Over the last eight days, approaching 55,000 acres of mountain forest in San Bernardino County have been burnt in two separate conflagrations, at least one of which was deliberately set.
The Line Fire, as was earlier reported by the Sentinel, was ignited on September 5 at roughly 6 p.m in northeast Highland near the intersection o of Baseline Road and Alpin Street by an arsonist in what is now known to have been his third attempt at starting the fire.
Originally dubbed the Baseline Fire, it resisted efforts by the California Division of Forestry, known by the acronym CalFire, which serves as the contract fire department for the City of Highland, and the San Bernardino County Fire Division, to knock it down.
A CalFire incident management team was activated on September 6, as the steep terrain of the area into which the fire was spreading created challenges.
With the escalation of the surrounding heat, the fire began to expand rapidly on September 7 into the San Bernardino Mountains, prompting evacuation orders for the communities of Running Springs and Arrowbear Lake, thereafter followed by evacuation orders to those in the communities of Angelus Oaks, Seven Oaks and all campgrounds and cabins in the area; Green Valley Lake north from Highway 18 along Green Valley Lake Road; the community of Forest Falls; and the community of Mountain Home Village. Those orders pertained to 11,400 structures under what was deemed to be immediate threat.
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American Medical Response’s challenge of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors’ decision late last year to give an Arizona-based ambulance company that has partnered with the emergency dispatch center for 13 of the county’s fire departments precedence in responding to medical emergencies throughout much of the county has resulted in a judge’s decision to delay the exodus of 150 of AMR’s ambulances to points elsewhere until an indeterminate point after the scheduled October 1 service switchover date.
For well over three decades, Greenwood Village, Colorado-based American Medical Response, also known as AMR, has had a near monopoly on the provision of emergency medical transport service over a wide swath of 21,105-square mile San Bernardino County. American Medical Response partially fashioned that preeminence and partially inherited it with its buyout of Mercy Ambulance, which had effectuated its own monopoly on the county ambulance franchise. Mercy’s four owners – Homer Aerts, Don Reed, Steve Dickmeyer and Terry Russ – after engaging in the late 1960s and early 1970s in cutthroat competition against one another in the operation of their four independent ambulance companies, united under the Mercy logo. Employing Dennis Hansberger, who was then serving as a lobbyist between his first set of two and his final set of three terms on the board of supervisors, as their representative, Aerts, Reed, Dickmeyer and Russ used generous political donations to the sheriff, district attorney, members of the board of supervisors and mayors and council members of the county’s cities to obtain for Mercy Ambulance what were with only a few slight exceptions exclusive operating contracts throughout most of the county, a hold they solidified when in the 1980s they created an air ambulance wing that offered rapid service to the county’s remote desert areas. Continue reading →

The Upland City Council this week fell short in obtaining citizen input with regard to how money the city is to obtain from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development should be spent next year.
While the federal agency strongly recommends that cities and local officials engage with residents in determining what priorities residents have for the money that comes to local jurisdictions through what are referred to as Community Development Block Grants, ultimately the choices made in apportioning those grants are made by the elected leadership of the cities in question, as in the case of Upland, its mayor and city council.
The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program was enacted a half century ago by President Gerald Ford through the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974. In creating the program, President Ford emphasized that he wanted it to take the place of the administration of inefficient federal bureaucracy from afar, such that the decision on how the money was to be used would be made by locals, bypassing federal officials who were too much removed from the communities in question, so that the grant process would be controlled “with the judgments of the people who live and work there” and placing more decision-making power on local funding choices in the hands of local governments and residents who “are most familiar with local needs.”
As one of the longest-running programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the CDBG grants fund local community development activities with the stated goal of providing affordable housing, anti-poverty programs and infrastructure development. Community Development Block Grants, like other block grant programs, differ from categorical grants, made for specific purposes, in that they are subject to less federal oversight and are largely used at the discretion of the state and local governments and their subgrantees.
In Upland, what has evolved with regard to identifying the preferences of the local population is a so-called citizen participation plan, which, according to a report authored by Upland Development Services Director Robert Dalquest provided to the city council for the meeting on Monday, September 9 “is a foundational document that ensures the city engages residents and stakeholders in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of its HUD-funded programs, e.g., the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. The citizen participation plan is particularly important for ensuring that residents, especially those from low-and-moderate income communities, have a meaningful role in shaping the city’s housing and community development strategies.”
