Affordable Housing Comes (Close) to Claremont

Fair Oaks Walk,
141 E. Foothill Blvd., Pomona, CA
(Click to Enlarge)

Imagine our surprise when a reader brought to our attention a new affordable housing project going in on Foothill Blvd. near the border of Claremont and Pomona. The project, Fair Oaks Walk, is the result of a partnership between Cal Poly Pomona, the Cal Poly Foundation, and The Olson Company, which built the Claremont Village Walk townhomes and was going to build a similar development on the old Claremont Courier site at 111 S. College Ave. in Claremont.

The Fair Oaks development is open to employees of Cal Poly and other local educational institutions. The project's website gave a description:

Just 25 miles east of Los Angeles in Pomona, at the foot of the beautiful San Gabriel Mountains, Fair Oaks Walk—developed for Heroes in the Education Sector(Faculty & Staff)—strikes the perfect balance between charming small town life and convenient city living.

Enjoy local parks, great schools, shopping, dining and more. Or head to nearby Claremont Village, one of Southern California’s most idyllic college town destinations. And it’s all yours with easy access to the 10, 210 and 57 freeways, plus the always convenient Metrolink.

These classic townhomes feature up to 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths, plus a host of modern amenities.

Fair Oaks Walk in Pomona serves up the ultimate combination of small town comforts and Los Angeles County fun.

• Plans starting at $289k
• Close to shopping, dining, schools and Metrolink
• 34 stylish homes
• Up to 3 bedrooms & 2.5 baths
• From 1,548 to 1,741 sq. ft.
• Two-car attached garage
• Outdoor BBQs and community “Tot Lot”
• Kids can walk to Sumner Elementary School
• Outstanding Claremont School District

The website also explains who can buy one of these units:

Who is eligible to purchase homes in Fair Oaks Walk?
Current Cal Poly Pomona Faculty, staff, as well as employees of other academic partners of Cal Poly Pomona: CSU Fullerton; Mount San Antonio College; Western University of Health Sciences; Claremont Colleges; school districts of nearby cities such as Pomona-Walnut-Diamond Bar-San Dimas-La Verne-Industry-Claremont; CSU Emeriti; Cal Poly Pomona alumni; Innovation Village affiliates. All purchasers must live in Fair Oaks Walk as their principal place of residence and remain affiliated with Cal Poly Pomona during their residency.

Yes, that's right. Employees of the Claremont Colleges and the Claremont Unified School District are eligible.

Did we miss something, or did Cal Poly Pomona and The Olson Companies actually manage to get an affordable housing project built near Claremont's western edge while the Claremont 400, the Claremont Area League of Women Voters (LWV), and the Claremont City Council, led by former Mayor Peter Yao and current Mayor Ellen Taylor, wasted four years dithering and throwing money at a project doomed to failure from the outset?

You might have noticed that the Cal Poly's Fair Oaks Walk is smaller than Claremont's defunct Base Line Affordable Housing Project (34 units versus 45) and has purchase units rather than rentals, both things that would have been acceptable to the Base Line project opponents. Mayor Taylor and the Claremont LWV refused to budge on these points, however, and the project eventually died because its proximity to the 210 Freeway made it unable to qualify for LA County affordable housing funds.

It's also interesting that one of Fair Oaks' selling points is the fact that children living there will go to Claremont schools and that the homes are close to the Claremont Village.

It is remarkable what you can get done when you're not trying to shove a misconceived, poorly sited project down the throats of a community that has a better idea of what should be done. Practicality trumps intractability and foolishness every time.

Score: Cal Poly Broncos 1, Claremonsters 0.

Gold Line to Ontario Airport - Community Meetings Scheduled

We received some information from the folks over at the Metro Gold Line announcing three open houses to solicit public input on the route selection and station siting for the Gold Line extension to Ontario Airport (this is a separate matter from the Pasadena-to-Montclair Foothill Extension):

We want to invite you and your readers to attend an upcoming open house to learn about the latest route options and station locations being studied to link the Metro Gold Line light rail line to LA/Ontario International Airport. The open houses will be held in Ontario, Upland, and Rancho Cucamonga over the next week. Residents will have the chance to speak one-on-one with the Gold Line’s project experts and weigh in with their feelings on the routes and proposed station locations. Metro Gold Line officials and elected officials will attend the meetings.

The following is the schedule of open houses:

Wednesday, June 18 – 5:30pm-7:30pm
Doubletree Hotel
Rainbow Lake Room
222 North Vineyard Ave
Ontario, CA 91764

Thursday, June 19 – 5:30pm-7:30pm
Upland First Church of the Nazarene
120 West Ninth St
Upland, CA 91786

Tuesday, June 24 – 5:30pm-7:30pm
James L. Brulte Senior Center
David Dreier Hall
11200 Baseline Rd
Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701

* No formal presentations are planned. Arrive anytime between 5:30 – 7:30 pm.

