The city of Upland has enlisted the services of a controversial management consultant who became involved in a series of questionable acts in Colton, including entering into a problematic contractual arrangement, fraught with conflicts of interest, involving its former city manager.
According to Upland city officials, the city has hired Bill Mathis, who touts himself as a psychologist specializing in corporate and public management issues, to serve as a “facilitator” to assist city leaders in visualizing goals, hosting workshops and public meetings involving the city council and residents, working with the city manager to derive a code of conduct for city officials and employees, developing “council norms,” overseeing evaluations of the city manager and city attorney and encouraging a high level of performance by the city council.
Upland is seeking to recover from a scandal that involved the indictment of former mayor John Pomierski on extortion and bribery charges relating to shakedowns of business people and others with applications for project approval or permits at City Hall. In recent months, city officials have experienced a less than trusting regard from a skeptical public. A keynote in Mathis’ approach is to call upon city officials and those participating in public meetings to take a positive approach, be respectful of others and allow all involved to participate without interruption.
Despite what Mathis is purported to offer, some have questioned why the city has engaged his services.
In Colton, a contractual relationship with Mathis declined into contretemps three years ago.
In October 2007, then-Colton city manager Daryl Parrish used his administrative authority to approve without prior city council authorization a $15,000 contract with Mathis to provide ethics training to the city council. Parrish was instrumental in convincing four of the council’s seven members in August 2008 to extend the contract with Mathis until June 2009, upping his contract to $50,000.

Bill Mathis

In time, however, Mathis would soon step into an ethical morass of his own. In addition to his work as a psychologist and ethics trainer, Mathis also works as a headhunter, i.e., recruiter, for municipalities, agencies, governments and businesses looking for executives or department heads. One of those entities Mathis was working for was the city of Covina, which was seeking a new city manager. While he was working for Colton, Mathis was evaluating Parrish as a candidate for the city manager’s post in Covina. Neither Parrish nor Mathis disclosed that to the Colton city council. Based on Mathis’ glowing recommendation of Parrish, Covina officials chose Parrish to head the city staff in that Los Angeles County city.
Questions would later emerge as to whether Parrish’s successful effort in August 2008 in convincing four of the council’s seven members to extend Mathis’ contract through June 2009, and thereby confer upon him another $50,000, had anything to do with the fervor with which Mathis recommended Parrish to the Covina city council.
After Parrish jumped to Covina, he induced Dilu De Alwis. then Colton’s finance director, to leave Colton and go to work in Covina. It is unclear whether Mathis was used as a headhunter in Covina’s recruitment of De Alwis, but the departure of Parrish and De Alwis in 2009 came as the actual extent of Colton’s dire financial condition, which had been shrouded in secrecy for some time, was revealed to the council. After Mathis’ $50,000 contract with Colton expired in June 2009, he was awarded another contract with Colton, this time in the amount of $18,900 to coordinate the city manager recruitment process.
Thus, Mathis was able to reap another monetary reward for having effectively relocated Parrish out of Colton.
When details of what had occurred were publicly revealed, including how Parrish and Mathis had taken steps to benefit each other while keeping the city councils in both Colton and Covina in the dark about their interaction with each other, a minor scandal ensued. Then-Colton mayor Kelly Chastain sought to defend the continuation of the city contract with Mathis. But Chastain’s defense of Mathis soon redounded to her embarrassment when it was revealed that after the council at Parrish’s behest in August 2008 signed off on a not-to-exceed $50,000 contract with Mathis, Parrish issued two purchase orders to Mathis, one for $50,000 and another for $15,000. The council never approved the $15,000 purchase order and questions about whether it constituted a gift of public funds or possible embezzlement ensued. Then-acting city manager Bob Miller, who was also the city’s police chief, refused to make the $15,000 payment to Mathis. Chastain’s effort to serve as an apologist for Mathis took its toll on her credibility, and despite the city’s eventual decision to sever ties with Mathis, Chastain’s reputation took a beating over the matter and she was turned out of office in the November 2010 election.
Upland city manager Stephen Dunn said “I am fully familiar with the Parrish thing and how he left Colton. I am very sensitive to it. I just felt that for what I am trying to get done, he [Mathis] could be of some help. My peers in other cities spoke highly of him. I did not know him until early last summer when he approached the city after we advertised we were looking for a facilitator.  I picked him because he is well known and comes highly recommended. I am not in his pocket by any means. He is not a buddy of mine. He is just a consultant that came recommended.”
Dunn continued, “For those that have been following what has been going on, we had the Pomierski problem and we now have two new councilmembers, Gino [Filippi] and Debbie [Stone] and Ray [Musser] who has been on the council all these years but is relatively new as mayor and we have brought Bill Mathis in to help the council and myself with teamwork because I think we have not been in sync and have been a little bit disjointed in how we operate. I think he can make us work in harmony and facilitate strategic planning between myself, the council and the department heads. I think he can make us look at the challenges facing Upland and determine what our goals are.”
Dunn said Mathis had shown his value during a workshop involving the council and the public that was held on Saturday, January 24. “We had basically four hours of real productive stuff,” Dunn said. “Two of those hours consisted of him asking questions and setting everything in motion. Once we got past that part, the department heads took over, but he was very good about keeping us on track and keeping people engaged and speaking to what was on the agenda. I truly believe we got something accomplished. People can say that he is too touchy-feely in his approach because he has a tendency to come across as an understanding grandpa, but I did not see it that way. We were not standing in a circle singing Kumbaya.”
Dunn reiterated that “As far as him being a facilitator, I don’t see a problem. He is there to help the council function as a cohesive unit.  We are not using him as a recruiter or anything like that, nor would I use him for anything like that. Like any good consultant, he is looking to expand his role. He offered to help in the fire chief recruitment. I turned him down. We are definitely going to be staying away from anything like that.  What we have left for him to do is there will be another workshop in late March or April to develop council norms. I don’t see him being used again by us this year. We will evaluate what he has done for us after that, whether we might want to use him at some point in the future.”
Efforts to reach Mathis at his office in Napa, his mobile phone and a number his website lists for his Rancho Cucamonga office, elicited no response.