At Monday night’s meeting, Upland Housing Manager Diane Cotto emphasized further the importance of public participation.
“Tonight, we ask that you open a public hearing to accept public comments on the city’s HUD citizen participation plan,” Cotto said in directly addressing the city council. “We also ask that you adopt the resolution approving this plan and allow the city to submit the document along with the city’s five-year consolidated plan that’s due to HUD on or before May 15, 2023. The citizen participation plan is basically a way to get the community involved in creating the city’s five-year consolidated plan.”
Cotto again emphasized the importance of getting city residents involved.
“The purpose of the citizen participation plan is to ensure transparency and to give the public a chance to provide input on how the federal funds are spent and ensure decisions are community-driven,” she said. “The citizen participation plan makes sure there are public meetings and comment periods so people can voice their opinions and influence decisions about local projects and priorities. This feedback helps shape the consolidated plan and outlines how the city will use the federal funds.”
After Cotto’s statements concluded, the council asked no questions.
Mayor Bill Velto then announced, “We’ll open the public hearing.”
At that point, City Clerk Kerri Johnson responded: “I don’t have any speakers on this item.”
Velto said, “In that case, then, we’ll close the public hearing.” The public hearing was open for a total of six seconds. The council voted unanimously to adopt the resolution.
Several people who were in attendance at the meeting indicated their belief that the public hearing failed to generate any public participation because of inadequate noticing and advance publicity of the hearing and its significance. Shortly after the meeting concluded, three people in attendance at the meeting told the Sentinel that they were not personally aware of the hearing until they were at the meeting and the item was called.
The agenda containing the item was posted by the city clerk’s office at 6 p.m. on September 4, which meets California’ minimal legal requirements that the agendas for public hearings be available to the public 72 business hours in advance of the meeting in which the hearings are held.
Nevertheless, in Upland after Monday’s meeting, there were some questioning whether merely complying with the 72-hour advance notice requirement was adequate in consideration of the expressed importance of achieving public input.
The Sentinel dashed off letters in the form of emails to Mayor Velto and Development Services Director Dalquest, asking both if they felt the hearing and vote taken on September 9 were adequate, even assuming that the city met all legal requirements with the way the matter was scheduled and addressed, and the public hearing, such as it was, held. The identical question posed to Velto and Dalquest went to a deeper level, that being whether they believed what occurred on September 9 met the spirit of open governance and transparency, which Velto on more than one occasion has referenced as the standard he wants the city to adhere to.
The Sentinel asked the mayor and the development services director if they considered what took place Monday night to have been adequate in all ways, both legal and in terms of activating community involvement in deciding how to best apply HUD money in the city.
The Sentinel asked Dalquest if he was willing to use his status as a department head and his personal credibility to ask the mayor and city council to reschedule the public hearing and the vote that took place on Monday night, and to preface it with a more intensive public announcement and effort to engender public participation in the process of discussing the highest and best use of the Community Development Block Grants to be provided to the city. In its letter to Velto, the Sentinel inquired of the mayor, “Would you consider rescheduling the item for discussion at a future meeting, before which the city would carry out a more energetic and pervasive noticing for the meeting in an effort to convey to Upland’s citizenry the significance and importance of the matter so as to encourage wider public participation in the public hearing, thus giving the council the benefit of that input before it reconsiders and remakes the decision it voted upon on Monday night? Would you be willing to use your authority as mayor to intercede with your council colleagues so that the five of you might reconsider the matter in a forum for which is sought greater resident participation than took place on Monday?”
Neither Velto nor Dalquest responded to the Sentinel by press time.

By Richard Hernandez
With his recent actions, Governor Gavin Newsom has shown himself to be a racist, a typical Anglo politician lording it over people of color, despite the empty promises of building toward an enlightened governance he has used to get into and stay in office, two of his former supporters, ones who actively campaigned against his being recalled from office three years ago, now say.
