(October 10) Orange and October are the perfect combination for the harvest season. The harvest is the prelude to the holiday season. The color orange is making a wave this month and with a punch. I am fascinated by the people wearing bright orange in the middle of fall. It’s a very interesting color that is going to stick around until about the end of the month. Color is a great way to create art, so make sure you take orange to the limits this October. California is very special and different because we really do dress for the weather and we always want things to look different every season. With that said, orange is here and it’s perfect for October. Fashion has reversed gears and the day of realism is here in the most imaginative and colorful way possible. It’s great to dress the body with many interesting things and the beginning of fall is a great time to recreate your style. It’s all about contagious enthusiasms when it comes to dressing in October. Have fun and be creative.

“The tones of gray, pale turquoise, and pink, will prevail.”    -Christian Dior

A SB County sheriff’s deputy who in the past two-and-a-half years  has  been involved in the deaths of three suspects finds his action under increasing scrutiny as the family of one of those who died at his hands has received a $4.25 million settlement and the families of the two others are  pressing forward with civil suits against him, the sheriff’s department and the county.
San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy Ismail Diaz was directly or indirectly involved in the officer-involved deaths of Allen Kephart in May 2011, Kenneth Munoz, Jr. in October 2011 and Merlin Factor in June 2013.
The 350-pound Kephart expired after suffering a heart attack when three officers, including Diaz, administered 16 taser gun jolts to him for his failure to comply with Diaz’s commands following a traffic stop. Diaz administered eight of those electrical shocks.
Munoz was shot twelve times by a sheriff’s sergeant and Diaz after deputies were summoned by Diaz’s father during a dispute over a pickup truck and the younger Munoz grappled with another officer after he was ordered to the ground. Diaz shot Munoz ten times.
Factor, who was allegedly combative and armed, was shot by two sheriff’s deputies after  a call reporting an act of vandalism at a mobile home park led to a confrontation with the deceased. The sheriff’s department has not confirmed that Diaz was one of the deputies involved in the Factor shooting.
The district attorney’s office has completed reviews of the deaths of Kephart and Munoz. A determination with regard to criminal issues in the Factor shooting has yet to be made but it is anticipated it will exonerate the involved deputies.
The district attorney’s office, while acknowledging that the ordeal Kephart was subjected to during the attempt to arrest him resulted in physical stress that was “a significant factor” in his death, concluded “there is insufficient evidence to establish criminal liability on the part of these deputies.”
Diaz maintained that on the afternoon of May 10, 2011, he had attempted pull Kephart over after Kephart failed to make a full stop at an intersection in the San Bernardino Mountains. Kephart, according to Diaz, drove nine-tenths of a mile before pulling over, at which time a confrontation ensued in which Kephart only partially complied with Diaz’s commands that Kephart get down on his knees and then lay prone on the ground. The district attorney’s office said the tactics used by Diaz and two other deputies and a sergeant that arrived on the scene to back up Diaz, “were not unreasonable.”
Kephart’s mother and father, Alfred and Carol Kephart, filed suit, naming the county of San Bernardino, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, and the three sheriff’s officers who used their tasers on Kephart, deputy Diaz, deputy Michael Gardea and sergeant Bryan Lane.
The Kepharts were represented by attorneys Marc Goldstein, Brian Pannish and Thomas Schultz.
The lawsuit offered a different version of events than was put forth by the sheriff’s department and accepted by the district attorney’s office.
An examination of the roadway Diaz and Kephart traveled  while Diaz was using his lights and siren in an effort to pull Kephart over demonstrated there were no safe spots at which to pull over, given the relative narrowness of the highway. Kephart appeared to have stopped at what was the first safe place. Utilizing an audio recording made by Diaz as well as the communications between Diaz and the sheriff’s department’s dispatcher, the legal team countered Diaz’s claim that the encounter ensued after Kephart ran a stop sign. Rather they maintained the encounter began when Kephart honked at Diaz after Diaz pulled in front of Kephart at the intersection. A witness, Magda Haran, testified Kephart had indeed stopped at the stop sign.  The legal team used eyewitness accounts and data retrieved from the Taser devices to show that Kephart was ordered out of his car at gunpoint, shoved face first to the ground and Tasered repeatedly in the upper back, neck and head. In pressing to make the case that Kephart’s civil rights were violated and that he had been subjected to excessive force, the plaintiffs encountered resistance from the county, which deemed  information in  Diaz’s personnel file confidential and at one point obtained a stay of legal proceedings. But after the stay was set aside, Diaz’s videotaped deposition was taken, in which he repeatedly demonstrated an inability to recall specific details relating to the incident as well as other times he had used potentially deadly force in the field, including the shooting of Munoz and at least five other times he had used a Taser.
More than two months ago and less than a month after the Factor shooting, the county on  July 26 quietly moved to close out the litigation, conferring a $4.25 million settlement on Mr. and Mrs. Kephart.