A division has opened up between members of the Grand Terrace City Council over the timing and substance of a review of city manager Betsy Adams’ performance.
Adams was hired by the city council in 2010 as the third full-fledged city manager in the city’s history. Seth Armstead guided the city from its 1978 inception until 1989, at which point he was succeeded by Tom Schwab. Schwab suffered a subdural hematoma in 2008 and was hospitalized. Assistant city manager Steve Berry was appointed fill in as acting city manager during Schwab’s absence. In 2009, after Schwab had recovered, a struggle between Berry and Schwab ensued as to whether Schwab would return or Berry would be promoted from his interim status to actual city manager. The contretemps that ensued led to Schwab’s retirement and a bitter conclusion for Berry, who offended a majority of the city council by his several attempted power ploys in seeking to replace Schwab. He was then succeeded by finance director Bernie Simon as interim city manager. A statewide recruitment was conducted and Adams, who was then deputy city manager with the Riverside County city of Moreno Valley, was chosen to lead the city.
Adams was provided with a $209,001 annual salary and $85,993 in benefits for a total compensation package of $294,994,  but agreed to cut her salary back to $185,500 shortly after being hired and to another set of reductions she and the council agreed they would impose on city staff  that reduced her salary to  $166,950 and her benefits to 77,690, so her total yearly compensation is  $244,640.
Among San Bernardino County’s 24 incorporated cities, Grand Terrace is the third smallest population-wise. It ranks 24th as a producer of tax revenue of all sorts, such that it has the most meager of the city’s 24 municipal budgets.  Adams ranks as the 13th best paid of the county’s 24 city managers. Nevertheless, when the size of Grand Terrace both in terms of its population and operating budget is considered, Adams is the third most expensive of the county’s city managers in terms of per capita cost to taxpayers.
A significant and vocal portion of the city’s residents were long indulgent of Adams and the members of the city council who had hired her. In 2010, then-city councilman Walt Stanckiewitz was elevated to the mayor’s position and two new councilmembers, Darcy McNaboe and Bernardo Sandoval, were elected to the council. Subsequently, Gene Hays was appointed to fill the vacancy created by Stanckiewitz ascendancy to mayor. Thus, Adams now serves at the pleasure of a city council that counts among its current members only two of those – Stanckiewitz and councilwoman Lee Ann Garcia – who hired her.