On August 28, The California Assembly gave final approval to Assembly Bill 1840, which had been passed by the California Senate the previous day.
The bill allowed undocumented immigrants to apply alongside other qualified applicants for the California Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loan Program, which offers up to $150,000 in no-interest loans to cover down payments and fees.
The program lets applicants secure what are termed “loans” of 20 percent of a home’s purchase price up to $150,000 – an amount equal to a typical down payment on a home, in the form of a disbursement from the $255 million fund set aside for the program held within the California state treasury, prior to any payments having been made toward the purchase price on the home. The loan is to be recovered through the homeowner’s eventual repayment of the original loan amount plus 20 percent of the appreciated gain in the value of the home when it is sold, transferred or refinanced.
Theoretically, those taking out the “loan” could avoid having to pay it back or cover the 20 percent appreciation fee if the individual or couple who take out the loan does not sell it or refinance it and it remains with the purchaser’s or purchasers’ heirs or his, her or their trust into perpetuity. There is no provision in the law limiting how long the purchaser can hang on to the property.
In 2023, there were 1,700 applicants selected by lottery to access the California Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loan Program’s $255 million in funds. In the most general of terms, the state legislature’s Democrats supported Assembly Bill 1840 and Republican lawmakers opposed it.
Republicans argued that in addition to the state not not being able to afford the program, it was simply unacceptable to make a program financed by California citizens in good standing and taxpayers available to illegal aliens whose participation in the California tax system is sketchy at best.
The bill’s author, Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno) said the legislation would merely expand California’s down payment and assistance program for first-time home buyers regardless of their immigration status. Arambula in a statement said that homeownership creates financial stability.
“The social and economic benefits of homeownership should be available to everyone,” Arambula said. “As such, the California Dream for All program should be available to all.” Democrats who supported AB 1840 said that there were no giveaways involved, since those who apply for the loans have to qualify for mortgages, meaning they are working and thus paying taxes.
Republicans doubled down on their arguments against the program, reminding the Democrats that the California Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loan Program ran out of fundings in 11 days and remains tied down with an overcrowded backlog. They said that diverting precious state money reserved for housing to assist non-citizens in purchasing homes is unconscionable, given that the state has yet designed a workable program to house its homeless veteran population.
State Senator Janet Nguyen (R-Huntington Beach) said as much or more in a post on X shortly after the bill’s passage.
“I spoke out today on the Senate floor against 1840, assistance for first-time homebuyers,” Nguyen texted. “Veterans are beneficiaries of this program and it will be raiding their fund. I will always look out for our veterans and military.”
Nguyen said that making undocumented immigrants eligible for homebuyer assistance sends the wrong message by pushing California citizens who are seeking to benefit from the program to the back of the line.
Before Assembly Bill 1840 passed there were questions about the solvency of the fund behind it.
Last year, California set aside $300 million in the California Dream for All Program. Funds were exhausted within 11 days as 2,182 applicants received help, according to Senator Toni Atkins’ (D-San Diego).
Within two months, the California Housing Finance Agency in a report rushed into print was referring to the California Dream for All Program as “dramatically oversubscribed.”
“While it was expected that a few additional weeks would be necessary to build the requisite lender capacity and begin originating loans in earnest, the response to the Dream For All program was overwhelming, with unprecedented lender and consumer uptake,” the report California Housing Finance Agency stated.
The Senate Committee on Appropriations said it could not ascertain what the fiscal impact of making undocumented immigrants eligible for the $150,000 in assistance would be.
The committee, chaired by State Senator Anna Caballero (D-Merced), said it would have “unknown significant cost pressures, potentially in the millions annually.” Though her committee advised caution with regard to Assembly Bill 1840, Caballero voted for AB 1840.
There were similar disconnects in the run-up to the vote, but it passed.
It was widely assumed that as another piece of progressive legislation, it would be signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom.