In January 2013, the district attorney’s office entered a determination that Diaz and sergeant Michael O’Brien were legally justified in fatally shooting Kenneth Munoz Jr. on October 26, 2011. Sheriff’s deputies  had been summoned to the 35200 block of Avenue B in Yucaipa by Kenneth Paul Munoz Sr., who reported that his son was refusing to return to him his truck, which they used in common as a work vehicle in their family run business. After deputies arrived and attempted to persuade the younger Munoz to comply with his father’s request, he refused and ran away. The officers gave chase, utilizing a Taser, and a bean-bag shotgun before deputy Joseph Perea commanded him to lie face down on the ground in a neighbor’s yard. After Perea knelt upon Munoz’s back in an effort to handcuff him, Munoz became resistant and combative. In the ensuing struggle between Perea and Munoz, Perea’s gun, a 45-caliber Glock 21 pistol, fell out of its holster. The scuffle between Perea and Munoz continued and when Perea separted from Munoz, O’Brien opened fire, striking Munoz twice. Diaz then shot Munoz ten times as he lay on the ground. Munoz died at the scene.
In ruling the shooting  justified, the district attorney’s office noted that Munoz had numerous intoxicants in his system, including  methamphetamine, opiates and hydrocodone.
Paul Munoz, Jr’s estate, including his father and mother and two of his minor children, have filed a lawsuit against the county, the sheriff’s department, Diaz and O’Brien in U.S. Federal Court. They are represented by attorneys Antonio Rodriguez and Jorge Gonzalez.
In court papers, Rodriguez and Gonzales maintain “the actions of the deputies from start to finish were overly aggressive and drove the situation until lethal force was used. Their actions were independent and reckless uses of force, and have a direct causal relationship to the end result. The officers did not have probable cause to arrest Kenny.”
Rodriguez and Gonzales maintain that Munoz was in the midst of an emotional and psychological breakdown, but did not constitute a physical threat to his father, himself or the responding deputies. “The use of force and attempt to subdue Kenny when he was clearly experiencing a mental breakdown was very provocative, and exactly the opposite of what a well-trained officer would do in such a circumstance,” accoring to Rodriguez and Gonzalez.  They say Diaz arrived at the location at a latter stage of the confrontation with Munoz  and “acted without any knowledge of the prior events, or of Kenny’s mental disturbance… and displayed a severely aggressive attitude to apprehend Kenny regardless of the costs. Further, Diaz was the last of the deputies to fire his handgun, shooting 10 rounds at Kenny, five times that of Sergeant O’Brien.” Diaz, according to Rodriguez and Gonzales, “acted in a panic, and fired an excessive number of rounds for the situation. His conduct in this regard was clearly incompetent.”
Rodriguez and Gonzalez have taken depositions of several of the deputies involved, including Diaz; have made analyses of other materials relating to the case, including the audio recordings from the recorders carried by the officers; and obtained witness statements from civilians who watched the chase and shooting, including Robin Dyrland, in whose yard the shooting occurred.
“The shooting was not in response to an imminent threat of deadly force or great bodily injury, and the deputies later conspired to use this as the justification for the shooting, thus manufacturing the sequence of events,” according to Rodriguez and Gonzalez. “Furthermore the version of the deputies that a wrestling match between Perea and Munoz was underway, described by Perea as a ‘life and death struggle,’ was directly contradicted by Robin Dyrland, who was standing at her back door watching the events unfold, and did not see the deputies wrestling with anyone just before the shooting. She recalls the deputies were all standing erect and stepped back just before they started shooting.  Both the sound recording and the two percipient witness directly contradict the entire version of events as stated by the deputies “
The Munoz case will likely go to trial in 2014.
The case involving the shooting of Merlin Factor is somewhat nebulous, as is Diaz’s role in it.  The district attorney’s office has yet to make a finding with regard to whether the shooting death was a justifiable homicide, although such a finding is anticipated. And while several reliable sources have given indication that Diaz was one of the deputies involved in the shooting, there has been no confirmation of that at an official level.
Los Angeles-based attorney Dale Galipo is representing Factor’s sister, Cassandra Hudson, in a wrongful death complaint against the county, the sheriff’s department and the involved deputies. Galipo told the Sentinel that “We believe Ismail Diaz was one of the two deputies involved in the death of Merlin Factor based upon several statements we have and other information but I do not have confirmation. It has been pretty difficult to get information on this shooting. That may be because of this deputy’s involvement in these other deaths but I cannot say that definitively.”
