If he weren’t so blinded by anti-City rage, NAFF might realize that what the City wants to do is essentially privatize the operation of our public library system by outsourcing staff to a privately-held, for-profit library services company in Maryland.

Under the city’s preferred scenario, those highly skilled, educated and -yes!- unionized library employees in the SCV would either get the boot and have to work at other LA County Libraries or leave their jobs and apply to work for the private corporation, ending their time on the public dole.

This outcome, it seems to me, would be a most favorable one for a conservative guy who has appeared at Tea Party rallies holding “GREEN IS RED” signs and who drives around town in a Hummer with an anti-Jane Fonda bumper sticker.

But because the library seizure is proposed by the City (which he -without irony- attempts to tar with Obama’s Hope ‘n Change mantra) it’s toxic to him, and so he sides by default with public unionized library employees.

The folks who have a real, honest beef with the direction of the SCV need a better spokesperson than Not a Ferry Fan.

I was. I’ll let Laurie Ender tell the story:

As part of the City’s initial research on the issue, it was noted that under city management, library services could be enhanced without raising taxes or fees.  Some of these enhancements include increasing hours at the Canyon Country Library and the Old Town Newhall Library by nearly 20 percent each (to match the hours at the Valencia Library); increased local control of library services and programs and better tailoring them to the specific needs of area residents; and opening all of the local libraries on Sunday.

There’s a lot to talk about here. First of all, there are two separate issues.

1) Should the City of Santa Clarita take over the three County libraries in Santa Clarita? And 2) How should the City manage the libraries if and when it does take them over?

On the first question, the math seems irrefutable. The City says we’ve been sending $6m+ every year to the County, and they don’t spend all of it here on materials and staff. In fact, last year, some $416,000 went to the County and didn’t come back. The City estimates $14 million in special library and property tax revenue has been lost in this way since 2003.

What can the City of Santa Clarita do with that extra money? Ender and the others say they can expand service hours and programs. More bang for our buck.

So, on its face, it appears to be in our economic interests to take over the libraries.

As to the second question, there is little doubt that the City would privatize the operation of the libraries. They do that in virtually every other service-oriented operation they run (the Transit system, for example, is run by a private corporation).  It’s likely they’ll look to Library Services & Sciences Incorporated,  a Maryland-based for-profit library management company that got its start in the hey-day of Ronald Reagan’s privatization push.

By some accounts, LSSI has saved local library systems from total ruin and failure. The company moves in, usually offering existing librarians a job (albeit it at a lower salary and without a pension), reforms the system, and turns a small profit.

But other LSSI contracts aren’t so clear cut. Library Journal.com reports that when LSSI took over Calabasas’ County library, it launched a volunteer initiative in order to save on personnel costs, cynically using the public’s goodwill to save money on human resources. In Finney Kansas, LSSI took over the library there, decreased staff spending on highly trained MLS librarians by 9% and cut spending on materials too.

And, as the City points out in a FAQ, experienced and trained local librarians -employed by the County- wouldn’t automatically keep their jobs under the City’s new management. They’d have to apply to work for the private corporation, and they’d lose whatever benefits and pension they had under the County system. Either that or they can transfer somewhere else in the LA County system. What a raw deal for the Librarians who live in and have served this community for years.

Whatever the City is planning, it’s obviously been at this for awhile. Shortly after Ender’s article ran, the City launched SantaClaritaLibrary.com, a slick new website devoted solely to selling this idea to the public. It features comparison charts of local library hours before and after the City’s hoped-for takeover. It has a list of articles about library privitization from organizations as diverse as the International City/County Managers Association to the conservative Hudson Institute.

Speaking as someone who still loves libraries and would kill for more hours (especially on Sunday), I’m intrigued by this idea, but I’m not sold. The City’s FAQ leaves a lot to be desired; I don’t think they could guarantee, for instance, that our local libraries would be able to check out materials from other Los Angeles County Libraries. And would the county end library programs at our three libraries? And what’s with the jumbled brainstrom in the last paragraph of the Financials page that says the $25 million budgeted for the new Newhall library could go somewhere else, like a new Valencia public library?

Finally, there’s a matter of trust, but not just any old trust, I’m talking about the public trust. Knowledge, information, literature and education materials belong to the public, to we the people. Libraries are the warehouses of that free information.