Community input is critical to this process which will ultimately narrow the potential routes and station locations to those locally preferred.

Information is also available on the study website – www.goldline2ontario.com and the community hotline (909) 740-3170.

PFF Agrees to Buyout

The Los Angeles Times reported today that PFF Bancorp, parent company to PFF Bank & Trust, has agreed to be acquired by FBOP, Inc, an Illinois-based banking concern and parent company to California National Bank.

The Times article focused on the problems facing local community banks, problems directly tied to construction loans and the housing market crash:

Southern California's oldest bank, PFF -- formerly Pomona First Federal -- had doubled its loan portfolio to $4 billion over the last decade, in large part by financing residential developers and builders of affordable housing in the Inland Empire.

But the bank's losses on such lending has soared, sending the stock price of its parent company, PFF Bancorp, down 90% this year. Desperate for fresh capital, the company agreed Monday to be acquired for $30.5 million in cash.

Home-mortgage specialists may have been the first lenders to suffer for their roles in financing the housing bubble. But, as foreclosures rise and home prices fall, many smaller banks and thrifts that backed residential developers and home builders are watching black ink turn red and are spending uncomfortable amounts of time with regulators. The financial institutions also are enduring jabs from critics who say they tossed lending standards out the window.

PFF Chief Executive Kevin McCarthy said in an interview that his bank started pulling back on land loans two years ago, anticipating a downturn like "the normal economic cycles we've always had out here."

"But nobody foresaw what would happen to the housing market, or that sub-prime mortgages would collapse so completely," he said. As for the sale to Oak Park, Ill.-based FBOP Corp., parent company of community banks including California National Bank, McCarthy said it was a hard but necessary choice: "I'm doing this to keep as many employees on the job as I can."

Community banks embraced commercial lending in recent years, largely ceding home loans, credit cards and other mass-market products to big national players.

Residential construction loans, which generate big fees, were especially profitable for smaller banks -- until housing collapsed in places like the Inland Empire, where prices are down more than 30% from their highs, and the Central Valley, where some former boom markets are off more than 40%. Raw land on which Ontario-based Empire Land installed roads, sewers and utilities, expecting to then sell it to builders, has declined even more.

The Daily Bulletin's Matt Wrye also reported on PFF and said the takeover deal is pending shareholder approval. The article painted a dire picture for PFF:

"I don't think shareholders have a whole lot of options," said Joseph Gladue, banking analyst with Los Angeles-based B. Riley & Company, Inc., about whether shareholders will approve the deal. "They're sort of between a rock and a hard spot. If the company falls under `adequately capitalized,' the (federal) regulators will come in and put some severe restrictions on it."

PFF reported millions of dollars in loan losses over its last two quarters because housing developers stung by the subprime mortgage meltdown can't repay PFF what they borrowed.

Monday marked the bank's deadline to pay off a $44 million overdue loan from an undisclosed lender, but the bank, once again, couldn't make deadline. It's been pushed off until June 16 of next year.

PFF's losses for the quarter ending March 31 are also a lot higher than expected: $204 million.

Claremonter Jil Stark, who has been on the PFF Board of Directors since 1975, is also quoted in the article. When PFF stock (PFB: NYSE) was flying high not all that long ago, Stark made about $417,000 from her stock options.

Neighborhood Forum Tomorrow Night

The Claremont City Council will be holding a neighborhood forum 7pm tomorrow, June 17th, at Chaparral Elementary School near the corner of Mills Ave. and Chaparral Dr. Come out and meet your council. With no television coverage, Mayor Ellen Taylor should be in her usual ill-humor.

Neighborhood Forum -
Tuesday, 6/17, 7:00 PM
Chaparral Elementary School
451 Chaparral Dr.
Claremont
(909) 399-5460

Marijuana Ordinance: New, Improved, Says City

Having opted out of a municipal ordinance that would have allowed a single medical marijuana dispensary to operate in Claremont, city officials will instead consider adopting an ordinance banning the dispensaries entirely.

The city council will consider the newest marijuana dispensary ordinance at their next meeting on June 24th.

You can review the draft ordinance here.

Mortgage Scams on the Rise

In other, non-Alvarezian crime news, we're finding that economic hard times bring out the worst in people:

An 87-year-old Claremont woman as swindled out of her $800,000 home by a self-ordained minister named Leroy Dowd. Dowd, who formerly ran the Los Angeles-based Triumph Church of God, offered to help the victim with her Social Security and Medicare benefits if she signed her house over to him.