The initial report of the Saturday, June 29, 2013 shooting, based upon the information provided in a sheriff’s department press release, maintained that deputies opened fire on the 26-year-old Factor after a series of events beginning with a call reporting vandalism to a mobile home in the 12900 block of Second Street in Yucaipa. Factor was identified as having vandalized the mobile home and that he had left the scene with the woman who lived there, possibly against her will. Shortly thereafter, the allegedly abducted woman placed a 911 call and deputies went to the location from which the call had been placed, near Yucaipa Boulevard and Third Street. At that point, deputies were advised  Factor was wanted on a felony warrant.
Deputies located Factor and the woman in a vehicle and pulled him over in the parking lot of the First Baptist church. “Factor got out of the vehicle and began fighting with the deputies,” according to the sheriff’s department statement. “Factor attempted to retrieve a weapon during the struggle, forcing a deputy to shoot him.”
The arrest warrants issued for Factor pertained to his failure to appear in court 23 days earlier on misdemeanor theft and providing a false name to a police officer.
The department seems to have backed off from the assertion that Factor had a gun, but has not clarified its position.
“Our information is that he had no gun when he was shot,” Gallipo told the Sentinel. “We do not know if there was a gun. If there was, where was it? Was it under the seat of the car? He did not have a weapon of any kind when he was shot. We have talked to several witnesses and no one saw a gun or said anything about him having a gun.”
Factor did have a criminal record. He  pleaded guilty to burglary in 2012 and was on probation at the time of his death.
Gallipo said that he and his legal staff have only undertaken a preliminary examination of the circumstances and facts, having been hampered by the sheriff’s department’s reluctance to release information on the shooting. He said it appeared the sheriff’s deputies acted out of anger and annoyance in their fatal confrontation with Factor. “He was known to the sheriff’s department,” Gallipo said. “They had been looking to arrest him on the outstanding warrants before this. They were looking forward to arresting him and he had run away from them before and had gotten away. They were frustrated. They caught him and then just lost it and overreacted.”
Gallipo said he did not expect the district attorney’s office to determine the shooting was an unlawful one. “In almost every case, the district attorney’s office finds officer involved shootings to be within policy and legally justifiable. But when you take these matters to trial and lay out all the facts, juries in many of these cases find the officers’ actions to have been excessive and unreasonable. In officer involved shooting cases, juries tend to disagree with the district attorney.”
While county officials and sheriff’s brass are publicly maintaining a stiff upper lip with regard to Diaz and his continuing tenure with the department, internally there is concern that he may represent a liability to both the department and the county governmental structure. Reportedly, Diaz  is a  foremost concern within the county’s risk management department with respect to current employees. Having been stung for $4.25 million on the Kephart case and with the Munoz and Factor  matters wending their ways through the court system, pressure is mounting to ease Diaz out of the department or transfer him into a role in which he will be unlikely to encounter a use of force situation. When queried about Diaz, county risk management director Hueston Whiteside said, “That is something you should discuss with the sheriff’s department because a reassignment is not something my department is likely to have a hand in.”
The sheriff’s department’s public affairs division, citing the lateness of the Sentinel’s inquiry about Diaz this week, was unable to offer input.
Deputy district attorney William Lee, who reviewed the Kephart matter for his office, maintained that during his encounter with Diaz, “Kephart was defiant and resistant. The force used by the deputies was limited to overcoming that resistance. Diaz is obligated to enforce the laws of the state. It was Kephart’s obligation to submit to legal authority, to follow all reasonable commands and to cease any active resistance. Kephart failed to meet these obligations.”
Chief deputy district attorney Karen Bell, who reviewed the Munoz matter for her office, concluded “The officers had cause to pursue Kenneth Jr. when he failed to cooperate and would not respond to questions.  They had a duty to investigate a possible auto theft but his conduct was out of the ordinary and he might have posed a danger to himelf or others. Despite repeated efforts to convince him to stop running he did not. When Kenneth Jr. finally stopped… the officers approached with great care, based on his earlier conduct to insure (sic) their safety, the public’s and his. Unfortunately, at that moment the circumstances changed radically In such circumstances officers are entitled to use deadly force in protection of themselves or others., Kenneth Jr left them little alternative but to use their last tool – deadly force.”

(October 4) Citing what he said was an unacceptable increase in serious crime throughout the county and a lackluster effort to prosecute its perpetrators, deputy district attorney Grover Merritt said this week he will challenge his boss, incumbent district attorney Mike Ramos, in the 2014 election.
Merritt, who was the head of the district attorney’s office’s appellate unit under former district attorney Dennis Stout and continued in that capacity under Ramos for two years, said office morale has plummeted during Ramos’ tenure as a consequence of his lack of aggressive leadership, inattentiveness and womanizing. Merritt charged his boss with having made decisions based on politics rather than the merit of the cases that come before the office. He further alleged that prosecutors under Ramos have become too dependent on plea bargaining as opposed to working cases toward trial.
