(August 9) The county this week approved a one-year retroactive extension on the time the developer of a long-delayed 2,000-lot subdivision in Lytle Creek has to complete a levee and other drainage improvements for the project.
The county is requiring Corona-based Lennar to construct the Lytle Creek Levee Improvement and Sycamore Creek Drive road and drainage improvement projects for Tract 18402, which is a partial re-subdivision of Tract No. 15900.
County policy for improvement security and bonding on the subdivision, approved on September 16, 1985 and then later amended on June 3, 1991, allows for extensions of time where there are extenuating circumstances. Lennar has requested several extensions of time to complete the required levee improvement and road and drainage improvements, most recently on May 29, 2013. “This extension of
time is retroactive due to delays in receiving approval documents from other agencies,” said Tom Hudson, the director of the San Bernardino County Land Use Services Department.
On May 19, 2009, the county board of supervisors partially reduced the initial road and drainage performance securities for the Lytle Creek Levee Improvement from $10,449,000 to $2,099,800.  On June 15, 2010, the board reduced the performance securities for the Sycamore Creek Drive road and drainage improvements from $7,506,000 to $1,501,200.
As part of the original Tract 15900 sureties, Lennar agreed to complete the required Lytle Creek Levee Improvement and Sycamore Creek Drive road and drainage improvements by July 13, 2012. The board granted an extension of time on September 11, 2012, which moved the completion time from July 13, 2012 to July 13, 2013 after Lennar cited the downturn in the housing market as the reason for the delay.
Economic difficulties have caused delays in the completion of the improvements and Lennar has requested a time  extension to complete the levee and drainage improvements once more.
According to Hudson, “This extension of time will allow Lennar until July 13, 2014 to complete the required improvements. Lennar has paid the required deposit for the extension of time. The department is satisfied that the secured amounts are sufficient to complete the construction of the required Lytle Creek Levee Improvement and Sycamore Creek Drive road and drainage improvements and therefore recommends approval of this extension of time. The flood control district’s operations division is satisfied that the Lytle Creek Levee Improvement is currently in good standing and therefore recommends approval of this extension of time.
The performance securities will be held until Lennar completes construction of the required improvements and the board accepts the construction. The labor and materials securities will be held until six months after the board accepts construction of the improvements and the department verifies that no liens have been filed with the clerk of the board.”

(August 2) There are indications that in 2014, at least two of San Bernardino County’s leading politicians will need to withstand serious political challenges to remain in office.
In the case of Fourth District County Supervisor Gary Ovitt a persistent rumor is that Assemblyman Curt Hagman will vie for the supervisor’s post representing Chino Hills, Chino, Montclair, Ontario and southern Upland. Hagman’s intention next year has not been clarified, however, and his candidacy for supervisor has not been confirmed.
More certain is that Redlands Mayor Pete Aguilar will challenge 31st District Congressman Gary Miller next year. Miller, who formerly represented the 42nd District, which covered the heavily Republican tri-county area of northeastern Orange County, southeastern Los Angeles County and southwestern San Bernardino County, after the redistricting following the 2010 Census opted not to fight it out with fellow Republican Ed Royce to remain in Congress representing Orange County and instead run in the 31st District, which spans across San Bernardino County from Rancho Cucamonga to Redlands.
In running in the 31st. the Republican Miller took a risk in that Democrats held a slight voter registration advantage over the GOP in the district. Miller, as an incumbent Congressman, however, had a huge fundraising advantage and he was further aided by California’s adoption in 2012 of open primaries, in which the top two-vote getters in the June election, regardless of party affiliation, qualified for the November run-off. Aguilar sought election, but was hampered by a large Democratic field, which included Justin Kim, Rita Ramirez-Dean, and Renea Wickman. In addition to Miller, the Republicans fielded Bob Dutton, who at that time was a member of the California State Senate. With the Democrat vote splitting four ways in the primary and the Republican vote splitting two ways, Miller and Dutton qualified for the November race, which Miller won.
As 2014 approaches, the Democrats appear to have learned from what occurred last year and are determined to not be outmaneuvered again. In this way, the party is coalescing behind Aguilar, who outpolled all of the other Democrats vying in the 31st in 2012.
In May, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has selected Aguilar as one of five candidates nationwide to be included in its Jumpstart program, which is intended to assist early-emerging Democrats seeking to unseat incumbent Republicans deemed to be vulnerable. In California, Aguilar has pulled in the endorsements of Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.
Money is pouring into Aguilar’s political war chest. More attention was drawn to him, ensuring even more contributions, when the Washington-based news organization, Politico last month named Aguilar one of “50 Politicos to watch 2013.”