Then, working with two accomplices, Dowd sold the house and made an estimated $775,000 in the process. An article by KNBC-TV described how the scam worked:

POMONA, Calif. - A 71-year-old self-ordained minister is expected to be arraigned Wednesday on charges alleging he duped an 87-year-old Claremont woman into signing over the grant deed to her home. The accused, Leroy Dowd, operated the now-defunct Triumph Church of God in Los Angeles. His arraignment has been delayed for medical reasons, but he is expected to appear in Pomona Superior Court today.

Dowd met the woman through church in December 2006, and allegedly told her he could secure widow's benefits for Medicare and Social Security if she signed over the grant deed to her $800,000 home -- which was paid in full, according to the District Attorney's Office.

Dowd sold the home eight days later to Bessie Mae Moore, who allegedly posed as a straw buyer for the home and obtained financing through Alexander Trevino, who worked as a loan officer at a Glendale mortgage business and is accused of falsifying the financial information on Moore's loan application.

With the economy hurting, we're likely expect to see a rise in these sorts of scams. Just last March, the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office filed a case against another a group based in the San Fernando Valley accused of forging signatures on loan documents, sometimes with very high, undisclosed fees and sometimes without the homeowners' full knowledge.

In the same case, California Attorney General Jerry Brown's office froze the mortgage broker's assets and filed a civil action seeking $20 million in fines and restitution against the company.

A 3/19/08 LA Times article reported on the details of the criminal and civil actions against the group:

California authorities said today they cracked a mortgage fraud ring that allegedly victimized thousands of Californians, some of them elderly and some who lost their homes.

The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office this morning arrested five people and were waiting for two more to surrender to face charges of conspiracy, grand theft and elder abuse as part of a crackdown on alleged sub-prime mortgage lending scams with the California Department of Justice.

A related lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court accuses six companies of using predatory lending practices to trap homeowners in illegal and expensive loans.

As the mortgage crisis worsens, a growing number of fly-by-night companies are employing utterly brazen tactics to push homeowners into illegal and unconscionable loans,” Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said. “The illegal sales practices of these companies … included psychological pressure, forgery and outright lies.”

The companies, which did business throughout Southern California, used bait-and-switch tactics to take advantage of thousands of consumers, costing many of them their homes, Brown said.

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.

Gold Line News

Steve Hymon has a post about the Gold Line Foothill Extension on the Los Angeles Times' Bottleneck Blog. In it, he describes the wrangling going on between the Gold Line Authority and the planned Expo Line to LA's Westside.

The two transit lines are competing for the same pot of LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) construction money, but the Expo Line has run into some controversy over street crossings. The Gold Line doesn't face the same sort of problems and is seen as ready to go.

The money hunt is pitting Westside LA against San Gabriel Valley communities, Hymon reported:

The Westside Cities Council of Governments grew sufficiently concerned about the issue that they met last month with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to try to persuade him that funding for Westside projects must come first.

"The fear is that the Gold Line has all its ducks in order and they [the Council of Governments] were worried that the Gold Line could leapfrog over the Expo Line" for money, said Los Angeles Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represents the far Westside and attended the meeting. "They wanted to make sure the mayor knew the Gold Line couldn't leapfrog ahead of the Expo Line -- that the Expo Line construction time-line is sacred."

The first phase of the Expo Line is under construction from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City. But the line has run into controversy about street crossings that could delay construction of the first phase and delay the second phase from getting underway. The Expo Line will need federal money for its second phase and officials worry it's hard enough without having to compete with a Gold Line extension.

San Gabriel Valley officials have long chafed at the structure of the MTA Board, which gives the most political muscle to the city of Los Angeles and the western half of the county. Now those officials want leverage and have privately hinted that if the Gold Line doesn't get money now, they may not support a prospective ballot measure in November that would raise the sales tax in Los Angeles County by a half-penny to pay for a pile of transit projects.

"The San Gabriel Valley is not without its political clout," said Monrovia Mayor Rob Hammond. (An earlier version of this post incorrectly gave the mayor's last name as Martin.)* "The timing is such that it’s all coming to a head right this minute and part of the agreement that is out there is that the San Gabriel Valley, through the foothill extension, will receive favorable support from members of the MTA Board."

That view is somewhat echoed by MTA board member David Fleming, who was appointed to the board by Villaraigosa.

"We’ve talked to them about this sales tax and told them 'Look, you want our help, we have to have your help,'" Fleming said. "I personally think your extension is a good one and we need it. Part of the consideration for supporting them, they have to support the sales tax, which they agreed to do."

