(June 6) The Highland City Council last week turned back politician-turned-developer Glenn Elssmann in his effort to achieve a breakthrough project success, at least temporarily stymieing his effort to obtain entitlement to construct a shopping center and accompanying 800-unit residential unit complex along Greenspot Road east of Highway 210.
Elssmann has been going eyeball-to-eyeball with Highland planning division employees and city council members for months. His proposal is to strengthen Highland’s sales tax base by putting a shopping center into what the city refers to as its Golden Triangle, on Greenspot Road across from the existing Highland Crossings Shopping Center. Elssmann says he will bring in tenants to the center he is contemplating that will be every bit as good as the Highland Crossings’ anchor, Lowes Hardware and Garden Center. Simultaneously, he proposes to develop a three-story apartment complex north of the shopping center, providing the center with a ready store of customers.
Having dubbed his energetic development proposal the Greenspot Marketplace and Village, Elssmann has been seeking to forge an arrangement by which the corporate entity that will undertake the project, Mission Development, will provide the city with infrastructure to offset the impact of the development on the city’s ability to provide basic services. In this case, Elssmann has said he is amenable to purchasing a ladder truck for the fire department that will provide protection for the apartment complex.
That firetruck, built in Wisconsin and costing in excess of $900,000, would be staged out of Highland Fire Station 1, at 26974 Baseline Avenue, and be available to the entire community.
Elssmann said he would be willing to purhase the ladder truck but balked at defraying the cost of paying the annual salary of a firefighter to boost one of the city’s three-man engine teams to four-man strength to provide the ladder truck with a full complement.
Because the three story apartment project would be the sole structure in town requiring the safety provision of a ladder truck, a majority of the council was insistent that Mission Development pick up the city’s added costs in manning the truck. Elssmann failed to strike a compromise with the council over that issue.
Elssmann,  a school teacher who was elected to the city council in Loma Linda in 1994 but lost the 1998 election to Robert Ziprick, moved on to serve as a consultant to and representative of developers coming before the Loma Linda City Council. He subsequently reinvented himself as a developer.
In those capacities, Elssman represented both the Lewis Operating Corporation,  the successor to Lewis Homes, in its efforts to proceed with the University Village project, a 1,500 homes and apartment subdivision and accompanying commercial uses north of Mission Road in Loma Linda, and Washington-based Holland Partners Orchard Park LLC, which wanted to build 900 residential units on adjoining property to the University Village project between Redlands Boulevard and Mission Road.
Both of those projects were approved by the Loma Linda City Council in 2005 but were never completed after citizens groups in that city protested their approval. During those protests, Elssmann’s role as a developer who had traded upon his former position as a councilman became an issue utilized by the low-growth and no-growth movement opposing the projects.
Elssmann since 2001 has been associated with a growing list of development companies, including Cb Land Company, LLC, Deer Park, LLC, Mission Development and Loma Linda Village Center, LLC., all of which are located in Redlands. While success with large projects such as Orchard Park or University Village have eluded him, his development company has had direct or indirect involvement with construction or design work on some smaller residential projects in Loma Linda.
Though the approval of Greenspot Marketplace and Village was not granted by the council, Mayor Larry McCallon told Elssmann he was free to come back with a more definitive plan in keeping with the council’s wishes in the future. Elssmann is hopeful that success with the Greenspot Marketplace and Village will advance him to the next tier of developers in San Bernardino County.

(June 7) In anticipation of the Upland City Council’s approval of  the upcoming 2013-14 budget, city manager Stephen Dunn shot down reports that the city was going to be more than million dollars short of its earlier anticipated revenue for the upcoming year.
Dunn said he is confident the city will receive roughly $40 million in revenue in the twelve months between July 1, 2013 and June 30, 2014 and can meet the goal he has imposed on the city’s department heads of holding overall operating expenditures to $38.5 million to generate $1.5 million in reserves.
In 2012-13, Upland functioned on a balanced general fund budget that took in $39.8 million in revenues matched by $39.8 million in expenditures.
