(September 21)  A second officer named in the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department training scandal indictment last year is on the brink of being exonerated by the prosecuting agency that leveled the charges against him, the Sentinel has learned.
An indictment unsealed in March 2011 charged seven current and former sheriff’s department employees in a conspiracy to falsify their own and/or others’ training certification. The case against one of those officers was dismissed in July.

Russell Wilke

Now, sheriff’s lieutenant Russell Wilke is slated to join retired sheriff’s lieutenant William Maddox as a former defendant who has been cleared in the matter, despite the highly detailed indictments that were returned against them and five of their department colleagues, individuals knowledgeable about the matter say.
According to informed entities conversant with the case, key portions of the information and material pertaining to Wilke contained in the indictment cannot be substantiated or has now been determined to be erroneous or non-existent, such that the prosecutor’s office has internally acknowledged it does not have sufficient evidence to ensure Wilke’s conviction.
Wilke, unlike other unretired defendants in the case, has not been suspended from the department and has remained on active duty, having been transferred to the West Valley Detention Center.
In September 2009, insinuations of fraud, theft by false pretenses and unjust enrichment cropped up against Hobart Gray, more commonly known as Bart Gray, who was the commander of the Yucaipa sheriff’s station, as well as Gray’s wife, and approximately 25 other members of the department.
Allegations were that Gray had submitted to the bureau in Sacramento that handles Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) certification documents that were false in information and content. His wife, Angela Fair Gray, allegedly obtained or prepared the false documentation in question.
Mrs. Gray, who worked at the department’s Glen Helen North Training Facility, in conjunction with Sally Ann  Christian, was said to have facilitated a situation in which sheriff’s personnel would sign up for POST classes but never attend them. Mrs. Gray would sign them off as having attended a particular class, usually held at San Bernardino Valley College, then submit the paperwork through the required channels and obtain certificates of completion. Those who signed up for class would either get overtime for attending or were allowed to attend classes on workdays, receiving in turn regular or overtime pay. Many of those who signed up attended only a single class, or in other cases, no classes whatsoever, according to the district attorney’s office.
The never-completed coursework included instruction on verbal judo, advanced subjects contact, officer survival, child abuse, hate and bias crimes, basic dispatch, advanced dispatch, supervisory skills, basic traffic collision, gang awareness, driving under the influence, and civil liabilities. Sworn officers with the department were either required to get periodic retraining in law enforcement skills or were eligible to receive pay increases with the completion of further training. The coursework was supposed to be done in compliance with the state’s POST criteria, that is, Police Officers Standard and Training guidelines, which are set by the state.
More than a year after word leaked out that some of the department’s officers were cutting corners on training and retraining requirements, a special criminal grand jury was impaneled in November 2010 to hear testimony in the case. It was that grand jury, which is separate from the civil grand jury that traditionally monitors the function of San Bernardino County government, that heard testimony from witnesses.
None of those who were eventually charged were taken before the criminal grand jury and the indictment was based entirely upon the testimony of witnesses who were not charged.
Those named in the March 2011 indictment were Wilke; retired lieutenant William Maddox; retired assistant sheriff Michael Stodelle; detective David Pichotta; Hobart Gray, who had recently before retired at the rank of captain; Angela Gray, an unsworn custody specialist; and Christian, an unsworn training specialist..
All were accused of falsifying training documents. All but Angela Gray and Christian were accused of having benefited directly from the falsifications. As sworn officers, Pichotta, Maddox, Wilke, Stodelle, and Hobart Gray had received salary enhancements upon certification of the completion of the POST classes.
Nevertheless, in July, deputy district attorney Dan Silverman, who was prosecuting all seven POST scandal defendants, abruptly dismissed all charges against Maddox, acknowledging that information that had been made available to the prosecutor’s office created a situation in which he would no longer be able to prove Maddox had engaged in the actions previously alleged and that his office could not establish criminal intent on Maddox’s part. Maddox had been charged with having falsely claimed credit for  completing advanced dispatch training. Maddox’s attorney, Michael Scafiddi, proffered documentation and information to the district attorney’s office demonstrating Maddox completed all of the training certification courses he was credited with completing when Maddox applied for dispatch certification based upon his work opening a dispatch center in the desert. Doing that required him speaking with other agencies throughout the state and researching both technical and procedural issues. Scafiddi established that Maddox was told by the sheriff’s academy staff that the research and work he did in setting up the dispatch center qualified him to audit the dispatch class, and that he was instructed by his captain to apply for the advanced certificate ten months later.
