Mark Nuaimi will receive $126,666 in severance pay, pursuant to his termination as city manager, which was concluded by a unanimous vote of the town council this week.
Nuaimi, whose dismissal as the chief staff member of 20,700-population Yucca Valley this month represents one of the most rapid demises of a top city official in county history, will not be provided with the entirety of the $750,000 he was due to receive under the terms of his contract, which was renewed for three years last February.
It was the extension of that contract which ironically led to Nuaimi’s forced exodus this week, one unanimously approved by all five council members, including the four town council members who approved the contract six months ago.
That contract extension, which kept his $190,000 per year salary in place while increasing his benefits to over $100,000 annually with yearly enhancements that would see his total compensation exceed $300,000 by February 2015, created a firestorm of controversy in Yucca Valley, where the mean annual household income is $34,000.
Adding injury to that insult, Nuaimi further angered the town’s citizenry when in March he undertook the eradication of the town’s $400,000 budget deficit by effecting a  17 percent reduction in the town’s workforce, from 41 to 34 full time employees, including the layoffs of the town’s associate planner and Yucca Valley’s two recreation coordinators, what appeared to be the forced or incentivized retirement of town clerk Jamie Anderson and community services director Jim Schooler and museum supervisor Lynn Richardson, along with a museum assistant, an animal shelter administrative assistant and a code compliance technician. In addition, Nuaimi announced that the town would do away with or severely curtail four popular municipal programs – the operation of the town’s pool during summer months, the Fourth of July fireworks spectacular, the town museum and Yucca Valley’s Concerts in the Park.
The council in February was composed of four members – Mayor Merle Abel and council members Dawn Rowe, Robert Lombardo and George Huntington – as Isaac Hagerman had resigned in 2012 and had yet to be replaced. So intense was the anger with Nuaimi’s contract and the diversion into his pocket of money that would have paid for the maintenance of the cancelled recreation and cultural programs that community members began to openly discuss a recall attempt targeting Abel, Rowe, Lombardo and Huntington. In time, recall proponents, led by Ron Cohen, elected to focus on Lombardo and Huntington, who had been reelected to the council without opposition in 2012, and seek to remove Abel and Rowe next year when they are due to stand for reelection.
Lombardo and Huntington’s supporters, as well as those of  Rowe and Abel, have denounced the recall attempt as misguided, saying Lombardo and Huntington had done nothing meriting the attempt to remove them and had merely taken prudent steps to ensure the town’s solvency.  Nevertheless, outrage in the community festered and, according to the recall campaign’s sponsors, more than half of the signatures needed to force a referendum on Huntington and Lombardo’s continued tenure on the council had been  gathered by the end of July.
Nuaimi yet appeared to be riding high and maintaining the confidence of the full council.
But with the recall effort progressing, on August 10 Lombardo and Huntington,  Republicans both, took the extraordinary step of appearing before the Morongo Basin Democratic Club, hoping to use that forum to present their side with regard to the effort to recall them from office and offer those assembled justification of their records and action in office to persuade at least some of that group that removing them from office is not warranted.
Before the crowd, Lombardo and Huntington sought to explain how it was that the council was reliant upon Nuami’s guidance with regard to governance and management in Yucca Valley. But it was the club’s members, instead, who made the more compelling case as one after another provided unremittingly negative assessments of Nuaimi’s performance and people-handling skills. So overwhelming were those impassioned remarks that before the meeting concluded Huntington said he previously had no idea of the communitiy’s depth of discontent with the city manager. At last devoid of grounds upon which to make a defense of Nuaimi, Lombardo said he would give consideration to cashiering the city manager. Huntington seconded that sentiment. Four days later, the entire city council met in a specially-called meeting and placed Nuami on administrative leave.
In the ensuing days, the council directed city attorney Lona Laymon to work out some accommodation with Nuaimi by which he would make a permanent exodus with minimal repercussions to the council. Laymon and Nuaimi thereafter negotiated a separation agreement that neutralized the possibility that Nuaimi would stake a claim to the $750,000 he could assert he was due to collect under the terms of February’s contract extension, given that it covers a term through February 2016. Such a possibility was tenuous, since the contract extension maintained language from Nuaimi’s original contract that characterized him as an “at-will” employee of the town.
Language in the severance agreement provides a window on the delicate position the town and the council are in, as well as efforts that Nuaimi apparently went to in order to maintain his professional viability hereon out by avoiding the council citing a cause for terminating him. The agreement states, “The town and employee mutually agree that employee shall be dismissed without cause, with an effective non-cause dismissal date of August 20, 2013. Employee and the town agree that because the town initiated his dismissal from employment with the town, under Contract Section 4.1(c), employee is entitled to severance pay in accordance with the terms of the contract. Specifically, the town shall provide employee with eight (8) months’ salary (salary payment) and continuation of employee’s health benefits as of the employee’s severance date, for twelve (12) months or until employee finds other employment, whichever comes first. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the employee has become the focal point
of a political divide in the community. There exists a bona fide dispute of fact as to whether the town has any basis to claim that employee ever conducted himself within the defined parameters set forth in Section 3.4 of his contract (the “Dispute”). However, town and employee agree that the employee’s immediate dismissal without cause is in the best interest of the town in that all employee’s waivers of claims herein are made in consideration for town’s agreement to dismiss employee without cause and waive any claims it may have in dispute with employee. Such not-for-cause dismissal will allow the town to immediately replace employee so that the town can focus on the many challenges presently facing the community, and will secure the town valuable protections from any and all legal claims that might be asserted by employee.”