Dunn said there may be declines or delays in the receipt of some of the income the city receives. “Our revenue remains flat,” Dunn said. “This year, we expected $4.5 million in property tax but only got $3.9 million, mostly because of delinquencies in some of our residents paying. We will eventually get that money but there will be a delay. Property tax comes in twice a year, in April and December. The housing market is starting to burn hot in San Bernardino County and banks are no longer hanging on to foreclosures, so that should clean the slate and we will get those delinquencies.”
Dunn also said that the city may not receive $100,000 in what he called “surplus” money from the county, which is passed along to municipalities by the board of supervisors from leftover funds they have to spend within their districts at the end of each fiscal year. He said the city will be able to make do without that windfall.
In the run-up to the preparation of the  2013-14 budget, which he  said he hoped to have approved at the last council meeting this month, Dunn indicated he instructed the city’s department heads to start with the assumption that the city will have roughly the same amount of general fund money in the upcoming year – $40 million – that it had in the current fiscal year.  He told the department heads his goal was to have the city build a $1.5 million reserve into the budget.
The department heads returned, Dunn said “with $1.8 million more in expenditures than the $40 million in expected revenue.  We have since made adjustments and at the last round we were at a break even point, with revenues matching expenditures.”
He said the exercise will be performed again and again until the $38.5 million goal is reached.
“We have to look at lowering our expenditures because we really can’t control revenue,” he said.
Dunn said he is relatively sure the city will have $40 million in revenue into its general fund. He said that revenue model assumed a three to five percent property tax delinquency.
The city would eventually be able to hold the expenditure line, he said, because of contract concessions the city had earlier achieved with employee bargaining groups.

(May 31)Residents in the San Bernardino Mountains are growing increasingly anxious over the recent proliferation of residential facilities intended to house recovering drug and alcohol addicts in their community, accompanied by drug and alcohol treatment centers catering to the residential facilities’ clientele.
At issue is the residents’ demand that the county, which normally exercises land use authority in the county’s unincorporated areas, undertake some form of regulatory action to rein in what they perceive as a growing nuisance and activity  incompatible with the sedate rural mountain ambience. County officials’ insist that state law pertaining to such rehabilitation residences eclipses local ordinances and planning authority. By meeting a minimum set of standards which include limitations on the number of occupants per unit, county officials maintain, the proprietors of the homes are free to maintain and operate those facilities without interference. After initiating a revamping of the permitting process for such operations, the county has suspended that effort.
In response, mountain community members suggest that county officials are underestimating the limits of their regulatory authority and are shying away from applying other forms of their authority such as policing, code enforcement and prosecutorial powers to prevent behavior detrimental to the community.
Indeed, the county’s own zoning codes show what is now the centerpiece of the mountain community’s rehabilitation operations is a “use not allowed.”
Ground zero in the growing controversy is a company – Above It All Treatment Centers – and the company’s owner, Kory Avarell. More than four years ago, in seeming anticipation of California legislation – Assembly Bills 109 and 117, which cycled what were defined as low-level inmates out of state prisons into county facilities and had the secondary effect of prompting the release of drug offenders into the community, in many cases into state-licensed halfway houses or treatment centers – Avarell opened nine six bed residential facilities for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics in the San Bernardino Mountains.  Six of those were in Lake Arrowhead, two in Crestline and one in Twin Peaks.
In making his application for the facilities, Avarell adroitly did not refer to them as “treatment centers, treatment homes or treatment facilities,” but rather as “sober living homes.”  Whereas a treatment facility requires a state license, a sober living home with fewer than seven residents does not need a license.
Avarell began advertising the residential services he offered, including a drug and alcohol rehabilitation strategy in a sober living environment, at a national level. The spaces he offered were quickly filled.
In relatively short order, nearby residents became alarmed at the activity and behavior of some of those living in the sober living homes. In time, complaints would manifest. Inquiries were made, but county officials claimed they had no rubric under which to take action against the homes.
Complaints, however, persisted. A common element in such complaints was that the homes were incompatible with nearby residential uses.