Wilke and Maddox are two of four command level officers who were implicated in the training completion falsifications. Though Silverman maintained that the case against both Grays, Stodelle, Christian, Pichotta and Wilke remains active, the Sentinel has been provided with information suggesting the district attorney’s office has put the case against Wilke on hold and is waiting for an opportune occasion to dismiss the charges against him. A factor in the delay is the consideration that ending the prosecution of Wilke would bring to a total of two the number of cases dismissed in the high-profile matter and erode the prosecution’s credibility in proceeding against the other five defendants.
Though sheriff Rod Hoops publicly appeared with district attorney Mike Ramos in announcing the indictments in March 2011 in an effort to display a united front with regard to the case, there were sharp divisions between the sheriff’s department and the prosecutor’s office with regard to the case from the outset, as was evidenced in the decisions to allow Wilke, Pichotta and Christian to remain in their work assignments with the department. Pichotta and Christian are currently on leave from the department. The case against Wilke was never considered to be overwhelming. A follow-up examination of Wilke’s actions by the sheriff’s department concluded there was neither probable cause to arrest him nor grounds to criminally charge him. By demanding that the internal sheriff’s department report be entered into evidence, Chuck Nacsin, Wilke’s attorney, can virtually assure that the district attorney’s office will not proceed with the case, sources indicate.
Nacsin said,  “The oddity about this case is the sheriff’s department brought the case against all seven, including my client, to the grand jury. Internal  affairs brought him in and they cleared him to go back to work. But at this point the criminal case is still going forward. It is true internal affairs cleared him. Charges are still pending. We haven’t gotten there [vindication] yet.”
This morning, September 21, a discovery hearing for Wilke is to be held in Judge Michael A. Smith’s courtroom. Both sheriff’s department and prosecutor’s office employees and former employees have indicated the case against Wilke will soon be dropped.
Silverman did not return a call seeking clarification.

(September 21)  The Victorville City Council has denied a claim by the firm that marketed its bonds demanding the city cover the company’s expenses in responding to questions put to it by a series of investigators looking into the city’s financial transactions.
Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios, a Carlsbad, California–based firm which provides investment banking, advisory and underwriting services to municipal entities, handled Victorville’s bond transactions throughout the 2000s. When the FBI, Securities & Exchange Commission and the San Bernardino County Grand Jury interested themselves in a number of issues pertaining to city finances, including representations made to investors and how the proceeds from issued and sold bonds were actually spent, employees with Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios were interviewed, indeed interrogated, and subpoenaed to provide backup documentation with regard to those bond sales and expenditures.
Among the issues explored in those inquiries were financing arrangement for four hangars built at Southern California Logistics Airport, two city-sponsored power plant projects – the  Victorville 2 and Foxborough electricity generating stations – which ate up well over $150 million in development costs but ultimately were never completed, and the rerouting of bond money from projects that money was originally intended for to other undertakings.
In a letter to the city on behalf of Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios, attorney Kenneth Lounsbery states “Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios’s costs have steadily mounted as it continues to defend its own and the city’s interests” and that the firm had saved city officials’ bacon by stopping hard charging officials and prosecutors dead in their tracks. “After many months of document production and communication with regulatory agencies, Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios believes all issues have been addressed and adequate proof provided to such agencies that all rules, regulations and requirements were satisfied,” Lounsbery wrote.
Moreover,  Lounsbery asserted that  Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios’s work on behalf of the city had been crucial to the city’s efforts to develop four hangars at the airport, having “undertaken an extraordinary set of responsibilities” in doing so. “These are assets for which the city has Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios to thank,” Lounsbery said. “The city’s legal interests have been defended and protected against challenges launched by the original developer who brought the hangar construction project to a calamitous halt. Despite the recession, the downturn in the city’s fortunes and the associated stress, Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios has previously held a good professional relationship with the city.”
In his letter, which was dated August 23, Lounsbery did not delineate a specific amount owed by the city to Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios for responding to the investigative inquiry, but he did reference a request for indemnification previously provided to the city.  He implied that Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios had been treated shabbily by the city’s attorney, Andre DeBortnowski. He further suggested that De Bortnowski’s action, or lack thereof, with regard to the bond sales had created problems for the city.