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t trust the City of Santa Clarita more than the County of Los Angeles Public Library just because the City is local. This isn’t like other City/County issues; the LACO Public Library is well-regarded and is overseen by its own board. They run a good system and even when library dollars escape the SCV, they still get spent on other parts of the system.

This should be an interesting debate come August 24, when it will be on the City Council’s Agenda.

But if that’s the case, if TeaPartySCV.com is some renegade website unaffiliated with the others, how come the unified Tea Party Patriots SCV (the people behind the parade entry) link to him -indeed celebrate him as the Infamous Unknown blogger?

As if that weren’t damning enough, the anonymous blogger has self-censored and deleted the joke from his website:

Wake up and smell the scrubbing!

So much for being a swashbuckling fearless defender of our Founder’s Ideals. Do you think the Founding Fathers would have run from such controversy? Do you think the Founders would have self-censored?

To set the record straight, here’s what TeaPartySCV.com posted last week before the scrubbing:

I love the little disclaimer at the end. As if it's my problem that I took offense at his racial joke

You are a coward TeaParty SCV “Unknown blogger.” And the only only thing worse than a controversial and cowardly blogger is a controversial and cowardly blogger who doesn’t stand behind his posts and tries to scrub them from his blog.

Fortunately nothing is deleted permanently on the internet and your cowardice is available for all to see.

What’s the matter, Jeff, did you have a “case of the Mondays?” In the past you’ve written about how well the city is run, how when you look around you don’t see a place that is one big shambles, and how people need to curb their inchoate rage. But now you’r whining that the cross valley connector was finished and opened before the election? Huh? And being upset about a groundbreaking for the library project when they have obviously started site work? Should they have done the ceremonial groundbreaking AFTER they had already “broken ground.” Yes, the council pivot on the immigration five bills was smart politics. It blunted Gauny’s xenophbic riding of the immigration issue while actually accomplishing nothing because those bills won’t get out of congress or be signed into law by Obama. Isn’t it typical though that the good politicians are the ones that succeed in, um, what do they call it, um, oh, right, politics? And finally, in a city of almost 200,000 people, couldn’t the case be made that all candidates need to be able to raise more money to be able to get their messages to the voters? I bet both Gauny and Boydston had people who have them the full $360 and would be able to give them a full $1,000 (sort of a rising tide lifting all ships)?

So let me get this straight – you would now prefer construction projects that take longer, groundbreakings to occur after the ground has been broken, politicians that aren’t good at politics, and more discord between city council and city bureaucrats? And that would make us more “democratic?”

Huh?

Another reader took issue with my claim that democratic government is supposed to be inefficient, asking me if I’d like to see the City become more like the DMV.

Both readers are missing the point: the city can and should be as efficient as possible in its day-to-day business: issuing permits, repairing pot holes in the street, building new facilities, providing transit for bus riders etc. The business of the city should be as lean, efficient and service-oriented as possible. And I think the City of Santa Clarita is efficient and strong in those areas and it deserves to be congratulated for that.

But at the Council and Commission and committee level, at the level where policy is decided and decisions are made, that is where democracy and competing interests and conflict arise. That is where we should have long debates, where things get messy, where we should take time to hear from all parties involved and where compromises are made, as we did during the Mayo expansion.

But that’s not what we’re going to get with appointed commissioners who can stay as long as their hard-to-defeat incumbent patrons stay. And I stand by the other point too: in this town, I’d be much more likely to donate $1,000 to an incumbent Council person rather than a challenger because I’m looking at it as a cost/benefit equation. Show me the list of people who will bet $1,000 on a challenger when the odds have proven so long?

And all that’s before you get to the makeup of the at-large City Council itself, which, in my view not representative of the SCV. We have 27% Latinos in this City. Do you see anyone on the Council of Latino heritage? Do you see anyone from Saugus, or the poorer neighborhoods of Newhall and Canyon Country represented on our City Council? You do not. I’d bet the same is true of the commissions and committees.

As for the specific examples I cited and the reader addressed: you praise the City Council for blunting Gauny’s charge as “good politics.” I call it by what it rightfully should be called: cynical manipulation as well as an embarrassment to me as someone who believes undocumented immigrants should be treated with respect and dignity.