Walt Stanckiewitz

Adams and the present council enjoyed a honeymoon with most of the city’s voters over most of the last 14 months but in recent weeks, the sentiment of a highly vocal portion of the electorate has turned against both the city’s elected political leadership and the city’s senior management. In particular, these  critics have taken exception to the manner in which the city proceeded with the operation of its redevelopment agency in the latter portion of 2011, even as the state legislature at Governor Jerry Brown’s bidding had moved to phase out all of the state’s municipal redevelopment agencies. Grand Terrace, like many other California cities, had banked on the success of a collective lawsuit challenging that legislation, but in the waning days of 2011, the California Supreme Court ruled that the state had the right to shutter the agencies.
In Grand Terrace in particular, the effort to hang onto redevelopment authority was an abrasive issue, as Stanckiewitz and Sandoval had succeeded in the 2010 election largely on the strength of their pledge to reform redevelopment. That pledge followed the exposure of former city practices that utilized the redevelopment agency in a way considered highly questionable and even illegal – one that saw redevelopment money used not for erasing blight in the community but erasing red ink out of the city’s operating fund ledgers.
To many of the city’s awakening critics, the Stanckiewitz/Adams regime was not acting fast enough to undo the legacy of redevelopment agency abuse and they grew increasingly alarmed when the city, instead of embracing Brown’s and the legislature’s abolition of the agency, fought it.
Seemingly overnight, Stanckiewitz went from being hailed as the city’s last best hope to being celebrated as a pariah who needs to go and to take Adams with him.
The Grand Terrace News, a blog that covers local issues and is overseen by an as-yet unidentified activist know as Grandpa Terrace, took issue with issues as seemingly mundane as an increase in pet license fees to similar increases in rental home inspection fees, business fees and taxes, and propositions to charge local sports groups fees for the use of parks. Similarly, those involved with the blog blasted City Hall for high salaries and pensions for city employees, and increases in general taxes. The blog made clear its sponsors’ had lost faith with city management and the city council and no longer trusted City Hall with the stewardship of taxpayer funds.
Stanckiewitz was likened to Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burned and the blog called for the “End [of]the city of Grand Terrace as an incorporated city” and for “All Grand Terrace City Council Codes and Ordinances [to] be nullified” so the city “would revert to county, state, and federal regulations only.” The blog called for the council to “Stop all payments of any kind to all city council members, and the related costs of all council members. No more medical insurance or co-pay, and any other payments made to them.”
Moreover, the blog issued a call for the termination of Adams, who was portrayed as incompetent and overpaid.
Previously, before the California Supreme Court ruling on municipal redevelopment authority, Stanckiewitz had called for a review of Adams’ performance as city manager. But in the aftermath of that ruling, which triggered the onslaught of disapproval of Grand Terrace City Hall, Stanckiewitz sought to delay that review. This led to a pull in the opposite direction by McNaboe, who insisted that the review proceed.
This week, McNaboe told the Sentinel  the review was proceeding.

Darcy McNaboe

“We are currently in process of doing a review,” she said. “This will be our second  review. It is being done in closed session. I am not at liberty to disclose any part of the process we are undergoing, but we are looking at our responsibility.” McNaboe said a review of the city manager’s performance “is contained within her contract.”
McNaboe was somewhat dismissive of suggestions that Adams was overpaid.
“A couple of years ago she did do a ten percent giveback,” McNaboe said. She said comparing Adams’ salary to that of other city managers on the basis of city population was not a fair measure of worth or value.  “Population and tax base are two differenct things,” she said. The consideration that Adams is struggling with insufficient capital to run the city does not mean she should take a pay cut either, McNaboe suggested. “[Not having money] does make the job tougher. When I look at performance review, I am looking at how the city is doing under her management. I will be looking at her performance.”
Asked whether Adams was going to be given a job performance evaluation, Stanckiewitz said, “Yeah, but no. I was the instigator of that. I tried to get a performance review for her before but [then mayor] Maryetta [Ferré] did not want to do it. Now another year has gone by and we owe her an evaluation. I wanted to do it but given everything we are going through, the last thing I want to do is take time away from her and have her sit down and write up what we have asked her to do and what she has done to meet those expectations and instructions. I do want to accomplish an evaluation. This is not the right time to stop the train to do that. We have a whole bunch of things we are going through at the moment and once we figure out what state our redevelopment agency is in then we can come back and revisit it.”
Stanckiewitz continued, “When I brought it up in early December, that was before the Supreme Court made its decision. Now we are approaching the February First deadline and we are going through this fire drill imposed on us by the state and I do not think we want to distract Betsy with that. Right now we need all hands on deck dealing with the redevelopment wind down and if that means we are going to delay the review for a couple of months, I’m fine with that. I am the person who started this conversation about the review. I think it important that she gets a performance evaluation. I’m not sure that right at this moment is the time to do it. If we can put it on the back burner for another month or two, that is what I hope the other council members will support.”
Stanckiewitz said he has a disagreement with recently emerging criticisms of the council and Adams.
“On the Grand Terrace News blog, Grandpa Terrace, whoever he is or she is or they are – I think it is a group of people – they are saying she is making three times what the average income in Grand Terrace is,” Stanckiewitz said. “The woman took a pay cut to come here and shortly thereafter took another pay cut because we instilled that in all employees. I would say to Grandpa Terrace:  ‘Do you think we can get someone of her caliber for the average income of Grand Terrace, 66 grand? Show me where we can get a person for that kind of pay. I know that salaries for city managers are inflated. But look at what we were paying our old city manager. Tom Schwab was knocking down way more than Betsy is making. I don’t know how to respond to that blog and what they want to do. Reality doesn’t allow us to do what they want us to do. The bottom line is we’re in a competitive environment and you get what you pay for. Sometimes you make a mistake and you end up paying top dollar for someone who is not worth it. I do not believe that is what we have with Betsy. She has been with us for two years, cleaning up minutiae.  Every time we get our heads above water something else comes in at us. It is one financial disaster after another. I am ecstatic with her performance. I have watched over the years how salaries for city managers have escalated. I thought we had done the right thing. We did not inflate her salary. Given her background and what she was paid [in Moreno Valley] it was a lateral to a downward move for her. She got a job closer to home. That was the big bonus for her and we got a good deal.  Had she known what was under the water and all she has ended up dealing with, she would not have come here. At her own recommendation she took a salary reduction. She has never brought that up. She has done a good job here and she has a job to do here and she is still doing it.”