In response to the town council’s action, Cohen and the other proponents of the recall reiterated their intention to seek to have Huntington and Lombard removed from office.
“The recall is not about the performance of town manager Mark Nuaimi but about the decisions of council members Huntington and Lombardo,” Cohen said. “The recall proponents, in their initial notice, provided a list of charges against both council members Huntington and Lombardo. These charges have not been satisfactorily addressed. Mr. Nuaimi engaged in ‘willful misconduct’ deserving of immediate termination. Based on the details of the posted severance agreement between the town and Mr. Nuaimi, the council has, in fact, grounds for Mr. Nuaimi’s dismissal with cause, but chooses not to pursue this path.”
The approval of the severance package, Cohen charged, rendered the council “guilty of yet another poor fiscal decision—one that requires the taxpayers of Yucca Valley to pay for the failures of the council.” He said that the vote to provide Nuaimi with the $126,666 in severance pay merely provided the residents of Yucca Valley with “more reason to recall council members Huntington and Lombardo.” He said the council should have “terminated Mr. Nuaimi with cause and without severance.”

(August 23) NEEDLES — The Chemehuevi Tribe has added its protest to the growing chorus of opposition to the Cadiz Water Project, which is purposed to transfer up to 50,000 acre-feet of water from the East Mojave Desert to Orange and Los Angeles counties and was given project approval by an Orange County Water District last year but is now being contested by eleven lawsuits.
The project is an undertaking of Los Angeles-based Cadiz, Inc., which since the 1980s has operated a 500-acre organic grape, citrus, melon and pepper farm in the Cadiz Valley. Cadiz, Inc. arranged to have the Santa Margarita Water District, to which it is contracted to deliver a portion of the water to be extracted from the desert, to assume lead agency status for the project’s approval. Many of those opposed to the project considered that to be a conflict of interest. San Bernardino County contemplated but in March 2012 ultimately elected against challenging Orange County-based Santa Margarita’s assumption of that lead agency status on the project. Instead on May 1, 2012  the county entered into a memorandum of understanding with that district and Cadiz, Inc. and its corporate entities, including the Fenner Valley Mutual Water Company, allowing Santa Margarita to oversee the environmental impact report for the project and conduct the public hearings related to project approval. On October 1, 2012, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors gave approval to a groundwater monitoring plan to facilitate completion of the project.
The project generated eleven  lawsuits in which San Bernardino County, Santa Margarita and Cadiz, Inc. have been named as defendants. Even before those lawsuits materialized, the county, on March 27, 2012, retained the San Francisco-based law firm of Downey Brand to assist county counsel in responding to any lawsuits it contemplated might be triggered by the project at what was then said to be a not-to-exceed cost of $449,322. Since that time, however, legal costs have escalated and the county has now earmarked $1,449,332 to pay for outside legal counsel to represent the county with regard to legal challenges to the project.
The lawsuits allege that the project will drain the aquifer in both the Cadiz Valley and nearby Fenner Valley, wreaking environmental harm; that the approval process for the project which allowed a water district in Orange County more than 217 miles from the  project area to serve as the lead agency for the project and oversee its environmental certification violated state and federal environmental laws; that the county of San Bernardino failed to abide by its own desert groundwater management plan in approving the project; that the environmental impact report for the project was inadequate; and that approval of the project violated provisions of both the National Historic Preservation Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and that the Bureau of Land Management failed to conduct a proper review of the cultural and environmental impacts of the project; that the extraction of the water will interfere with salt mining and other pre-existing industrial operations in the area; and other issues.
Plaintiffs include Delaware Tetra Technologies, which operates a salt and mineral mine in the Fenner Valley, the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the International Union of North America Local No. 783, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Colorado River Branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association, Santa Margarita Citizens and Ratepayers Opposing Water Nonsense, and Rodrigo Briones.
Among those inveighing against the project are U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and former assistant San Bernardino County administrative officer John Goss.  Feinstein has publicly stated that the project’s proposed extraction of more than one million acre-feet of water from the Eastern Mojave Desert over the 50-year life of the project will significantly exceed the United States Geological Survey’s estimate of the area’s recharge capability.  Goss, who drafted the county’s desert groundwater management ordinance before it was adopted in 2002, said that ordinance was violated when the memorandum of understanding between the county, Cadiz, Inc. and the Santa Margarita Water District had been entered into before a groundwater management plan for the Cadiz project was adopted.