In what he would maintain was a compromise intended to ameliorate the concerns of those objecting to the homes, Avarell last fall announced his willingness to close down homes on West Shore Road, Alder Lane, Montreal Drive in Lake Arrowhead and another in Crestline on Kissing Rock Road.  To offset those closures, in December he acquired the 17-unit Storybook Inn hotel in Skyforest, agreeing to pay its owner,  Rob Perrin, the full list price of $1.2 million, conditional upon being able to move the residents that had been displaced from the Lake Arrowhead and Crestline sober living homes into Storybook immediately.
While that transference may have seemed to be a positive development for the residents on West Shore Road, Alder Lane and Montreal Drive in Lake Arrowhead and those on Kissing Rock Road in Crestline, it proved something of a coup for Avarell, who for more than a year had been operating a rehabilitation clinic within short walking distance of the Storybook Inn in a building at the corner of Highway 18 at Kuffel Canyon Road in Skyforest. Skyforest lies just one mile southeast of Lake Arrowhead on Highway 18.
In the intervening months, the influx of recovering addicts into the commercial district has exacerbated an already deteriorating situation. As early as 2011, a nearby businessman, Dr. Carl Melville,  a chiropractor whose office was located within the same building as the rehabilitation clinic Avarell has been operating at the Kuffel Canyon Road/Highway 18 intersection, lodged a complaint with San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford, referencing sexual activity in a nearby public restroom involving  the clinic’s patients, sexually explicit graffiti, twenty-to-thirty patients of the rehab clinic lining up in front of the clinic with urine cups, physical fights between the clinic’s clientele, second hand cigarette smoke, displays of public nudity and raucous behavior and the harassment of his patients.
Melville further cited the incompatibility of a marijuana clinic next to the rehab clinic and said he had witnessed patients smoking marijuana in front of his office, which is proximate to a school bus stop. He said that the number of his own patients had decreased as a result of the proximity of the drug recovery clinic to his business.
On April 4 of this year, the county planning commission took up the subject of licensed and unlicensed residential care facilities, including sober living and drug and alcohol treatment facilities, ultimately voting unanimously to recommend that the county implement an amendment to the county development code related to such homes and facilities.
The newly drafted regulations recommended by the planning commission would not impact upon individual homes housing six or fewer people, which are permitted to exist in residential neighborhoods containing single family homes. The major changes envisioned by the planning commission in its non-binding recommendation to the board of supervisors extend to larger facilities accommodating seven people or more, defining them as incompatible with single-family residential neighborhoods and require that they be located within areas zoned for multiple family residential uses, i.e., apartments, dormitories and hotels. While noting that “state licensed alcohol/drug treatment homes with six or fewer residents are considered a permitted residential use under state law, and the county must allow this type of facility in a single-family residential district,” the planning commission did provide for a regulation that larger such facilities be limited as to location and be subject to a stringent permitting process. At the same time, the commission called for the county to be empowered to undertake a permitting process for the smaller – six occupants or fewer – treatment homes that allows them to be located in single-family residential areas, while subjecting them to “reasonable” limitations such as requiring that they not be clustered or concentrated in a single area, be located at least 300 feet from one another, one to a block, so that “group home uses do not become the dominant residential use in a neighborhood.”
The planning commission’s action would have little or no impact on the Above It All Treatment Center’s operations, which adhere to the proposed new county standards in nearly all particulars and would be exempt, i.e., grandfathered in, as a use that pre-existed the new regulations.
Avarell this week spoke with the Sentinel about the controversy his operation has generated. He maintained that much of the protest against Above It All was wrongfully directed and that his operation was an ordered and well-run one.
He said the residential facilities are sedate and unobtrusive.
“Out of all the houses we have, I am trying to think of anywhere the actual neighbors complain,” he said. “Those that drive by do complain but that is the 10 percent that complain about everything. One of our homes, the houses on both sides burned down, so there is no one to complain. At another, the houses across the street are burned down.  At another house, we have new neighbors who love us. At one of the other houses, the neighbors have never complained. We have been around for over four years. Four years ago, one of the neighbors who was selling his house had trouble doing that because we were next door. That was the first and only time we’ve had an issue with an actual neighbor. Before that and since then we have operated without anyone knowing we are here because we are so quiet.”
Avarell addressed Melville’s litany of complaints, saying there was tension between Melville and himself because his treatment clinic had ended up displacing the chiropractic business.
