The city of Hesperia has sustained a $340,000 loss brought about by the failure of a restaurant more than three years after the now-defunct Hesperia Redevelopment Agency sought to kickstart it with a low interest loan.
In December 2008, the Hesperia Redevelopment Agency provided the owner/operator of Kid’s Planet, a Mexican food restaurant located at 15075 Main Street, with the $340,000 loan, which came on top of the mortgage on the property with Arrowhead Credit Union.  Over the next two years, the proprietors sought to make a go of it, investing more into the operation and obtaining another $800,000 loan from the Small Business Administration. By last year, the business was on the ropes and the business and property were put up for sale at an asking price of $1.6 million. Simultaneously, Governor Jerry Brown pushed, and the state legislature passed, legislation that dissolved the authority of all of the state’s cities’ redevelopment agencies. The 15075 Main Street property failed to fetch any offers even approaching $1.6 million and in February Arrowhead Central Credit Union, which held the note on the property, unloaded it to a private investor for $750,000.
Neither the Small Business Administration nor the city, which has inherited the assets and liabilities of the redevelopment agency, recouped principal or interest from the loans.

SAN BERNARDINO—The recently elected city clerk in the county seat has found herself in the unwanted glare of publicity, controversy and challenge as the city council this week turned back her request to boost her salary even as the electoral opponent she narrowly defeated in February is taking her and the registrar of voters to court to contest her victory.
Hanna, who was sworn into office March 5, had expected to be paid a salary of $11,307 per month or $135,684 per year, based on the $2,713.68 filing fee she was required to pay to run for the office. In San Bernardino County the filing fee is calculated at two percent of the yearly salary for the elected office in question.
Hanna has since been informed she will actually be paid $9,302 per month, or $111,624 per year, the low end of the pay scale for city clerk in San Bernardino.
In San Bernardino, there are eleven levels, or steps, to the remuneration paid to the city clerk. In considering Hanna’s request, the council determined that Hanna will need to progress through each stage of experience and remuneration city clerks are traditionally subject to.
One councilwoman, Wendy McCammack even suggested that the council should consider having Hanna voluntarily give back ten percent of her salary as a show of solidarity with other city officials and employees who have agreed to such pay reductions to help the city with its efforts to offset its ongoing budget deficit.
When city attorney Jim Penman said that the giveback could not be imposed on the city clerk, the council stopped short of doing that, which would have reduced Hanna’s pay to $8,371.80 per month or $100,461.80 per year. Hanna did not accede to McCammack’s hint and offer to take the pay reduction. The entire episode prompted some residents in attendance at the city council meeting to question Hanna’s commitment to civic duty and suggest that she was being greedy.
Meanwhile, Amelia Sanchez-Lopez, against whom Hanna eked out a razor-thin victory in the February 7 election, is proceeding with legal action to contest Hanna’s victory.
Represented by the Los Angeles-based law firm of Leal-Trejo, Sanchez-Lopez is petitioning the court to require San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Michael J. Scarpello to consider 28 sworn declarations of voters in which the affiants insist they cast ballots in the February 7 election that were wrongfully disqualified. Scarpello’s office threw those ballots and 36 others out because signatures on their mail-in envelopes were inconsistent with the signatures on those voters’ registration cards. The affiants claim they are and were indeed eligible to vote.
Shortly after the completion of mail-in balloting on February 7 in which 12,143 voters participated, Hanna was declared the winner by three votes. Sanchez-Lopez requested a recount, and on February 21, the registrar’s re-tallying of the votes gave Hanna a six-vote margin of victory.
Penman, who had supported Sanchez-Lopez during her campaign, assisted her in tracking down several of the 64 voters whose ballots were discarded by the registrar. Those voters had not been informed that their ballots were disqualified and 28 of them have now signed affidavits declaring themselves to be eligible voters. Twelve of those are plaintiffs in the suit asking for all 64 discarded votes to be considered in a final official vote count.
Hanna has retained Los Angeles-based lawyer Daniel K. Abramson to represent her in the matter. The registrar’s office will be represented by county counsel. Hanna appears to be secure in her office for at least six months, as the matter will not be heard until September 13.

Ted Dutton this week told the Sentinel that recent press reports relating to him with regard to his current involvement with the Cadiz Land Company and as a past contributor to his son’s political campaigns were inaccurate.
Last week, the Sentinel reported that the Needles City Council had declined to endorse the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project, which is a proposal by Cadiz Inc., also known as the Cadiz Land Company, to pump an average of 50,000 acre feet of water out of the aquifer in the east Mojave Desert per year and sell it to five water purveyors serving consumers in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties.  Cadiz, Inc. has recruited the Santa Margarita Water District in Orange County to act as the lead agency for the environmental certification of the project and was hoping to get from the city of Needles a letter of support for the project to help offset the opposition raised by local residents and environmentalists to the project.
Dutton said he is no longer involved with Cadiz, Inc. and that it was not true that he was the owner or prime mover in the company.
“I was a stockholder and an employee but was far from being the majority owner,” he said. “I was the vice president of Cadiz, but I am not the VP now. I haven’t had stock in the company for at least thirteen years. I sold my stock when I left there.”
When he was vice president of the company in the 1990s, Dutton had taken a lead role in opposing a proposal by the Santa Fe Railroad and Waste Management, Inc. to locate a massive waste dump at Bolo Station near Cadiz. The Cadiz Land Company had opposed the project because of its potential to contaminate the water source upon which the Cadiz Land Company’s 500-acre citrus, melon, tomato and grape farm relied for irrigation. Dutton said, “I opposed the trash-by-rail plan because both as a citizen and a Cadiz employee, I thought it was wrong.” With regard to the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project, Dutton said, “I think they have a viable project. Unfortunately, the way it is being looked at by others is making it difficult. But I am not personally involved.”
Dutton said he became less active in the company when he began spending more time in Sacramento during his stints as a member of the state’s Fish and Game Commission, a member of the State’s Employment Training Panel, executive offer with the State Allocation Board and the State Office of School Construction.
Dutton also took issue with another report in the March 16 edition of the Sentinel relating to developments in the ongoing political campaign for the GOP nomination in the newly redrawn 31st Congressional District. Ted Dutton’s son, Bob Dutton, currently a state Senator, is vying against incumbent congressman Gary Miller in that race.
The Sentinel article stated that in the past Ted Dutton had “bankrolled much of his son’s political career.” Ted Dutton insisted that was an overstatement.
“If you fully consider the situation, I could not legally give him any more money than anyone else could,” he said. “If you check with the Fair Political Practices Commission, which enforces the law that controls how much an individual can contribute to any single politician, you will see that I did not contribute any more to him than I provided to several other politicians or any more than others contributed to him. Yes, I donated to his campaign, just like you would donate to your son if he was running, or any candidate I believed would do a good job. But I did not contribute any more than the maximum allowable amount provided by law. I would have been fined or sanctioned if I had.  I think that while he has been in office, Bob has studied the issues and has done the right thing. I think he is honest. I taught him to be. I think he would be a good congressman. As far as his political situation goes, if you want to write something political, write something about his opponent. How people in San Bernardino County would want a Congressman under FBI investigation, I don’t know.”