Merritt referenced the latest FBI uniform crime report that pegged a 56 percent increase in the number of homicides in the city of San Bernardino, the county seat, in 2012 over 2011, accompanied by a 24 percent jump in property crimes. Crime in the county’s East Valley in particular is on the rise, he said. Merritt vowed to deal with criminals ruthlessly in court once they are caught.
He said he will either judiciously utilize or  eliminate entirely  specialized units that Ramos created for public relations purposes, such as the public integrity unit, the human trafficking unit and the crimes against peace officers unit. He will emphasize nuts and bolts prosecutions of everyday, garden variety criminals, he said, rather than make efforts to generate newspaper headlines.
He lambasted Ramos for carrying on with many of the office’s female employees, which he referred to as “beneath the dignity of this office. I will see to the elimination of the weekly recounting of the district attorney’s latest sexcapades as the center of attention among office employees. This alone will lift the esprit de corps. His nuclear strength womanizing is an inhibiting factor on the strong woman working in our office who are given to understand they have to give something to get a supervisory position in the office.”
He also tore into Ramos for a “distinct absence of leadership” with regard to the closing of the Needles, Barstow and Chino courthouses.
“There was not a peep of protest from him over the closing of the courthouses at the far reaches of the county. He did not speak up for the citizens there who now have to travel long distances to get justice.”
After Ramos defeated former district attorney Dennis Stout in 2002, rumors began to circulate that Merritt would challenge Ramos in 2006. Ramos precluded that, however, when he accused Merritt of leaking information relating to two criminal cases, one involving former Sheriff Floyd Tidwell’s retention of firearms from the sheriff’s department’s evidence lockers and another involving torture murders by career criminal Jimmy Kelley in Yucca Valley. Ramos fired Merritt, who contested the sacking, proving in a hearing before a civil service commissioner that it was Ramos’ political ally, assistant district attorney Mike Risley, who had actually leaked the information as part of a scheme to destroy Merritt’s status, credibility and political viability. Merritt was returned to the office with back pay and provided with a $297,500 settlement of his suit for wrongful termination.
Ramos, who was previously under consideration by the Republican Party as a possible replacement for now retired Congressman Jerry Lewis, more recently sought a judgeship appointment from Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, but was turned down. He announced last month he would run for district attorney once more and has picked up the endorsement of Congressman Paul Cook, state senator  Bill Emmerson, San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, assistant district attorney Michael Fermin and San Bernardino Police Chief Robert Handy,  as well as the Ontario and Upland police officer associations.

(October 4) The specter of the return of the FBI’s interest in Upland hangs over the City of Gracious Living as its city council finds itself being ushered toward making an extension of a no-bid contract with its franchised trash hauler for at least another 15 years.
Burrtec, a company founded in 1955, currently has exclusive trash hauling franchise contracts with the sixteen of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities – Adelanto, Apple Valley, Barstow, Fontana, Grand Terrace, Highland, Montclair, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Rialto, San Bernardino, Twentynine Palms, Upland, Victorville, Yucca Valley and Yucaipa. Additionally, the company provides trash pick-up service to the  unincorporated San Bernardino County communities of Amboy, Angeles Oaks, Baker, Barton Flats, Bloomington, Cima, Crestline, Daggett, Del Rosa, Devore, Dumont Dunes, East Highlands, El Rancho Verde, Forest Falls, Fort Irwin, Halloran, Helendale, Hinkley, Kelso, Lake Arrowhead, Landers, Lenwood, Lucerne Valley, Ludlow, Mentone, Mountain Pass, Mt. Baldy, Newberry Springs, Nipton, Oak Glen, Running Springs, San Antonio Heights, Silver Lakes and Yermo.
For 12 years, from 2001 until July 1 of this year, Burrtec held the contract to run the county’s landfill system, a $17 million per year job that solidified its position as San Bernardino County’s major refuse handler and put it at or near the forefront of trash haulers in Southern California.
But in April, the company was dealt a blow when the county board of supervisors followed a recommendation by county public works director Gerry Newcombe to confer the contract for the operation of the county landfills for the next ten years on Los Angeles County-based Athens Services. As a consequence, Burrtec is now seeking to secure its future viability and profitability by locking the jurisdictions and service areas where it now has franchises into long term commitments.
The city of Upland represents one of the first tests of whether Burrtec’s new corporate strategy will succeed. Affluent but scandal plagued, Upland represents for Burrtec a particularly lustrous jewel in its crown. In addition to the $9.6 million the company currently collects annually in compensation for its refuse handling in Upland, the franchise contract it has had with the city since 2000 was amended in 2007 to involve a highly favorable seven-year “evergreen” clause. Under the terms of the current contract, the franchise renews for seven years every year. Upon the city’s notification to the company that it does not wish to renew the franchise, the franchise will then have seven years to run. Thus, at present, Upland is locked in to keeping Burrtec as its trash hauler at least until 2020. If the city does not give notice to Burrtec by July 1 of next year, the contract will run through 2021.