Over the course of most of his gubernatorial run, Newsom has been accommodating in finding room in the budget to fund all order of programs aimed at righting past social and economic wrongs. But within the last 18 months, less than a year after he was reelected to a second term, which followed by roughly 14 months his having survived a recall effort, the one-time mayor of San Francisco and two-term lieutenant governor was given a dose of fiscal reality indistinguishable from being doused with a bucket of ice water. As late as February 2022, Newsom was functioning under the assumption the state would achieve a $75.7 billion budget surplus later that year. He was given a series of downturning projections in the months thereafter, which erased most of that surplus before the 2022-23 fiscal year had begun. Things grew worse from there, with the state having no choice but to dig into its reserves to balance the budget in 2023-24, and the California Legislative Analyst’s Office projecting the most bleak 2024-25 imaginable, nearly a 180-degree economic shift over what the governor and others thought was the case two years previously: a $73 billion deficit. Over the last four months, the combined California Legislature and the governor have implemented a host of austerity measures, including a temporary tax hike on certain businesses, in an effort to reduce the deficit, having so far reduced the hemorrhaging of $73 billion in red ink to a still-devastating $46.8 billion shortfall.
Upon being presented with AB 1840, Newsom uncharacteristically hesitated. Then, he did what previously would have been unthinkable. On September 6, he struck it down with his veto pen.
In doing so, Newsom referenced the program’s limited funding, which included having absolutely no money budgeted for it in the current state spending plan after it was sucked dry in 11 days last year.
Newsom said he could not ignore the state’s ongoing $47 billion budget deficit. “This bill seeks to prohibit the disqualification of applicants from one of the California Housing Finance Agency’s (CalHFA) home purchase assistance programs based solely on their immigration status,” Newsom wrote. “Given the finite funding available for CalHFA programs, expanding program eligibility must be carefully considered within the broader context of the annual state budget to ensure we manage our resources effectively.”
The reaction was swift.
Some of the milder criticisms were that Newsom is a “fair-weather progressive,” ready to take action and credit when money is flowing but one revealed as a closet conservative when money gets tight. He wasn’t able or willing to live up to his rhetoric of seeking economic equality for all, it was charged.
Others were less charitable still. They pointed out that Newsom had not acted to prod the state legislature in the right direction less than a week previously when a pair of reparations-related bills that had already passed in the State Senate, SB 1331, which would have created a new state fund for reparations, and Senate Bill 1403, which would have established a state agency to oversee the reparation process and determine who would be eligible, were killed on August 31 in the Assembly when they were not brought to the full floor for a vote.
It was pointed out that the wealthy and white Newsom, whose father was J. Paul Getty and who owns at least two houses of his own, has no real compassion for poor immigrants from Mexico seeking to live out the American Dream.
And he has no feel for the descendants of the victims of slavery who were deprived of freedom and opportunity by their white masters – Newsom’s ancestors – when he stood by while far more conscientious lawmakers in the state he rules were trying to pass legislation that would atone for the legacy of racist policies that subjected the Negro to unthinkable disparities including employment, education, housing and health, even while the likes of Newsom and his parents and grandparents were living in mansions, others alleged.
Simply put, it was said, Newsom is an out and out racist.
William Washington III, who campaigned with the Democrats in 2021 to thwart the effort to remove Newsom from office, said he feels betrayed.
“We supported him,” Washington, who is active in the Black Lives Matter movement, said. “Where is he now when it’s our time for justice?”
Washington said it wasn’t just Newsom failing to act to salvage SB 1331 and Senate Bill 1403 that had revealed his true colors. He pointed to Newsom yesterday affixing his signature to AB 1960, legislation which addresses so-called large-scale theft, also referred to as smash-and-grab robbery. Authored by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, AB 1960 puts in place enhanced sentencing for those convicted of high-value property thefts, including those who knowingly traffic or resell stolen goods. The bill is of a piece with a broader set of laws relating to “organized retail crime,” ones intended to give law enforcement officers more leverage and prosecutors more options when dealing with practitioners of “smash and grab” tactics, which involve multiple perpetrators – from three or four to as many as two dozen – descending on a retail establishment and using hammers or other heavy objects to smash display or security cases and seize highly valuable merchandize in a flash effort which can net property worth upwards of $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 or even $100,000. The new legislation strengthens existing laws and mandates stricter penalties for felony property thefts involving damages or stolen goods valued at over $50,000. AB 1960 applies not only to those seizing the merchandise but their “fences,” or those who knowingly purchase or sell such stolen property.