“The heart of   Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios’s response to the [Securities & Exchange Commission] inquiry is its ‘due diligence’ that all material information was disclosed – which due diligence is curative of any perceived flaw in the bond proceedings,” Lounsbery wrote. “Your city attorney served as co-disclosure counsel with respect to the issuance of the bonds relevant to this inquiry. Thus, it was the attorney’s duty to formally document those facts disclosed by Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios. The extent to which such facts may not have been disclosed, or incompletely disclosed by counsel at the time will become a factor in the analysis of the propriety of all events related to the completion of the hangar projects. As the city analyzes this claim, it must consider the potential for a conflict between the duty owed to the city by the disclosure counsel, and the role the same counsel could or should play in the claims process.”
“The preliminary claim previously filed by Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios was forwarded to your city attorney, who responded with a rationale for recommending denial. Communication has been made to the city attorney concerning this indemnity. We and Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios have been frustrated by the delays and lack of response from that office,”  Lounsbery wrote. Calling for the city to respond with what he termed “appropriate dispatch,” Lounsbery said he would initiate a lawsuit on Kinsell, Newcomb and De Dios’ behalf if the city did not indemnify the city within 45 days of the date of the letter.
Despite the prospect of that lawsuit, the city council denied the claim.
The city council’s decision to make that denial, the Sentinel has learned, was influenced by the suggestion that Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios in some measure invited the Securities & Exchange Commission’s scrutiny of Victorville through its own action.
One issue investigators latched onto was alleged efforts by Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios’s executive vice-president, J. Jeffery Kinsell, to filter, i.e., launder, campaign contributions to Victorville city officials.
Another area of concern for the Securities & Exchange Commission was that Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios had a potential conflict of interest with regard to some of the work it did on the city’s behalf.  An element of the Securities & Exchange Commission’s investigation pertains to the existence of a relationship between Tom Barnett, one of the principals in Inland Energy Group, and J. Jeffery Kinsell. Inland Energy Group was centrally involved in the Victorville 2 Power Plant project and provided consulting services with regard to the Foxborough power plant project. Regulators are seeking to determine if the city’s contractual relationship with either Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios or Inland Energy and Barnett resulted in kickbacks between those parties, the misdirection or redirection of any investment capital, the loss thereof or incomplete disclosure to investors.

(September 21)  The opponents of Measure R, an initiative to reduce the compensation of San Bernardino County supervisors by 72.6 percent, are seeking to discredit the measure by associating it with former supervisor and assessor Bill Postmus.
Last year, Wrightwood resident and former grand jury member Kieran “Red” Brennan launched what seemed a Quixotic effort to gather the 43,250 signatures needed on a petition to put before the voters a countywide initiative that would reduce San Bernardino County supervisors’ annual $151,971 salaries and $67,500 in benefits to $50,000 in salary and $10,000 in benefits annually, a drop in total compensation from $219,471 per year to $60,000. Brennan’s seemingly impossible undertaking was furthered when he coordinated with Eric Steinmann, a wealthy entrepreneur who bankrolled, and thereby significantly advanced,  Brennan’s signature gathering effort.
In the same time frame, the board of supervisors raised the ire of the county’s two largest unions – the San Bernardino Public Employees Association and the Safety Employees Benefit Association – by proposing that those unions make salary and benefit concessions with regard to their existing labor contracts or otherwise face layoffs of substantial numbers of their members. When the board followed that request up with an open discussion of a ballot initiative putting future pension increases for county employees up to a public vote, the unions joined in with Steinmann and Brennan in their petition effort. By March, their collective efforts resulted in the gathering of 73,672 signatures, qualifying the supervisors’ pay reduction measure for the November ballot. The county registrar of voters later designated that initiative “Measure R.”
Alarmed at this development, a majority of the board of supervisors in July invoked their privilege as elected officials and placed a measure on the November ballot designed to counteract the Brennan/Steinmann/public employee union-sponsored measure, one that would reduce the supervisors’ salaries by a more moderate amount  – a $5,269 trimming to $146,702.per year, while allowing their $67,500 annual benefits to remain in place.  That initiative has since been designated “Measure Q.”
The proponents of Measure R insist that Measure Q is a cynical attempt at sleight-of-hand to fool the voters and have them accept a bogus version of reform. Four of the current supervisors and the other proponents of Measure Q insist that the impetus behind the qualification of Measure R for the ballot was the unions’ animus at the board for seeking to reduce spending in a context of dwindling revenue availability for local governments.