The seven-year evergreen clause was inserted into the contract in 2007, during the administration of then Upland Mayor John Pomierski and his hand-picked city manager Robb Quincey. For ten years Pomierski dominated the city politically, enjoying the unwavering support of three of his council colleagues and exercising near dictatorial power with regard to city commission and committee assignments and appointments. He ruled City Hall with an iron fist, going beyond the traditional role of working as a member of the city council to set general municipal policy. Instead Pomierski directly influenced day-to-day decisions, including those related to zoning, land use and contract issues. In 2011, Pomierski was indicted for having solicited and received bribes that involved backroom deals and City Hall-orchestrated favors to those who greased his palm. In 2012, he entered a guilty plea to those charges and is now in federal prison. Quincey, who at Pomierski’s direction amended the Burrtec contract with the seven-year evergreen clause, has been charged with three felony corruption charges, including unlawful misappropriation of public money, gaining personal benefit from an official contract, and giving false testimony under oath. The official contract in question did not involve Burrtec. The case against Quincey remains open. He has not been convicted.
Burrtec and several of its principals and employees were among Pomierski’s major political campaign donors. Burrtec and its employees and principals have also been among the largest of political contributors to other Upland city council members as well as the mayors and council members of other cities in San Bernardino County where it holds trash hauling contracts. The company’s largesse has extended to members of the county board of supervisors, who sign off on the trash hauling franchises in unincorporated county areas.
In May of this year, Burrtec executive vice president Michael Arreguin wrote a letter to Rosemary Hoerning, Upland’s public works director, proposing a revision of the existing franchise contract for Upland’s waste hauling.
Central to that proposal is increasing the terms of the evergreen clause by eight years, thus ensuring that Burrtec will remain Upland’s trash hauler for at least 15 years, until 2028. Burrtec is offering to add street sweeping to the trash hauling service it is currently providing and providing the city a pavement impact fee to compensate it for any damage done to city streets as a result of the weight of its trash trucks as part of the exclusive franchise arrangement being extended.
If Burrtec’s proposal advances and is accepted by the city, Upland will presumably be able to save money by eliminating its in-house cost of providing the street sweeping service. Burrtec would enjoy a triple-fold gain. It would extend its contract by eight years. It would eliminate the requirement that it engage in a bid process in another six or seven years to extend the contract, thereby avoiding the possibility that it would need to lower its rates to maintain the contract. And its proposal would increase the rate it charges Upland’s customers by 7.2 percent for the remainder of 2013-14; another 2.1 percent in July 2014; 2.1 percent in July 2015; 2.3 percent in July 2016; and 2.4 percent in 2017. Increases beyond that would be tied to the Consumer Price Index.
Moreover, the contract would adjust the arrangement between the city and Burrtec hashed out in 2007 under the Pomierski regime that demarked recycling and green waste disposal as the city’s “responsibility” but which involved the city paying Burrtec for those specialized handling and disposal services while sharing with the company any revenues generated from recycling. The revised contract proposal gives back to Burrtec direct responsibility of the recycling and green waste programs, with annual pass-throughs to the city of the actual cost of the service, based on any changes in landfill disposal fees.
Arreguin and others touted the contract revision as advantageous to the city. And while some city officials echoed Arreguin’s statements verbally, several of the city’s highest ranking officials have made a curious avoidance of stating in writing their personal endorsement of the new contract arrangement, even as they have been moving it toward the council for approval.
City manager Stephen Dunn designated Hoerning to oversee the matter. Hoerning, however, deftly moved out from under the weight of the issue, reportedly because demands on her time prevented her from taking the matter on. Nor did assistant public works director Aquanetta Warren evaluate the city’s options with regard to the proposal, Warren is the mayor of Fontana, where Burrtec is likewise that city’s franchised trash hauler. Burrtec has been one of Warren’s major campaign contributors.
Together, Dunn, Hoerning and Warren punted the issue to R3 Consulting, a Northern California-based firm that specializes in evaluating solid waste, trash hauling and refuse issues. Dunn used his authority as city manager to expend up to $50,000 on single projects without prior council approval to hire R3, at a cost of $35,000, to make the evaluation. R3 principal Richard Tagore-Erwin had previously made recommendations to other municipalities with regard to Burrtec, including ones favorable to the company.
R3 returned a recommendation to the city that highlighted the benefits of Burrtec’s     revised franchise contract proposal. R3’s endorsement of the concept was then cited by Hoerning in her staff recommendation that the council approve the revision and extension.
A close examination of the consultant’s report, however, betrays that R3 was provided with selective and incomplete information relating to the proposal, primarily information laid out by Burrtec. The report did not engage in an exacting analysis of the full implication of contractually binding the city to its current trash hauler for the extended period Burrtec’s proposal envisions.