Simultaneously, Democratic Party officials are seeking to encourage both Joe Baca, a Democrat who was a member of Congress from 1999 until he was ousted by another Democrat, Gloria Negrete-McLeod, last year, and Eloise Gomez Reyes, a longtime Democratic activist, to steer clear of an electoral effort in the 31st next year. By presenting a united front that is undiluted by competing Democratic candidates, Democratic strategists believe Aguilar can beat Miller in a toe-to-toe slugfest, despite Miller’s incumbency and formidable fundraising capability.
There are signs that Miller recognizes difficulty may lay ahead for him and there has been talk of his abandoning the 31st District in 2014 to run in the 45th Congressional District, where Republican Representative John Campbell has announced he will retire from Congress following the current term. Miller, however, has said he is committed to remaining put in the 31st District..
At the county seat in San Bernardino, where Gary Ovitt has been serving as the Fourth District Supervisor since a special election was held in 2004, reports are circulating that Curt Hagman, a former Chino Hills mayor and a member of the California Assembly since 2008, covets Ovitt’s position. In 2014, Hagman will be prohibited by California’s term limit restrictions from running for the Assembly again. Under the county’s term limit regulations, Ovitt will be eligible to run for one last term on the board of supervisors next year.
Both Hagman and Ovitt are Republicans and at least until lately, political allies. They endorsed each other in their last election efforts. Hagman is currently the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, i.e., the GOP’s county political apparatus, giving him considerable control over the party’s fundraising processes, including the ability to endow independent expenditure committees. This could leave Ovitt, a former Ontario mayor, at a disadvantage since the county has instituted campaign finance limits which have curtailed the ability of supervisorial candidates to draw money from individual donors with the exception of independent expenditure committees.
Reportedly, efforts are under way to persuade Ovitt to “voluntarily” choose not to seek reelection next year, a course of action that will be made easier given his pension as a retired teacher and the pension he can draw as a former supervisor. Neither Hagman nor Ovitt have at this point officially announced their respective 2014 intentions.

(August 2) SAN BERNARDINO – Claiming that San Bernardino city officials delayed their responses and improperly confiscated recall petitions, the group sponsoring the effort to remove most of the city’s politicians from office filed a writ of mandate with the San Bernardino Superior Court on July 29 seeking to compel City Clerk Gigi Hanna to count signatures endorsing the recall against city attorney James Penman that Hanna has rejected as improperly collected.
Michael L. Allan, the attorney representing San Bernardino Residents For Responsible Government, stated in the writ that Hanna had used a “false pretext” to derail the recall effort.“Hanna’s actions do not comport with the clear language of the [city] charter, nor are they based upon the documents filed pursuant to the recall nor the timing thereof,” according to Allan.
San Bernardino Residents For Responsible Government, headed by Scott Beard, formed in April and has undertaken to recall Mayor Patrick Morris, all seven members of the city council and city attorney James Penman.
According to Allan, the group adhered to the recall process specified in state law and in the city of San Bernardino’s charter, including proper handling of the petitions, their circulation and giving the recall targets the opportunity to provide a response that would be circulated with the petitions when signatures were gathered by the proponents. Allan claims, however, that city officials, including Penman and city manager Allen Parker, used their positions and authority to intimidate Hanna, illegally take custody of the petitions and through an overbearing assertion of non-existent protocol induce her to reject the petitions pertaining to Penman that have so far been filed.
According to Allan, “On May 21, 2013, the city manager, Allen Parker, descended upon Hanna’s office and confiscated the recall election files, taking the documents to his office. Reputedly, Hanna did not resist the confiscation of the recall election files. It was not until, approximately June 5, 2013 at 4:25 PM that Hanna took possession again of the recall files.”
The writ continues, “On July 12, 2013, petitions requesting the recall of city attorney James F. Penman, bearing almost 19,000 signatures of the voters of the city of San Bernardino, along with a filing cover letter and a certificate of acknowledgment, were submitted for filing to Hanna, in her official capacity as the city clerk of San Bernardino and its elections officer. Hanna stated that she as invalidating the petitions, returned them to Beard, and declined to sign the certificate of acknowledgment. She then handed an already prepared letter to Scott B. Beard, proponent and responsible officer for San Bernardino Residents For Responsible Government, attempting to justify her rejection of the petitions. Hanna’s letter asserted a failure to jointly publish the notice of intent to circulate a recall petition and [the] answer of Penman as the justification for her action. Hanna did not provide a certificate of sufficiency or insufficiency regarding the petitions or the reason for their alleged deficiency.”