Now joining Feinstein and Goss are members of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe. Jay Cravath Ph.D., cultural director of the Chemehuevis, said the tribe has “deep concerns”  regarding the project.  “It  will draw considerably more water than the aquifer can replace. It will pose a threat to the ranchers, rural communities and East Mojave landowners. It will do long-term harm to the springs of the precious Mojave National Preserve.”
Cravath went on to state, “What has not been part of the debate is the fact that those are among the ancestral lands of the Chemehuevi. We have traveled the trails for a thousand years. For us, the New York Mountains are akin to the Hebrews’ Mount of Olives; the forests of the Ship Mountains, our Cedars of Lebanon. The ancestors considered those springs not only the life-giving flow, but sacred blessings of mother earth. As this process moves forward, any decision must also weigh the sacred nature of these lands to our tribal members, and those who came before.”

Dr. Richard Pitts, the former assistant medical director for Kaiser Permanente in Orange County, has been named medical director of San Bernardino County’s hospital, Arrowhead Regional Medical Center located in Colton.
Pitts, a physician, health educator and hospital administrator with a 40-year career as a health profession, was brought in to replace Dr. Dev GnanaDev, who had been county medical director from 2000 until he left under something of a cloud in January.
The county hospital was the focus of an investigation, including the serving of search warrants obtained by the FBI in 2010. There have been unverified accusations of favoritism at the hospital benefiting top county officials, off- the-book patient record keeping and conflicts of interest pertaining to GnanaDev’s function as the head of a surgical unit that had a contract to perform surgeries at the hospital.
Dr. Emily Ebert was brought in to serve as the acting medical director of the county hospital shortly after GnanaDev’s departure as medical director.
Pitts is being asked to complete the institution of reforms and lead the hospital staff with the initiation of the Affordable Care Act, including its Individual Mandate provisions which are to take effect January 1. Pitts’ list of duties includes oversight of and final decisions with regard to the provision of medical services; compliance with federal and state laws; day-to-day management operations; and maintaining clinical integrity.
Significantly, Pitts will take on the one area of oversight at the hospital that led to the conflict-of-interest charges against GnanaDev: contractual relations with the physician corporations that provide medical services at the hospital. Arrowhead Regional contracts with 21 private physician corporations employing over 390 physicians or medical professionals, including one that provides surgical services that is owned by GnanaDev. Pitts is not an owner or involved with any of those contractors. Pitts is set to start with the county on September 9.

(August 23) TWENTYNINE PALMS—More than a year after the California Department of Transportation rejected a request for the establishment of a traffic light at the deadly Highway 62/Encelia Avenue intersection in Twentynine Palms, that agency has reversed itself and has now agreed to provide half of the funding needed for the city to undertake the signalization project.
The approval of the traffic signal came three-and-a-half months after another fatality at the hazardous crossing.
On April 30, a traffic collision involving a sheriff’s vehicle moving at a high rate of speed as its driver was en route to a service call and a motorist who was crossing Highway 62 on Encelia Avenue killed the motorist and left the deputy with severe injuries to his lower extremities.
On that fateful day, Luc Van Bui, 64 of Perris,  was traveling north on Encelia Ave in a Toyota Camry around 7:30 p.m. After stopping at the Encelia intersection with  Twentynine Palms Highway, Bui pulled into the intersection and was broadsided by a sheriff’s vehicle, a 2010 Ford Crown Victoria, driven by deputy Erdem Gorgulu, who was eastbound on the highway en route to a radio call.
Multiple witnesses estimated Gogulu’s speed as at or exceeding 80 miles per hour. Witnesses said the patrol car’s lights and siren were not activated. In addition, Gorgulu’s heading and his moving downhill and out of a setting sun approaching an intersection with visibility problems combined to doom Bui, who was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to Twentynine Palms City Manager Joe Guzzetta, Caltrans officials have reached a conclusion that erection of the signal is warranted and will have the state  contribute half of the funding for the signal.

(August 23) Bob Blough has been forced out of his position as the general manager of the largest public employee union in San Bernardino County.
The San Bernardino Public Employees Association represents and handles collective bargaining for over 11,000 employees working for San Bernardino County and 3,000 others working for 16 of the county’s cities – Barstow, Big Bear, Chino, Chino Hills, Colton Fontana, Hesperia, Loma Linda, Montclair, Needles, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Redlands, Rialto, San Bernardino, and Upland, as well as three cities in east Los Angeles County, Claremont Pomona and West Covina and Banning in Riverside County.
“The employment of SBPEA General Manager Bob Blough has come to an end,” a posting on the SBPEA website’s homepage says.
During his tenure, which followed that of Chris Prato, Blough has been buffeted by a contracting economy that has forced local governments to rein in spending and conflate staffing levels, and either institute furloughs, reduce salaries and benefits or lay off employees.
