(December 16)  Whether or not the November 19 vote by Adelanto City Councilman Ed Camargo to approve Geo Group Inc.’s proposal to establish a privately-run prison to hold 1,050 inmates from the California Department of Corrections constitutes an illegal conflict of interest will turn on whether he and his girlfriend have commingled their financial affairs, legal experts said.
Camargo’s girlfriend is an employee of Geo Group Inc.
Geo Group Inc. already operates two detention facilities in Adelanto, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and Desert View Modified Community Correctional Facility. Geo Group’s latest proposed prison facility would be located at the northeast corner of Holly and Koala roads.
Camargo acknowledged after the vote was taken that his girlfriend works for Geo Group. That prompted those opposed to Geo Group’s bid to open a third facility in the cash-strapped city to charge him with a conflict-of-interest, particularly a violation of California Government Code 1090, which prohibits a public official from participating in a decision in which he or she has a financial interest.
Camargo said he has kept his finances separate from his girlfriend’s, and that they do not cohabitate.
The 3-2 November 19 vote in favor of the Geo Group’s project must be confirmed with a second vote to be finalized. That vote is tentatively scheduled for the council meeting on January 28

(December 15)  Deputy San Bernardino County Counsel Steven Singley has been elevated to the bench by Governor Jerry Brown.
Singley, a Republican, returns the total number of San Bernardino County Superior Court judges to 86, as he fills a vacancy that came about with the retirement of Judge John Gibson.
Singley lives just across the county line in Claremont. He began as a deputy county counsel in 2008 and was designated the general legal counsel to the county sheriff’s department in 2012. Prior to that he was a deputy district attorney with San Bernardino county from 2000 to 2008. Singley, 46, passed the bar in 2000.  He is a graduate of  Azusa Pacific University and the University of LaVerne College of Law.

(December 19) The Rancho Cucamonga City Council has selected Lynne Kennedy to fill the vacancy created when Marc Steinorth departed to take up a position in the California State Assembly.
Kennedy, who had a 36 year career as an educator ranging from teacher to assistant district superintendent, placed third in the November 4 election for city council.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
Riverside Superior Court Judge Gloria Connor Trask, who is hearing a lawsuit brought against the city of Los Angeles and its airport agency by the city of Ontario which calls for ownership and authority over Ontario International Airport to be returned to the city from which its name derives, declared on Tuesday that the matter before her is a complicated one. If the bench association hands out awards for direct statement of the obvious, Judge Trask should be this year’s recipient…
Let me stab at cutting through the complication. In 1967, when Ontario Airport was a struggling backwater airfield with fewer than 550 passengers passing through its gates daily and a gravel parking lot full of mites and ticks, its city council entered into a pact with Los Angeles to let its much more experienced officials essentially run the airport. Built into the agreement was the proviso that upon reaching certain goals, the airport would be turned over to Los Angeles. It took eighteen years, but by 1985, all of those goals had been met and the Ontario City Council, minus its mayor who was against surrendering the facility, voted to transfer title to the airport to Los Angeles. That transfer was made for no consideration, based upon Los Angeles’s considerable outlays in building the airport into a modern transportation wonder. The airport continued to prosper under Los Angeles’ ownership, just as it had under the previous eighteen years of its guidance. A second, entirely new east-to-west runway was laid down over its obsolete  northeast-to-southwest runway and vast improvements were made to its existing east-to-west runway, including the widening of taxiways and the addition of storm drains. Its tower was modernized.   Two ultra-modern terminals were built at a cost of $270 million, augmented with a world class concourse. Ridership at the airport continued to grow and grow and grow until in 2007, forty years after Ontario had entered into its partnership with Los Angeles, there were over 19,700 passengers moving through its gates daily, which was 36 times the passenger traffic the airport had under Ontario’s management…