Recently, Measure R opponents have seized upon information they have come across to indicate that Bill Postmus played what they consider to be a crucial role in drafting Measure R’s language and then qualifying it for the ballot.
Postmus less than a decade ago was the most powerful political entity in San Bernardino County. In 2000, at the age of 29, he was elected First District supervisor, having launched himself into that position from the post of president of the High Desert Young Republicans. In 2004, he was reelected supervisor and acceded to the position of chairman of the board of supervisors. Moreover, he was elected chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. He was widely viewed as a likely future candidate for California Assembly, state Senate or Congress. In 2006, he was elected county assessor. By 2008, however, Postmus’ political career began to unravel, as he was beset with widening reports of drug use and in January 2009 he was arrested for drug possession when investigators looking into reports of abuses of authority at the assessor’s office serving a search warrant at his condominium found methamphetamine, the drug extacy and drug paraphernalia. He resigned a year later. In 2010 he was indicted on political corruption, bribery, extortion, perjury and conspiracy charges. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to a total of 14 counts contained in that indictment.
According to information provided to the Sentinel, those campaigning against Measure R are now resolved to utilize Postmus’s fall from grace and the disrepute he suffered in that fall in making a case against the initiative to radically curtail supervisors’ pay and benefits.
Postmus, opponents of Measure R are set to allege, was the go-between who put Brennan in contact with Steinmann at that crucial moment last year when the flickering flame of the signature-gathering  effort for the supervisor compensation reduction initiative was about to blow out.  By tying Postmus to the Measure R effort, opponents believe voters can be convinced to reject the initiative as one of questionable pedigree or dishonorable provenance.
Brennan, however, told the Sentinel “That’s not the case. I know them both [Steinmann and Postmus].  I don’t know Bill Postmus as well as Eric. Eric’s a neighbor.”
Brennan said he did not believe Postmus had any involvement in the effort to gather petitions to qualify the measure for the ballot or to promote the measure now that it is headed to a vote.
“I can only speak from what I have experienced, but I have not seen Bill at all,” Brennan said.
He said his motive in creating the initiative and pushing to get it before the county’s voters was simply that “I believe the county supervisors are overpaid for what they do. It may be a full time job, but from what little I’ve seen, they are not working full time. Even if it were a full time job, that is a lot of money to get paid. They are paid more than some CEOs get in the private sector.”
Measure Q, which was put forth by the supervisors, was requested by supervisor Gary Ovitt, a onetime Posmus ally, who asked the county counsel’s office to draft it. Measure Q makes no provision for a reduction in the supervisors’ staffs. Steinmann and Brennan’s measure calls for their combined staff budgets to be reduced from $6 million to $1.5 million a year.
In putting their measure on the November ballot, the supervisors referenced this year’s grand jury report, which was critical of Steinmann and Brennan’s proposed reduction in supervisor pay.
The San Bernardino Public Employees Association and San Bernardino Safety Employees Benefit Association spent roughly $100,000 in the effort to qualify Steinmann and Brennan’s measure for the ballot.

(September 21)  Los Angeles World Airports, the entity created by the city of Los Angeles to run three airports that city owns, has released a 60-page consultant’s report that offers an inexact estimate of the retail value of Ontario International Airport.
The consultant, the firm of Leigh Fisher, pegs the airport as being worth at least $243 million and as much as $605 million. The calculations are based on cash flow expectations over the next half century, the report states.
Los Angeles took over management of Ontario Airport in 1967 as part of a strategy to increase flights out of the aerodrome. That ploy worked, as Los Angeles was able to use its control of gate positions and other considerations at Los Angeles International Airport to induce airlines to fly into and out of Ontario. Just under 200,000 passengers enplaned at Ontario Airport in 1966. Under Los Angeles’s management, over $550 million in improvements were made to the facility. In 1985, Ontario deeded the airport to Los Angeles for no consideration. In 2007, usage of the airport peaked, with 7.2 million passengers moving through the airport’s gates.
Since that time, passenger traffic through Ontario International has dropped dramatically, with 4.2 million passengers using the airport in 2011, and further declines registering this year.