“He was back due about nine months on his rent and the landlord let him go on that and we offered to move into his space and pay for it,” Avarell said. “He got angry, because we kicked him out, so to speak. If it had not been for us, the landlord probably would have let him stay on.”
Avarell did acknowledge that when both businesses were present, “We congregated there.” That conflict is no longer an issue, Avarell said. “He has been gone about a year.”
Averall said the nearby medical marijuana clinic is likewise old news. “Right next door we had a marijuana clinic,” he said. “It’s been gone for about eight months.” He suggested that bothersome activity previously cited at that location was attributable to the marijuana clinic rather than Above It All’s clients.
It is true that there is a school bus stop proximate to his operation, Avarell said. He said Above It All had been sensitive to concerns about that.
“We have standardized our sessions so that our clients are not outside when those two drop offs and pick- ups are scheduled,” he said.
The treatment clinic is located in a commercial district, Avarell said, and as such is compatible with its surroundings.
“Closest to us is a commercial office and post office, a restaurant, and Charter Cable, which are all commercial,” he said. “Across the street is all commercial. There is a pizza place.”
Within relatively close proximity, Avarell conceded, “There is one house that is zoned neighborhood commercial, which includes a cabinet shop. Those people bought that fully knowing that we were here  and are now complaining about it. Our center was disclosed to them when they came in here in about October. I actually talked to them about it. I think they are bothered now by the [cigarette] smoke that blows up toward them. We have a designated smoking area in a fire cleared area approved by the fire marshal. They are complaining about that but we are complying with what the law says and the fire marshal’s directive by having our smoking area in the only place it is permitted.”
To the Sentinel, Averall expressed surprise at reports of untoward behavior by Above It All’s clients in the proximity of the treatment center and the various residences.
“No one has brought that up to me,” he said. “If that had been brought to our attention, we would have dealt with it.”
In a promotional video for Above It All, Avarell indicated that those being treated may  be temporarily out of sorts.
“When people  get here, especially during that first week, it is hard for them, because they want to run,” Avarell said. “They don’t want this. They are giving up control. That’s a big thing. Everyone wants control and they are completely having to give that up. They are not feeling well because they are detoxing and they want to go. Of course it is our job to make sure that they stay if it is at all possible, but we know what that person is going to be like. It’s just ten days, or whatever. We know what’s going to happen.”
Nevertheless, Avarell insisted to the Sentinel, those undergoing treatment at Above It All “are very well supervised 24 hours a day.” Avarell said Above It All, which employs 80, averages roughly 40 clients at a time moving through a treatment period that lasts 30 days.  That clientele fluctuates, he said, moving to as high as 65 and down to 25 from time to time.
Averall said negative publicity about Above It All has intensified in recent weeks and that much or all of it is based on falsehoods.
“I heard just a few days ago someone accused us of having sexual predators in here,” he said. “That is not true. There was a posting on [the internet reviewing site] Yelp saying that we were engaging in unethical treatment of our clients and violating their privacy. The only one violating their privacy was the one who came in here taking pictures and then making the accusations.”
Avarell said Above It All is in compliance with all zoning codes.
“It is a state law, not a county ordinance and we do comply with state law, which is that we have six or fewer residents in our homes,” he said.
Those opposed to Above It All are misinformed and misdirected, Avarell said.
“We serve a good purpose,” he said. “We’ve treated over 120 people over the last two years absolutely free, at our cost, no cost to them. Almost 100 percent of those were local people. You will never find drugs in our house. The people here want to be here. None are court-mandated. Most have insurance. For the most part they have pretty good jobs.  We employ 80 people. What other industry up here [in the San Bernardino Mountains] provides that number of jobs? We are an important part of the local economy. I was born here and I care about my community.”
Those who believe Above It All and other drug and alcohol treatment facilities and sober living homes can be shut down are wrong, Avarell said.
“No one is going to be able to change the laws,” he said. “Newport Beach spent $2.5 million to get treatment houses out of that city and lost in court and then went to the higher courts and lost there. As long as you are obeying the law, you just can’t be removed. It is never going to change. No one is going to force us out because we are 100 percent legal. The law is on our side and the laws will not be changed. The courts have proved that through lawsuits in other cities and counties.”
