Readers comments: July 15, 2022

Please do better covering school board
Letter to the new editor:
Congratulations, Mick Rhodes, on your promotion to COURIER editor. I appreciated the report in the July 8 issue on the many exciting ideas you have for subjects of future stories and the fact that your staff will increase with a new full-time reporter.
So, this seems like the perfect time to renew the request I made to the COURIER a few months ago that you report on school board meetings. (That request received no response, public or private.) Steve Felschundneff is doing a fine job of attending city council meetings and informing us of its decisions. Yet decisions made by Claremont’s only other major governing board at its regular meetings go neglected, even though they affect the lives of thousands of Claremonters. Please include the school board in your list of future subjects worthy of coverage.
Lissa Petersen
Claremont

More push/pull on Larkin Place
Dear editor:
In a letter to the editor in the Claremont COURIER dated July 8, Mr. Lyons would have the public believe that a city council vote against the easement requested by Jamboree Housing for the Larkin Place project was a vote against the development. The Larkin Place development is still approved under the state’s new “by right” housing laws and with Resolution 2022-02 of the Claremont Architectural Commission. The project should be able to use the same four-story building design by simply pushing the building to the far north side of the site, placing parking in the front of the building, and building a short attractive wall between the front setback and the parking area so the parked vehicles could be obscured from view. There may be other issues that have an effect on the project, but no city councilmember should be besmirched for his or her concern for the reasons of safety or use of public funds/lands for private purposes in our community.
Larry Schroeder
Former Mayor, Claremont

 City should ask hard questions of CalPERS
Dear editor:
It has recently been revealed that CalPERS, our city’s employee pension fund, has over the last several years invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian oil companies and banks. This despite Russia still being under official U.S. sanction since its invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Perhaps it is time for the city to ask the CEO of CalPERS, Marcie Frost, why its citizens’ hard-earned money is being used to fund the war machine in Moscow and elsewhere. It is not enough for CalPERS to divest itself of these now worthless investments. We need to know the individuals at CalPERS who approved these investments and then demand their immediate resignation.
Sincerely,
John J. McDermott III, M.D.
Claremont