Ontario city officials have repeatedly asserted that Los Angeles World Airports is purposefully mismanaging Ontario Airport’s operations to increase passenger traffic at Los Angeles International Airport, which has undergone significant renovations in recent years.
Los Angeles World Airport officials reject those claims, maintaining that the drop in passenger traffic through Ontario is a function of the sputtering economy and the doldrums in the airline industry generally.
Ontario officials have pushed ever more strenuously – including seeking legislation in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. and conducting an intense public relations campaign – to have Los Angeles return ownership and management of the airport to Ontario.
At one point, Ontario city officials, led by councilman Alan Wapner, were suggesting that  Los Angeles should simply deed the airport back to Ontario as a public benefit transfer, propounding that the airport had no value as marketable real estate. Quietly, however, the city of Ontario made a confidential offer to purchase the airport for $50 million and an assumption of all debt related to financing for improvements that had been made to the airport.
Los Angeles officials have indicated they are not prepared to simply surrender their autonomy over the airport and they believe the aerodrome and its assets to be worth in excess of $450 million.  Last year they floated the idea of privatizing the airport and selling it and its assets to an investor or firm specializing in airport operations. They sought parties interested in just such an arrangement, eliciting responses from ten  domestic and international entities, including American Airports Corporation, a California-based airport operator; Airport Property Ventures, a California-based airport operator; AMP Capital Investors, an Australian infrastructure fund manager; Aviation Facilities Company, a Virginia-based airport manager and developer; Carlyle Group, a Washington DC-based private equity firm; Fraport, a German airport investor, owner and manager; GMR Airports, an Indian airport operator; Goldman Sachs Infrastructure Partners, a New York-based infrastructure fund; Incheon International Airport Corporation, a Korea-based airport operator; and Munich Airport Consulting, a German airport operator.
Los Angeles World Airport’s hiring of Leigh Fisher and the contents of the report drove home the very real possibility that Los Angeles could simply sell the airport to the highest bidder, leaving Ontario in the position of having to accommodate a private company’s primacy with regard to the airport’s operation. The Leigh Fisher report provides Los Angeles with a sufficient basis to reject Ontario’s assertion that the airport has no monetary value. That monetary value potentially exceeds the roughly $50 million in cash and assumption of roughly $75 million in debt Ontario has referenced.
The Leigh Fisher document points out that there have been varying valuations for mid-size hub airports such as Ontario over the last several years, at ranges below and well above the price Ontario officials envision for Ontario Airport.  According to the report, “The Port Authority of New York bought Stewart Airport for $78.5 million in 2000.” The report further notes, “In Chicago, the city conducted a competitive bid process for a 99-year lease of  Midway Airport. A consortium offered $2.52 billion. The timing of the bid coincided with 2008 financial crisis and the transaction was not completed, with the investors forfeiting a $126 deposit  in the process.” The report also referenced “Luis Munoz Airport serving San Juan, Puerto Rico, [which is] classified as a medium hub airport by the FAA. In July 2012, the government announced the award of a 40-year lease to a consortium consisting of a Mexican airport operator and an investment firm for $615 million, annual lease payments and agreements to make specified improvements.” That deal is currently undergoing FAA review.
Nevertheless, Leigh Fisher indicated there were factors that inhibited Ontario Airport’s value.  “Compared to other medium hub airports with comparable numbers of enplaned passengers, Ontario has high airline charges as reflected in its per enplaned passenger charges, somewhat lower non-airline revenue in comparison to its peers, considerably higher maintenance and operating expenses due to high staffing levels and particularly high costs for security, law enforcement, airport rescue and firefighting,” the Leigh Fisher report states. “Based on Ontario Airport’s role as an airport in the Los Angeles basin and industry trends, it is likely that in the near term the increased focus of mainline airlines and low cost carriers such as Southwest on service development at large hubs and international gateways such as Los Angeles International Airport may continue to limit Ontario Airport’s airline service development.”

(September 21)  In a rare but permissible move, the county of San Bernardino is advancing the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District over $5 million in property tax that it is calculated the district will be due at a later date.
The Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District straddles portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, consisting of six elementary schools, two junior high schools, one high School, four alternative schools and an adult school.