The man in the middle -- both geographically and politically -- is Villaraiogosa. His press office declined to say whether he would vote to give the Gold Line money this month, although the mayor has expressed support for the project in the past. At the same time, he is under pressure to provide mass transit for the Westside and likely needs the sales tax increase if the subway-to-the-sea is to become a reality.

Hymon's post has generated a lot of comments, so feel free to jump into the mix.

The key to the Gold Line moving forward quickly is it's inclusion in the MTA's Long Range Transportation Plan. A final decision on the plan will be made at the MTA's board meeting on June 26th. If you're interested in attending, you can sign on at the Metro Gold Line's website.

Ravelers at Doubletree Tonight

If you're looking for a non-Belgian, acoustically friendly place to cool your heels, the local band The Ravelers is playing tonight at the Claremont Doubletree Hotel from 7pm to 10pm, or so our Raveler Spam tells us:

The Ravelers are returning to our favorite casual hang-out this Friday evening for a party on the patio.

Come on out and help us put "Friday the 13th" on it's ear...

Friday, June 13- Let's party on the patio!

---Doubletree Hotel Claremont
---555 W. Foothill Blvd
---Claremont, CA 91711
---(909)626-2411

(Please call to make reservations if you would like to eat dinner, it helps them to set up the right number of tables on the patio)

The Ravelers play from 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm. Meet with friends, food, and fun!

On Foothill Blvd between Indian Hill and Mountain Ave.

New Belgian Pub Open

We got a note from a reader who reminded us that there's a new pub in town:

Subject: I'll never have to go to the Press again!
To: "Claremont Insider"

The new Belgian Beer bar, The Back Abbey, is open!

The Daily Bulletin had a pre-opening article on The Back Abbey, which opened this past Monday:

The Back Abbey, housed in a tiny Spanish-style building beside the Laemmle Theatre on Oberlin Avenue, will feature an additional 50-60 imported beers in bottles, a rich wine list and a unique food menu of burgers, sausages, salads and other items, said owner John J. Solana.

Solana said the beers would be 60 percent to 70 percent Belgian, with the remainder from France, Germany and England.

"(I'm) hoping to capture an intimacy that's only found in those little hole-in-the-wall pubs in Belgium," said Solana, a La Verne resident and professional chimney sweep.

The intimate pub - it fits 45 inside and 45 on outside patios - opens at 11 a.m. and has city permits allowing it to stay open until 1 a.m., though Solana says it may close earlier depending on business. The pub will be closed Sundays.

Meg over at M-M-M-My Pomona ran the first review we were able to find, and she described the place as only she can:

The place was a ZOO, I'm telling you. Every available seat was taken, every standing space filled, every oxygen molecule converted to CO2. And it was so noisy that K. and I had to shout into one another's ears to be heard. It was like being at club, and I'm not talking some piddly little Jonathan Richman show but a full-on International Noise Conspiracy performance. Without earplugs.

So don't say you haven't been warned. Until the place calms down some AND (not "or") they add some acoustic dampening, I can't recommend it for a fun evening with friends. It would, however, be a great place to take someone you don't really want to talk to.

The Back Abbey is located inan old ice house on Oberlin Ave. behind the Hotel Casa 425 and next to the Claremont Laemmle Theatres. The Claremont Courier's Tony Krickl had an article back in January giving the backstory to the pub and the building:

The 1050-square-foot building was originally located at the corner of First Street and Indian Hill Boulevard, said Ginger Elliott, executive director of Claremont Heritage. Owned by the Edison Company, it was moved to its current location in the early 1920s.

When the union ice house company managed the building, large quantities of ice were stored there and cooled fruit from The Packing House through an underground tunnel, Ms. Elliott said. Ice was also loaded onto each end of freight trains that transported fruit cross country and was reloaded at various icehouses along the way.

“They could almost be described as a partnership between the citrus and the railroad industries before refrigerated carts were used,” Ms. Elliott said.

The Ice House was still functional until the early 1990s, selling ice to individual and event organizers throughout the region. In 1996, the city purchased the building along with much of the land where Hotel Casa 425 and the Village Expansion plaza now sit.

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.

Marijuana Grow House Problem

Yesterday's New York Times contained a long article on the front page, below the fold, on the problems caused by medical marijuana dispensaries and their associated infrastructure, grow houses.

The article states,

[Proposition 215] gave rise to...the opening of clubs or dispensaries to make it available and growers going large scale to keep those outlets supplied.

In turn, that led to the kind of worries that have bubbled up in Arcata, home of Humboldt State University, where town elders say roughly one in five homes are "indoor grows," with rooms or even entire structures converted to marijuana greenhouses.

That shift in cultivation...has been blamed for a housing shortage for Humboldt students...

Could it be that marijuana grow houses are to blame for the lack of affordable housing in Claremont? Maybe urban farmers getting their gro-lamps, electric-meter jumper wiring, and the other accouterments in early?