According to Allan, the recall effort’s campaign manager, Michael McKinney, had earlier sought to comply with the requirement that the recall targets be allowed to propound their response to the recall group’s stated grounds for the recall.
“On May 9, 2013, on behalf of the proponents and the proponents committee, McKinney began requesting information regarding the filing of answers by the officers, and copies of answers filed and statements regarding publication,” the writ states. “Further requests for the answers, and copies of any other documents filed, if any, including the officers’ declarations of intent to publish, were made on May 13, 14, 16, 20, and 24, 2013, requesting from Hanna copies of all documents filed by the officers in response to the notices of intent to circulate recall petitions. No purported declarations of intent to publish were sent by Hanna or her office, nor acknowledged. Indeed, on May 14, 2013 at 8:48 AM, [and] at approximately 1:30 PM, McKinney telephoned Hanna and spoke with her directly and asked her for copies of the declarations of intent to publish by the officers, if any had been filed. Hanna responded that there were none.”
The writ continues, “On May 24, 2013, McKinney at 10:03 AM, emailed a letter to Hanna, inter alia, acknowledging that the city manager had removed the recall documents and files from her office, and reminding her that no declarations of an intent to publish, which had been repeatedly requested by the San Bernardino Residents For Responsible Government, had been provided by her office or by the city manager during his interregnum.”
According to Allan, on May 29, Parker wrote the recall group, asserting that all of the recall proponents had filed answers they wanted published with the recall notices and that the recall proponents were required to publish those answers.
When Hanna rejected the petitions to recall Penman, she cited the section of the city charter which provides for the circulation of petitions only after the simultaneous publication of a notice of intention to circulate a petition together with the reasons for the petition and any response the targeted official provides. According to the city, Penman has a copy of his request with a time stamp indicating the request was made by the deadline and at the same minute that he submitted his response.
Allan maintains Penman’s response was forwarded to the recall proponents too late to be included in the published notice of the recall but that it was included on the petition for recall, which afforded those who signed the petition the opportunity to read his answer before they endorsed the petition.
The writ calls upon the court to “issue an order declaring that a) plaintiffs/petitioners complied with the requirements of Charter Section 122 as regards the service, filing, publishing, circulation for signatures, and submission for filing of the recall petition concerning Penman, b) that the officers, and each of them, failed to comply with the strictures of Charter Section 122 regarding any purported request for joint publication of the notices of intent to circulate a recall petition and their respective answer [and] c) that no duty to jointly publish the notices and answers of the officers, or any of them, is now or was during the period from the filing of the notices against the officers to the present time, incumbent upon the petitioners.”
Neither Hanna nor Parker had filed a response to the writ by press time.

(August 2) If the much-delayed preliminary hearing for Dr. Stephen Kinzey goes on as scheduled next week, the public is likely to get a glimpse of several sophisticated and here-to-now sensitive and/or secret methods of investigation now being utilized against suspected and actual domestic narcotic rings.
Kinzey, a tenured professor of kinesiology at Cal State San Bernardino, garnered national and international attention when he was indicted along with ten others and charged with being the kingpin in a methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution network. Kinzey’s circumstance invited comparisons to the Sony Pictures Television production Breaking Bad telecast on AMC, a fictional depiction of a struggling high school chemistry teacher who with the aid of a former student produces and sells methamphetamine.
In relatively short order, seven of those charged with Kinzey pleaded guilty to elements of the criminal case brought against them. Less than two months ago, another of those charged entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to commit a crime.
Kinzey and the two other defendants remaining in the case, Holly Vandergrift Robinson and Jeremy Disney, had been present in court on June 20 for their combined preliminary hearing, which was postponed to August 6 by Judge Kenneth Barr when it was learned that defense co-counsel Stephen Sweigert had been involved in a car accident.
Kinzey, now 47, was charged with drug dealing, running a street gang and possessing illegal firearms. Robinson, his girlfriend and a former Cal State San Bernardino student, is accused of helping him run a handful of meth dealers in what law enforcement officials saw as a small-time operation that was on the verge of expanding.
Kinzey, a
PH.D
in kinesiology, obtained his doctorate from the University of Toledo, and previously earned his masters at Indiana State and his bachelor’s at Wayne State. He began teaching at the University of Mississippi in 1995 and transferred into the California State University system in 2001 and eventually became the chairman of the San Bernardino campus’s kinesiology department’s curriculum committee. Kinzey was considered a serious academic who had performed research into ergonomics and the health effects of videogame playing on children. He also had an interest, bordering on an obsession, with motorcycling and motorcycle clubs. A Harley-Davidson owner, Kinzey joined a local chapter of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club while he was a professor in Mississippi in 1997.