According to San Bernardino County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector Larry Walker, his office “received a request from Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District for a temporary transfer of funds, in accordance with the provisions of Article XVI, Section 6 of the California Constitution and Section 42620 of the California Education Code. These provisions require the board of supervisors to order the county treasurer to make a temporary transfer of funds to a school district from any funds of the county not immediately needed to pay claims of the county if the school district has established a need for the funds. The temporary transfer of funds must not exceed 85% of the anticipated property tax revenue that will accrue to the school district, and shall be re-transferred by the auditor controller tax collector to the fund of the county from property tax collections before any other obligation of the school district is paid.”
“The district has requested a temporary transfer of funds for $5,060,000. The auditor/tax collector/controller’s office considered several factors, including the district’s deepest projected cash deficit and the anticipated tax revenue that will accrue to the district in arriving at its recommendation,” Walker continued. “In addition to demonstrating a cash need, the district has established inter-fund borrowing authority for the auditor/tax collector controller’s office to consider in its recommendation to the board of supervisors that a temporary transfer of funds be approved.”
Walker added, “Upon review of the district’s cash needs, the auditor treasurer controller’s office finds that the district has satisfactorily demonstrated a reasonable need for a temporary transfer of funds and recommends a temporary transfer of funds of $5,060,000. This amount represents the lesser of the district’s request; 85% of its anticipated tax revenue, and 125% of its deepest projected cash deficit for 2012-13.”
School District temporary transfers of funds are non-interest bearing and thus reduce the mount of county funds available for county use until repayment is completed, such that county interest earnings will be reduced while the school district utilizes the temporary transfer.
The board’s action establishes a “line-of-credit” in the amount of $5,060,000 for Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District to draw on, as needed, to be repaid by April 29, 2013.

(Sepember 21)  The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department is contributing a full-time clerical worker and overtime compensation for one officer as its part in a multiagency taskforce targeting illicit narcotic distribution activity spanning the border with Riverside County. According to documentation provided to the county board of supervisors by sheriff Rod Hoops and captain Steve Higgins, the Sheriff’s Department will be reimbursed by the federal government up to $47,779.25 for salary and overtime costs related to participation in the Riverside Task Force from September 30, 2012 through September 30, 2013.
The Department has participated in the Riverside Task Force since 1992 as a means of targeting, investigating and prosecuting major drug trafficking organizations in Riverside/San Bernardino Counties.
“The department’s participation in the task force results in better coordination with other agencies involved in major drug trafficking investigations and enhances the prospect of disrupting drug traffic in the area,” Higgins said.
The individual holding the clerical position reimbursed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Administration is provided with a salary of $30,577.00. Overtime costs for one safety position assigned to the task force total $17,202.25. That cost is also picked up by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

(September 14)  Catastrophe was averted this and last week after a Fort Irwin Middle School student came across five grenade simulators and then, with two of his older friends who were students at Silver Valley High School, took four of the devices to the middle school campus, where they left them after unsuccessful attempts to detonate them.
On September 3, a first unexploded training grenade had been found off campus in the wash area of Sandy Basin. On September 5, another grenade – identical to those used in training exercises by soldiers at the National Training Center – was found on the roof of the middle school by a maintenance worker repairing that facility’s air conditioning system. School administrators immediately put the campus on lockdown. A search of the campus turned up two further grenade simulators on Thursday, September 6. The entire area around where the devices were found was cordoned off and explosive ordnance disposal soldiers disarmed and removed them. Bomb sniffing dogs from the Marine Corps Logistics Base were utilized to search for additional grenades. None were immediately found, but on Monday, September 10, another simulator turned up on the campus.
A team of military police took up the case on September 5, eventually determining that the five devices had been in the possession of three teenagers  –  two high school students and a junior high school student, all males. The junior high school student had found them at his home in a handbag. The three then took the grenades to the junior high campus after school hours, where they attempted to activate them by pulling out the ignition pins, but were unable to do so. One of the grenades was lobbed onto the roof of the school.
The devices do not possess the fragmentation capability of combat grenades, but nevertheless are powerful enough to kill or maim. Each possesses roughly two grams of explosives, enough to blow off the hand and part of the arm of someone holding it, blind or deafen someone if it explodes proximate to one’s face, or kill an individual if the device detonates too close to the head or thorax.
Marc Jackson, superintendent of Silver Valley Unified School District, told the Sentinel, “The military police have determined that they were brought to our campus by two high school students and one student at the junior high. They all participated in taking the simulators. They tried to pull out the pins but didn’t have the strength. They threw them over the fences. After the first one was found, the principal called security and the fire department. One of the firefighters took a look at it and immediately said we needed to call the bomb squad, the military’s explosive ordnance disposal team.  The bomb squad came in and we swept the campus and went through our process and procedures in an expeditious manner. We moved the students away from where the devices were found.  The team did its work. We are confident all of the devices were found and we are coming to the end of this chapter.”