How long do you think it will be before we hear of a marijuana grow house being raided in Claremont?

City Council Meeting Tonight

We received this email yesterday from a reader questioning a closed session item on tonight's Claremont City Council closed session agenda:

If you check under the second closed session item on tomorrow's (June 10th) city council meeting agenda, you will see real price negotiations for property at 390 Arrow Highway. I believe that is the address of Peppertree Square. Is the city going to but the property? Is the city going to help someone else buy it? Is city hall going to be moved to South Claremont? Will the citizens be told what they are going to do and when? Only the Shadow knows....

We've got no idea what's going on with that one, but we'll keep an ear to the ground. If you watch the streaming video on the city's website, you can hear a report on the closed session at the beginning of the regular meeting at 6:30pm.

Among the items on the regular meeting agenda are:

• The acceptance of the annual Landscaping and Lighting Assessment District engineer's report, which recommends raising the LLD assessment 3.3%, from $142.42 to $147.12 per $100,000 of assessed property value.
  
  
• Allocating $25,000 from the city's General Fund to help underwrite a $7.6 million wetlands project proposed by the Claremont Area League of Women Voters (LWV) for a site near the city's Thompson Creek Trail at Mills Ave. and Mt. Baldy Rd. The LWV has applied for a grant from the San Gabriel River and Mountains Conservancy to fund the project, and the city wants to make a token show of community support.
  
  (In actuality, there may or may not be community-wide support for the project - no one knows because the LWV has never had a public discussion on the topic! Apparently, open public discussion is not in the League of Women Voters' mission statement.)
  
  One interesting point: The pool of funds the LWV is applying to is about $63 million and is supposed to be spread out among all of the cities in the San Gabriel River watershed. So, Claremont's LWV is staking a claim to well over 10% of the total amount. The extent of Claremont's hubris is truly remarkable. As always, it's not their money, so what do they care?
  
  
• Also, the city council will consider separate memoranda of understanding between the city and the Claremont Professional Employees Association, and the city and the San Bernardino Public Employees Association. The memoranda include such things as cost of living increases and increases in the health and fitness benefits paid to employees.
  

Claremont City Council Meeting
Closed Session: 5:15pm
Regular Session: 6:30pm
City Council Chambers
225 W. 2nd St.
Claremont, CA 91711

Summer Concert Series

The City of Claremont will be co-sponsoring a Friday night concert series beginning June 20th. The city's website offers this information:

This summer, the City and its co-sponsors are proud to present "Friday Nights Live," in the Claremont Village. Let the music set the mood for you to visit old favorites and explore new businesses throughout the Village. Artists will be performing at 2nd and Yale, in the Public Plaza and at the Packing House. This 12-week program will feature 36 bands playing a variety of musical entertainment each Friday evening,beginning June 20 through September 12, from 6 to 9 pm. This event is brought to you by the City of Claremont, the Packing House, Hotel Casa 425, Claremont Village Square, Arteco and Waznoo.com. Upon the conclusion of this series, the entertainment continues in the Fall with the Depot Jazz Series beginning September 19. For more information, call 909-399-5460.

CHS Percussion Band Wins High Honors

A reader wrote pointed us to a bit of local news we missed:

I did not see this mentioned on your web pages, and therefore thought I would inquire as to your thoughts on something.

The Claremont High School percussion ensemble, against many odds thrown in their path, made it to Dayton, Ohio, in April to the WGI World Championships, and brought home the gold medal in "concert percussion" and the bronze medal in "marching percussion."

Congrats to the CHS percussion ensemble for their well-deserved honors!

The reader also wrote of some concern that the Claremont Courier had failed to cover the ensemble news, but the Courier ran an article by Landus Rigsby on the CHS Percussion Band in last Saturday's edition:

When the instruments in an orchestra blend together as they were meant to be, they produce a collective sound that no individual instruments could ever produce. The same principle applies to a percussion band—when all instruments blend together, a rhythmic and melodic resonance is created that will wow a crowd of people to their feet.

This was the case for the Claremont High School Percussion Band, who captured the gold medal in the Scholastic World Concert Percussion category and the bronze medal in the Scholastic World Classic Marching Percussion category to make history at the 2008 Winter Guard International (WGI) World Championships in Dayton, Ohio back in April.

“I’m very proud of them, seeing how hard they worked,” said CHS Interim Percussion Band Director Ryan James. “And I’m very proud to see them achieve something that they haven’t before.”

The feat of capturing 2 medals at the event is something that has not been done by a school for 12 years. CHS’ gold medal winning performance earned high reviews from judges—who gave the school a score of 96.05—and also favorable written reviews from writers such as WGI website author Michael Reed. Even in the Marching Percussion category where Claremont finished in 3rd place, the group still earned a high mark of 94.7.

