Catch the Fever!

Below:
Atascadero City Manager Wade McKinney and Indio City Manager Glenn Southard pose for the April, 2008, edition of the City Manager Newsletter, a publication of Trackdown Management and Jack Simpson. All three, McKinney, Southard, and Simpson, are on the board of the California City Management Foundation, which Southard helped found.

We've been writing this past week about the situation in Indio where a portion of the city's utility tax has reportedly gone uncollected from nearly 8,000 homes and 650 businesses. Our fascination with the story has less to do with the fact that former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard in now ensconced in that desert down and much more to do with the opportunity to view the story as a case study in crisis management by Southard.

Southard would like to have the public believe the under collection of the 23-year-old Indio utility tax preceded his administration by decades. But has anyone bothered to look at how many of those 8,000 homes and 650 businesses were constructed in the past three years during Indio's great real estate boom? Indio's population, according to U.S. Census estimates, went from 49,116 in 2000 to 76,896 - a better-than-50% increase.

So if the taxes that weren't collected came as newly constructed properties, and if many or most of those new properties were built during the Southard years in Indio, then he would have to bear a much greater share of the blame than he's been willing to up to this point.

We also suspect that Southard will do his best to slip any blame at all for the mess, which likely runs into the millions of uncollected tax dollars. As we've noted, Southard survived a number of crises in Claremont by effectively controlling the public message - defining the story himself; by using his ability to charm councilmembers into supporting his actions even at the cost of their council seats; and by marshaling the power of city employee unions to get involved politically to exert pressure on councils (see the Preserve Claremont campaign of 2005).

Spinning the public and the press is certainly not a new phenomena. It's really not much different than a medieval king having his favorite scribe write a chronicle of the monarch's most recent war of conquest.

We've seen it go on here in Claremont as well. The recent Cookie Monster flap with Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor is a good example with Taylor trying to counter the negative attention she received by portraying herself as being concerned about the safety of the girls involved.

These things are scalable, from the local level to the highest international circles. In a lot of ways, the current Beijing Olympics is a massive PR campaign by China, complete with lip-syncing and digitally-enhanced fireworks.

And that's not all:


Chinese Officials: Deadly Virus Sweeping China Is Just Olympic Fever

DUI Checkpoint This Weekend

There must be a lot of drunks driving around Claremont. Either that or a lot of drunk state or federal grant agency bureaucrats doling out money for DUI checkpoints.

The city is conducting yet another of these things this weekend, beginning Friday, August 15th, at 6pm and ending at 2am Saturday morning. The checkpoint will be set up by the Claremont Police Department at an undisclosed location.

You fugitive felons should also think twice about driving through town, too. The city will probably have its digital fingerprint gadget handy to ID you if happen through the checkpoint.

Tri-City Recovery

Tri-City Mental Health, the cooperative mental health agency funded by the cities of Claremont, La Verne, and Pomona, apparently has recovered nicely from its bankruptcy and recently received a $10 million contract from LA County to service Medi-Cal patients it the three cities.

According to a blurb in the San Bernardino Sun, Tri-City hosted a reception at the Pomona Fairplex Sheraton to celebrate its recovery. The Sun quoted a couple Tri-City boardmembers:

Pomona Councilwoman and Tri-City board chairwoman Paula Lantz praised a recent reorganization of the governing board in which three members have been added as part of a restructuring process intended to help create a future vision for and re-establish the mission and core values of the 48-year-old organization.

La Verne Mayor Jon Blickenstaff, also a board member, said, "When you think about the hundreds and even thousands of people in this Pomona Valley that are served by Tri-City and the enrichment to their lives that we have provided, (it) makes you realize why everyone in this room and so many others have worked so hard to guarantee that this organization continues to serve in the exemplary manner that it has...."

Jesse Duff, who had served as Claremont's interim City Manager right after Glenn Southard left for Indio in 2005, was hired as Tri-City's interim director in August, 2007, and has overseen the agency as it has been regrouping following the bankruptcy. Duff was hired on a permanent basis in late-June.

Indio Spin Class

Well, it didn't take very long for our prediction from last Thursday to come true.

You might recall that in commenting on the situation in Indio where former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard is getting some extra summer heat for a screw up in the tax collection department, we said that we wouldn't be surprised to see Southard's staff trotting out stats and charts to show how none of this was really Glenn's fault at all.

The problems in Indio stem from the failure of the city's electrical utility, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) to collect the city's five-percent Utility User Tax (UUT) from about 8,000 households and 650 businesses. The missed tax money for the Indio UUT, collected over $4.5 million last year, could easily run into the millions of dollars.