Then came the economic downturn of 2007. Air travel in general, not just in Southern California, but in the United States and worldwide, declined.  Los Angeles, which had embarked on its own modernization effort at Los Angeles International Airport in 2006, continued with that effort. Airlines cut back on the number of flights into and out of Ontario Airport. A few airlines ceased operations there altogether. Meanwhile, with the improvements at Los Angeles International Airport and other factors coming into play, passenger traffic into Los Angeles picked up. Ontario officials interpreted that as malignant neglect. With the situation at Ontario Airport continuing to stagnate, they initiated an effort to have Ontario Airport returned to Ontario. And they were not very civil about it, either. The effort was accompanied by what can accurately be described as a campaign of vitriol, one in which Los Angeles was rudely demonized and its airport officials and politicians portrayed as mendacious and duplicitous monsters seemingly intent on destroying the viability of Ontario Airport as a regional hub and driving the economy of the Inland Empire into the ground at the same time. According to these representations, the number of flights into and out of Ontario Airport was not a reflection of the energy, intensity and health of the region’s economy, but the primary generator of economic activity in the area surrounding it. Los Angeles was, in this depiction, a greedy and rapacious landlord with its foot strategically planted across the prostrate inland area’s windpipe…
“Give the airport back!” Ontario officials indignantly demanded, and they encouraged other local officials in San Bernardino County and even across the county line in Riverside County to join them in that chorus. The next move was to insist that Los Angeles neither request nor accept any money in exchange for the return of what rightfully belonged to Ontario. This demand bypassed entirely any consideration of the improvements, conservatively estimated as representing a cost of half of a billion dollars over 47 years without any adjustment for inflation. Ontario officials made a mantra of insisting, at least publicly, that as a public benefit asset the airport had no monetary value, and as such, should simply be deeded back…
Secretly, however, behind the scenes, Ontario officials conveyed to their Los Angeles counterparts that they would be willing to put up $50 million in cash, assume debt service on $75 million in outstanding bonds for past  airport improvements and provide up to $125 million to Los Angeles from future revenue to be generated at the airport over the next dozen years. But Los Angeles officials, who were still smarting over the yet raging public campaign in which they were being excoriated as rapacious cretins, were unimpressed and unmoved. Deftly, they publicly disclosed that Ontario, which was yet maintaining to the rest of the world that the airport had no monetary value, was offering to pay a quarter of a billion dollars to reacquire it…
Ontario officials sputtered and fumed, beside themselves with rage over Los Angeles’ betrayal of  their confidence, seemingly incapable of understanding that their insults to Los Angeles and its officials might have consequences. In that shuffle, an opportunity was lost. Ontario Mayor Leon was a Los Angeles native who, chance would have it, knew, and knew well, Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa. Both had grown up on the mean streets of Los Angeles and survived, each achieving a rough hewn political status with a reputation for the artful dodge, capped by a veneer of eloquence. The two knew each other well enough to be able to take drives together through the cities over which they held sway and all the cities and stretches of freeway in between them. But Ontario was in fighting mode, and Leon was never tasked to negotiate, as perhaps only he could, with the political leader of Los Angeles over the fate of Ontario Airport. That opportunity was squandered. Instead, a stalemate ensued in which Ontario pinned its hopes on the two mayoral candidates to succeed Villaraigosa, Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti, coaxing non-enforceable commitments from them to the effect that each would cooperate in returning the airport to Ontario under less than specific terms. But even before the victorious Garcetti was sworn into office, in the waning days of Villagraigosa’s tenure as mayor, Ontario sued Los Angeles in Riverside Superior Court, using the high powered Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, destroying whatever prospect it might have had for working with Garcetti…
Recently, during a lull in the litigation, Los Angeles responded to Ontario’s $250 million offer. It would sell the airport, Los Angeles said, for $450 million. That threw Ontario officials into apoplexy…
From my mountain redoubt, I find this squabble both amusing and perplexing. It seems Ontario officials take us, the public, for fools. Is the airport worth nothing in monetary terms, as they claim publicly? If so, then why are they fighting so hard to get it back? And if it is worth nothing, as they are telling us, then why did they offer $250 million for it? It seems there is a bit of disagreement over the monetary value of nothing. Nothing appears to be worth, it seems, somewhere, from what I can tell, between $250 million and $450 million…
Another thing is the city of Ontario’s inflated ego. I shall, no doubt, leave a few deserving places  off of my list here, but when I think of the world’s great cities, London, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Istanbul,  Munich,  Rio De Janero, Cairo, Athens, San Franciso, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, Brussels, Moscow, Shanghai, Mexico City,  Chicago, Bombay, Montreal, Madrid, Copenhagen, Rome, and yes, Los Angeles leap to mind. Ontario is a nice place and host to one of my favorite Chinese restaurants, but, alas,  absent from the above list…