In the face of a growing trend among municipalities to shy away from long term contracts that stipulate rates or pricing levels that cannot be adjusted downward, R3 accepted the increase of the automatic evergreen contract renewal to 15 years without substantial comment. Also left unexamined in the report is the no-bid implication of the contract extension and providing Burrtec with the advantage of specifying a fee and rate schedule that is arrived at outside of a public forum not subject to the downward pressure that naturally comes about during a competitive bid process.
Further unexplored in the report is the rapidly changing standard in the waste hauling industry with regard to the relative expense of the disposing of recyclables and how the committing of the city to a long term arrangement with regard to this element of the contract may be disadvantageous to the city and its ratepayers. Under the proposed contract renewal, city residents are to pay Burrtec to haul away not only their trash but recyclable discards as well. Burrtec would then be able to sell those separated recyclables at a profit, making money at both ends. In recent years, companies have come into existence which will haul away recyclable material for free, or in some cases, pay to do so, turning a profit entirely on the sale of the materials. While the city is committed until 2020 to remain with the arrangement it now has with Burrtec, beginning in 2021 city residents could see a significant decline in their trash rates if the city contracts with a company that is willing to haul recyclables at no charge or provide customers with a rebate. By remaining with Burrtec under the current terms, such a savings by Upland residents would not be realized.
Whether Burrtec will be able to wangle the contract revision and extension it is proposing is unknown at this point. A key vote in favor of Burrtec, that of councilman Brendan Brandt, does not appear to be forthcoming. From 2002 until Pomierski’s ignominious departure from the city council in 2011, Brandt was a rock steady member of the Pomierski political machine and one upon whom Pomierski counted for backing during council votes. Brandt supported the franchise contract change in 2007 that boosted the evergreen clause to seven years. Brandt is an attorney and his law firm has done work on behalf of Burrtec. Accordingly, he has recused himself from participating in votes or discussions of the proposed franchise contract revision.
Brandt, one of two regular members of the city’s treasury and finance committee, did not attend that panel’s meeting held this week on October 1, at which the Burrtec proposal was the main topic. In attendance was the other regular member of the committee, Glenn Bozar, and councilwoman Debbie Stone, the alternate who substituted for Brandt. Also at the meeting were Dunn, Hoerning, Warren and Arreguin. Present as an observer, but not participating as a voting member, was councilman Gino Filippi.
Stone was supportive of the staff recommendation to go along with Burrtec’s proposal. In contrast, Bozar was not. Bozar subjected Dunn and Hoerning to a series of questions relating to the length of the proposed evergreen clause, noting that if it were accepted, Burrtec, which has been the city’s trash hauler since 2000, will have been given what will be at least a 28-year long contract unchecked by any competitive bidding. While Dunn spoke somewhat guardedly in support of committing to the revised contract terms Burrtec has proposed, Hoerning was less reserved in backing Burrtec, based upon the recommendation from R3. Arreguin asserted that Upland would do well to commit to the terms his company is offering, given that they will provide long term rate stability to the city’s residents. Dunn was dismissive of suggestions that future recycling revenues will manifest to render the aspect of the proposed contract revision relating to Burrtec’s ability to utilize that recycling revenue as disadvantageous to the city or its residents. Warren unabashedly was supportive of Burrtec, asserting the company had been diligent and helpful in its provision of service so far.
Stone said the city “needs to move forward” by approving the franchise contract revision. Bozar said he wanted to explore removing the evergreen clause from the contract. Because Bozar and Stone were unable to agree, no vote from the committee recommending for or against the contract revision was forthcoming.
There are indications that councilman Filippi, who counts Burrtec principal Cole Burr among his major political supporters, will support Burrtec’s proposal. But Mayor Ray Musser by phone told the Sentinel he would not be in favor of extending the contract for 15 years. Thus, the proposal appears stalled at present. And without a vote to extend the contract on terms more favorable to Burrtec, further FBI action with regard to pay to play politics in Upland, at least with regard to the Burrtec contract, would be stalled as well, even if city residents have now begun to question why so many city officials have been pushing so hard to lock them into a marriage with their trash hauler, without competitive bids, until 2028.
R3 principal Tagore-Erwin responded to questions about the propriety of the contract extension proposal and his firm’s recommendation of it.
He disputed the assertion that cities are moving away from long term contracts.
“That is not true,” Tagore-Erwin said. “The trend is  actually away from shorter contracts to longer term ones that last five to seven years. Upland is already in a seven year rollover term with Burrtec. You have to look at the rates and the level of services Burrtec is offering, which is very favorable to the city. Overall, we normally do not recommend evergreen components to a contract, whether for five years, or seven years or 15 years. But given the benefits of the totality in this package, we feel it is in the city’s interest.”
He said changing the evergreen term to fifteen years was pretty much a “moot point,” given that the city is already committed to remain with Burrtec for seven years and “has not provided notice that it wants to go out to bid.”