Subsequently, after coming to California, Kinzey intensified his biker club associations. It is unknown whether Kinzey landing in San Bernardino County, the birthplace of three of what are referred to as outlaw biker gangs – the Hells Angels, the Vagos and the Devils Diciples – was calculation or coincidence.
After his relocation from Mississippi, Kinzey started two local motorcycle clubs in Southern California while he was teaching at San Bernardino State. Curiously, his status with each of the clubs he founded eroded and it he founded eroded and it appears he was invited to leave or was forced out of both.
In time, Kinzey moved on to form a new chapter of the Devils Diciples, a biker gang that originated in Fontana in 1967 but which now has its national headquarters in Detroit. Kinzey formed a San Bernardino Mountain chapter of the club and until his arrest was actively promoting the affiliation, selling Devil’s Diciples shirts, helmets and rider paraphernalia from a website.
Prosecutors have suggested a nexus between Kinzey’s alleged drug manufacturing activity and his ties with the Devil’s Diciples and possibly other motor cycle enthusiasts. Those suggestions have been vague, though, and little in the way of concrete information with regard to those associations has motorbeen provided.
Unanswered questions, at this point, run to whether the alleged drug ring Kinzey headed had a connection to a wider network paralleling the national structure of the Devil’s Diciples or if the conspiracy prosecutors say Kinzey headed was endemic to a handful of small scale local operators and users.
A preliminary hearing, also known as an evidentiary hearing, is a proceeding that takes place after a criminal complaint has been filed by the prosecution in which the judge hearing the matter is to make a determination whether there is enough evidence to warrant having the matter proceed to trial. While sufficient evidence to convict need not be demonstrated, enough evidence to satisfy the judge that there is probable cause to conclude that a crime was committed and those charged are responsible must be aired in open court. All evidence and witnesses brought forth are subject to examination by counsel for the defense, making it likely that more than a cursory vetting of the evidence will occur and that prosecutors, to some degree, will be locked in on the case they will need to present to a jury.
What is known is that the Kinzey ring was the focus of a joint task force that involved the FBI, the San Bernardino Police Department and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deparment. There is at present some mystery as to how the investigation into the Kinzey ring evolved, that is, whether investigators worked the case from the top down or ground up. A ground up investigation would have involved local investigators coming across indications of drug activity, potentially drug dealing at the street level, and tracing that activity up the ladder ultimately reaching Kinzey. A top down investigation would have entailed an investigation that began with Kinzey as the target, most likely based upon his Devil’s Diciples affiliation.
Federal authorities and other law enforcement agencies have been striving, for some time, to make drug trafficking cases against the Devil’s Diciples. Federal Prosecutors in 2009 charged the club’s national president, Jeff Garvin “Fat Dog” Smith and 17 other Diciples members with drug trafficking, but then dropped the case six months later. In July 2012, 41 members and associates of the Devils Diciples, including Fat Dog Smith and national vice president Paul Anthony Darrah, were indicted on a variety of criminal charges, including racketeering, drug trafficking, illegal firearms offenses, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling, and other federal offenses. Eighteen of the defendants, including Smith and Darrah, were charged with violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Kinzey was the target of an investigation that involved intense surveillance which tracked his movements and saw his communications, both telephonic and via the internet, closely monitored.
As the president of the local chapter of the Devil’s Diciples, Kinzey administered a website that was utilized to promote the club. In his representation of the group, Kinzey was known by the moniker “Skinz.” Undercover agents analyzed the postings to and from the website Kinzey controlled and took particular interest in purchases made, ostensibly for Devil’s Diciples t-shirts and other regalia, utilizing the website or e-Bay, with law enforcement officials seeking to determine if the sales masked or signaled drug buys or pick-ups.
Agents also shadowed Kinzey during his occasional meetings with Devil’s Diciples members when those confabs took place in public, including ones that took place at Chad’s Place, a bar in Big Bear frequented by bikers of all stripes.
Investigators obtained warrants to listen in to conversations or overlook text messages involving the rings members. Several of those communications piqued officers’ attention, giving them leads on his suspected network of drug distributors. For example, one text message sent to a suspected distributer read: “Bring whatever cabbage u got for my soup cuz ingredients are low.”