“Capturing their first WGI title with a pristine display of musicianship, Claremont (CA) brought the contemporary sounds of Japanese composers Akira Nishimura and Minoru Miki to town with ‘Kala,’” Mr. Reed wrote. “Opening with metallic instruments in their upper ranges, the fast, light playing was like the twinkling of bright stars. The group gave a superb exhibition of balance and blend, as the entire range of instruments from the highest crotale note, to the lowest marimba pitch, could be clearly heard throughout the stadium even during the softest dynamic levels.”

Boom Towns

The boom town that was the Inland Empire has been undergoing a "boom" of another sort, and Claremont isn't excepted from from the experience:


BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE $460 MILLION?

PFF Bancorp (NYSE: PFB) was back in the news Friday. The Daily Bulletin's business reporter Matt Wrye had a brief article noting that PFF Bancorp was looking to generate $460 million. The Rancho Cucamonga-based banking company had to ask for an extension on a $44 million overdue loan at the end of May and is looking to pay that off.

Wrye's article stated that PFF hadn't disclosed any details about the $460 million deal and said that it would require shareholder approval. The article also said the deal would involve a stock offering. The piece gave some background on PFF's problems:

The bank has written off millions of dollars in losses over the last couple of quarters.

In the midst of a booming, inflated housing market, CEO Kevin McCarthy signed off on loans to housing developers who can't repay what they borrowed.

Some experts speculate PFF is on the verge of government receivership if private equity doesn't come to its rescue, or if the bank isn't bought out.

The bank's stock closed Thursday at $1.33, a mere fraction of its $39 value just two years ago.

PFF's board of directors had no problems with CEO McCarthy's management of the company when it was flying high, and several of them, including San Dimas Mayor Curt Morris and former Claremont McKenna College Athenaeum director Jil Stark made out pretty well with their stock options prior to PFF's collapse.

Now that the party's over, the PFF board has kept a pretty low profile. We'll see how long they can keep that up.


HOUSING MARKET WOES

As Matt Wrye's article observed, PFF's problems had their roots in the housing market downturn. Loans to builders and developers turned bad, and share value eroded as a result. The Inland Empire has been hit particularly hard by the problems in the housing market.

Wrye had another article yesterday that posed the question, "When will it end?" to several real estate experts. One of them, Rancho Cucamonga developer Jeffrey Burum, thought the market might not fully recover until 2012.

Burum, coincidentally, helped PFF Bancorp out a couple months back when he bought a portfolio of problem loans from PFF. The loans had originally been valued at around $100 million, but by the time Burum bought them off PFF, they were worth only $60 million. Burum paid $22.5 cents on the dollar for those loans, the Daily Bulletin reported.


CITIES HELPING BUILDERS CLOG THE ROADWAYS

People who've grown up in the area can tell you that traffic has worsened over the years. Builders and their lobbying groups such as the Building Industry Association, funnel large amounts of money to elected officials (see our piece on Pomona Mayor Norma Torres' contributors for her State Assembly run), and that gets translated into poorly planned residential and business developments getting easy approval by those same officials.

At the same time, state officials have been siphoning off transportation funds to try to balance the state budget. Consequently, much-need transportation infrastructure repairs and improvements have been neglected. The added traffic created by all those building projects over the years hasn't been matched by new freeway and public transit projects and simply gets dumped onto our already crowded roads.

The LA Times is running a series on traffic issues and the failure of state and local governments to address these issues, despite voters approving billions in financing for transportation funds. Today's installment in the Times' series charges local officials with bypassing laws requiring builders to help pay for transportation projects to carry the traffic their projects generate:

* State and local officials have not expanded the region's highways and mass transit systems enough to keep up with population growth.

The population of the five-county Southern California region grew 22% from 1990 to 2006, and the total miles driven by motorists has increased about 42%. But the number of miles of highway in the region has increased by only 7.5%.

Since 2001, Govs. Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with state legislators, repeatedly have diverted money from the state's taxes on gasoline to pay for non-transportation programs. Schwarzenegger plans to do so again in the budget for the coming year. Roughly $5.8 billion in highway and mass-transit funds that were diverted during the state's repeated budget crises this decade have not yet been repaid.

While the region's highway capacity has lagged behind population growth, mass transit has not made up the difference. Los Angeles County for the last 25 years has put three-quarters of its voter-approved transportation money into rail and bus systems. Even with the investment of about $7 billion, 85% of commuters still drive.

* At the same time, local officials repeatedly have sidestepped state laws that were supposed to require developers to lessen the traffic-snarling effects of projects.