In working with city managers and San Bernardino County Chief Executive Officer Greg Devereaux toward achieving operational cost reductions, including givebacks and concessions on existing contracts, Blough has fallen under criticism by some association members and there have been several efforts to decertify SBPEA as the representative of some employee divisions, most recently involving the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Following a report of his departure last week, efforts to contact him by means of his association-issued cell phone have been unsuccessful.
He has been replaced, on an interim basis, by  Deidre Rodriguez.

(August 16) The departure of the former head of Omnitrans more than two months ago has Upland officials hopeful that the public transit agency serving the San Bernardino Valley will soon consent to providing heretofore denied bus routes to and from the downtown Upland train station.
That Upland officials have developed something of an inferiority complex with regard to neighboring Claremont’s highly successful downtown business district goes without saying. For decades Upland has been seeking ways to renew the once vibrant but now long-struggling commercial hub north of the railroad tracks that lie south of Ninth Street, spanning from Euclid Avenue on the west to just beyond Sultana Avenue on the east and extending north to Arrow Highway. Contained in that area is the city’s civic center, entailing City Hall, the Upland library and the city’s oldest existing fire station. But for a variety of reasons, the area has not prospered, despite concerted city efforts to promote it, subsidizations to restaurants and other businesses believed to have promise, as well as the investment activity of outsiders, including the late comic Sam Kinison, who with members of his family sought to revive the old Grove Theater on Ninth Street.
Across the county line, in Claremont, a similar historic business district surrounds the civic center and city library. But over the last decade, efforts to reignite the night life in that similarly compact area has succeeded. Restaurants and night spots there are flourishing. A hotel that does a brisk business, especially on weekends, is pouring tax money into city coffers.
One obvious advantage Claremont possesses that Upland does not is  Claremont is a university town that hosts five colleges, a graduate school and a school of theology within walking distance of the downtown district.
Moreover, Upland has been further disadvantaged by a policy maintained by a public agency beyond its control. Upland’s historic downtown district, like that of Claremont as well as numerous other cities in not only Southern California but within the entire state and nationwide, sprang from where the railroad passing through town had its station. With the advent of the automotive culture, train stations became somewhat passé and for decades offered little or no draw to those downtowns. Over the last two decades in this part of Southern California, though, the Metrolink line that runs from San Bernardino to Los Angeles has revived the railroad line as a vital transportation link.
In Claremont, which lies in Los Angeles County as opposed to San Bernardino County, the placement of the Metrolink station in the downtown district was accompanied by the extension of bus lines to its train station, providing an incentive for what were initially scores and today are hundreds of commuters to utilize the train, confident that they can get to the station in the morning by riding the bus and return home in the evening in the same way.
In Upland, this fluid continuum of public transportation has not been available. That shortcoming has stymied downtown Upland’s potential growth.
In June, Milo Victoria abruptly resigned as the general manager and CEO of San Bernardino-based Omnitrans. His departure, it seems, had been hastened by the release of a scathing audit of Omnitrans operations, including the sbX (sic) project in San Bernardino now under development, a high speed bus route running from Loma Linda to Cal State San Bernardino. Since January 2010,  Victoria, who was previously the assistant general manager for bus service with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in Washington, D. C., had been in charge of Omnitrans. During his tenure in San Bernardino, the agency had proven highly resistant to requests that Omnitrans extend or reconfigure or create bus lines linking downtown Upland with other spots or lines.
Victoria was replaced as general manager and CEO by Scott Graham, who had been Omnitrans director of operations since 2006. Previously, Graham worked for the Orange County Transportation Authority for 12 years as a transportation base manager. Prior to that he served 26 years in the US Marine Corps, He has a masters degree in transportation management from San Jose State University and a bachelor of arts degree in political science from East Carolina University.
Upland officials believe that Graham will prove amenable to a request that the Omnitrans, which was established as part of a joint powers authority involving 15 San Bernardino County cities and currently operates a fleet of 1,500 buses serving more than 360 bus routes and more than 12,000 bus stops across a 480 square mile service area while carrying 15 million passengers each year, will augment its routes and operations to include ones to downtown Upland.
“We have a well-used Metrolink station downtown that has more than adequate parking for daily commuters,” said Upland Mayor Ray Musser, who is a member of the Omnitrans Board of Directors. “But the station is a really underused asset. What would really help this take off is the addition of three or four bus routes with stops at the station. It would take time, but if people in this area could rely on bus service that would deliver them to the train station and back to stops that are reasonably close to where they live, you would see ridership on the Metrolink into and out of Upland dramatically improve.”
Musser went on to say, “With Milo Victoria gone, I think we stand a pretty good chance of Omnitrans reassessing whether these new routes into Upland can be created or whether some existing routes to Ontario or Montclair or Fontana could be altered to include us. I am looking forward to those discussions with the Omnitrans board.”