I believe Ontario brought Los Angeles in to run its airport 47 years ago because it did not have the wherewithal to do so on its own. I do not believe that to have changed. A few years ago city officials there had promoted their fire chief, whose name was Christopher Hughes, to serve as  city manager. Mr. Hughes was, I might note, a very handsome fellow and must have turned quite a few female heads. He rather looked like a movies star, in my estimation on the order of a Clark Gable. He even had the right name for the silver screen. He would have been better off in Hollywood than at Ontario Airport. If one of the planes there caught fire, no doubt, he would have done an admirable job dousing it, and would have looked very good doing so. But I am confident he would have been less fit at running an airport than I am, and that is saying something…
As I will get to below, I do not think Ontario will be wresting from Los Angles control of the airport anytime soon, but if it does, I believe there will be a grave danger that it would soon be in far worse shape than it is today. Ontario, I am told, has the largest budget of all of San Bernardino County’s cities. But even with its large nest egg, it does not have the leverage that Los Angeles possesses, and I would predict that many of the airlines that remain in operation out of Ontario will depart if they do not have Los Angeles to offer them inducements, such as favorable gate positions at Los Angeles International Airport, to stay…
This brings us back to where I started, with Judge Trask. Yes, indeed, she has a complicated set of facts before her. But I will go out on a limb and make a prediction on how she is going to rule with regard to this motion to simply abrogate the 47-year-old agreement confirmed by the city of Ontario’s willing conveyance of the airport to Los Angeles 29 years ago and have Los Angeles just return the airport to Ontario. My prognostication is she will not grant the motion. To do so she will need to turn the custom and precedent of contractual law on its head and overturn an arrangement that both parties have accepted for moving on to nearly half a century. In the end, I believe the court will allow Ontario to take back the airport, but only upon a demonstration that it has the means and the available resources to run it and the cash – meaning at least $450 million or a larger figure adjusted for inflation – to pay Los Angeles what it has invested in it…

The Count’s views do not necessarily reflect those of the Sentinel, its ownership, its publisher or editors.

By Mark Gutglueck
Earl Holmes Richardson is associated with and played a role in two of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities, the geographically disparate municipalities of Ontario and Adelanto.
Born in Wisconsin in 1871, Richardson came to age in the era of Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. As a young man in Milwaukee, which was one of the hotbeds of the latter industrial revolution, Richardson learned a few things about practical science. He made his way to Ontario in 1895 and found a job maintaining and repairing the power plant that electrified the trolley cars that traveled up and down Euclid Avenue. Several years later he would return to the power plant and help to electrify the Model Colony.
In the early 1900s, he was employed as a meter reader for the Ontario Power Company. Inspired by his wife, Mary’s lament about the relative inconvenience of having to constantly reheat her traditional clothes iron on the stove, Richardson utilized his knowledge of electricity to experiment with using resistive heating from an electrical current to create an electric flat iron.  He designed a small, lightweight model that was easier to wield than the five to ten pound irons of the day. He distributed his model widely around Ontario, convincing his customers that they represented an improvement on the fueled irons of that generation that utilized whale oil, kerosene, ethanol and even gasoline. He then prevailed upon the company he worked for to generate power all day every Tuesday, which he promoted as ironing day, so power customers could use his new iron. He reasoned that if sufficient electric irons were in use, customers would demand more power and through a wider cusomer base  and economies of scale the  high electrical rates then being levied could be reduced. This proved to be the case.
In 1904, Richardson left the power company and started up the Pacific Electric Heating Company on Euclid Avenue just below the railroad tracks to manufacture electric irons. An initial flaw in the early model of his irons was that they grew too hot in the center of the ironing plate. His wife suggested that he redesign the heating element closer to the top point of the iron to facilitate pressing around buttonholes, ruffles and pleats. He fabricated a version incorporating this change and had several local laundresses test it as to its serviceability. They found “the iron with the hot point” to be indispensable. In 1905, he manufactured and sold more electric irons under the “Hotpoint” name than any other company in America.
Beginning in 1911 and continuing until 1917, Richardson found other innovative ways to electrify household appliances. These entailed the “El” line of products, with El being short script for “electric.” Among them were the El Perco (an electric coffeepot), El Chafo (a chafing dish), El Tosto (an electric toaster), El Stovo (an early hotplate), El Eggo (an egg cooker), El Teballo (an electric teapot), and El Warmo (an electric heating pad).