The draft revised ordinance to amend the county code with regard to residential care facilities was scheduled to come before the board of supervisors on June 18. Mountain residents had asked county staff to harden elements of the county’s existing code and reinforce provisions prohibiting a rehabilitation center from being located in both neighborhood commercial and residential zones.  Their advocacy transformed into consternation, however, when they learned that the draft of the ordinance would actually expand the permitted locations of sober living homes from one to 12 zones. After meetings with representatives of Supervisor Janice Rutherford and Assemblyman Tim Donnelly did not result in any substantial change to the draft, a rising level of dissatisfaction with the county’s intention with regard to the code amendments was expressed. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that the ordinance had been taken off calendar for the June 18 meeting. It remains on hold.

More than six months after Chino Hills City Manager Mike Fleager was granted an 18-month contract extension by the city council, he abruptly announced that he will remain in the city’s top administrative position a full year less than what the contract extension provided for.
Fleager, 57, who became city manager in 2008 upon the retirement of his predecessor, Doug LaBelle, apparently came to the decision to retire on his own without any prompting from the council. Indeed, the council seemed to be caught flatfooted by his announcement.
The community safety director for the affluent Los Angeles County city of Cerritos in the 1990s, Fleager went to work for Chino Hills as community services director in July 1999. His original contract as city manager was set to expire today, May 31, 2013. Last November 13, however, a week after Cynthia Moran had been elected to the city council but before she was sworn into office, the council voted 3-1, with Mayor Art Bennett and councilmen Ed Graham and Peter Rogers in the majority and then-councilwoman Gwen Norton-Perry in opposition, to extend Fleager’s contract until November 30, 2014. The council at that point was depleted to four members following former councilman Bill Kruger’s September resignation. He would not be replaced until a special election earlier this year. Norton-Perry, who did not seek reelection in November, opposed the appointment because it deprived Moran and current councilman Ray Marquez, who was elected in March, of any input in the decision of who would manage the city.
The move to extend Fleager’s tenure was defended as one that would give the city stability as it is making a case with the California Public Utilities Commission to rescind its 2009 decision to allow Southern California Edison to erect 197-foot high towers through the heart of Chino Hills for the Tehachapi Line, i.e. electrical cables to carry electricity from what is to be the world’s largest wind power field in Kern County to the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The public utilities commission’s decision is due in July.
Fleager, in making his announcement, said he would retire this November, with one year left on his current contract. The timing of Fleager’s announcement triggered widespread speculation as to what had prompted it, including suggestions that he was privy to information presaging a decision by the public utilities commission that would be unfavorable to Chino Hills.
Fleager offered testimony on behalf of the city to the Public Utilites Commission in March. In some quarters he was criticized for having provided impolitic statements in the course of that testimony which were seen as strengthening the position of Southern California Edison, which wants to leave the electrical line above ground through Chino Hills rather than laying it below ground as large numbers of residents in the city are demanding.
Simultaneous with Fleager’s announcement, the city’s second-in-command, assistant city manager  Kathy Gotch announced she will retire in June. Gotch likely would have been a likely candidate as Fleager’s interim replacement.

(May 31) The city of Los Angeles last week rejected a claim by the city of Ontario that Ontario International Airport has been mismanaged while under the stewardship of the larger city and that the aerodrome should be returned to the custody and management of an agency Ontario and the county of San Bernardino created last year to assume operation of the airport. .
In April, the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Sheppard Mullen Richter & Hampton, on Ontario’s behalf filed an administrative claim, considered to be the precursor of a lawsuit, against the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports, charging them with chronic mismanagement of the airport.  That claim sought to dissolve a 46-year-long joint powers operating agreement between the two cities for the management of the airport.
In 1967 Ontario and Los Angeles entered into that joint powers agreement to allow Los Angeles to use its clout with airlines to increase flights into and out of Ontario International, which at that time was servicing fewer than 200,000 passengers per year. Under Los Angeles’ guidance, the airport grew, more airlines began flying out of the facility and improvements were made to its runways and terminals. In 1985, after all of the conditions set down in the 1967 joint powers agreement had been met, Ontario deeded the airport to Los Angeles for no consideration.