Despite the net of surveillance that had been stretched around Kinzey toward the end of the investigation, he eluded it when the task force made its move and served arrest and search warrants on the accused and their places of residence. When police descended on Kinzey’s upscale East Highlands Ranch home, they nabbed his live-in girlfriend, Robinson, and found a pound of methampetamine, loaded handguns and rifles and Kinzey’s biker leathers, but Kinzey was not there and he did not return. Instead, after an all points bulletin went out for his arrest in which it was reported that he was to be considered armed and dangerous, Kinzey days later came forward with his lawyer and $300,000 in bond money, which was posted without him being booked, photographed or fingerprinted. It was not until he turned up for his arraignment where he pleaded not guilty that he was subjected to the formalities of arrest, and then was immediately set loose.
Of peripheral interest is just how far beyond the confines of the motorcycle club and the circle of eleven people indicted the drug manufacturing and distribution activity extended. One indication was that Kinzey was not the “cook,” i.e., the chemist who manufactured the drugs, but rather the first link in the chain between the lab and the eventual end users who bought it at the street level. At least for a time, investigators were intent on determining the relationship between Kinsey and Denver Cooley, the owner of Monumental Bronze & Granite in San Bernardino and also the pastor of the Roadhouse Biker Church in San Bernardino. It is not known whether the investigation into Kinzey and the ten others indicted with him turned up any evidence to confirm investigators’ theories that the Roadhouse Biker Church was being used as a front in illicit activity by the Devil’s Diciples and other motorcycle clubs.
If the preliminary hearing indeed gets under way by August 6 as is scheduled at press time, in the docket with Kinzey will be Robinson and Jeremy Disney, who have consistently maintained their innocence. The eight others originally indicted with them have all agreed to turn state’s evidence.
Wendi Lee Witherell pleaded guilty September 2011 to reduced charges.
Elaine Linda Flores, Stephanie Danielle Padilla, Chelsea Marie Johnson, and Eric Cortez all pleaded guilty in October 2011 to reduced charges.
Edward Freer and Christopher Allen Rikerd pleaded guilty to reduced charges in November 2011.
Hans Robert Preszler pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit a crime in June 2013.

(August 2) In Rancho Cucamonga, the fire department has become a symbol of prestige and pride that distinguishes it from most of its counterparts within San Bernardino County.
Currently, three of Rancho Cucamonga’s city council members – Mayor Dennis Michael and councilmen Sam Spagnola and Bill Alexander – are retired firefighters, partially accounting for the elevated status the fire department has in the community.
There are even more historic factors that explain the reverence accorded the fire department.
Fifty-seven years before the incorporation of Rancho Cucamonga, the community of Alta Loma in 1920 bought its first fire engine. The Cucamonga Fire Department formed in 1948. The Alta Loma and Cucamonga fire departments merged in 1975 to become the Foothill Fire District.
When the communities of Alta Loma, Cucamonga and Etiwanda combined to form the city of Rancho Cucamonga in 1977, the Foothill Fire District remained independent, with its own governing board. Twelve years later, the fire district became a subsidiary component of the city, named the Rancho Cucamonga Fire Protection District, with the city council supplanting the fire board. The fire district now functions as part of the city government, but is a separate legal and fiscal entity.
This year, Rancho Cucamonga boasts a $65,240,470 general fund budget, which covers all order of municipal operations except for its library and fire department. On a ledger separate from its general fund, Rancho Cucamonga has budgeted $28,449,220 for fire department operations in fiscal 2013-14.
Only one other city in San Bernardino County – Ontario, which has responsibility for fire suppression at Los Angeles-owned Ontario International Airport – has a larger annual budget for its fire department, at $39.7 million.
In the county seat of San Bernardino, where the fire department has a proud and storied history of ensuring public safety, morale in the fire department and the city generally has plummeted in the wake of years of municipal fiscal mismanagement that culminated in the city’s bankruptcy filing last year and the subsequent departures of the fire chief and his assistant chief who replaced him for a duration that was marked by unrest within a division that was called upon to severely curtail operations and expenses.
Conversely, in Rancho Cucamonga, with its population of 165,000 fire protection and emergency medical response provided by the Rancho Cucamonga Fire Protection District remains as the sine qua non of municipal services and the amount of money appropriated to the district by the city this year is more than the general funds of 11 of the county’s 24 cities.
The Rancho Cucamonga Fire Protection District employs more than 120 full- and part-time personnel preventing fires, fighting fires, rescuing victims, making emergency medical response and responding to hazardous material situations, including handling and disposing of such substances before a situation involving them becomes critical.