In 1915, Richardson sold one of his patents and purchased land in what is now Adelanto for $75,000. His intention was to  and develop one of the first planned communities in Southern California. Richardson subdivided his land into one-acre plots.
Upon America’s entrance into what was then known as the “Great War” but which subsequently was called World War I, many of the combatants, known in America as “doughboys” were exposed to mustard gas.  Richardson, in response to the significant number of GIs afflicted in this way, hoped to create in Adelanto a community that would be hospitable to veterans with respiratory ailments suffered while serving their country. He worked toward building a respiratory hospital/sanitarium there. Richardson never fully realized this goal, but his planning and efforts laid the foundation for what is currently the city of Adelanto, which incorporated in 1970 and transitioned into a charter city in 1992.
During World War I, Richardson entered into discussions with George Hughes, the owner/inventor of the electric range and with the heating device section of the General Electric Company. The upshot of those talks was a merger of the Richardson’s Hotpoint electric Heating Company with the others, creating the Edison Electric Appliance Company,which featured the GE Hotpoint line of products.  That resulted in an expansion of the existing iron manufacturing facility in Ontario.
GE Hotpoint became the largest employer in Ontario, employing 25 percent of the city’s labor force. After the merger was in effect, General Electric sought to bring Richardson back to near Milwaukee, asking him to manage its manufacturing operations in Chicago. But he was reluctant to leave Ontario and Adelanto, so he continued to manage the local Ontario plant.
Under his direction, new products were designed and sold, such as room heaters.  In 1925, in conjunction with Hughes, Hotpoint offered the first all-white, fully enameled electric range. In 1929, GE began selling Richardson’s last significant invention, an early version of the crock pot, which he called the “jug cooker.”
Richardson died in 1934, but the Ontario plant continued to manufacture electric irons until it closed in 1982.
In 1941, the 20 millionth iron manufactured at the plant, this one gold-plated, was presented to Una Winter, Earl Richardson’s sister. When the 50 millionth iron was produced at the plant in 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower was looking on. In 1969 the 100 millionth iron rolled off the Ontario production line and in 1980, the 150 millionth was manufactured there.
According to legend, the last iron manufactured there was buried on the grounds of the Ontario plant rather than being sent back to GE’s Bridgeport Connecticut plant in 1982.

(December 18)  VICTORVILLE— Some six dozen denizens of the Mojave riverbed homeless encampment in Victorville are about to be presented with an unwanted Christmas present, as city officials and sheriff’s department officers are in the final stages of preparing an eviction notice specifically targeting them.
City officials say the move is justified by the consideration that at least some of the property where the homeless are residing is private property, that there has been a large volume of calls to the sheriff’s department to quell disturbances there and that the encampment is resulting in pollution of the environs because of insufficient sanitation facilities there.
Under the terms of the eviction notices being prepared for processing through the San Bernardino Superior Court, those served will be presented with a March deadline by which they must entirely vacate a proscribed area between the Iron Bridge near Highway 18 at the Mojave Narrows and Stoddard Wells Road. Those who do not comply with the order or who leave and return will be subject to arrest or citation on trespassing charges.
Officials have yet to spell out how they intend to document the identities of those served, as some lack identification or traditional addresses. Nor have officials specified what procedure will be utilized against any individuals or groups who take up residence near the river after the initial set of notices are served.
People have been subsisting at that stretch along the often-dry riverbed for two decades, including at least a handful who are still in residence there.
There have been desultory and occasional enforcement actions over the years aimed at persuading the population there to move on, which has had only limited success.
The stepped-up plan of action comes less than a month after Gloria Garcia, who has been on the city council since 2012, was elevated to the position of mayor. Garcia was the most visible representative of the city in the announcement of the intent to proceed with the eviction. The other entity associated with the move is the sheriff’s department, with which the city of Victorville contracts for the provision of law enforcement services. The department is employing one of its more obscure divisions, its so-called “homeless outreach and proactive enforcement team” to carry out the nitty-gritty of the assignment. The department will enable the team by giving it orders to clear the riverbed. In doing so, the team is to be augmented with volunteer inmate crews from the county’s detention facilities, who will be brought in to “stand by” as the sheriff’s deputies make their final pass through of the property in question in March. Those who do not leave at that point will be arrested and incarcerated themselves. The jail trustees on hand will then be called into action, and will discard all of the trash and debris at the site along with any of the remaining belongings of the evictees. It is believed that having the inmates, bona fide members of the community’s criminal class, in place to look down on the riverbed’s inhabitants as their living quarters are decimated, will psychologically break them of any determination they possess to return.