Administrative law judge Jean Vieth has directed Southern California Edison to give serious consideration to an alternative for routing the Tehachapi Line through the city of Chino Hills.
Southern California Edison is committed to completing the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project, which consists of a massive wind power field near Tehachapi that will deliver electricity to Southern California’s population centers by means of the Tehachapi Line, a series of 200-foot high transmission towers.
The California Public Utilities Commission in 2009 granted permits to Edison to proceed with the line over protests by the city of Chino Hills, the most densely populated area through which the line will pass. Efforts to have the line rerouted, including lawsuits and by legislation, failed. After 12 of the towers were erected, city officials last fall importuned members of the commission to reconsider the matter. Late last year, the commission, which is now led by Michael Peevey and consists of three new members who were not party to the 2009 approval of the project, put further work on the line, which was scheduled to entail 18 towers through the city upon completion, on hold and asked Edison to study alternative routes.
On January 10, Southern California Edison offered up four variant ways of bringing the electricity through upscale Chino Hills by means other than the 200-foot high towers. Those methods were routing the lines through Chino Hills State Park, undergrounding 500 kilovolt lines through the city, utilizing a route that skirted the perimeter of the city, and using the existing right of way with shorter and more closely-spaced towers.
Vieth, after looking at Edison’s presentation of alternatives, was presented on January 16 with a suggestion by Michael B. Day, the city’s legal counsel, that the utility company could use a single circuit 400 kV underground cable to transmit the electricity.
Day referenced the practice in Europe of utilizing 400 kV-capable cables for high voltage transmission, which is less than the 500 kV voltage design that is standard in the United States and Canada. “There is virtually no difference between 400 and 500 kV lines for purposes of underground construction, maintenance, safety and reliability,” Day stated. “The California Public Utilities Commission should have complete and accurate information on the extensive use of these lines in order to fairly judge their safety and reliability.”
Day requested that Vieth have Edison provide more information about the feasibility of reconfiguring underground methods of conveyance, including spanning the city beneath the utility’s existing right-of-way and beneath the city’s streets.
More than 70 well-heeled city residents sojourned to San Francisco to attend the hearing on the matter January 18.
Vieth called upon the City of Chino Hills and Edison to initiate a mediation of the matter by early February.
Edison officials maintain that even the least expensive alternative at this point will entail an added expense of no less than $8 million, given that twelve of the towers are already erected. Any change to the approval of the overall project already given by the California Public Utilities Commission would boost the project cost considerably, Southern California Edison corporate officers maintain.
According to Edison’s list of alternatives, the cost for completing the portion of the project through Chino Hills per the 2009 approval was projected as $166 million. The alternative of erecting shorter towers would boost that projection to at least $174 million and perhaps as much as $192 million. By skirting the city and going through the state park, the cost would escalate to at least $424 million and could go as high as $589 million. The undergrounding option would be the most expensive, running from $601 million to more than $1 billion, Southern California Edison officials maintain.