Maintaining that in recent years Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that manages Ontario International, Los Angeles International and Van Nuys airports for the city of Los Angeles, has stifled Ontario International in a deliberate effort to benefit Los Angeles International, the city of  Ontario  has undertaken an aggressive campaign to force Los Angeles to redeed the airport back to Ontario. Ontario officials publicly insisted that LA should relinquish the airport for no consideration because the airport is considered a public benefit property which has no sale value. Privately, however, Ontario has offered Los Angeles $246 million for the airport as Los Angeles has sought potential private and public buyers for the aerodrome at reported prices ranging from $225 million to $650 million. In the sometimes acrimonious back-and-forth between the two cities, Los Angeles revealed the existence of Ontario’s offer, to both the chagrin and embarrassment of Ontario officials. Last year, Ontario, with the county of San Bernardino, formed the Ontario International Airport Authority, an entity intended to take over ownership and operation of the airport once Los Angeles relinquishes it.
The claim filed on Ontario’s behalf by Sheppard Mullen Richter & Hampton was intended as a crucial step in the effort to wrest the airport back. In that administrative claim, Ontario castigated Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports as responsible for  the reduction of passenger traffic through the airport since 2007, when 7.2 million passengers enplaned there. The decline of passengers to 4.2 million last year, according to the claim, is a direct result of the Los Angeles World Airports’ favoritism toward Los Angeles International, where extensive facility improvements have been ongoing for the last seven years and where passenger traffic has been on the upswing.
If Ontario officials had hoped Los Angeles would make a substantive response to that claim, they were disappointed. In a terse, seventeen word sentence, the city of Los Angeles rejected the claim, giving no grounds for doing so. That puts the ball into Ontario’s court, and city officials have six months to respond with a lawsuit based upon the issues outlined in the claim.
This is not the first time Los Angeles has rejected an airport takeover overture from Ontario. Last October, the Los Angeles City Council voted 12-0 to decline the $246 million bid Ontario submitted in December 2011.
The lawsuit set up by the administrative claim would likely seek the dissolution of the 1967 joint powers agreement relating to the airport between the two cities, a tall order given the city of Ontario’s 1985 action in deeding the airport to Los Angeles, which included a finding that Los Angeles had lived up to its end of the original agreement. The matter is complicated by Los Angeles having rerouted over the years scores of millions of dollars in passenger fees collected at Los Angeles International Airport to improvements at Ontario International. Moreover, the city of Los Angeles is in discussions with several private sector entities possessing airport management credentials, both foreign and domestic, with regard to a sale of Ontario Airport.
Earlier this week, the president of the Los Angeles’ Board of Airport Commissioners, Michael Lawson, firmly stated “There is no sound, legal or factual basis for this claim.”
Lawson and other Los Angeles World Airports officials referenced a recent report done by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which found that there has been a steady decline in passenger traffic at midsize airports all around the country and that market forces are driving the declines.

(May 3YUCCA VALLEY—In an unexpected move, Hi-Desert Water District Assistant General Manager and chief financial officer Frank Luckino resigned his position effective next week to take a lower paying position with the city of Blythe.
A former Yucca Valley councilman, Luckino in making the announcement suggested he was making the transition as part of a strategy to eventually achieve his career goal of becoming a city manager.
Luckino’s departure from the water district comes as that entity is struggling with the financial challenges of having Yucca Valley comply with a state mandate to convert from its traditional septic systems to a sewer system in several phases over the next decade.
Town voters last year voted down a sales tax measure put forth by town officials which those officials said would be primarily devoted to funding the sewer program. The water district is set to be the lead agency in the provision of the new sanitation system. As the water district’s chief financial officer, Luckino was faced with the daunting assignment of meeting capital improvement goals for the district while keeping its operational funds solvent.
Luckino, who was hired as the Hi-Desert Water District’s chief financial officer in March 2009,  has continued his education and is due to receive a masters degree in public administration with an emphasis in policy and governance this year.