In addition to its standard firefighting corps functioning out of the department’s 7 fire stations covering the city’s 49 square miles, the department employs a team of firefighters specializing in wildland fire protection, given the city’s proximity to Day and Cucamonga canyons and the foothills below Cucamonga Peak, which is part of the Angeles National Forest. The department’s personnel work closely with the Rancho Cucamonga Fire Safe Council and homeowners to improve the defensible space around residences in order to give firefighters a chance to save such properties when in danger of wildfire. In addition, as part of the department’s emergency preparedness and response program, evacuation and travel routes in the event of a wildland fire emergency have been developed. This plan was practiced during a recent countywide preparedness exercise focusing on a wildland fire scenario.
The district has taken great pains to refine its state-of-the-art emergency medical service/paramedic program.
Each frontline Rancho Cucamonga Fire District response unit is staffed and equipped to provide advanced life support services in response to a variety of illnesses and injuries. Firefighters cross-trained as certified paramedics are responsible for patient assessment, contact with local hospitals and advanced treatment that includes the administration of controlled drugs. Department units carry defibrillators.
The Rancho Cucamonga Fire District’s technical rescue team is capable of making immediate response to calls requiring highly specialized rescue skills. The team is certified as a heavy level rescue team and was the first such team certified in San Bernardino County. Additionally, the tech rescue team is part of the California Emergency Management Agency, which allows for the team to be activated throughout the state if needed. The team is trained and equipped for confined space rescues, trench collapse rescue, building collapse and shoring response, swift water rescue, high angle rope rescue and large animal rescue.
The department’s hazardous materials team employs trained specialists supported by certified operational first responders. The Haz Mat Team responds out of Fire Station 173 in the city’s Day Creek area to incidents reported to involve potentially dangerous spills or releases of various hazardous materials.
The Haz-Mat/Fire Team participates in a joint powers authority with four other surrounding agencies including cooperative assistance from the Ontario International Airport Fire Department. This joint powers authority offers additional staffing or equipment as needed in the event of an incident. Rancho Cucamonga has also employed a small quantity conditionally exempt generator (SQCEG) program through San Bernardino County. The SQCEG program allows the fire district to mitigate small spills without delay, in so doing providing fast response so the businesses experience less down time and reduced clean-up costs.

CHINO HILLS –Foreclosure proceedings have begun on the home that was being used as an illicit maternity hotel in an upscale neighborhood here last year until adverse publicity and legal action by the city forced its closure.
What was originally a seven bedroom and six-and-a-half bathroom 7,964-square-foot home at 15250 Woodglen Drive owned by Hai Yong Wu had been converted into a 17-bedroom maternity hotel operation at which wealthy pregnant women from China would stay during the final stages of their pregnancies and would then give birth at local hospitals so that, under the 14th Amendment, their children could claim U.S. citizenship.
In September 2012 the home’s septic system became overloaded, resulting in a sewage spill, leading to the activity at the home becoming publicly known. There ensued a local protest targeting Wu and his business partner, Yi Wang, and complaints to the city and the sheriff’s department.
In November, Chino Hills officials obtained a court order allowing them to carry out an inspection of the premises, during which they discovered the non-permitted alterations to the home’s configuration, the addition of ten toilets and evidence that as many as 30 women were being housed there at one time. Numerous city code violations were noted and a public nuisance complaint was filed December 7.
A request for a temporary restraining order was filed by the city against Wu and Wang on December 27 in West Valley Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga.
Wu and Wang, represented by attorney Stephen Shepard, initially moved to resist the enforcement action but eventually complied, such that maternity hosting activity at the home ended. At the end of January, Wang was dismissed as a party in the enforcement action, and in February Wu, represented by Shepard, entered into a “stipulated judgment” whereby nine of the building code violations were acknowledged and a correction plan was put into place. Under the terms of that agreement, which was confirmed as a court-ordered settlement issued by West Valley Superior Court Judge Keith Davis on February 11, Wu was required to remedy sewer line discharge violations, cover exposed electrical wires on the premises, outfit the single entrance bedrooms with emergency exits, provide ventilation, correct illegal construction of add-on rooms in the house, install smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and alarms, and ensure clearance of flammable materials.
On March 11, Wu, in an apparent attempt to get out from beneath the burden of the situation, had the home listed for sale with an asking price of $3.3 million. Despite the listing, the home has a more realistic appraised value of less than half that, at $1.6 million. The listing does not appear to have attracted any serious buyers and on May 31 it was taken off the market.
Despite the stipulated judgment, there is no indication that Wu has undertaken any of the improvements needed to bring the property up to code. No permits to undertake the agreed-upon changes to the structure have been pulled at City Hall.
Less than three weeks after the listing was discontinued, Wu was hit with a foreclosure notice. Title is further clouded by the city’s recording of documents requiring that the home cannot be cleared as a habitable structure until the inspectors sign off on the improvements referenced in the stipulated judgment.