A city work crew will then erect k-rails at the open points of egress to the riverbed, which will discourage any further encampments.
City and police officials have armed themselves with statistics to ward off any “bleeding heart” advocacy on behalf of the homeless to be displaced.
In essence, those talking points boil down to an assertion that the soon-to-be evicted merit the treatment they are to receive. Garcia and other members of the council, as well as senior staff at City Hall and members of the sheriff’s department who will be involved in the eviction have been prompted with statistics to show that the sheriff’s department has received over 4,400 calls for service in or near the riverbed in the 34 months commencing in January 2012 and that in that span there were over 80 assaults, four rapes and a murder there.
Garcia and the sheriff’s department made clear that a new day is dawning in Victorville in which tolerance of the homeless is drawing to a close. “It is time for them to leave,” Garcia said. The new approach will begin with relatively benign outreach, officials said, which will consist of telling those living on the riverbed, through postings and word of mouth, that they must get out of town. The approach will grow firmer and firmer until, Garcia said, “the problem is eradicated.”
Cooperation of those targeted for removal is up to those individuals targeted, officials said. Those who choose to cooperate will avoid any direct enforcement action. Those who don’t will face criminal charges.
Some made the observation that Victorville had awaited to institute the draconian policy until Garcia, a Hispanic, was serving as mayor and Eric Negrete, another Hispanic who was elected in November, was serving on the council, thus blunting any accusations that might follow which charge the city with taking the action against a disadvantaged social class.
Others expressed the view that the action is long overdue and credited Garcia, the council and the sheriff’s department with a “great job” in resolving to take the action now under preparation.
Still others said the evictions would prove inadequate and would merely displace the homeless further down the road without creating any lasting solution to the homeless problem or the underlying plight of the human condition of social and economic disparity.

By Paul Chabot
The first editorial published by Congressman Elect Aguilar titled, “Executive Action Not Enough on Immigration Reform (December 14th)” is astonishingly out of touch with the real issues affecting families in the Inland Empire. Instead of addressing the core concerns that citizens are worried about, including jobs, K-12 education, healthcare, public safety, social security, veterans, terrorism, rising cost of tuition, housing, etc., Aguilar instead chose to run to the left of Pelosi and Obama, which in itself is difficult for most Democrats to do, but apparently not Aguilar who has put his foot down and said the President’s Executive Order allowing 5 million undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. did not go far enough. Really Congressman Elect Aguilar? The President himself said seven times in the past that he was against an Amnesty Executive Order because he didn’t have the authority, and today most Americans agree that Obama was wrong in using an Executive Order in such a fashion, yet you believe he didn’t go far enough?
The United States of America is a nation of laws and when we lose that foundation, we disregard the men and women who fought and died to preserve our democracy. The Constitution should be honored, preserved and valued, not disrespected and trampled upon.
The core issues affecting this district’s citizens need real leadership. Families are hurting while many struggle with unemployment or under-employment and are finding it hard to buy Christmas gifts.  The Inland Empire is ripe with talented and dedicated workers who simply want to find good paying jobs.  Yet, the slow economic recovery has largely left us all behind.
Many in the Inland Empire have lost their doctors because of Obamacare and families are finding it hard to pay for the new increases in premiums, which even the Obama administration admits will rise in 2015.  A year after the implementation of the law, it remains highly problematic and unpopular at best. At worst, families are seeing canceled health care plans and out of reach expenditures that rations health care. If the United States government cannot run healthcare effectively for our military veterans, it surely cannot to do so for the entire nation. And let’s not forget the words of Obamacare’s Chief Architect, Jonathan Gruber, who said last year that a “lack of transparency and the stupidity of the American voter helped Congress approve Obamacare.”  We need to start over.
Children need a great education and parents should not be forced to send their kids to failing schools.  Equal opportunity for a strong education is the right thing to do. Focusing on ensuring our children can succeed is the role of every parent, teacher and elected official.