Despite long-lingering questions over whether Cedar Glen residents were ever provided with the improvements to the water system they have been paying for over the last three decades, the board of supervisors this week made a crucial commitment toward proceeding with revamping  that system at further expense to those residents. The county’s insistence on proceeding with the improvements without redressing the underlying reasons for the current inadequacy of the system, some of those residents say, will likely result in an even more widespread refusal on the part of local property owners  to pay their escalating water bills.
The county in 2009 initiated the first phase of improvements to the area’s water system. With that portion of the project now reported as completed, the county will move on with phases II and III, which are to consist of continued improvements, including the replacement of existing water storage facilities with additional steel water storage reservoirs; construction of a new domestic water well; and replacement of approximately 7.7 miles of existing distribution pipeline to bring the Cedar Glen water system into compliance with the California Safe Drinking Water Act and California Department of Health Services requirements.
In May of 2009, county special districts division managing engineer Jim Oravets reported that one well was successfully drilled off of Coulter Drive where there was no electricity service to the area in order to operate a water pump. Oravets said the special districts division was in discussions with Southern California Edison to extend electrical service to the area.
It is this well and its location that has led some of the residents to question the motives of the special districts division, in that the well is located on the southern boundary of the San Bernardino National Forest and is surrounded by San Bernardino National Forest. Some citizens have expressed their belief that they are paying for infrastructure to benefit developers.
The community of Cedar Glen located in the San Bernardino Mountains was provided with water service by investor owned Arrowhead Manor Water Company (AMWC) until May of 2003, when the company went into receivership.
Six months later, in October of 2003, the community was devastated by the Old Fire, which burned over 300 homes. Based on the disaster, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors adopted the Cedar Glen Redevelopment Area on November 23, 2004.
The board approved a loan from the county general fund in the amount of $800,000 for a proposed improvement zone on June 7, 2005 and shortly thereafter, an improvement zone was formed by the county under County Service Area 70 to provide water to the residents of Cedar Glen to be governed by the San Bernardino Special Districts Department (SDD).
On November 15, 2005, before the county had even purchased Arrowhead Manor, the county submitted an application for funding to the California State Department of Housing and Community Development for a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) through the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In February 2006, the county of San Bernardino was provided with $3,091,270 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds as part of a disaster recovery initiative to pay for the proposed repairs to the water system in the Cedar Glen community.
The board of supervisors approved the purchasing Arrowhead Manor Water Company for the price of $305,000 through the court appointed bankruptcy receiver on October 17, 2006. The county finalized the purchase on January 28, 2009.
Shortly after the purchase of the water company, Phase 1 of the water improvements funded by the CDBG funds began.
At a meeting of the Cedar Glen Redevelopment Project Area Committee on April 24, 2009, special districts director Jeff Rigney said 14,000 feet of water line had been completed, a well had been drilled and they were repairing a water tank.
Many Cedar Glen residents have refused to pay their water bills over the last couple of years.
This refusal has grown out of the circumstances under which the county obtained ownership of the water facilities. Shortly after Arrowhead Manor was placed into receivership in 2003, water rates were raised over 400 percent. The county borrowed $800,000 to acquire the water company and its assets and to make necessary improvements to it. $305,000 of that loan money was used to buy Arrowhead Manor. By 2008, the loan principal, penalties, and interest had risen to approximately $2,000,000.
At present, the $800,000 loan is not being repaid, but local water users are still paying greatly inflated prices for water.
“The Cedar Glen water situation is based on several layers of fraud and the county supervisors are now in jeopardy of becoming accomplices in this fraud,” said area resident Hugh Campbell. “There is a reason people are not paying these bills and it is the responsibility of the board of supervisors to investigate the reason. The original fraud took place in 1980 when through the Safe Drinking Water Bond Act the owners of the Arrowhead Manor Water Company, Ernie and Jean Schoettmer, were awarded $910,510. The fraud consisted of how that money was ‘not used,’” Campbell said.
“Amazingly, the 1980 improvement plan involved three phases, much like the current three phase plan in Cedar Glen,” Campbell said. “One phase was to build a pump house, a water tank and pipelines off of Balsam Ave. According to the plans, there was an existing tank on site and a new tank was to be built. As per the plans only the existing tank is currently on the property. A notice of completion was sent to the Department of Water Resources stating that all work had been completed. That work, in fact, was never completed.”
“Another phase of the project was to put new 8- inch pipelines on Juniper Drive, Maple Drive and Pineridge Drive,” Campbell continued. “These are the exact locations where the current phase 1 was just completed. The original notice of completion was dated January 9, 1981. There are even more questions on the billing as there were hundreds and hundreds of hours charged for expensive office labor, field inspectors that obviously didn’t inspect anything and travel charges at .50 a mile in 1980! The fact is that at least half or more of the project was never done. The fraud here is in excess of $400,000.”
The board of supervisors is being misled by the falsehoods contained in the record and by county staff members, who have examined the circumstances and know about the fraud, said Campbell.
“The reason that the county and its special districts division have been so quiet about this is that the engineering was done by Albert Webb and Associates and the final permits were signed off at the time by what was the county’s Department of Transportation and Flood Control in 1982. The letter from the Department of Transportation and Flood Control stated, ‘This letter is to confirm that the work performed in the Cedar Glen area under Permits E31696 and E30957 with Arrowhead Manor Water Company has been satisfactorily completed.’”
Current staff is compounding the problem and layering more fraud on top of the existing fraud, Campbell charged.
“Phase 1 was designed to cover up the fact that pipes were not laid in 1981 and the money was embezzled,” Campbell said. “The county even went as far as to give themselves an out by stating in a preliminary system evaluation dated July 20, 2004 that ‘Based on conversations with Mr. Darel Davis (the engineer hired by the receiver), 6 & 8-inch piping installed was not installed correctly and needs to be replaced.’ This was never mentioned in Mr. Davis’s official report to Thomas Sutton a month earlier on June 17, 2004. This is far from where the fraud stops. In July of 2002 the Public Utilities Commission made Decision 02-07-009 and the significant thing stated is that Arrowhead Manor was found to ‘have improperly diverted Safe Drinking Water Bond Act surcharge funds…’ and ‘The Commission concludes that all penalties imposed by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) on Arrowhead for failure to make timely loan payments are Arrowhead’s obligations under its DWR contract and are not recoverable from ratepayers.’ Further in Resolution W-4407 dated July 10, 2003 when the PUC reinstated the Safe Drinking Water Bond Act surcharges it also stated ‘As a condition of re-establishing the Safe Drinking Water Bond Act surcharge, the decision put Arrowhead on notice that it would be held responsible for refunding or applying on behalf of customers any surcharge revenues not applied to repaying the loan.’ So the surcharge was reinstated in July of 2003 two months after the Superior Court appointed John Richardson as the receiver of Arrowhead Manor Water and from that time nothing was paid to the Department of Water Resources.”
Campbell told the board of supervisors, “The reason that the county worked so hard to pass a bill to eliminate the interest and penalties is that the customers of Arrowhead Manor could not legally be charged. The fact is that all money collected by the court appointed receiver and the Special District since 2003 needs to be refunded to the residents of Cedar Glen, because it is obvious that it was never paid to the Department of Water Resources. While receiving information through a public information request, I met with James Oravets of the Special Districts division on March 3, 2009 and told him of my concerns with fraud and even downloaded the files I obtained from the Department of Water Resources through a public information request. Mr. Oravets stated that they laid two miles of pipe during the loan. I told him that according to invoices charged against the loan that over 14 miles of pipe were supposedly purchased. Mr. Oravets could then only seem to find page one of the original plans for Cedar Glen. This was a sad attempt to again cover up the fraud that the Special Districts was aware of. In spite of this, I downloaded all the information I received from the Department of Water Resources onto Mr. Oravets’ computer and I mentioned to him that it would be nice if County Special Districts looked into the fraud for the benefit of the people of Cedar Glen instead of showing that they are just another corrupt county organization.”
But, according to Campbell, “Of course this was not the end of the fraud. In January 2009 a bill was sent to residents to collect $504 on the Safe Drinking Water Bond Act surcharge.  This constituted more fraud. In February 2009, a facilities charge showed up on the bill for the first time for $17.35. In April 2009, the facilities charge grew to $36.60. In August 2009, the facilities charge grew again to $123.60, where it now appears on each statement.”
Campbell said that the board of supervisors had failed to provide legal notice to residents that there would be a facilities charge. “What legal mechanism was used to implement these charges and how did the charges go from $17.35 to $123.60 in 6 months?” Campbell askied. “Was the board of supervisors aware of these charges?”
Campbell said he is now taking action – i.e., refusing to pay his bill, as the next logical step in forcing the county to come to terms with the fraud that has been perpetuated.
“After the April 2009  bill I gave up and quit paying, as it was obvious that there will be no end to new charges and the public has no input to what Special Districts does.”
Campbell offered his opinion that “If the board of supervisors place these charges onto the taxes of Cedar Glen residents, they are guilty of a conspiracy to commit fraud. The county was involved with this conspiracy in the beginning and steps have been taken recently to cover up the fraud. The board of supervisors needs to initiate an immediate investigation into these allegations. The board of supervisors is also bound by PUC resolution W-4407, which stipulated the conditions of the reinstatement of the surcharges and the county is thus bound to repay every resident in Cedar Glen all surcharge monies collected since July 10, 2003. The other option is that the county can drop the surcharge payments altogether.”
The board of supervisors, functioning on a different tack, authorized using taxing authority to collect water bills two years ago.
This week the board voted to file environmental documents certifying the completion of the California Environmental Quality Act compliance process with respect to the construction of phases II and III of the water system improvement.
“The existing water system does not meet the requirements of the California Safe Drinking Water Act and the California Department of Health Services requirements and work has been phased to provide capital improvements as funding becomes available. The first phase of improvements (Phase I) was approved with the adoption of a Mitigated Negative Declaration in 2008, and included a new domestic water well, construction of a 425,000-gallon water tank and 3.8 miles of replacement water lines,” Rigney told the board this week.