He will go to work as finance director in Blythe. The position he now has with the water district pays $139,000 in salary plus benefits. The bottom rung salary for finance director in Blythe is $94,000 per year. The current top pay salary level for the same position after accruing experience and seniority is $117,000.
With the combination of his seven years on the city council, his experience with the water district and his masters degree, Luckino is hopeful he can eventually parlay his position in Blythe to a promotion to deputy or assistant city manager, putting himself in position to land a top administrative post with some municipality.
Luckino is now finalizing the water district’s proposed 2013-14 budget. He is set to leave for Blythe, where he intends to move his family, on June 6.
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(May 31)FONTANA — The city of Fontana has shortchanged three of San Bernardino County’s school districts by millions of dollars by finagling the formula being used to pay the districts their share of property tax revenue due them in the aftermath of the dissolution of the North Fontana Redevelopment Agency.
In 2011, after the failure of a municipal coalition’s final legal challenge of the state’s AB XI 26 and ABXI 27, which shuttered all of California’s redevelopment agencies, Fontana, like all other California cities, closed down its redevelopment agency, and created in its wake a successor agency to extinguish its debts.
In rerouting that portion of the property tax revenue formerly exclusively devoted to the redevelopment agency, known as tax increment, to other governmental entities with a claim to the property tax generated in the area, the city apportioned to the Fontana Unified School District, the Chaffey Joint Union High School District and the Rialto Unified School District a revenue stream utilizing a formula that used fiscal 1997-98 as the base year for making its calculations for what would be provided to those districts from the North Fontana Redevelopment Project Area, which covers roughly 8,900 acres.
Mindful that significant development occurred in North Fontana over the previous two decades with a commensurate substantial increase in property tax revenue, Chaffey Joint Unified’s financial division raised with the city of Fontana its use of the 1997-98 figures, maintaining the computation of what the district was owed should be based upon a later tax-year baseline. Chaffey Joint Unified notified Fontana Unified, which also raised the issue with Fontana officials.   The city, however, in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, utilized the 1997-98 tax year as its pass-through revenue model.
Fontana Unified did have representation on Fontana’s redevelopment successor agency in the form of former associate superintendent of business services Alex Alvarez, who last year sought to have the successor agency resolve the base year calculation discrepancy for the North Fontana Redevelopment Project Area funding relinquishment but was outmuscled politically by the city’s two representatives on the successor agency board, Mayor Aquanetta Warren and councilman John Roberts.
North Fontana lies within the jurisdiction of not only Fontana Unified, but Chaffey Joint Union High School District on the west side and Rialto Unified School District on the east side.
With Fontana Unified School District in the lead, a lawsuit against the city of Fontana, along with the county of San Bernardino and San Bernardino County Treasurer Larry Walker was filed, contending that the inappropriate 1997-98 tax year baseline had been used in calculating the pass-back revenue due the three districts.
According to the suit, the formula should have involved a baseline of the 2004-2005 tax year. Using their own accounting methodologies and the 2004-05 tax year baseline, lawyers for Fontana Unified contend that from fiscal year 2006-07 through fiscal year 2010-11, Fontana owed Fontana Unified $11,475,014 and made good on $7,407,447 of that amount, leaving $4,067,567 unpaid.  Chaffey Joint Unified, according to the suit, was due $4,339,558 and actually received $2,058,556, leaving an unpaid balance of  $2,281,002. Rialto Unified was supposed to have received by now $662,555, of which it was paid $453,863, entailing an arrearage of $208,692, according to the suit. Moreover, if the current formula is left in place, the city will continue to shortchange the districts in future years, according to the suit, with Fontana Unified losing $23,352,614 owed it between 2012 and 2034, Chaffey being shorted $15,216,399 and Rialto missing $1,362,309.
Because AB XI 26 mandates that legal questions relating to the dissolution of the state’s redevelopment agencies be litigated in Sacramento Superior Court, the lawsuit was lodged there. The county is named as a defendant because of its function in overseeing the disbursements of payments from the successors to the redevelopment agencies. Walker, who as treasurer oversees the maintenance of the accounts from which the funds are disbursed, is also named in his capacity as the county controller, auditor and treasurer.