As to the library: I still don’t know what to make of that fiasco. The Signal published renderings in September, I posted them here too; then, the week after groundbreaking, everyone’s raising a fuss saying it looks like a ski chalet and the redesign cost in the six figures. Who screwed up? I don’t know and don’t care, but it felt rushed and designed for a pre-election photo-op. Maybe I’m wrong.

I yield on the CVC. It was an accomplishment long in the making and the Council and City deserve to be congratulated for that. By the way, I hope soon to celebrate the opening of the Cross Valley Bike Lane, the last bike path linking Sierra Highway with Highway 126.

Just some of the words that come to mind as I think of the City Council’s post-election behavior in 2010. First they found a solution in search of a problem: they removed term limits for appointed commissioners. Then they raised to $1,000 the amount individuals could donate to City Council candidates. Again, who was complaining that there wasn’t enough money in local politics? And then, to add insult to injury, the report they presented to Councilmembers and the Public was factually incorrect about other agencies’ campaign contribution limits.

Then take into consideration all the pre-election news from the City Council and staff. The vote to support those ridiculous right-wing immigration bills to appease the know-nothing immigrant bashers and to co-opt David Gauny’s base. The rush to get the Cross Valley Connector opened just weeks before the election. The Newhall Library groundbreaking (apparently the design hadn’t been settled upon prior to the groundbreaking, or so we learned later). The lack of any real substantive talk about the chloride matter until after 4/13/10.

Taking all that pre- and post-election business into consideration and it’s become clear now that this is a City that doesn’t countenance challenges to the status quo very well. It is a city that desires smoothness, cohesiveness and continuity above all else. It is as if the council and the staff are one, and they react as one to perceived threats, scratching each other’s backs for the sake of the other.

“Where the Good life Takes you,” has become “Don’t rock the boat.”

But democratic government isn’t supposed to be like that. Democratic government is about give and take, conflict and competing interests. It’s not supposed to be efficient and business-like. It’s sometimes messy, slow, and inefficient because, guess what, that’s the only way man has figured out how to govern large groups of people with different interests. And in Santa Clarita, there are large groups of people with different interests.

It’s as if the City of Santa Clarita, now almost 23 years old, is devolving into a less democratic organization rather than a more democratic one. We just had one of the closest elections in our history; a normal government might step back and say, “Wow, there’s a lot of discontent out there. Let’s see if we can reach out to these people.”

Not our city: instead they’re making it harder for potential candidates to run (knowing full well that few will donate the thousands required to defeat an incumbent who can just collect 10 or 15 $1000 checks.) And they’re making it harder for interested citizens to be appointed to commissions and committees because there will rarely, if ever, be vacancies on those commissions.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the staff does a great job and is responsive to the public by and large. But you can’t deny that there is a comfortable clique at City hall more interested in self-preservation and smooth operation than in true democratic governance.

Sidenote: Of personal interest to me is how Bob Kellar alternately plays hero and villain in my view of City Hall. Last winter he was the villain, whipping up anti-immigrant fervor out of nowhere and for no particular reason, lending his good name and title to the nuttiest people in a 200 mile radius. Now, summer 2010, I find myself agreeing with him and admiring him for being vocal about money in local elections. Local politics is strange.

The City of Santa Clarita City Council will host a Special Meeting on Immigration Education on Monday, June 28 at 6:00 p.m. at the City’s Activities Center. The meeting will feature three separate presentations on the various complex issues relating to immigration. Following the presentations the public will have an opportunity to speak and the City Council will discuss the issue.

The three presentations to the City Council will address different aspects of the legalities of immigration. The Academic Presentation will feature a scholar presenting information on the Bracero Program, the Immigration Act of 1986, what has transpired since, and offer a review of current immigration dialogue at the national level.

The Law Enforcement Presentation will feature representatives from the Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department discussing their roles and authority as it relates to enforcing matters involving immigrants.

The City Attorney Presentation will provide an overview on the recent court ruling related to the City of Redondo Beach and its relevance to Santa Clarita.

Now let me tell you how this is really going to go (It is not, despite the title, about educating immigrants, apparently). There will be three lengthy PowerPoint slide shows explaining the complexities involved in illegal immigration, Congressional law making, the Federal code, state law, the US Supreme Court, local law enforcement, federalism and the failed efforts of other cities. It will be entirely reasonable and, for the normal, well-adjusted citizen of this city, persuasive.