Tagore-Erwin said it is “up to the city council as to going out to bid,” But, he noted, soliciting bids from a wide variety of providers would be no guarantee of better rates. In fact, he said, the Burrtec proposal provides for reasonable rates for an extended period. A new bid process could result in higher rates, he said. “This locks them into what is a very good deal for the city. With rising landfill disposal costs, higher fuel costs and rising insurance rates, you see bids coming in that are anywhere from  20 to 45 percent higher than  what the previous rates were.”
With regard to the changing standards relating to recyclable handling and profitability, Tagore-Erwin said the contract will not preclude other companies from handling Upland’s recyclables. “Under state law, any companies that want to come in to do that will still be able to do so,” he said. “They just will not be able to charge for that service, under state law. The city will still have the ability to decrease costs associated with its green waste processing.”
Tagore-Erwin defended the scope of the study R3 had performed.  “We looked at Burrtec’s proposal at face value from the city’s perspective,” he said. “The overall proposal is sound and good for ratepayers. They are carrying out a rate study that will verify and validate the rates going forward. It will provide an  increase in services, including  medical waste and  household hazardous waste handling.”
As to the suggestion that there was some untoward relationship between himself and Burrtec based upon prior recommendations he had made in the company’s favor and that R3’s report was preordained and intended to serve as justification for Upland accepting Burrtec’s proposed revision terms, Tagore-Erwin said “I don’t work for them. I have never worked for them and never will. Yes, I have made recommendations favorable to them. I also made a recommendation against them last year, in Hemet. I find that [the charge of collusion with Burrtec] to be an insulting insinuation.”

(October 4) The Rialto Unified School District embezzlement case is a far more serious, involved and complicated matter than was initially believed, investigators working the case have learned.
Judith Oakes, a school district accountant who had overseen the receipts from the district’s nutrition services division since 1997, was arrested on August 7 on suspicion of embezzlement. According to a Rialto Police Department search warrant, a video camera that had been installed at the district office where she worked caught  her stuffing school lunch money into her bra.
Police and district officials have been tight-lipped with regard to the case, which contains several troubling and even, to outsiders, baffling aspects.
Officials have not disclosed what led to the installation of the camera.
The district had apparently entrusted Oakes, for more than a dozen years, with virtually unrestricted, unmonitored, and unchecked control over not just the accounting of, but the actual physical custody of, the proceeds from the entirety of the district’s school lunch programs before that money was deposited into a district account. No independent audit of the account, or Oakes stewardship of it, had been undertaken until recently.
In addition to the Rialto Police Department, which took the lead in the initial investigation of the matter and arrested Oakes, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office and San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Office have undertaken investigations into the matter. The Rialto Unified District, at the direction of the school board, launched an investigation of the matter in which district superintendent Harold Cebrun was entirely cut out of the loop, and an independent firm, Rancho Cucamonga-based Stewart Investigations Services, was brought in to do the gumshoeing. Jeff Stewart is the lead investigator for Stewart Investigations. More recently, as the fuller implication of what took place registered, the California Department of Education opened up its own probe of the matter.
Much of the case is shrouded in mystery, undisclosed information and outright confusion. Even the nature of the charges against Oakes are unclear. The Superior Court’s on-line record shows that a case – number 1308340790 – was opened against Oakes involving a single charge of PC 459 filed against her on August 12. While the court’s action page with regard to case 1308340790 shows that on August 12 a $50,000 bond was posted for Oakes, the action notation for the following day, August 13, reports that the district attorney was notified but that no case was filed, a seeming contradiction to the previous reference of a PC 459 charge. PC 459 refers to burglary. The record notes that Oakes’  arraignment is scheduled for October 10.
At the September 25 Rialto Unified School District Board meeting, a few tantalizing tidbits surfaced, as a few general and fewer specific preliminary findings from Stewart Investigations Services’ investigation were aired before the board. Indications were that Oakes’ depredations were not just relatively recent but may have been ongoing almost from the time she was hired by the district. The numbers in this regard were startling.
An audit completed in conjunction with the Stewart probe indicated Oakes appears to have made off with $1.8 million of the district’s money over the last eight years, and might have embezzled $3.1 million over the course of 14 years.
Board members were stunned by Stewart’s tentative conclusions. Upon the advice of the district’s legal counsel, Trevin Sims, only a vague outline of the ground covered by Stewart was disclosed publicly.
According to acting superintendent Mohammad Z. Islam “A forensic audit has documented a loss of  $1,811,244.26, but the loss could actually be as high as $3,169,677, taking into account discrepancies that at this time cannot be accounted for.”
The clear implication of Stewart’s findings thus far is that numerous others may have been involved in the embezzlement and law enforcement officials, including the Rialto Police and the district attorney’s office, are engaged in actions that could lead to further arrests and charges.