The trustee sale will take place at 11:30 a.m. on August 16 at the Chino Public Library in the Chino City Hall complex.

(August 2) UPLAND –Belatedly, the Upland City Council will review and likely pass the city’s 2013-14 fiscal year budget on August 12.
This week the Upland Finance and Economic Development Committee reviewed city manager Stephen Dunn’s proposed spending plan for the ongoing fiscal year running from July 1 to June 30. That panel’s members, councilmen Brendan Brandt and Glenn Bozar, indicated they would recommend Dunn’s proposal to the entire city council.
Anticipating roughly $40 million in income over the entire year, Dunn had pressed the city’s department heads to budget for their divisions in such a way that the city would spend just $38.5 million through its general fund, which covers basic city operations. Dunn’s goal was to be able to salt away $1.5 million into a reserve account by the end of the fiscal year in June 2014.
After several goes at it in May and June, however, that goal was not achieved and Upland did not approve the 2012-14 budget prior to July 1, as is traditionally done. Twenty-two of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities had approved spending plans for the current fiscal year by or before June 30.
Ultimately, Dunn’s goal of preserving $1.5 million was not met. Instead, the city predicts it will take $39.37 million into the general fund while spending $38.6 million on basic operations, netting a reserve of $770,000.
Dunn acknowledged that a carryover miscalculation from last year hampered the city in meeting the $1.5 million reserve goal. He said that last year $980,000 in funding for the police department had been inadvertently withdrawn from the 2012-13 budget. That amount was restored to the baseline figures the police department had to work within in establishing its 2013-14 budget. Dunn said police chief Jeff Mendenhall succeeded in paring $300,000 of the $980,000 that had been returned to the police department budget.
Total operating funds for the city, including the general fund and spending outside the general fund such as Upland’s various enterprise and special funds, will total $106.23 million in expenditures.
The city will spend $8,759,670 on capital improvement projects.
The city will shell out $108,000 in merit increases, will increase its overtime budget by $130,490, increase fringe benefit payouts by $41,190, increase its contribution to the state employees retirement fund by $165,840, set another $164,780 aside for increases in retiree benefits, increase its outlay for fleet maintenance by $191,030, and up its contribution into its self-funded liability account by $300,000. The city will see its legal fees decrease by $1.5 million due to the settlement of litigation it had with the county over flood control issues at the Colonies Project,. The city also obtained, Dunn said, $1,047,950 in savings as a result of labor concessions.
While the city’s animal services division will generate $415,750 in income, its operating expenses will run to $895,540.
On the revenue side, while the city anticipates a $351,800 increase in property tax proceeds and a $569,850 increase in sales taxes due primarily to new retail outlets at the Colonies Crossroads Center, Dunn said the city will see a $69,890 decrease in fees due to the anticipated drop in fee-generating services provided by the police department and a $20,000 decrease in revenue from development services map and plan check activity.

(August 2) FONTANA – The city of Fontana has extended its contract with city manager Ken Hunt for another five years.
Hunt, the successor to a string of notable city managers in Fontana, including Jack Ratelle, John O’Sullivan, and Greg Devereaux, has been with the city in the capacity of top administrator since 1999. Prior to that, he was with the city for nine years, serving in the capacities of city auditor, budget officer, purchasing manager, finance director and human resources director.
In extending Hunt’s contract, his annual salary was upped from to $264,600 to $277,000.

(August 2) IVANPAH—What will be the largest solar plant in the world when it becomes operational in December is nearing completion at the northeast corner of San Bernardino County.
The $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a joint venture by BrightSource Energy, Google and NRG Energy, located 110 miles east of Barstow, five miles west of the California-Nevada border. According to the California Energy Commission, which licensed the Ivanpah project in 2010 in keeping with the state’s goal of promoting clean renewable energy and having 33 percent of the state’s energy produced from such sources by 2020, construction is 95 percent complete. The 377-megawatt plant, consisting of three 459-foot tall towers and 170,000 heliostats, i.e., mirrors reflecting solar energy to the towers, on 5.3 square miles of federal land, will provide sufficient energy for 140,000 households and will connect to both Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison’s systems.
A significant portion of the funding for the project consists of a $1.6 billion loan guarantee by the U.S. Department of Energy.

(July 26) With the dog days of summer upon us, the number of dying stray animals is on the rise, due in part to the region’s seasonal unforgiving sultriness.
In Hesperia, one of San Bernardino County’s hottest cities, the already-elevated incidence of neglected animals expiring due to exposure to the elements is exacerbated by the municipal code and city policy.