And then the city will turn the microphone over to the crowd whereupon dozens of Gitlinites will condemn City staff, the LASD, and the City Council (except Bob Kellar) over illegal immigration in the SCV. Then, while loudly proclaiming they are not racists, they will employ every ugly stereotype about Latinos to prove and bolster their point. They will come with Arizona state flags and use code words like “invasion,” “clown houses” and “anchor babies.”

The spittle will fly and the microphone and dais will have to be wiped down occasionally. It’s possible Los Angeles media will show up and, predictably, broadcast the most virulent anti-immigrant sentiment just to make us all seem like a bunch of hicks. The Council, predictably, will cave into the mob and make bold pronouncements about “doing something”, thus totally making the entire “education” exercise a waste of time.

One wonders why the City is bothering doing this at all. They promised to hold a “study session,” but that was several months ago and the furor over illegal immigration has largely died down since the Council election ended. Who’s pushing this now, just weeks before the City Council goes into recess?

And what more can the City do anyway? Councilmembers already voted to support a set of ultra-right wing Congressional bills to please the Gitlinites, and it still hasn’t made them happy.

That’s the word that came to mind when I read The Signal’s story today on the “postponed” or “paused” Lyons Avenue railroad crossing. The City says money is to blame; they’d rather wait for a developer to contract with the city to fund (in part or whole I suppose) the estimated $7.5 million cost of building a railroad crossing at the eastern end of Lyons Avenue. The purpose of the crossing would be to 1) replace the obsolete and dangerous crossing at 13th Street & Railroad and 2) ultimately link Lyons Avenue to Dockweiler, thus bypassing Placerita Canyon and its fussy homeowners.

But now that link, that crucial piece of infrastructure for Newhall that has been in the planning stages for decades, is “paused.”

Come on, don’t bullshit me. It’s dead isn’t it?

And we all know why it’s dead. It’s dead because the Placerita Homeowners, the most powerful NIMBY special interest group in the SCV with their own sphere of influence, their own special standards district and their own high-powered attorney, thinks that that link will lead to the development of high density housing that threatens their safety and makes it difficult for them to use golf carts in Placerita Canyon.

Indeed, that was the gist of this story on Friday afternoon, when Signal Publisher Ian Lamont teased today’s story  for Saturday’s Signal via the Qwik-E email:

This story should have appeared in Saturday’s Signal, and as you can see from the tease above,  funding challenges weren’t mentioned as a cause for the “pause” of the Lyons Avenue rail crossing. In fact, the tease all but says the city is killing off the rail crossing “in light of public outcry, primarily from Placerita Cnayon Residents.”

Yet come Monday morning, we learn that it’s actually funding challenges that’s “pausing” the rail crosssing. What changed between 3:02pm on Friday and this morning? Is there another version of this story sitting on a  Signal hard drive that didn’t get published?

No surprise that the P-Canyon homeowners are pleased by this development, whatever its cause. Val Thomas tells The Signal that “Our point has really not been to stop the thing [Lyons crossing] but to get the whole picture,” by which she means that, to P-Canyon residents, a Lyons rail crossing necessarily means that 500-700 safety-threatening condos will be built at the entrance to their rural-equestrian paradise.

What she (and The Signal) leave out, however, is that the condos can’t be built now because the existing 13th Street Railroad crossing is totally and completely inadequate. Thus, from the P-Canyon resident’s point of view, if you kill Lyons Avenue crossing, you kill the 500-700 condos.

The City has always rightfully looked at the Lyons crossing on its own, because that’s how it should be looked at. It’s a piece of infrastructure that will lead to a four lane road connecting Old Town Newhall to Sierra Highway. It has nothing to do with Casden’s condos, that’s just the foil the P-Canyon people use to fight progress.

And progress, make no mistake, is what this is about. It’s about building a road that puts traffic into a revitalized Old Town Newhall. A road that would eventually allow Disney Studios at the Ranch workers quick and easy access to businesses in Newhall. It’s like Newhall’s own Cross Valley Connector.

And now it’s dead because of a handful of rich property owners in Placerita Canyon, a group of homeowners who have veto power over just about anything in this part of the SCV. A group of homeowners who practically own us.

They win, we lose.

And the Lyons Crossing is dead but the City doesn’t have the courage to say it.