On both the school board and among various investigators there are sharp differences over Cebrun’s culpability. It is now a given that a close personal relationship had developed between Cebrun and Oakes. Some investigators believe that Cebrun could not have helped noticing that Oakes, the widow of Jack Oakes, a former principal of Ramona-Allesandro Elementary School in San Bernardino, had access to a considerable amount of money beyond what would be normal for someone holding her position with the district.
Cebrun, however, has publicly stated that he had no knowledge of the thefts. He pointedly did not deny having a relationship with Oakes, but said “This crime is an isolated incident of one person… not involving me.”
School board president Joseph Ayala has expressed confidence in Cebrun, who has been with the Rialto district since March 2009 and was superintendent before that in the Compton and Lynwood school districts. But the board last month voted 4-1 to place Cebrun and his second-in command, assistant superintendent of student services James Wallace, on paid administrative leave. On October 2, Ayala asked his board colleagues to reinstate Cebrun, but the board voted 4-1 to keep Cebrun suspended, albeit with pay.

(October 4) WRIGHTWOOD—Brad Mitzelfelt, the last vestige of the Bill Postmus Political Machine that rocketed meteorically into political dominance over San Bernardino County and bestrode the political landscape like a colossus until it collapsed in scandal and disrepute, has ended his earlier announced intent to mount a political comeback and has left California for the greener grass of Kentucky.
As late as last month, Mitzelfelt was monitoring the viability of a run for state Assembly. He had retained a fair-sized political campaign war chest despite a resounding defeat when he had vied for Congress in 2012. He and his coterie of remaining political supporters were staking their hopes on incumbent 33rd Assemblyman Tim Donnelly undertaking a run for governor in 2014, leaving an opportunity open for Mitzelfelt to seek election  in the heavily Republican-leaning district Donnelly represents.
But recent events and developments auger against Donnelly seeking to take up residence in the Governor’s Mansion, and when Mitzelfelt was offered a position as a contract public affairs spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Energy, he abandoned his current political aspirations in the Golden State. He will need to move to Kentucky to accept the Department of Energy assignment.
After serving in the Marine Corps in the capacity of a public spokesman during the Gulf War, he returned to civilian life and enrolled at Redlands University, where he studied business and management. There he made the acquaintance of Bill Postmus, who was studying business to prepare himself to own and operate a hair salon.
Mitzelfelt convinced the young Postmus, who at that point was rebelling against his sheriff’s lieutenant father’s conservative world view, to embrace the ideology of the Republican Party and advance himself. Soon, with two other young Republicans – Keith Olberg and Tad Honeycutt – Postmus and Mitzelfelt founded the High Desert Young Republicans and found positions on the staffs of Republican state legislators such as Jim Brulte and Kathleen Honeycutt, Tad’s mother. Later, Olberg would successfully run for the Assembly himself. In the late 1990s, the High Desert Young Republicans became a political force to be reckoned with. In 2000, with Mitzelfelt directing his campaign, Postmus succeeded in ousting incumbent First District Supervisor Kathy Davis, herself a Republican who had made herself vulnerable by associating too closely with Democrats.
Postmus named Mitzelfelt as his chief of staff and together they fashioned a political dynasty. Both were elected to the San Bernardino County Central Committee and in time Postmus became that organization’s chairman. At roughly the same time, Postmus was elevated to the position of chairman of the board of supervisors. The duo pushed conservative causes and solicited hefty donations from party members to be used in promoting conservative causes and Republican candidates. In 2006, Postmus, while he was still chairman of both the board of supervisors and the county GOP, successfully ran for county assessor. After he left the board to become assessor, he effectively lobbied his former colleagues on the board to appoint Mitzelfelt to replace him as First District supervisor. In 2008, Mitzelfelt stood for election on his own and was elected to the First District supervisor’s post, representing most of the desert area in the county, in his own right.
At that point, the political machine Mitzelfelt and Postmus had constructed appeared invincible. Shortly thereafter, however, it all came crashing down when the ostensibly Christian-fundalmentalist, family values-oriented, right wing Postmus was revealed to be a homosexual who had become addicted to methamphetamine and inhalants. He was forced to resign as assessor after a political patronage investigation into the assessor’s office resulted in the serving of search warrants at his county office and his condominium, at which drugs and drug paraphernalia were found.
Mitzelfelt managed to hang on to his board position in the aftermath of Postmus’ demise, but he became a politically wounded animal as a result of the questions about his knowledge of and complicity in Postmus’s misrepresentation of himself. Mitzelfelt then inflicted upon himself further damage when he supported Cadiz, Inc.’s plan to extract millions of acre feet of water from the East Mojave Desert and convey it to Orange County for use there. In 2012, he vied for Congress in the newly formed 8th Congressional District, but was soundly defeated.
More recently, Mitzelfelt said he was exploring running for the spot Donnelly holds, but he has now abandoned that effort.