(August 16) Three high schools in the Colton Joint Unified School District and one high school in the San Bernardino City Unified School District were among 242 schools in California where students potentially had advance access to material in or relating to the state’s Standardized Testing and Reporting assessment examinations this spring, according to state education officials.
Despite the leaking of questions or other contents of the statewide tests and their subsequent distribution over the internet and through social media, education officials expressed the belief there was not widespread cheating on the tests that skewered results.
The California Standard Tests were formulated by California educators and test developers specifically for California to measure students’ progress toward achieving California’s state-adopted academic content standards in English-language arts, mathematics, science, and history-social science, which describe what students should know and be able to do in each grade and subject tested.
Students from at least 16 state public schools leaked questions from California’s STAR tests, mostly by means of social media networks during the March 1 to June 30 test period. In addition, state education officials identified 226 other schools at which test materials other than questions, such as test booklet covers, were posted on social media.
Most, if not all, of the material in question was compromised by means of photos or videos of the tests and testing materials taken via cell phones in the possession of the students. In hundreds of  cases, the videos and photos were uploaded to Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
Once Department of Education officials were informed of the breaches, they undertook efforts to have the various social media remove the posts. STAR test results were released earlier this week, bringing with it notification of advance exposure of the test material.
Test-taking protocol involves instructing students to turn off any mobile communication devices and to store them with their possessions in backpacks, or, where they are available, lockers, away from where the tests are administered. Districts generally do not frisk students before allowing them into the testing room.
When it released the statewide STAR test results, the California Department of Education flagged those schools where there was a known compromise.
At present, the Department of Education has been unable to document any specific cases of cheating on the tests linked to the postings.
Whether massive cheating on the tests had occurred remains unclear and a matter of opinion and conjecture. Conclusions as to how widespread the cheating may have been vary with those you talk to. Those with status and a stake in the matter, the Department of Education, school districts, the involved schools and their officials, maintain the testing outcomes were unaffected by the postings or the advance sharing of questions. Students, including those attending school where the posting occurred, drew the opposite conclusion.
“If you know the questions before you take the test, I guarantee you will do better,” said one.
Materials were posted by students at Colton High, Grand Terrace High and Bloomington High in the Colton Joint Unified School District.
Materials were posted by students at Indian Springs High in the San Bernardino City Unified School District.
School officials have learned the identities of most of the local students involved in the postings. The Indian Springs High students involved in the incident have been disciplined.
Statewide,  students averaged a score of 344.8 on overall English language arts testing.
At Grand Terrace High students averaged a score of 316 on the English language arts tests.
At Colton High, students averaged a score of 322.2 on the English language arts tests.
At Bloomington High, students averaged a score of 320.3 on the English language arts tests
At Indian Springs High students averaged 328 on the ninth grade and 317.5 on the tenth grade English language arts tests.
Statewide students averaged a score of 318 on the ninth grade general mathematics test.
At Grand Terrace High students averaged 288 on the ninth grade general mathematics test.
At Colton High students averaged 293.8 on the ninth grade general mathematics test.
At Bloomington High students averaged 303.7 on the ninth grade general mathematics test.
At Indian Springs High students averaged 253.7 on the ninth grade general mathematics test.
Statewide students averaged a score of 334.1 on overall algebra 1 testing.
At Grand Terrace High students averaged a score of 299.9 on algebra 1 tests.
At Colton High, students averaged a score of 301.4 on algebra 1 tests.
At Bloomington High, students averaged a score of 290.4 on algebra 1 tests.
At Indian Springs High students averaged 267.5 on the algebra 1 tests.
Statewide students averaged a score of 320.8 on overall geometry testing.
At Grand Terrace High students averaged a score of 308.6 on geometry tests.
At Colton High, students averaged a score of 301.3 on geometry tests.
At Bloomington High, students averaged a score of 300.3 on geometry tests.
At Indian Springs High students averaged 277.3 on geometry tests.
Statewide students averaged a score of 325.2 on overall algebra 2 testing.
At Grand Terrace High students averaged a score of 303 on algebra 2 tests.
At Colton High, students averaged a score of 306.5 on algebra 2 tests.
At Bloomington High, students averaged a score of 337.4 on algebra 2 tests.
At Indian Springs High students averaged 296.1 on the algebra 2 tests.
Statewide students averaged a score of 334.1 on overall world history testing.
At Grand Terrace High students averaged a score of 319.9 on world history tests.
At Colton High, students averaged a score of 303.5 on world history tests.
At Bloomington High, students averaged a score of 314.4 on world history tests.
At Indian Springs High students averaged 210.9 on the world history tests.
Statewide students averaged a score of 348.5 on overall U.S. history testing.
At Grand Terrace High students averaged a score of 324.6 on U.S. history tests.
At Colton High, students averaged a score of 322 on U.S. history tests.
At Bloomington High, students averaged a score of 327.1 on U.S. history tests.
At Indian Springs High the U.S. history test results were not available.
Statewide students averaged a score of 354 on overall biology testing.
At Grand Terrace High students averaged a score of 344.4 on biology tests.