Southard wasted no time dropping the possible litigation threat and hiring MuniFinancial (the same company that handled Claremont's failed Parks and Pasture Assessment District vote) to audit IID and determine how long the money has gone uncollected.

Southard's team also took the Desert Sun newspaper for a quick spin, as a Desert Sun article on the subject indicated. The article, titled "Indio: There Were No Signs Tax Wasn't Collected," noted that some residents were questioning how the city could overlook the missing revenue. Southard's assistant Mark Wasserman, however, argued that there appeared to be no drop off in revenues:

Wasserman said the city has annual revenue audits, and problems with the utility tax did not surface.

“When you look at the population and the UUT revenue they do grow at consistent rates with one another,” he said.

For example, from 1995 to 2000, Indio's population grew by 14 percent, and the utility tax revenue by 14.5 percent, Wasserman said.

From 2000 to 2005 — the height of the city's development boom — population grew 35 percent; the utility tax revenue increased even by 54 percent, Wasserman said.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary during budget preparations. Projections for utility tax revenues are based on prior years, he said.

“There were no huge increases, no decreases. Revenues that we received from IID were in line with the growth from the city,” said Susan Mahoney, management services director who oversees finance.

The Desert Sun's article also carried a helpful graphic that showed that UUT revenues since 1994 tracked population growth in the city fairly consistently, just as Indio officials had said:

Chart from The Desert Sun, 8/7/08
(Click to Enlarge)

But should the tax be tracking the population or should it be rising much faster than population growth because of rising energy prices? You can see from the graph that in the last five years the UUT revenues did outpace population growth, but how do we know that curve is what we should really be seeing? Maybe the difference should be much more dramatic.

It seems to us there's a pretty simple way of figuring the correct amount. The Desert Sun reported that Indio has 27,704 households, according to the California Dept. of Finance. Let's say we know that the average household's yearly utility tax payment for 2007 was $100 and 30% of that cames from electrical bills. Then, $30 times 27,704 households would equal the annual UUT revenue the city would have expected to collect from electric bills. In our example, the city should have collected $831,120 from IID electric bills.

But if the Desert Sun is right about 8,000 households not being billed, then the total electric bill portion of the UUT revenue from households would be closer to $591,120 - $30 times 19,704 households. It's a difference of $240,000, and you would think that would jump out at people. An analysis for business UUT revenue would be similar.

And it's not as if Indio doesn't consider these sorts of projections. Below is an image of a fiscal analysis for the 2/19/03 Indio City Council meeting. The analysis shows estimated utility tax revenue for a then-new housing development called Generations at Shadow Hills:

(Click to Enlarge)

Click here to see the actual report. (Sorry, the city of Indio doesn't make this easy. You have to click on the archive link, then click on the "City Clerk" folder and find the agenda packets. Look for February, 2003.)

The table shows what the estimated UUT revenues should be for the project as the homes become occupied. These are the figures, based on an average annual $166 utility tax collection per household:

2003 - 0 homes occupied, $0
2004 - 0 homes occupied, $0
2005 - 11 homes occupied, $1,824 (Uh-oh, the analyst's math may be wrong here; 11 times $166 should equal $1,826)
2006 - 22 homes occupied, $3,648 (Wrong here, too; should be $3,652)
2007 - 32 homes occupied, $5,306 (Wrong; should be $5,312)

So, did Indio really collect the amounts estimated for the housing units studied or did they instead collect some fraction of those numbers - $166 per household per year, minus whatever the electric bill portion of the utility tax was since the IID wasn't billing for that?

Indio was clearly used to figuring what the projected incomes should have been, so what was so hard about checking to see if the real numbers actually measured up to the projections? Southard and his staff were supposed to be auditing the numbers. Now, this was a problem that Southard inherited, but shouldn't a new administrator coming in with fresh eyes and getting paid barrelfuls of money be expected to do a proper audit? We know for sure that almost 8,000 households and 650 businesses weren't being billed. How did Southard overlook that?

More importantly, can whatever spin Indio's city management puts on the story trump the facts, as so often happened in Claremont over the various crises of the Southard administration here?

We can probably be sure that whatever audit is done, if the auditor isn't truly independent - loyal to the people of Indio rather than Southard or the Indio Council, then we might never know what happened. A citizen's group might be better off hiring their own auditor to go over the figures.

If that doesn't work, they can always start a blog.

City Pays at the Pump, Just Like You

Gas prices are hitting the City of Claremont just like anyone else, according to the Claremont Courier. Tony Krickl's article in Saturday's Courier reported:

With a fleet of 109 vehicles to maintain, rising gas prices can significantly affect the city’s bottom line.