For years, elected county and city officials across Southern California have put economic development and jobs ahead of mobility, approving major commercial and residential developments without requiring builders to pay enough for improvements needed to handle extra traffic.

All that development contributes to congestion that for the average motorist in L.A. and Orange counties adds up to almost two workweeks of delay each year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute, a think tank at Texas A&M University that compiles annual assessments of congestion nationwide. That's almost double what it was in the 1980s. In Ventura County , congestion-related delays each year consume roughly a workweek of the average motorist's life. The delay in the Inland Empire equals about six workdays.

Keep all of that in mind if in the future you see Claremont councilpeople greenlighting a new condo project or if you see a local State Assemblyperson voting for legislation affecting the building industry.

If traffic keeps going the way it has the past 20 years, the next boom we observe just may be one lowered on irresponsible state and local elected officials.

Support Your Local Lobbyists

As we predicted, Pomona Mayor Norma Torres (pictured right, proudly displaying her efforts to clean up Pomona) won the Democratic primary election for California's 61st Assembly District seat.

Torres now turns her attention to the November general election, where she will face Republican Wendy Maier. The Daily Bulletin's Will Bigham blogged about Torres for the Bulletin:

"I'm looking at this campaign as I would any other campaign," Torres said. "I'm not taking anything for granted, and I'm going to take it very seriously."

Torres said that she will not be running for re-election in November for the mayoral seat in Pomona. She added that she was going to wait to see who was running before endorsing any mayoral candidate.

We suspect that Torres, the best local politician for the money (Norma's all for the money), has a pretty good idea who she wants to replace her as mayor. Torres' main concern is to build power base by backfilling with someone loyal to her. She wanted to do a similar thing when she endorsed Three Valleys Municipal Water District boardmember Xavier Alvarez for his water board seat.

Torres needs that strong base to solidify her position within her party so that the lobbying money keeps flowing. Word is, lobbyists are increasingly unhappy with what they're getting for their dollars:


In The Know: Are Politicians Failing Our Lobbyists?

Claremont Graduate School

Having previously given a financial snapshot of the undergraduate colleges in Claremont, Pomona, Scripps, CMC, Harvey Mudd, and Pitzer, we now turn to the Claremont Graduate University (CGU).

These data are taken from the IRS form 990 filed by CGU for the period July 1, 2004 through June 30, 2005--the latest uniformly available. We provide general comments on the information here. However, the CGU 990 for the following fiscal year, ending June 30, 2006, is also available. We provide those numbers also for comparison and refer to them as 2006 numbers. They appear in RED.

Let's turn to the numbers. Though the first section on tuition, revenue, expenses, and net assets is a bit anemic. It is when we turn to salaries that we see that CGU is home to a bunch of rock stars. And it is kind of funny, for an institution whose reputation is--well--no better than that of the undergraduate schools.

Tuition and fees in 2005: $31,837,847 ($33,315,533 in 2006)

(Room and Board not given as this is not primarily a residential institution)

Total 2005 revenue: $57,549,629 ($61,729,863 in 2006)

Total 2005 expenses: $47,824,959 ($50,403,927 in 2006)

Excess for 2005: $9,724,670 (11,325,936 in 2006)

Assets as of July 1, 2004: $164,940,988 ($176,190,687 on July 1, 2005)

Assets as of June 30, 2005: $176,190,687 (199,319,048 on June 30, 2006)

Corporate Officers

William L. Everhart, Interim President, Treasurer (2005)
Compensation: $348,474
Contribution to Employee Benefit Plans: $38,953

Philip Dreyer, Provost, VP Academic Affairs (2005
Compensation: $209,000
Contribution to Employee Benefit Plans: $28,212

John Crowe, VP Development, Interim Secretary (2005)
Compensation: $194,000
Contribution to Employee Benefit Plans: $29,420
Expense Account: $598

Robert E. Klitgaard, President (2006)
Compensation: $354,606
Contribution to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation plans: $35,164
Expense account and other allowances: $141,381 (Wow! What is this? Housing? Signing bonus?)