San Bernardino County’s transportation officials are giving more than casual consideration to the concept of incorporating toll lanes along Interstate-10, Interstate-215 and Interstate-15, the Sentinel has learned.
While such additions are not likely to be put in place for a half-decade, roughly three quarters of the 29 voting board members of San Bernardino Associated Governments, which serves as San Bernardino County’s transportation agency, have indicated they are open to examining toll roads as an alternative for improving transportation options in the county.
In August, the transportation agency board, also known by its acronym SANBAG, voted to spend  $13.7 million to facilitate studies and planning toward toll road development in conjunction with private sector companies that would participate in such projects.
Proposals now being entertained, the Sentinel has learned, would provide for a toll lane from Ontario to Redlands on I-10 and from the Riverside County Line to Victorville on the I-215 and I-15 Freeways. A condition to the construction of the new toll lanes would include the construction of new general use lanes along the same stretches.
The most feasible concept for the program, which would cost $2.4 billion for the improvements to all three freeways, would be to bond against the future revenues from the toll lanes. Part of the ongoing study is to determine if the debt from just such a bond funding mechanism could be serviced by the toll road income.
SANBAG was drawn into examining the toll road concept by the consideration that Orange County already has toll lanes in place and a larger system of toll roads that would include San Bernardino County, Riverside County, Los Angeles County and Orange County freeways is being pushed by regional transportation officials, who insist that for the entire system to work there must be uniform participation.
There is resistance to the concept, however. On the Atlantic Seaboard and in the Midwest, toll roads are referred to as turnpikes, not freeways. In California, freeways have historically been maintained by the state and federal government through taxes, not toll charges.
Southern California Associated Governments, which serves as the regional planning agency for Southern California, supports the toll road concept. Within SANBAG there is some resistance to the concept.
The SANBAG board consists of all five members of the county board of supervisors and representatives from each of the city councils of the county’s 24 cities.
Highland mayor Larry McCallon, Rancho Cucamonga mayor L. Dennis Michael, Redlands mayor Pete Aguilar, Adelanto councilwoman Cari Thomas, Rialto councilman Ed Scott, Apple Valley Town councilman Rick Roelle, San Bernardino mayor Patrick Morris, Barstow councilwoman Julie McIntyre, Twentynine Palms councilman  Jim Harris, Big Bear councilman Bill Jahn, Upland mayor Ray Musser, Chino mayor Dennis Yates, Victorville mayor Ryan McEachron, Chino Hills mayor Ed Graham, Yucaipa mayor Dick Riddell, Yucca Valley mayor George Huntington, San Bernardino County supervisor Gary Ovitt, San Bernardino County supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, Hesperia councilman Mike Leonard, San Bernardino County supervisor Neil Derry, Needles mayor Edward Paget and Ontario councilman Alan Wapner all have supported at least exploring the possibility of constructing the toll roads.
The concept has been opposed by San Bernardino County supervisor Josie Gonzales, San Bernardino County supervisor Janice Rutherford, Montclair mayor Paul Eaton, Loma Linda mayor Rhodes Rigsby, Grand Terrace mayor Walt Stanckiewitz, Fontana councilman Michael Tahan and Colton councilwoman Deirdre Bennett.