At Colton High, students averaged a score of 314.8 on biology tests.
At Bloomington High, students averaged a score of 334.4 on biology tests.
At Indian Springs High students averaged 329.3 on biology tests.
Statewide students averaged a score of 342.9 on overall chemistry testing.
At Grand Terrace High students averaged a score of 320.4 on chemistry tests.
At Colton High, students averaged a score of 303.5 on chemistry tests.
At Bloomington High, students averaged a score of 303.1 on chemistry tests.
At Indian Springs High students averaged 329.7 on chemistry tests.

(August 16) Yucca Valley Town Manager Mark Nuaimi was placed on administrative leave August 14 by a unanimous vote of the city council during a specially called council meeting. Language used in making the move strongly implied Nuami would be terminated at the council’s next regularly scheduled meeting to be held Tuesday, August 20.
The council’s action Wednesday night ironically follows six months of increasing acrimony directed at four of the council members over their February vote to offer Nuami a three-year contract extension into 2016 that will see his total compensation package raised to more than $300,000 per year.
At the hastily called August 14 meeting, the council adjourned into a closed session with town attorney Lona Laymon for the scheduled discussion of “disciplinary action or dismissal of an employee” and emerged 45 minutes later. Laymon then announced that the council had voted to place Nuaimi, the town manager since 2010, on administrative leave “pending further consideration of an employee release from that position at a regular scheduled meeting.”
In early February the town council, which then consisted of mayor Merle Abel and council members Dawn Rowe, Robert Lombardo and George Huntington, voted to provide Nuaimi with a three-year contract extension by which he was to see his total compensation, including salary and benefits, upped to $293,000 this year with annual cost of living increases that would see that figure eclipse $300,000 by 2015.
There had been previous discontent with Nuaimi among certain elements of the community, where the mean household income is $34,000 per year. Within two months, Nuaimi proposed several measures aimed at eradicating a $400,000 budget deficit which were immediately approved by the council. Those included the layoffs of the town’s associate planner and Yucca Valley’s two recreation coordinators, what appeared to be the forced or incentivized retirement of town clerk Jamie Anderson and community services director Jim Schooler and museum supervisor Lynn Richardson, along with a museum assistant, an animal shelter administrative assistant and a code compliance technician. Overall, the layoffs, retirements and reorganization entailed a 17 percent reduction in the town’s workforce, from 41 to 34 full time employees, which Nuaimi said would provide a $300,000 savings in the 2013-14 fiscal year as the retirement incentives are cashed out, and $725,000 per year thereafter.
In addition, Nuaimi announced that the town would do away with or severely curtail four popular municipal programs – the operation of the town’s pool during summer months, the Fourth of July fireworks spectacular, the town museum and Yucca Valley’s Concerts in the Park.
In March, Bob Leone was elected to the council in a special election to replace Isaac Hagerman, who resigned from the council last year.  In his run for the council, Leone had been critical of the raise provided to Nuaimi and advocated against the closure of the pool and museum and the discontinuation of the firework and concert events.
In the aftermath of Leone’s ascension to the council, the long-festering discontent with Nuaimi metastasized, and serious discussion of a move to remove the four council members responsible for committing the town to keeping him in place at an elevated rate of compensation until 2016 ensued. That discussion evolved into a recall effort targeting Lombardo and Huntington, who had been reelected to the council without opposition in November. With both Rowe and Abel due to stand for reelection in 2014, recall advocates elected to seek Lombardo and Huntington’s political scalps at this juncture and to oppose Rowe and Abel for reelection next year.
Lombardo and Huntington’s supporters, as well as those of Rowe and Abel, have denounced the recall attempt as misguided, saying Lombardo and Huntington have done nothing meriting the attempt to remove them and had merely taken prudent steps to ensure the town’s solvency.  Nevertheless, the cancelation of town recreation and cultural programs while the council was rerouting money that would have paid for their maintenance into the town manager’s pocket has resonated around the community. According to the recall campaign’s sponsors, more than half of the signatures needed to force a referendum on Huntington and Lombardo’s continued tenure on the council have been gathered and the group is on target to meet its signature gathering quota by the September deadline.
With Lombardo and Huntington at the center of the firestorm, the entire council appeared to be chastened by the community outcry against their February vote and by the progress of the recall effort. Before the start of the new fiscal year and the onset of summer, the town council relented from its earlier plan to institute some of Nuaimi’s harsh economies, and moved to appease the town’s discontented masses, backing away from the closure of the pool, allowing it to remain open in the morning, when swim lessons are offered and lap swimming and exercising activity is allowed. At 11:30 a.m. it is open for general public use and remains open until 1:30 p.m. Likewise, the town did not make good on its threat to cancel the July Fourth fireworks celebration. That display was again put on after sundown on Independence Day. The museum remains open three days a week. Concerts in the park are being put on.