“We all know who that’s aimed at,” Washington said. “It ain’t aimed at no white boys. It’s aimed at niguhz like us.”
Equally upset with the governor was Guillermo Muñoz.
Muñoz pointed out that immediately after Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 1840, he drew the praise of the Republicans.
“Governor Newsom listened to our calls and rightfully vetoed the bill to give illegal immigrants free home loans,” State Senate Republican Leader Brian W. Jones said.
“Republicans are racists,” Munoz said. “Republicans are against La Raza being able to own homes. When the Republicans wanted to take Newsom out of office, we stood by him all the way. Now, he’s in with them. We should have let them recall him.”
Arambula stopped short of calling the governor a racist, but he made clear he did not approve of the way he is treating Latinos.
“I’m deeply disappointed that Governor Newsom today vetoed Assembly Bill 1840,” Arambula said. “The bill had won wide support in the Assembly and passed the Senate to get to his desk. My bill was about fairness. It simply clarified the language to make it clear that undocumented immigrants can apply — once again, if they meet all the criteria. That includes securing a bank loan or mortgage. Successful applicants have to repay the loan, without interest, when they sell the house. In addition, 20% of the appreciation on that home’s value must be paid.”
Arambula bristled at the suggestion that undocumented immigrants are criminals or disobeying the law. He said they are as important to the make-up of California as full citizens.
“We are a nation of immigrants, and we should remind ourselves the value and humanity of the people coming here who make our economy better — an economy that is the fifth-largest in the world,” Arambula said.

Dennis Yates, celebrated as a pillar of the Chino Valley community in which he lived and dedicated the last 42 of his 79 years, has died.
The son of Edward Laverne Yates and his wife, Beulah Marie Yates, Dennis Yates, one of nine siblings, was born in 1945 while his mother was living at the Sterling housing complex in Oceanside among other Marine Corps wives and families waiting for their husbands to return from World War II. When his father returned stateside and was subsequently discharged, the family moved to Pomona.
There, young Yates attended Lincoln Elementary, Emerson Junior High and Pomona High School, from which he graduated in 1963. As a kid, he learned to swim at the Pomona YMCA located at 350 North Garey Avenue between Center Street and Monterey Avenue, his YMCA membership having been defrayed by an donation from an anonymous benefactor, a senior executive from the Pomona First Federal Savings and Loan, sponsored him for a YMCA membership for many years.
local businessman. While yet attending Lincoln Elementary as a fifth-grader, he obtained a paper route, delivering the Los Angeles Examiner, which was then in competition with the Los Angeles Times and the Pomona Progress-Bulletin. By the time he was in the sixth grade, he landed another after-school job, as a box boy at the Gold Strike Market at 416 North Park Avenue. At Pomona High, he was a member of the football and track teams.
After graduation, having already moved on to the stock crew and assistant produce clerk at Gold Strike Market, he became the store’s night manager.
In 1966, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, whereupon after eight weeks of basic training in San Antonio Texas, her served four years of active duty, including tours in Okinawa, Thailand and Viet Nam, including duty at the Cam Ranh Bay,  Tan Son Nhut and Hoa Lac bases. He promoted to the rank of staff sergeant.
After his discharge, he attended Chaffey College on the GI Bill, obtaining his Associate of Arts Degree.
With his wife, Rosemary, Yates had three sons – Kevin, David & Jason – and two daughters – Janine and Denise.
His experience at Gold Strike served him well, allowing him to land another position in the retail industry, in this instance with Thrifty Drugs. He acceded to the position of senior merchandising executive with the company, remaining there for 38 years before retiring.
In 1982, when he was 37 years old, he and his family moved to Chino.
As a father, he found himself involved in spurring his three son’s interest in sports in a way that mirrored his activity when he was their age. He gravitated into being the president of Chino Pop Warner and was involved as a prime mover in the Puma Youth Track Club’s Invitational Track Meet, the Chino Relays and Chino City track meets for more than two decades.
The perception of some that the city was being less than fully supportive of the community’s youth sports programs than it could have been, an off-hand remark by someone in his circle and then an outright suggestion that he should run for the Chino City Council pushed him toward doing just that. He was elected to the council in 1992, coming into that position just as Fred Aguiar was departing as mayor for the California Assembly. Nevertheless, through their shared Republicanism, something of an alliance formed between Aguiar and Yates.