William L. Everhart, Treasurer, Secretary to the Board (2006)
Compensation: $281,520
Contribution to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation plans: $36,269

Yi Feng, Provost, VP Academic Affairs (2006)
Compensation: $63,333 (this must be a partial year)
Contribution to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation plans: $18,020

John Crowe, VP Development (2006)
Compensation: $202,730
Contribution to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation plans: $30,925
Expense account: $729

Compensation of the Five Highest Paid Employees other than Officers Directors, and Trustees

Cornelis De Kluyver, Dean
Compensation: $225,484 ($221,303 in 2006)
Contribution to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $31,464 ($32,816 in 2006)

Richard Smith, Faculty
Compensation: $209,014 ($218,443 in 2006)
Contribution to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $26,758 ($23,705 in 2006)

William Crano, Faculty
Compensation: $198,592 ($200,553 in 2006)
Contribution to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $27,891 ($27,345 in 2006)

Stewart Donaldson, Faculty
Compensation: $197,344 ($208,783 in 2006)
Contribution to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $26,809 ($26,631 in 2006)

Vijay Sathe, Faculty
Compensation: $202,520 ($215,838 in 2006)
Contribution to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $16,995 ($17,818 in 2006)

Compensation of the Five Highest Paid Independent Contractors

Frederick M. Weis, Claremont, consulting (2005)
Compensation: 53,653

Hodge Niederer Cariani, San Francisco, Executive Employment
Compensation: $90,000 in 2005 ($79,935 in 2006)

Carrier Johnson, San Diego, Contractor
Compensation: $161,112

Robert Soderberg, Claremont, Construction
Compensation $90,000

PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, Los Angeles, Accounting Firm
Compensation: $120,637 ($79,634 in 2006 to PWC in St. Louis for Accountant/Tax)

Capstone Development Corp, Birmingham, Alabama, Real Estate Development (2006) Compensation, $1,045,588

Clifford Associates LLC, Pasadena, Investment Management/Trust (2006)
Compensation: $95,643

Alliance Capital Management, Philadelphia, Investment Management (2006)
Compensation: $62,304

Pitzer College

The newest of the undergraduate colleges in Claremont, but now some 45 years old, Pitzer College began as an all-woman's college emphasizing psychology, sociology, and anthropology. It long, long ago went co-ed, and numbers as its graduates Fabian Núñez, former speaker of the California State Assembly, David Bloom, an NBC newsman and former co-anchor of Weekend Today, and of course Pomona College Dean of Faculty in 2005, Gary R. Kates (compensation $181,628). We think the image, above left, of David Bloom reporting from Iraq is so typical of the Pitzer student or graduate: flak jacket, surrounded by military vehicles, in the midst of lots and lots of shooting.

Let's see how Pitzer stacks up against the other undergraduate institutions in Claremont. We will present certain numbers from the Pitzer IRS form 990 for 2004-2005 (the latest available to us). This earlier post gives some general information and warnings about the interpretation of these data. You may compare with the other colleges by clicking on these links: Pomona College, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, and Harvey Mudd College. Remember, all data shown is as of June 30, 2005 unless otherwise noted.

Tuition and Fees: $27,566,023

Room and Board: $7,228,556

Total Revenue: $47,800,688

Total Expenses: $40,932,412

Excess for the year: $6,868,276

Net assets on July 1, 2004: $78,891,037

Net assets on June 30, 2005: $87,615,880

Corporate Officers

Laura Skandera Trombley, President
Compensation: $236,309
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $26,063
Expense account and other allowances: $27,200

Alan Jones, VP and Dean of Faculty
Compensation: $137,700
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $22,815

Arnaldo Rodriguez, VP, Admission and Financial Aid
Compensation: $134,556
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $19,801
Expense Account: $541

Vicke Selk: VP, Treasurer
Compensation: $183,162
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $29,528
Expense Account: $1,036

James Marchant, VP, Dean of Students
Compensation: $108,979
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $20,509

Anne Moran, VP, Advancement
Compensation: $136,578
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $22,384

Lori M. Yoshino, Budget Director, Associate Treasurer
Compensation: $93,584
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $11,971

Compensation of the Five Highest Paid Employees other than Officers, Directors, and Trustees

Carol Brandt, VP International Programs
Compensation: $127,234
Contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $18,823

Barry Sanders, Faculty
Compensation: $123,513
Contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $15,636

Stephen L. Glass, Faculty
Compensation: $115,698
Contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $19,710

Ann Helton Stromberg, Faculty Emerita
Compensation: $118,348
Contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $13,797

Albert Wachtel, Faculty
Compensation: $110,991
Contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $19,071

Wachtel ran for Congress many years ago against David Dreier. It would have been Congress's gain and Claremont's loss. By accounts one of the best teachers in Claremont. Sometime try to get him to discuss Shakespeare, Sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Compensation of the five Highest Paid Independent Contractors

Agape Employment, Rancho Cucamonga, Employment
Compensation $215,071

Papillon Tours and Travel, Los Angeles, Travel
Compensation: $111,400

PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, Los Angeles, Audit and Tax
Compensation: $107,011

MJS Professional Cleaning Service, Upland, Janitorial
Compensation: $86,913

Primary Cableworks, Inc., Riverside, Rewire Building
Compensation: $60,600