The recall effort continued unabated. On August 10, last Saturday, the increasingly desperate Lombardo and Huntington, who are both Republicans, took the extraordinary step of venturing beyond their normal comfort zone of their circle of supporters, and appeared before the Morongo Basin Democratic Club at its regularly scheduled meeting, hoping to use that forum to present their side with regard to the effort to recall them from office.
While the two embattled councilman believed they might offer the crowd justification of their records and action in office and persuade at least some of those in attendance that removing them from office is a drastic and unwarranted step, the event became for them more of an educational venue, as both were given an unfiltered and direct demonstration of the impassioned low regard much of the community has for Nuaimi.
Initially, Lombardo and Huntington sought to explain the reasons for their reliance on Nuaimi, a former mayor in Fontana who had parlayed his access to former Colton Mayor Kelly Chastain into the position of assistant city manager in Colton before he left that position and was later hired in Yucca Valley. But the meeting morphed into a forum for the negative assessment of  Nuaimi’s performance as city manager rather than an exposition by Lombardo and Huntington on why they merit remaining in office.
In a less than deft start, Lombardo insisted on utilizing Republican talking points, stating that he was “a capitalist and that is not a popular word with this group.”  This remark elicited loud groans from the audience, a fair number of which were business owners. When responding to a resident who asked a question about socio-economic disparity in Yucca Valley, an oblique reference to the generous enhancement to Nuaimi’s employment contract with the town, Lombardo was met with boos when he stated that “if someone is poor, it’s their own fault. What they need to do is get an education and pull themselves up.”  Lombardo insisted that personal wealth was a function of an individual’s effort and ambition, even in the face of suggestions by those in attendance that local government had fallen down with regard to its responsibility to create the opportunity for the economic advancement of its citizens.
At that point, several of those in attendance dispensed with subtlety and niceties, making direct inquiry of the two council members about what they characterized as the disrespect the council had demonstrated for the community by extending and enhancing Nuaimi’s contract while cutting municipal services to their constituents.
Huntington and Lomardo asserted the council collectively felt it needed to rely upon Nuaimi to guide the town through a thicket of challenging and complicated issues of governance and management. That provoked even tougher questions about the integrity and value of Nuaimi’s leadership as well as his character and judgment. Unrelentingly, those in attendance pressured Lombardo and Huntington with questions suggesting the city manager’s leadership had been oriented less toward public service than self advancement and self interest. Nuaimi had alienated many in the community, some suggested, and they questioned both his intent and judgment, as well as other aspects of his conduct.
In what came across as an extraordinary concession which transformed the tempo of the meeting and by extension Nuaimi’s fate, Lombardo and Huntington revealed that the council had been working with Nuaimi on behavioral issues, and that they felt he was “imperfect” but “making improvement.” This led to audience members questioning why the council had elected to extend his contract and increase his pay if he yet needed remediation with interpersonal skills. One audience member questioned the judgment of the collective council and Huntington and Lombardo in particular in having granted the raise and three-year extension given the council’s realization of the city manager’s deficiencies beforehand. In response to the overwhelming display of anger, frustration with and disapproval of Nuaimi, Huntington, pointed out that Nuaimi’s “expertise” had been of service to the council in the past, resulting in the council overlooking his “flaws” and “personality defects.” Huntington  stated that he had heretofore been unaware that there was so much dissatisfaction with the town manager and that Nuaimi’s dismissal was something that would be “considered.” Lombardo concurred with Huntington, indicating that he too would consider “all options” going forward.
Four days later, the full council pulled the plug on Nuaimi.
An important issue that will need to be hashed out at the closed session prior to the public portion of the August 20 meeting is what official cause for Nuaimi’s termination will be provided. Without the citation of adequate cause, Nuaimi will be due continuation of the payment he is eligible for under his contract, meaning the council will in effect be providing him with a $750,000 buyout.
While Huntington and Lombardo and their colleagues may have hoped sacrificing Nuaimi would derail the recall effort, taking action that will ensure Nuaimi is paid roughly $300,000 per year for two-and-a-half years for simply leaving town is not likely to assuage the council’s critics nor end the effort to remove the two now targeted from office.

A complex of issues – monetary ones – have descended upon Walt Stanckiewitz in the last fortnight.
The proprietor of La Pasta Italia in the city of Grand Terrace, Stanckiewitz on August 10 stood as a mute witness to the closure of another Italian restaurant in the county’s third smallest city when Bonello’s New York Pizza, which was located at 22413 Barton Road, closed its doors and moved to a newer and larger location at 803 West Valley Blvd. in Colton.
While the departure of a competitor might otherwise be a positive development for someone in Stanckiewitz’s position, he did not see Bonello’s leaving in a positive light.