In a piece of bureaucratic sleight-of-hand by the city of Victorville, the Victorville Water District was this week included as a member entity to the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority.
The Southern California Logistics Airport Authority (SCLAA) was established as a joint powers authority on  February 21, 2001 as comprised of the city of Victorville and the city of Victorville’s redevelopment agency for the purpose of serving as the redevelopment authority devoted to the conversion of the former George Air Force Base into a civilian airport.
Last year, as part of the 2011-12 state budget bill, the California Legislature enacted and Governor Jerry Brown signed AB IX 26, which requires that all municipal redevelopment agencies be dissolved. A collective of the state’s cities challenged that law, but on December 29, 2011, the California Supreme Court issued an opinion which effectively upheld the provisions of AB IX 26. Since AB IX 26 prohibits a redevelopment agency from taking any actions and since the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority was comprised of only two member entities, the Victorville Redevelopment Agency and the city, the authority was on the brink of demise.
Section 6502 of the Joint Powers Act provides that “two or more public agencies” are required to form a joint powers authority and exercise powers thereunder. With the expiration of the Victorville Redevelopment Agency’s charter, the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority was likewise on the brink of extinction.
By absorbing the Victorville Water District into the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority, city officials believe they can preserve its status as a joint powers authority.
In 2007, the Local Agency Formation Commission of the county of San Bernardino approved a reorganization consolidating the formerly independent Baldy Mesa Water District and the Victor Valley Water District into the Victorville Water District as a division of the city of Victorville.
According to a resolution passed by he Victorville city council this week, “in order to ensure the continued existence of the SCLAA given the mandates of AB IX 26 and in order to avoid defaults and or any unlawful or unintended termination of the SCLAA under the Joint Powers Act, it is deemed important and desirable to have the VWD become a member of the SCLAA.”
Accordingly, the resolution stipulates, “The Victorville Water District is hereby added as a member of the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority and shall possess all of the rights and privileges and assume all of the obligations and responsibilities associated with being a member of the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority.”
A question stands as to whether it is in the interest of the customers of the Victorville Water District for the purveyor of the water they utilize to have entangled itself in the effort to finance infrastructure and other improvements at the airport, undertakings that have no connection to the provision of water to customers outside the airport. The resolution, in tortured bureaucratese, references that consideration without, precisely, eliminating the possibility that water customers may end up paying for improvements at the airfield.
“The Victorville Water District and the city recognize and agree that as set forth in Section 31 of the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority Joint Exercise of Powers Agreement, all assets and liabilities of the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority are in fact the assets and liabilities of the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority, and such assets and liabilities are not and shall not be those of the members,” the resolution states.
The resolution also openly suggests that the absorption of the water district into the authority is an opportunistic ploy to preserve the airport authority and that the water district’s participation as a member will be terminated at such time as another member can be found.
“To the extent deemed necessary, the city has the right, at its sole discretion, to remove the Victorville Water District from the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority, and replace it with another appropriate body,” the resolution states.
The directors of the Victorville Water District are the members of the Victorville city council.