The city of Hesperia runs the Hesperia Animal Shelter, which despite admirable intentions, is inadequate to the task of humanely dealing with the demands of a 73-square mile city and the widespread desire that the facility be maintained as a no-kill asylum for lost pets, strays or unwanted animals.
Simultaneously, despite the consideration that Hesperia features as much or more property zoned for “residential agricultural” use as nearly any other city or town in the county, the city nonetheless enforces a strict limit on how many pets a homeowner may have according to lot size. Under the threat of draconian code enforcement action and heavy fines, homeowners have in many case chosen to abandon animals that have come under their care or ownership.
One case in point – that of the city’s code enforcement effort against Esther and Janet Duran –  illustrates how the city’s policies and overzealousness in the enforcement of its codes lacks sensitivity to not only humane considerations with regard to citizens efforts to protect animals but the ill-advised and ultimately costly lengths city officials have gone to in enforcing those coldhearted  rules.
In January 2010, the Hesperia code enforcement division took up a case that to all appearances was indistinguishable from the thousands of others in which the municipality used its authority, bankroll and control of the code enforcement process to overwhelm its citizens and obtain an inevitable adjudication in the city’s favor.
The division’s focus in this case was a property on Redwood Avenue owned by Esther Duran. which her daughter, Janet, was using as a temporary rescue shelter for horses that would otherwise have been sent to slaughterhouses for euthanization or processing for the dog food or glue manufacturing industries.
Janet Duran, an ambulance driver, in 2004 took up the cause of doomed horses, including wild mustangs run to ground by cowboys in Nevada and Arizona and ones being sold by their owners at auction, ostensibly to buyers interested in using them for horsemeat for as little as $5, $10, or $15 a head.
The Redwood property prior to city incorporation was zoned for agricultural use. The post-incorporation zoning was agricultural residential and the Durans were permitted under the city’s code to have up to six horses on the property per its acreage.
On January 13, 2010, a team of city employees that included two code enforcement officers, four armed sheriff’s department deputies in flak jackets and two animal control officers descended on the Durans’ property. One of the code enforcement officers served Esther Duran with papers and the team then seized three horses and five dogs, one of which was a stray whose owner the Durans were seeking to locate. Both Esther and Janet were cited and slapped with a total of $129,000 in fees, which upon the city’s processing protocol were ratcheted up into liens against the property. Those liens resulted in Esther Duran’s mortgage increasing from $1,400 to $4,700 per month.
Unwilling to take the city’s action lying down, the Durans hired Upland-based attorney Louis G. Fazzi. Fazzi brought several principles to bear which the city had in the past routinely overlooked in its enforcement efforts, including compliance with the city’s own codes, which actually allowed for the presence of up to three more horses than the Durans had on the property on January 13, 2010 and up to five dogs, as well as the right to due process. The city’s response was to seek a series of delays, which had the effect of increasing the Durans’ legal costs while the underlying issue – the return of their animals – remained unresolved.
Despite the cost, the Durans did not simply duck out of the fight. Fazzi persisted on their behalf, successfully removing the matter to federal court. Still, the city told the court the Durans were maintaining a substandard property and that the animals for that reason should not be returned to them. Fazzi maintained that the property was up to code and in compliance in all regards. In March 2012, a court-appointed independent inspector went over the Redwood property with a fine-tooth comb, concluding the property was indeed up to code.
In April 2012, U.S. District Court Judge John E. McDermott ruled that the city’s action against the Durans was improper and that their animals would have to be returned to them. Fazzi immediately brought a motion to have McDermott consider whether the entire process the Durans had been subjected to was unconstitutional.
While McDermott’s ruling was pending, the city offered the Durans a $200,000 settlement. The tendering of that offer, and the Durans’ acceptance of it, put the matter to rest, preventing a potentially precedent-setting ruling that would prohibit the city from continuing to employ the same tactics against other city residents.
There is no shortage of half-acre, one-acre, two-acre and even five acre and ten acre residential agricultural properties in Hesperia. Those lot sizes have not prevented the large scale demise of abandoned animals to the brutal elements in Hesperia or them being put to sleep by animal shelter workers.
Meanwhile, agricultural residential property owners and advocates of a more humane approach toward animal control are campaigning to have Hesperia change its animal control regulations and code enforcement tactics. Specifically, those advocates want reform that would  relax the city’s regulations regarding the number of animals per acre, so that animal rescuers would be free to take in, care for, feed and potentially adopt more animals, including ones incarcerated at the city’s shelter facing inevitable slaughter.