Jackson said of the three students responsible for the grenades being brought to the school, “They have been suspended, pending a pre-expulsion hearing. They were picked up and cited with that section of the penal code relating to being in the possession of explosives. They were taken to the Ft. Irwin Police Department today [September 12] and released to their parents this afternoon.”
The superintendent said the three young men “will be held accountable. I think it prudent to say we intend to enforce the consequences of their actions. I believe even good students do stupid things. This was not an intentional criminal act. We don’t think it was their intention to hurt anyone, but they were explosive devices. They were not firecrackers. They are extremely dangerous and we are going to enforce the education code.”
Jackson said, “I was really impressed with how quickly and expeditiously we moved in response to this. It was very well coordinated, with the school, the fire department, the bomb squad, and the military police. Coming when this did, there was concern this might be a terrorist act because of 9-11. We worked with the parents to give them information and keep communication at the forefront. They were legitimately very afraid about what seemed to be happening. I am very pleased with the support we received from [Ft. Irwin garrison commander] Colonel [Kurt] Pinkerton.”
It appears that the student that obtained the grenades did so as a consequence of having a family member stationed at Ft. Irwin, as was stated on the post’s website.  Nevertheless, Jackson said it was fortunate that there were military resources to assist in stabilizing the situation.
“We reacted in full partnership with the installation,” Jackson said. “Having them there was beneficial.”
Despite the trauma, he said there was a silver lining. “I do believe this will make us better responders when these type of things happen again,” he said.

(September 14)  The Twentynine Palms Planning Commission last week set the stage for a prohibition on commercial solar fields both within the city and its sphere of influence.
Though it is a quintessential desert town, influential Twentynine Palms civic leaders and many of its residents have drawn a line in the sand against massive scale power farms, even as national leaders have hailed solar power as the wave of the future and a means of achieving American energy independence and rejuvenating the economy.
On September 4, the commission endorsed a resolution calling for the city’s development code to be amended with the ban. The commission asked the  city council, in the event it does not approve an outright ban, to place exacting standards on any solar fields that are permitted.
While expressing approval of photo-voltaic panels, photo-voltaic film, photo-voltaic laminates and so-called solar panels, all of which can be applied to existing or new homes or industrial or commercial structures, the commission was less accepting of more aggressive solar power projects, i.e., commercial solar fields.
Solar fields are generally large scale facilities that entail variations on a few basic designs, all of which entail a massive array of solar mirrors. One design involves the arrays focusing the sun’s rays on a central vessel containing water. The heat from the redirected sunlight causes the water to boil and the steam is used to drive a turbine, which in turn creates electricity. Another design entails having the mirrors focus the sunlight on a glass tube or series of glass tubes containing Therminol, a synthetic petroleum product.  Therminol, which has various ratings that allow it to absorb temperatures ranging from 700 degrees  to 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, is then pumped to a heat condenser, which is used to boil water and create steam to run turbines and generate electricity. A variation on this design entails pumping the Therminol not to a heat condenser but to a series of Stirling engines, devices which have compression chambers inhabited by gasses of differing densities. By passing the heat across the top of the engines, the pistons are activated. The Stirling engines are then used to run the turbines to generate the electricity.
The planning commission collectively held that commercial solar fields are incompatible with the city, its character and its land use policy. The reasons given for excluding them ran to the fields not employing many workers; the potential that they would represent a loss of property tax revenue to the city; the visual blight and obstruction they would entail; the harm they would do to the local tourism industry; the deleterious impact on adjoining property uses and values; impacts on the quality of life for surrounding residents; as well as ecological harm in the way of damage to indigenous flora and fauna and archeological artifacts.
The commission also called for solar fields to be restricted to the southeast quadrant of the city and its sphere of influence if the city council, in its wisdom, at some future date allows such projects to be undertaken.

(September 14)  The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board has taken action against two San Bernardino County entities – a public agency and a private development company – for actions that compromised local water supplies or waterways.  In Victorville, the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority was hit with a $700,000 fine for a series of sewage spills that took place at its wastewater treatment plant two years ago.