HESPERIA—The San Bernardino County Fire Department has shuttered one of the three fire stations providing fire protection to this 72 square mile city with a population of  90,173.
Fire Station 301, located at 9430 11th Avenue, was shut down on January 14. Previously, one paramedic engine, one brush engine, one paramedic ambulance and one heavy rescue vehicle was staged out of the station.
The decision to close the station was made by county fire chief Mark Hartwig in the wake of the city’s inability to provide more funding. Three of the city’s council members and the fire union sponsored a citywide ballot measure in November that would have imposed an $85 per parcel per year tax to pay for augmenting fire service levels. That measure was defeated soundly, garnering only 19 percent support.

Mark Hartwig

That leaves only Fire Station 302, at 17288 Olive Street, with  one paramedic engine, one brush engine and two paramedic ambulances, and Fire Station 304, at 15660 Eucalyptus Street, with one paramedic engine, one ladder truck, one paramedic ambulance, one water truck and one chief’s vehicle, still manned and running as city fire stations.
Station 301’s fire engine will be maintained as reserve capital equipment.
There is another fire station in Hesperia, Fire Station 305, located on Caliente Road, west of Interstate 15. While a city fire department paramedic unit, which uses the paramedic ambulance formerly staged out of Station 301, is housed at that station, the rest of the equipment and personnel there are intended to provide fire suppression for the Oak Hills area.
Indeed, it is the county fire division’s devotion of Fire Station 305 to firefighting service outside the city that fueled much of the citizen opposition to the passage of Measure F.
Fire Station 305, at 18,478 square feet, is the largest fire station in the county. The city of Hesperia covered $4.5 million of the $6.7 million cost of constructing the facility. Those positing arguments against Measure F maintained that Hesperia residents had already made financial sacrifices to beef up the fire department and that they had been abused by fire department management and fire department union leaders, who had made hefty political contributions to three of the city’s five council members and had received overly-generous salaries and benefits in return. It is the excessive personnel costs that are an outgrowth of the salaries, Measure F opponents propounded, that drained the fire division of the revenue needed to maintain appropriate staffing, equipment and facility levels.
Nine firefighter positions were cut out of Hesperia’s operations after the voters rejected Measure F. Those three fire captains, three engineers and three firefighter/paramedics were not laid off, but were transferred elsewhere in the county.
The closure of Fire Station 301, the city’s smallest, will result in savings of $752,000 in the department’s $9.2 million budget for the remainder of the 2011-12 fiscal year, which ends on June 30. The closure will net the district savings of $1.4 million in 2012-13.
Councilman Mike Leonard, who closed out his tenure as Hesperia mayor last month, said the closure of Fire Station 301 was “brought about by a $1.2 million shortfall in our budget. Our fire district basically survives on property tax, and assessed value is down by 28 percent. There’s the problem. When times were supposedly good, we had false highs and homes were assessed accordingly. Right now they are assessed way lower and that is what is hurting us. We have a $1.2 shortfall and we can’t continue to supplement the fire department out of the budget because we would be out of money in two or three years. We have to keep our whole city operating.”
Leonard, who was a Hesperia firefighter himself before the city closed out its own department to contract with the county for fire service, has an acute understanding of the issues related to fire safety in Hesperia.
“What we did is we had to cut nine position from the department,” Leonard said. “We left it up to the San Bernardino County fire chief as to what to do. He could have done layoffs. He could cut one paramedic off all the engines. He did not do that. Instead he chose to downstaff one engine completely. He shut down the engine at 301 and since the engine is no longer staffed, he shut down the station and moved one paramedic team to 305. They respond from there now. I am not going to say eliminating one engine is better than downstaffing three engines but something had to give and from a certain standpoint, it is better to have full teams than teams that are cut by fifty percent each. I think the biggest problem is medical response is now different. We have moved our main ambulance away from the center of town. That is going to increase response times. People have to be aware. If grandpa  is experiencing chest pains, they have to be more alert and call for help at once.

Mike Leonard

“We still have Station 302 on the east side of the city, where we have an engine and two paramedic ambulances,” Leonard continued. “There is station 22 in Spring Valley Lake, which is a county station, and it can cover our northeastern area with its engine. Station 305 in the southwest portion of the city is a combination county city station. We both kicked out money to build it. If there is a fire in the southern part of Hesperia, an engine from 305 is going to respond to it. If there is a fire in Oak Hills, the city of Hesperia is going to respond there. When I was with the city fire department, we responded to Oak Hills fires all the time. We still have auto-aid or mutual aid or whatever you want to call it. We don’t bill them and they don’t bill us. The fact is, Hesperia has never had the fire stations it needs. We have never been adequately staffed. And now the state has come in and further robbed our budget. I don’t know what we can do. The bottom line is dollars and cents. Property tax is down. We are not doing any development. What can you do? Apparently people have set the level of fire protection they want. I don’t blame people for not passing Measure F because I realize times are hard for everybody. It affects us all, the cut in fire protection. I hated to see Station 301 go. That was my career for so many years. I see what the fire guys are up against and I also see the other side of the problem. It is all dollars and cents.”