Santa Clarita City Council Candidates 2010

More of a footnote to the impersonating an officer of the law allegation, but a note nonetheless:

City Council candidate and likely Gauny spoiler David Galvan says on his campaign website that he graduated from William S. Hart High School in 2004.

But his MySpace page says he graduated from Templeton High School in Templeton, CA – and even served as the ASB treasurer during his graduating year.

This just gets more and more strange.  Does anyone have an ’04 Hart yearbook?

Love him or hate him, Frank Ferry has got people talking and thinking with the comments he made above.

For starters, it’s reprehensible for a City Council member to call constituents in this community -our neighbors- “terrorists.” That loaded word isn’t something to be abused, it’s not a term that should ever enter our lexicon unless someone is using violence for political ends. It’s way off base and he should apologize for that.

That said, it’s about time we had this conversation.

There is a tendency among the anti-density folks in this community to extrapolate their hyper-local issues to the rest of this valley, as if a single medical building on McBean is proof that the City is rotten, that the sky is falling, and that the SCV’s best days are behind it, even as things are relatively good elsewhere (and indeed, getting much better in my neighborhood).

They tend to look at a given project and see tall buildings, torn down trees, lots of people, and traffic while others see new job opportunities, fewer trips over the hill,  shorter commutes to services and businesses and more local commerce.

They, good Republicans & free marketers (and even Tea Partiers in the case of Bob Kellar) when it comes to state & national issues, want an activist and interventionist local government when it comes to determining what a property owner does with his commercial property.

They act as if they represent a majority of the SCV, when in reality they are but one constituency of many, as proven by the last two City Council elections.

And some of them, not all, but some viciously attack the professional staff at City Hall (they justify this by saying that it is the staff that is in charge of the City Council, not vice-versa).

Lest I be accused of just picking on the anti-density folks, there’s plenty of hypocrisy to go around. Frank Ferry mocks the press even as he implores them to expose Boydston and Gauny and the neighborhood groups, but it was Frank Ferry just a few years ago who wanted the Signal to stop reporting crime statistics. It didn’t reflect well on the SCV to report such things in the paper, he said. Hey Mr. Ferry, either we have solid, responsible and exhaustive journalism or we don’t. You don’t get to tell The Signal they’re asleep on the job in one breath, then say they’re reporting too extensively in another.

To Ferry’s specific point: that development projects are being filibustered & slandered out of existence by these groups before they’ve had a fair shot before the Planning Commission or the City Council, I think he’s right.

He seems to think it’s unfair. I don’t.

Raise your hand if you think developers in Santa Clarita are unfairly put-upon by citizens? Anyone?  Didn’t think so.

It’s called democracy Mr. Ferry, and it’s often times messy. And yes, interested participants in democracy may have agendas. I recall you did too before you were elected to the Council, you said no one on the council was representing people like you, you said there weren’t enough parks and things for kids to do (don’t make me dig out the quotes from that food article I posted about last year!)

If the developers are finding it hard to compete with Facebook groups that -overnight- have hundreds of members, they need to step up their game. Like, I don’t know, maybe meet with neighbors earlier in the process.  Maybe address their concerns before it makes the front page of the Signal. Maybe the developers need to bribe the neighborhoods they want to develop in, like the oil company bribed the Placerita homeowners decades ago.

Whatever the case, the developers and Ferry shouldn’t feign shock and surprise when neighbors get aroused and angered by a 60 foot tall building they just learned about in the Planning Commission agenda.

Speaking of The Signal, they share some blame too. Occasionally they are brilliant (as they were in today’s piece on Ferry’s comments). But much of the time they’re mediocre. I’d happily trade the occasional brilliant articles away for more consistent, solid journalism that answers who, what, when, where, why and how and talks to as many stakeholders as possible.

It may not be fair to make The Signal arbiter of this old development & growth debate, but they’re all we got since the Daily News and the Times left town. On that point, I agree with Ferry.

Except for old fashioned books.

Have you ever seen such a spectacle in a California primary? Two billionaire Republicans thrashing at each other, hurling the epithet “liberal” everywhere, picking on poor people and basically slashing and burning their way to June 8 in competition for the 31% of voters in this state who identify as Republicans.

It’s as remarkable as it is exhausting.

I wonder how SCV is going to vote? McKeon is in Whitman’s camp while Smyth is in Poizner’s. If I had to guess, I’d bet Santa Clarita Republicans favor Poizner over Whitman.