Stanckiewitz is also the mayor of 12,040-population Grand Terrace. An out-of-the-way, off-the-beaten track community on a high terrace overlooking Colton and San Bernardino that is nestled against a forlorn and isolated northern extension of Riverside County, Grand Terrace is a bedroom community with little in the way of pass-through traffic and an equal dearth of sales tax revenue-producing commercial development. And for Grand Terrace and Stanckiewitz, the financial challenges are mounting. When he became mayor almost three years ago, the city had 34 employees. With its sales tax base steadily eroding and the state of California having eliminated redevelopment agencies and depriving Grand Terrace of funding that was used to augment its municipal operations, the city has made drastic cuts for three years running and is now down to just twelve-and-a-half fulltime employees.
The loss of Bonello’s and the sales tax revenue it generated will put the city further behind the eight ball economically, even if a few of Bonello’s former customers elect to eat at Stanckiewitz’s restaurant instead of seeking pizza elsewhere such as in Colton or Riverside.
Stanckiewitz lamented the closure of Bonello’s as “almost tragic. I never really saw myself as being in competition with them,” he told the Sentinel. Nonetheless, Stanckiewitz said he did not think Grand Terrace’s situation had anything to do with the closure of the pizzeria. “I think that had more to do with the arrangement they had as a tenant with their landlord,” the mayor said. “They had applied to make the transition to the Colton location a while ago and the health department came back with their permit faster than anyone expected and boom, they were out of here.”
Even as he learned of Bonello’s actual defection across the city limits to Colton, Stanckiewitz was huddled with the senior ranks of Grand Terrace’s few remaining employees, drawing up the ballot statement for what the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters has designated will be Measure C. The city has until August 22 to put together the ballot statement language for Measure C. Any parties wishing to submit a statement opposing the measure must meet the same deadline.
Measure C is a proposal, put forth by the Grand Terrace City Council, asking Grand Terrace voters to impose on city residents a five percent utility tax.
The city’s financial condition has deteriorated to the point that its entire finance department, planning division, permitting, building inspection, and park maintenance staff have been outsourced. In passing the city’s 2013-14 budget, the city council dropped the services of one patrol deputy in the city’s contract with the sheriff’s department as of July 1 and incorporated provisional plans to dispense with another deputy as of December 1, close Pico Park and Rollins Park and the senior citizens center as of January 1.
If the city’s voters choose to pass the tax measure, the mayor said “Calculations are that it will generate between $1.39 million and $1.4 million per year.  We are particularly short staffed as it is, with just twelve-and-a-half city employees. If we do not get this tax passed, we will be down to 28 hours a week for most of our employees. I really hate to use the word draconian in describing this, but that is what it is. We can’t cut our way out of this mess. There is not enough to cut. With the budget we have in place and all the things that will take place on December 1 and January 1, our budget will be balanced but will not solve the problems. We really won’t have management of the city. Over fifty percent of the city function is contracted out. The bottom line if this does not pass is I see Colton, which surrounds us on three sides, exerting its sphere of influence. It may take a year or it may take two years but Colton will take over our city. That is just my thinking. I have not spoken with the members of the Colton City Council, but this is inevitable in my view if we do not get this tax in place.”
Stanckiewitz said. “If you go back to the beginning of the city, when the committee for incorporation applied,  the Local Agency Formation Commission said we did not have the tax base, the commercial base, to sustain ourselves. The commission opposed it, but the committee for incorporation had political connections and they were able to prevail on the board of supervisors to allow the city to form. The Local Agency Formation Commission in the end went along with it but in its report said the city needed to seek a utility tax within the first several years.  City officials never lived up to that and used redevelopment money to keep the city afloat for 30 years. Now the state has closed out redevelopment agencies and we are losing our commercial base. We are losing what we can’t afford to lose. We can’t be a bedroom community if we can’t afford to provide the needed services.”

(August 16) RIALTO—Judy Oakes, an accountant with the Rialto Unified School District, was arrested by the Rialto Police Department on suspicion of embezzlement, burglary and grand theft August 7.
One report was that Oakes, the widow of Jack Oakes, a former principal of Ramona-Allesandro Elementary School in San Bernardino, was in possession of a large amount of cash at the time of her arrest.
Since 1993, Oakes had worked as an accountant for the Rialto district’s nutrition department.
The district placed Oakes on administrative leave following her arrest. On August 8, she tendered her resignation.
Oakes, 48 of San Bernardino, was arrested while at work at the district’s nutrition services offices at 151 S. Cactus Avenue and booked into West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. She was able to post $50,000 bail within three hours and was released.
Authorities say the known disappearance of money from the 26,408-enrollment district’s coffers is a relatively recent development and that Oakes’ thefts did not appear to have commenced until June. Because of her position controlling some of the district’s financial books, a forensic audit is planned to determine if there were previous thefts.  An account discrepancy triggered the investigation that led to Oakes’ arrest.
At press time, district officials were undertaking an inquiry into reports of a personal relationship between Oakes and the district superintendent, Harold Cebrun.
At a specially-scheduled board meeting this week, Cebrun denied any wrongdoing.
“I’ve served this district with honor and integrity for the past four and a half years,” he said. “This crime is an isolated incident of one person… not involving me.”