Our immigration system must secure our borders, enforce the law with dignity and respect, while addressing the core issue of illegal immigration in the first place. Mexico is a mess. Corruption is rampant with judges and police who are on the take, yet our Nation looks the other way and continues to provide foreign aid with no accountability measures. We must help Mexico help themselves and when we do, we will no longer see the flood of mothers, fathers, and children fleeing that nation. America must replicate measures of Plan Colombia of the 1980s which helped set Colombia on the right path.  When America gets serious about mandating that our foreign aid goes towards rooting out corruption, violence and lack of societal rule of law, Mexico will prosper and families will no longer flee and many already here in the United States will return to Mexico; it’s a beautiful country, but in desperate need of real help.
Terrorism is spreading across the globe. ISIS grows, Russia and China advance their military capability while our United States Armed Forces are being reduced to levels of pre World War II.  Reagan clearly understood that in order to preserve our nation, we must have the mightiest fighting force in the world. His peace through strength vision lead to the fall of Soviet Union – our enemies feared us and our allies trusted us. Sadly, today, that is not the case and the world is a much more dangerous place.
America is in trouble and needs real leadership. Next month, Congressman Elect Aguilar will take an oath to uphold the United States Constitution. We can only hope that he abides by that oath and puts his radical agenda to rest.
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Dr. Paul Chabot is President of Chabot Strategies and the 2014 Republican Nominee for United States Congress in the 31st District. He resides in Rancho Cucamonga.

Tyrant flycatchers (Tyrannidae) are relatively singless songbirds. They are a branch of passerine birds present in San Bernardino County which also occur throughout North and South America.
There are more than 400 species of these birds, making them what is considered to be the largest family of birds. They are the most diverse avian family overall in the Americas, but are relatively less diverse in the United States and Canada. The members of this large family of birds vary greatly in shape, patterns, size and colors. Some tyrant flycatchers superficially resemble the Old World flycatchers which they are named after but are not related to. They are members of suborder Tyranni (suboscines), which do not have the sophisticated vocal capabilities of most other songbirds.
Few tyrant flycatchers have spectacular color or plumage. Most, but not all, species are rather plain, with various hues of brown, gray and white commonplace. Obvious exceptions include the bright red vermilion flycatcher, blue, black, white and yellow many-colored rush-tyrant and some species of tody-flycatchers or tyrants, which are often yellow, black, white and/or rufous, from the Todirostrum, Hemitriccus and Poecilotriccus genera. Several species have bright yellow underparts, from the ornate flycatcher to the great kiskadee. Some species have erectile crests. The crest is taken to the extreme in the royal flycatcher, which is plain but for a large black-spotted, red-and-blue crest which it fans out like a peafowl tail when excited. Several of the large genera (i.e. Elaenia, Myiarchus or Empidonax) are quite difficult to tell apart in the field due to similar plumage and some are best distinguished by their voices.
Behaviorally they can vary from species such as spadebills which are tiny, shy and live in dense forest interiors to kingbirds, which are relatively large, bold, inquisitive and often inhabit open areas near human habitations. As the name implies, a great majority of tyrant flycatchers are entirely insectivorous (though not necessarily specialized in flies). Tyrant flycatchers are largely opportunistic feeders and often catch any flying or arboreal insect they encounter. However, food can vary greatly and some (like the large great kiskadee) will eat fruit or small vertebrates (e.g. small frogs). In North America, most species are associated with a “sallying” feeding style, where they fly up to catch an insect directly from their perch and then immediately return to the same perch.
The smallest family members are the closely related short-tailed pygmy tyrant and black-capped pygmy tyrant from the Myiornis genus (the first species usually being considered marginally smaller on average). These species reach a total length 2.5 inches to 2.8 inches and a weight of 4–5 grams. The minuscule size and very short tail of the Myiornis pygmy tyrants often lend them a resemblance to a tiny ball or insect. The largest tyrant flycatcher is the great shrike-tyrant at 11.5 inches and 3.5 ounces.  A few species such as the streamer-tailed tyrant, scissor-tailed flycatcher and fork-tailed flycatcher have a larger total length of up to 16 inches, but this is mainly due to their extremely long tails; the fork-tailed flycatcher has relatively the longest tail feathers of any known bird.
They often flick their wings and tails rapidly.
Flycatchers build shallow cup nests with plant fibers, grasses, leaves and bark shreds, lined with down, soft plant fibers and hair. The nest is usually situated three to thirty feet high in a shrub or short tree.
The average clutch consists of 2 – 3 eggs, sometimes with colored spots. The female alone incubates the eggs for about 14 – 17 days. The young fledge, i.e., leave the nest, when they are about 13 – 16 days old.