From July 2007 to the end of June 2008, the city purchased 83,869 gallons of unleaded fuel at an average cost of $3.05 per gallon, said Community Services Department Director Scott Carroll. It also consumed 42,430 gallons of diesel fuel at an average of $3.23.

The total cost of fuel last fiscal year for the city amounted to $393,000.

On July 24, the city made another bulk fuel purchase of unleaded costing $3.68 per gallon and diesel up to $4.34 per gallon. Assuming gas prices do not increase over the next year, the city will be spending $493,000 for fuel in 2008/2009 – a jump of $100,000 or 26 percent.

One advantage the city has over you, though, is that the city can always raise the price of services like trash collection to help defray higher gas bills. Most of you can't automatically raise the money you bring home to pay your bills.

This is Pomona College the New York Times Magazine is Talking About

(click on image to enlarge)

Sunday's New York Times Magazine contained a column by Randy Cohen (The Ethicist) on the subject of the Pomona College Alma Mater, though Pomona was not named in the column:

Julia DeIuliis, of Philadelphia, writes: "A college with which I am affiliated discovered that its alma mater was written for a blackface minstrel show in the 1900s. Although the lyrics are innocuous, the school banned the song from this year's graduation and formed a group to discuss its future use, part of a campaign to make students aware of things they take for granted. Is this a good response, or should the school focus on more important issues? Is it unethical to sing the song?"

Cohen replies: "Sing out--full-throated, clear-conscienced..." He then goes on to give cover to Pomona College President David Oxtoby, who made the decision to ban the singing of the song: "The school's response is not only ethical but also admirable. It did what a college should... This particular project may be evaluated for its efficacy...but should still be praised for its intent. "

He does not address the very real collateral damage inflicted on alumni and the wider college community by the somewhat draconian measure of banning the song, perhaps because this was not raised in the question. As we are learning from the Los Angeles Times and the Inland Empire Weekly, you can't count on the print media for the full story.

Traffic Solutions: Walking on the Wild Side

We received this in from a reader concerned about students trying to get from the Claremont Graduate University's new student apartment complex on the north side of Foothill Blvd. to the CGU campus on the south side of the often busy highway:

Subject: Claremont Planning: Nobody Walks in L.A., So They Shouldn't Walk Here Either

Hi There,

So sheer planning genius along the lines of Porkchop Park...

CGU finally built new housing for its students to replace the criminal slum lord housing it currently has. The new housing is up against the parking lot of the Rancho Santa Ana Botantic Gardens.

We all assumed that the city would put in a light on Foothill and College, since CGU is on College and a couple hundred students are moving into the apartments on the other side of Foothill, directly across from College. I mean, that would make sense....for the several years I've lived here, I've become accustomed to watching students play Frogger as they dashed for their lives across Foothill to get to the apartments at CST. The only other option was to walk all the way down to Dartmouth and back - which, on a hot day with no shade, is kind of brutal.

I mean...a light, a pedestrian bridge, something...

And then Claremont built an island median thing to prevent people from turning left on Foothill coming out of College. And put rocks all over it so you can't stand on it. And then added No Pedestrian signs. I think they wanted to add a moat and fire breathing dragons, but because of the budget, decided not to.

The city actually thinks that students should walk all the way down to Dartmouth, wait for the light there, take their chances crossing against turning traffic, and walk all the way back? Only in Claremont is the shortest distance between two points....a weird rectangle.

The weird access road that you have to take now is narrow - looks like its a one-way, but will have to have to accommodate two way traffic (even though there's no center divider line).

But hey, at least they put in a bike lane going up to the gardens, right? Except...its on the right side of the road, where there is no lighting.

Seriously, does the city want to kill off students?

here's the link to the housing info:

http://www.cgu.edu/pages/1156.asp

My favorite bit of ridiculous advertising on there is that the Metrolink is supposedly "within walking distance." Uh-huh. It's over a mile away, including crossing a major road with heavy traffic that doesn't have a freaking crosswalk, light, or pedestrian bridge.


Sigh.

Actually, dear reader, as typically happens with these things, a lot of thought and careful planning went into what you see. The City of Claremont and CGU threw tons of money at a traffic study from Acme Traffic Consultants, the finest traffic minds in the U.S.

The image below is taken from the computerized traffic model tested by Acme. Acme is a division of Acme Products, Inc., the same company the city hired to come up with coyote mitigations for the Claremont Wilderness Park. You might recall their plan to deal with our four-legged friends: Catapulting a large boulder from the highest point in the park until it falls on the unsuspecting coyote, who at the last minute notices the ever-larger shadow growing around him and, realizing his plight, holds up a sign saying, "Bye!"

Click to Enlarge

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.