Lahontan has also  ordered the Arimol Group to take immediate restoration steps at its Meadowbrook Road development site in Lake Arrowhead, preparatory to the levying of fines related to violations there.
As of press time this week, a settlement agreement between the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority had been forged, whereby the authority acknowledged that it had improperly discharged nearly 43 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Mojave River over a 15-day span from late December 2010 into January 2011 after the agency’s main pipeline in the riverbed failed during a storm; that the plant discharged another 110,700 gallons of partially treated wastewater from August 22, 2010 through August 28, 2010 because of operator neglect; and that 230 gallons of partially treated wastewater from its Victorville plant were discharged into the river on June 18, 2010 as the consequence of a power outage.
The Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority (VVWRA), which is still using a temporary bypass through the Mojave Narrows, is undertaking a $11.1 million project to move the pipeline out of the riverbed. It has also installed overflow basins.
At press time, it was anticipated that Lahontan would put its final imprimatur on the settlement, which has already been accepted by the VVWRA board. VVWRA will put $377,394 of that amount up in the form of a cash endowment from its reserves to the State Water Resources Control Board’s cleanup and abatement account. The balance –  $322,606 – will eventually be provided to construct desalter plants in the region.
In the San Bernardino Mountains, Lahontan has ordered Arimol Group and its president, Bill Moller, to initiate a trio of restoration steps at the Meadowbrook subdivision located at Meadowbrook Road and Cedar Court. The property, which is slightly larger than an acre, is adjacent to Moller’s Serenity Conference and Retreat Center. Lahontan wants channel alignments, widths and grades surveyed; a 30-inch corrugated metal pipe culvert and concrete headwall removed so to restore two creek beds to their historical flow paths; and drain rock, to prevent concentrated flows and sheet flows, placed around the perimeter of the concrete slab recently constructed on 995 Meadowbrook Road.
In general, the water board wants the Arimol group to take steps to prevent erosion and the disturbance of soil on the site.
The board first issued a notice of violation to Arimol on June 20. Arimol responded with a mitigation plan on July 20 that Lahontan considers inadequate.
Lahontan is in the initial stages of assessing administrative civil liability penalties against Arimol that will be adjudicated by the Lahontan board. Those penalties exist in the form of fines of $1,000 per day to $10,000 per day for each alleged violation.

(September 14)  The union representing San Bernardino County’s sheriff’s deputies and district attorney’s investigators has voted to approve a new contract that institutes a set of concessions on benefits and salary levels enjoyed by the officers.
The vote brings to a close a more-than-yearlong effort initiated by county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux to rein in public safety employee costs  as part of a strategy to limit current and future deficit spending by the county.  It is projected that by 2016, the county will sustain an “institutional” annual deficit of $130 million, meaning that contractual commitments to employee unions for salary and benefits will create a circumstance by which the county will take in $130 million less per year in revenues than is required to operate county government. The concessions made by the union, while substantive, were less far-reaching than Devereaux had previously sought. The reduced projected cost to the county under the deal eliminates for the time being the threat that Devereaux would impose on sheriff Rod Hoops a mandate to lay off a significant number of his deputies.
Sworn members of the sheriff’s department up to the rank of lieutenant and investigators with the district attorney’s office are represented by the San Bernardino County Safety Employees Benefit Association, known by the acronym SEBA. In a 681-91 vote of the rank and file, a proposal to have the union’s members accept five concessions was approved.  Those concessions included having the officers accept paying into their own retirement plans a sum equal to 4.72 percent of their yearly pay, which until now was being defrayed by the county; reducing previously granted 5 percent raises to 2.5 percent; giving back one percent of what the county pays into their medical retirement trusts; a reduction from 100 hours to 50 hours the compensation time union members can cash out annually; and having all new hired union employees accept a retirement plan that grants them the right to retire at the age of 50 and receive two percent of their highest yearly salary times the number of years they have worked with the county. The acceptance of the latter provision will create two classes of employees, since current union members are eligible to retire at 50 and receive three percent of their highest salary times the number of years they have worked with the county.
In accepting those terms, SEBA members sidestepped the imposition of the “last, best, and final offer” approved by the county board of supervisors in June, which called for a 4 percent pay cut and the elimination of compensation time.
The union members did wring from the county one additional perquisite, namely having each member’s annual leave increased from 40 to 60 hours.