The city of Fontana denies the allegations in the lawsuit, according to city attorney Jeffrey Ballinger.

(May 310 San Bernardino County law enforcement agencies will hold a massive gun buyback tomorrow, Saturday  June 1. The sheriff’s department, which provides contract police services to fourteen of the county’s 24 cities – Adelanto, Apple Valley, Big Bear, Chino Hills, Grand Terrace, Hesperia, Highland, Loma Linda, Needles, Rancho Cucamonga, Twentynine Palms, Victorville, Yucaipa, and Yucca Valley – and also serves the county’s unincorporated communities, will trade gift cards for guns between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Joining the sheriff’s department in the program, which is being funded by Proposition 30 funding, will be the Chino, Montclair, Ontario, Upland, Fontana, Rialto, Colton, San Bernardino Barstow, and Redlands police departments. Proposition 30, which passed by a thin margin, increased personal income taxes on high-income taxpayers for seven years and sales taxes for four years. It was represented by proponents as one that would shore up public school funding but had provisions to make the tax revenue available to fund other state programs, such as the gun buyback.
The buyback is the first comprehensively planned event of its type in San Bernardino County involving all 11 of its local law enforcement agencies simultaneously. It is being celebrated as an effort to get guns off the street.
Those turning in an inoperable weapon will receive a $50 Stater Bros. gift card. Those relinquishing operating hand guns, shotguns or rifles will receive $100 gift cards. Assault weapons will fetch $200. There is no limit on the number of weapons to be turned in.
Law enforcement officers said members of the public should unload the weapons and transport them to the purchase areas in the trunk or rear area of a vehicle. According to a sheriff’s department news release, officers will ask no questions of the individuals handing the weapons over.
The buy-back station in Barstow will be located at the Cora Harper Community Center, 841 Barstow Road in Barstow.
The buy-back station for Chino, Montclair, Ontario and Upland will be at the Stater Bros. parking lot at 919 N. Mountain Ave. in Upland.
The Colton, Fontana and Rialto police departments will stage their buy-backs at the Stater Bros. parking lot at 571 E. Foothill Blvd. in Rialto.
Redlands police will operate their collection site in the Stater Bros. parking lot at 11 E. Colton Ave. in Redlands.
In Victorville, the sheriff’s Department will collect guns at the Stater Bros. parking lot at 15235 Hook Blvd.
At the county seat, San Bernardino police will collect guns at the Stater Bros. parking lot at 444 E. Baseline in San Bernardino

( May 31) Montclair’s police chief, Keith Jones, is retiring today.
Jones, 58, is leaving as the city’s top cop after 32 years with the municipality.
He worked his way up through the ranks, having served in every sworn departmental assignment.
Jones was named acting police chief in early 2009 after the retirement of his predecessor, Chester Thompson. He was elevated to full chief in October 2009.
In September 2012, Jones was promoted once more, to the position of director of public safety, from which he also oversaw the fire department after  fire chief Troy Ament was given a two-week severance notice and eased from that position, a cost-cutting move engineered by city manager Edward Starr that saved the city nearly half a million dollars a year in wages and benefits.

BARSTOW—The most extensive vandalism ever done to the Western American Railroad Museum was the result of copper theft, according to authorities.
The museum sustained more than $100,000 worth of damage after thieves used saws and clippers to sever 160 feet of copper wiring and plating from inside the museum’s vintage 1925 California Arizona passenger  train car. That wiring lined both inside walls of the 80-foot-long green car and was part of the car’s radiant heating system.
According to Barstow police, Sean Michael Gilbert, 43, Erik John Kielty, 25, and John Phillip Blakenship, 46, were responsible for the theft. Authorities say that in addition to taking the copper cable from the California Arizona car, the trio removed the copper wiring in the car’s still-functioning electrical panel, rendering it non-operable, and made off with the railroad car’s two original 1925 light sconces, four  chairs, and the car’s collection of Mimbreno China.
The museum has been the target of at least 17 previous theft or vandalism incidents. This month’s was by far the most extensive.
The Western American Railroad Museum is a major tourist attraction and an international destination.
Gilbert, Kielty and Blakenship were nabbed by investigators and have a court appearance on June 5.