By clicking on the portal below you can download a PDF of the December 12 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 12-12-14

(December 10)  The San Bernardino County Local Formation Commission has recommended that the  Daggett Community Services District consolidate with two other nearby community service districts. .This week the Local Agency Formation Commission reviewed a draft plan, the centerpiece of which is that the Daggett Community Service District, the Yermo Community Services District and the Newberry Community Services District be merged to form one district.
Under that recommendation, the services for all three communities would be provided in common and consolidated.
The Local Agency Formation Commission staff has formulated a so-called “plan for service” that would make for consistent service levels, allow for the free distribution of resources between the entities and communities, streamline governance and management and reduce overall costs. A five-year projection shows the newly-formed district would remain fiscally solvent for at least half a decade, with no diminution of service levels in any of the three communities.
Daggett encompasses 26 square miles and is home to 487 residents. Newberry Springs covers 117 square miles and has 2,288 inhabitants. Yermo, at 74 square miles, boasts a population of 1,629.. Despite the size differences between the three communities, they have similar population densities. Daggett averages 18.7 people per square mile.  Newberry Springs has 19.6 residents per square mile. Yermo has a per square mile density of 22.
Within its confines, Daggett contains its own water company, which services an area beyond its borders, including several businesses and a few residences as well as Silver Valley High School, all located in Yermo.
The Yermo Water Company has long been troubled. Formerly owned by Donald Walker, the Yermo Water Company fell into severe disrepair early last decade, a situation which was exacerbated by Walker’s departure to Florida, making it difficult for his company’s customers to contact him.
As the absentee owner, Walker did not have a licensed operator available to operate the system. During the summer of 2006, the primary water tank serving the Yermo community’s water system developed a leak and customers were without water for a week in the small community near Barstow, where temperatures exceeded 100 degrees every day. The California Department of Health and the California Public Utilities Commission initiated an investigation into the matter in 2007.
A decision to pursue the appointment of a receiver was issued in May of 2009.  A  community-based prospective buyer  surfaced and the receivership was suspended while it appeared that a sale of the system was possible. But after more than two years of negotiations, Walker refused to inform the prospective buyer how much he owed in back taxes and fines to the California Department of Health. As a result, the sale fell through. The receivership arrangement that took place in November 2012 was contested by Walker’s family but was denied by the Superior Court on March 6, 2013. Beginning in November 2012, the Yermo Community Services District took over operation of the company’s assets and in December 2013, arrangement for the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company to purchase the Yermo Water Company in its entirety began. Preparations for that takeover are yet ongoing, as repairs to the water system are being carried out.
In its 2012-13 report, the San Bernardino County Grand Jury  identified numerous shortcomings in the governance, accounting and financial management, and internal controls of the Newberry Springs Community Services District. The Local Agency Formation Commission detailed its staff to look into those issues and others pertaining to Yermo and Daggett. The upshot was a finding that it would behoove all three districts to merge and settle on management and leadership for the collective that is competent and efficient. At the very least, according to commission staff, the Daggett Community Service District and Yermo Community Services District should come together to form one entity. Economies of scale, not to mention other advantages, make it logical that the Newberry Community Services District be brought in on the merger, according to the Local Agency Formation Commission.
There have been similar consolidation imperatives and consolidations carried out involving those communities in the past.  In the 1960s Daggett’s school district was forced into a shotgun marriage with the Barstow Unified School District. In 1978, the Daggett School District was able to reassert its independence, breaking away. But in that departure, Daggett had to forego assets and resources local residents felt rightfully belonged to Daggett and not Barstow.
Daggett and Yermo resisted the Local Agency Formation Commission’s push for them to merge five years ago.
While few of the residents in the Daggett, Newberry or Yermo communities look upon the pressure to merge favorably, they are subject to the authority of the Local Agency Formation Commission, which is putting each district through its paces in having to respond to the merger concept. The Local Agency Formation Commission will lay out the options outlined by its staff and present them to the three communities and their residents. On January 21, the Local Agency Formation Commission will consider those plans/options.
For a significant number of residents, there is concern that the dictates from the county seat in San Bernardino some 70 miles away will impose on them a management and operation plan that will run roughshod over local control and in some cases, at least, result in services, including emergency services, being based at locations that will be more remote and not conducive to quick response or sensitive response.