Just take a look at the photograph attached to this article. It's Mike Guerra dressed in plain clothes, looking straight at the camera.
Why would anyone need to be charged to have an ex Chief of Police show up to crash a party.
The fee should come out of staff salaries.

The photo may have been inappropriately attached to the event (Guerra may have been an invited guest), but I agree that expenses must be reimbursed to the government body providing security for any campaign event. After all, we aren't all registered democrats, and if we were, the host(s) (or the party in power) should still foot the bill, and promptly.

"we aren't all registered democrats"

Fallacy. All of us are 'registered' Americans (well, most of us in Atherton) and since we choose to live in a high profile town that frequently hosts the President of the United States, we should be honored to provide a simple police assist to the Secret Service in the protection of our President.

Whether the President is blue, red or green.

Or brown.

Except it's not an official Presidential visit.

Whenever the President does political events, the expenses are specifically paid for by the party.

Wait a minute here before you write off the expenses being picked up by taxpayers of Atherton. What ever became of the old adage, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse"? The rule that party-givers must pay was already on the books and the employees "forgot to remind the hosts" so now the rest of us must pay? It may be easy for the Atherton town management to spend other people's money, but what kind of "hosts" would go along with that cheapo attitude? They should be gracious enough to bear the burden of the expense they caused and not try to slither out of it. 'specially when we all know who they are!

@ Thoughtful That's right, vote no on the renewal of the p tax.