of whom ran as reformers.

It's always been our contention that the problems of Claremont and its city government were embodied by Glenn Southard but that the real heart of the dysfunction lay with those Claremonsters who still control influential groups like the board of Pilgrim Place, the Claremont Community Foundation, Claremont Heritage, and the League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area.

It's odd that all of those groups do good works, and we have no problems with the things they do as charities; however, it's their actions as the props to a form of municipal government that is close-minded, wasteful, and prone to crisis after crisis that we take exception with. It really has been a case-study in the corrupting power of small-town politics.

From those groups, the Claremonsters' new council and commission candidates will emerge - more Ellen Taylors, more Al Leigas, more Karen Rosenthals - and they will continue to try to take Claremont back to the days of 2000 when they controlled all five city council seats and when all hell was breaking loose.

The conscious effort by folks like Claremont Heritage president and former Claremont Mayor Judy Wright to erase the past and replace it with a sanitized, Disneyesque version of history ensures that we will be inevitably back again to deal with some other miscue, scandal, or crisis.

While it's job security for Insiders everywhere, it's also sad to see the same foolishness played out again and again.

Readers Chime In

A sampling of the Insider mailbag showed that readers seem to be as skeptical of Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor's claims of impending fiscal doom. This correspondent has figured out how to save the city coffers a buck or two:

Wonderful email. Two things to add:

1.) As you showed, the second deputy assistant dogcatcher makes a six-figure salary. The city manager got a $24,000-a-year *raise* last year, and some *extremely* marginal performers at city hall are making $150,000+ in pay and benefits. Government employees deserve to be compensated reasonably well for their work, but the salaries you revealed were out of kilter with reality. Give me a list of employees and salaries -- I'll save the city a couple hundred grand in five minutes.

2.) When Al Leiga left the council, I went to his (city-funded) going away party, where one speaker after another celebrated the city's "accomplishments" during Leiga's tenure: A new this, a new that, more of this, more of that. It was a laundry list of government growth in things like recreation programs at the community center. (Leiga, best part, is a Republican.) Can the people of Claremont get through a tough economic cycle without a massive sports park, extensive recreation services, a fully staffed community center, and a new LWV-sponsored wetlands project? Yeah.

"We're desperately poor -- come to the groundbreaking ceremony at the sports park!"

So, so dumb.

* * *

We also received some comments on Xavier Alvarez's journey into the criminal justice system, including this from an army vet:

I am retired from the U.S. Army after 20 years and service as an Infantryman in Vietnam. The value of military service has shrunk since the all volunteer army, but for those of us who have served, whether voluntarily or as draftees, service is an earned badge of honor.

Alvarez is a low life who took advantage of those who actually served and has dishonored us. But, even worse, he has dishonored the members who earned the Medal of Honor. They earned it by "service above and beyond the call of duty". If you check, you will find most of the Medal of Honor winners died earning the medal.

I live in Claremont so I can have no say in who represents Pomona. I, and I am sure all other veterans, can only hope that those who can participate recall this scumbag.

Maloof Foundation Hosts Exhibit

The Claremont Courier tells us that that the Maloof Foundation in Alta Loma has an exhibit in the foundation's Jacob's Gallery:

The current display features “the most prominent wood turner in the country,” Mr. Maloof said.

Entitled Loom and Lathe, the exhibition features artist Bob Stocksdale and his wife Kay Sekimachi.

Mr. Stocksdale is known for shaping wooden bowls out of rare and exotic woods. His pioneering efforts in the field revolutionized how wood turning was viewed, transforming it into a unique form of art.

Now in her 80s, Ms. Sekimachi is a distinguished fiber artist and weaver, using loom to construct 3-dimensional sculptures.

The 2 artists were married for 33 years before Mr. Stocksdale passed away in 2003 at the age of 89. Both Mr. Stocksdale and Ms. Sekimachi have won the Gold Medal from the American Craft Council, the highest honor the organization hands out.

The Maloof Foundation is located on the 7-acre estate of artist Sam Maloof, whose sculpted wood furniture is sought by collectors the world over. You can read more about the exhibit on the Maloof Foundation's website.

Loom & Lathe - June 4 to August 24
The Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for the Arts and Crafts
5131 Carnelian Street
Alta Loma, CA 91701
Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 1:00-4:00pm
(909) 980-0412