He served as a councilman for three terms, being reelected in 1996 and 2000. In 2004, when Eunice Ulloa opted out of seeking reelection as mayor, Yates ran to claim the gavel, trouncing Laura De La Cruz in the process. He was reelected in 2008 and again in 2012.
His association with Aguiar paid off, in that Aguiar after leaving the Assembly had run successfully for the San Bernardino County Fourth District supervisorial position, which he resigned from to become Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff when the latter become governor. As mayor, Aguiar was able to use his entree with the governor through Aguiar to pull off a coup, that being the expansion of Ayala Park from 41 acres to 141 acres as the result of the State of California agreeing to deed – as part of an agency-to-agency transfer – 100 “surplus” acres from the adjacent California Institution for Men campus.
In 2013, when the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was slated to expand the California Institution for Men in Chino to expand its capacity by 792 beds to accommodate Level II prisoners, Yates effectively lobbied the governor’s office to drop the proposal unless and until improvements to the facility and its security were undertaken.
Yates would score multiple other political victories during his tenures as both a councilman and mayor, which included the city’s annexation of a substantial portion of the Chino Agricultural Preserve, the establishment of his alma mater’s satellite campus – the Chaffey Community College Technology Center – in Chino, improvements to the city, including the downtown area prior to the state doing away with California’s redevelopment agencies in 2012, the construction of a low-cost senior housing project in the city, the construction of the Carolyn Owens Community Center and the College Park residential development.
Politics being what it is, of course, there were a few bumps in the road, some setbacks and embarrassments.
As some saw it, the breakup of the Chino Agricultural Preserve was a less than fully positive development. Moreover, some feel, Chino in 1999 should have laid claim to the entirety of the 15,200 acres in the preserve. Instead, Ontario annexed the lion’s share of the land – 8,200 acres – while Chino obtained 5,300 acres and Chino Hills took the remaining 1,700 acres.
A cross section of Chino citizens feel that Dennis Yates along with four of the other council members at the time – Eunice Ulloa, Glenn Duncan, Tom Haughey and Earl Elrod – engaged in typical political underhandedness and self-serving greed when they adopted Resolution 2006-051 on June 20, 2006, which was made retroactive to August 1, 2005. That resolution resulted in a health benefit bank compensation paid to the city council members that was more generous than the comparable benefit available and paid by the city for its employees as mandated under Government Code §36516(e), such that in 2010 the city council members received health benefit bank compensation of approximately $26,629 annually, whereas other city employees received benefit bank compensation of $15,672, a difference of $10,957 annually. This was alleged to be in violation of California Penal Code §424, related to the misappropriation of public monies. It was further asserted that in order to circumvent the maximum compensation requirement of the government code, the city council tailored a unique employment contract with the city attorney, which would allow the excessive health payments to also be classified as retirement benefits. This uniquely drawn up contract applicable only to the mayor, council members and city attorney was averred to be violation of Government Code §1090, California’s conflict of interest statute, since the city council members had a financial interest in the contract with the city attorney and they voted to approve it.  In 2011, after the State Controller required the compensation of the city council to be included in the database made available to the public, the city council took action to reduce the health bank benefits they had voted for themselves to being the same benefit amount as made available and paid to the other employees of Chino. It was thus the contention of some in the city that the total illegal benefits so derived by the mayor and city council exceeded $270,000 between 2005 and 2011.
That information had remained under wraps until the California state controller created a database in 2012 disclosed the compensation and benefits paid to California’s governmental employees. The data base also revealed that since the year 2000, Chino City Council members had received $1,440 annually in deferred compensation in addition to their salary. Such deferred compensation was never authorized by the passage of a city resolution or ordinance as required under Government Code §36506 and §37206. Public scrutiny of the matter in the aftermath of the state controller’s creation of the database led to the city council adopting Resolution 2013-46, authorizing such payment, which was seen as a tacit admission that the council had been acting illegally for nearly 13 years. The city council, despite adopting Resolution 2013-46, took no action to require that its members reimburse the city for the alleged previously unauthorized and illegal payments.
In addition, those monitoring the city council’s actions propounded that the city council had violated Government Code §36514.5 when in December 2005 it adopted Resolution 2005-093, resulting in a monthly communication allowance of $100. That $100 monthly allowance was in violation of the state’s reimbursement laws as such a monthly allowance is not for an actual expense. Additionally, it was noted, prior to 2005, the city council never adopted a resolution or ordinance authorizing the payment of a communication allowance as required under Government Code §36506 and Government Code §37206.
It was alleged the mayor and most of the council members had thus received $123,176 each to which they were not entitled.
The district attorney’s office began looking into the matter in 2014, at which time the practices were quietly discontinued. Neither the mayor nor the council members were prosecuted, but the episode served as an illustration of what some saw as an abuse of privilege and authority, as well as mendacity, by the mayor and council.
Two years later, perhaps in reaction to the scandal over the payments to the council, Yates announced he would not seek reelection.
In his mature years, Yates, with his graying hair turning white and his full mustache, took on the aspect of the character designed by the artist Daniel Fox for Parker Brothers Company to serve as the mascot of the board game Monopoly. The character, who over the decades took on various different names which included the Monopoly Man, the Monopoly Guy, Rich Uncle, Milburn Pennybags, Pennybegs or Mr. Monopoly, was said to have been modeled after the American Progressive Era businessman J.P. Morgan. The resemblance of mature Yates to the character, seen on the 18 of the Monopoly chance cards and 16 of the Monopoly community chest cards is remarkable.
The City of Chino posted on its website, “The City of Chino is deeply saddened to announce the passing of former Mayor Dennis R. Yates, a dedicated public servant, veteran, leader, and pillar of our community. Mayor Yates was 79 years old. Mayor Yates’ commitment to Chino and its residents spanned over two decades of service, beginning with his election to the Chino City Council in 1992.”
The posting continues, “An advocate for youth programs, Mayor Yates was integral in the creation of the Chino Youth Museum, a lasting tribute to his belief in fostering educational opportunities for children. He also spent decades as a volunteer and mentor with Chino Pop Warner football, where the Yates Field at Ayala Park stands in his honor, named after him in recognition of his 28 years of service to the program. Mayor Yates’ unwavering dedication to his community was honored with Chino’s highest accolade, the prestigious Spirit of Achievement Award in 2019. This award recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the city, reflecting the lasting impact of his leadership and service on Chino’s growth and vitality.”
Beyond his service to Chino, Mayor Yates held influential positions on boards and committees at regional and state levels. He served as vice chairman of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, board member of Omnitrans, and representative to the San Bernardino Association of Governments. Through these roles, Yates helped shape regional policies that improved the quality of life, not only for Chino residents but for communities across the region.”
Quoting Mayor Ulloa, the posting states, “Dennis Yates was a true public servant who loved his community and devoted his life to making Chino a better place. His leadership and vision have left a lasting legacy on our city, and his impact on Chino will be felt for generations to come. We send our heartfelt condolences to his wife, Rosemary, their children, and grandchildren.”
-Mark Gutglueck

LOS ANGELES– Two San Bernardino County residents were found guilty by a jury today of operating a “birth tourism” scheme that charged Chinese clients tens of thousands of dollars to help them give birth in the United States to obtain birthright U.S. citizenship for their children.
Michael Wei Yueh Liu, 59, of Rancho Cucamonga, and Jing Dong, 47, also of Rancho Cucamonga, were found guilty of one count of conspiracy and 10 counts of international money laundering.
According to evidence presented at a four-day trial, from at least January 2012 to March 2015, Liu and Dong ran a maternity house in Rancho Cucamonga. Liu and Dong rented apartment units in Southern California to provide short-term housing and provided other services to pregnant women from China who traveled to the United States to give birth so their children would acquire U.S. citizenship. Typically, within one or two months after giving birth, the women returned to China.
Among the services Liu and Dong provided was assistance on how to obtain visas to enter the United States, customs entry guidance, housing, and transportation in the United States, as well as assistance applying for U.S. legal documents for the children of their customers. Continue reading →