By Mark Gutglueck
Los Angeles World Airports Executive Director Gina Marie Lindsey, who over the last three years has been demonized by Ontario city officials for her organization’s stewardship of Ontario International Airport, on Tuesday announced her retirement.
After a 39-year career, 33 working in the aviation industry, Lindsey told her staff “It is time for me to move on to other adventures.”
Prior to tendering her resignation, Lindsey discussed the advisability and timing of her retirement with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners President Sean Burton.
“This is an appropriate time for a transition,” said Lindsey. “The next LAWA executive director will be able to take the Airports Development Program through its next major phase, its next round of projects that will last at least 10 years.”
In publicly announcing her departure, Lindsey said she will stay on into the spring to ensure a smooth transition to new leadership for Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), the corporate entity which manages the airports owned by the city of Los Angeles for its Department of Airports.
Lindsey’s departure comes at a critical juncture in the relationship between the city of Los Angeles and the city of Ontario, which have developed major differences over the current and future management and ownership of Ontario International Airport.
LAWA is charged with operating Los Angeles International Airport, Van Nuys Airport, and Ontario International Airport, the later of which has been under the control of Los Angeles for more than 47 years. In 1967, when Ontario Airport yet had a gravel parking lot and fewer than 200,000 passengers passing through its gates annually, the Ontario City Council ratified a joint operating agreement with the city of Los Angeles to permit the larger city to use its stronger negotiating position with the airlines serving Southern California to induce them to utilize the Ontario facility. Using the leverage it possessed by virtue of its control of gate positions at Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles persuaded a whole host of airlines to begin flying into and out of Ontario, transforming the former backwater air field into a world class aerodrome, eliminating one of its obsolete runways, improving its existing east-west runway and constructing another, and constructing an ultra-modern concourse and two new terminals. After all of the performance criteria in the original joint operating agreement were achieved, in 1985 the city of Ontario deeded the airport to the city of Los Angeles for no consideration. During the more than two-decades after that transition, the airport continued to prosper, with ridership rising to an all-time record 7.2 million in 2007.
That same year, on June 4, 2007, Lindsey, who had decades of experience in airport management and a record of success in renovating and improving international airports, including with Seattle-Tacoma Airport, was appointed LAWA executive director.
Lindsey’s arrival coincided with two sets of events that ultimately fueled the souring of relations between the cities of Los Angeles and Ontario with regard to Ontario International Airport. The first of these was Lindsey’s push to step up the modernization of Los Angeles International Airport, which would ultimately lead, at least in part, to soaring passenger numbers there. The second event was the massive economic downturn that transitioned into a lingering national, statewide and regional recession that perpetuated itself for nearly seven years. Airlines, in an effort to shield themselves from the continuing economic decline, began cutting back on flights, particularly to locations outside heavy population centers. Beginning in 2008 and until mid-2014, passenger traffic at Ontario International declined steadily. This led to a deterioration in the working relationship between Los Angeles and Ontario. In 2010, Ontario officials, led by city councilman Alan Wapner, initiated a campaign aimed at wresting control and ownership of Ontario International Airport back from Los Angeles. Los Angeles officials, including most prominently Lindsey, at first ignored and then began to resist that effort, which grew increasingly strident and uncivil. Ontario officials, with Wapner in the lead, began to openly charge that Lindsey had evinced hostility toward the city of Ontario and its airport, and was deliberately managing Ontario International operations to raise costs and minimize both revenues and ridership there as part of a plot to increase revenue and gate numbers at Los Angeles International Airport. Lindsey and her staff denied those accusations, pointing out that the airlines were being pushed by their own economic imperatives. But in 2013, in the waning days of Anthony Villaraigosa’s tenure as Los Angeles mayor, the city of Ontario, through the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, sued Los Angeles in the neutral forum of Riverside Superior Court, charging Los Angeles and LAWA with willful mismanagement of Ontario Airport and seeking the return of the aerodrome to the city in which it is located.
The city of Los Angeles turned back a major portion of that legal challenge last month when Riverside Superior Court Judge Gloria Connor Trask ruled against Ontario’s claims that the 47-year-old joint operating agreement and the 29-year-old title transfers were illegally ratified and therefore unenforceable and voidable. Along the way, however, Ontario’s lawyers have pushed for the discovery of internal LAWA documents and staff communications, and has trumpeted selected examples culled from these in the press to demonstrate what Ontario officials, again led by Wapner front and center, said was LAWA’s and in particular Lindsey’s pernicious attitude toward Ontario.
The personalization of the attacks have occurred against a backdrop of jockeying between the two cities over the “value” of the airport, i.e., the amount of money that will change hands if the airport title is to be handed back to Ontario. Wapner long insisted that the airport was a “public benefit asset” and had no “value” as such. He called for Los Angeles to simply deed the airport back at no consideration. Los Angeles, on the other hand, has claimed that over $500 million dollars has been expended on improvements at the facility and that major portions of the funds for those improvements originated from revenue generated at Los Angeles International Airport or at Ontario International Airport while it has been in the possession of Los Angeles, as well as from federal grants Los Angeles secured or from bonds issued under the authority of Los Angeles as a public agency.
Ontario privately tendered a $250 million offer to Los Angeles World Airports for transfer of the airport’s title and operational control. That offer included Ontario assuming $75 million of the outstanding bond debt obligations for past improvements to the airport, $125 million in future passenger facility charges to be realized at the airport and $50 million cash.
Los Angeles scoffed at that offer, giving indication they would accept no less than $450 million for the airport and the property on which it sits, which in any case they considered to be a generously charitable counterproposal reflecting a roughly $100 million discount of the cost of the improvements made to the airport during Los Angeles’s 47 year managerial run there.
Ontario has fought back, suggesting both in court documents and in public statements that Los Angeles has cooked the books and grossly overstated – by hundreds of millions of dollars – the actual amount of money Los Angeles has contributed toward improvements at Ontario Airport.
For their part, Los Angeles officials at all levels, from the city council through to the management ranks at LAWA have been offended by the vitriol and tenor of Ontario’s campaign. It is unclear whether Lindsey’s departure came at her own initiative or was imposed upon her by the political leadership on the Los Angeles City Council and the airport board. The timing of her leaving in the wake of the city of Los Angeles’s substantial victory over Ontario in court by virtue of Judge Trask’s recent ruling is widely seen as a gesture of magnanimity by the larger city, and an effort toward reconciliation that calls for a similarly statesmanlike move on Ontario’s part. At this point, it appears the ball is in Ontario’s court, and it is an open question whether Ontario will seek some level of accommodation or maintain or step up its aggressive and bellicose tactics. What has been suggested is that Ontario could reciprocate by removing Wapner, whose inflexibility, aggressive personality and confrontational approach in his engagement with Los Angeles officials has consistently resulted in an elevation of tension and a hardening of positions that have locked the city into a showdown posture of dubious prospect that involves a legal throw of the dice which will entail, if played out to its conclusion, millions of dollars in legal fees whether Ontario ultimately wins or loses.
An incremental move in the direction of accommodation appears to be afoot in that the Ontario International Airport Authority, the entity that was created by the city of Ontario and the county of San Bernardino to assume management control of the airport upon its return to local ownership, has designated recently installed Fourth District County Supervisor Curt Hagman, whose district includes Ontario, as a second negotiator to complement Wapner in dealing with Los Angeles and LAWA officials.
“I hope this impending personnel change clears the way for the cities of Ontario and LA to reach agreement on the transfer of Ontario International Airport to local control on terms that are consistent with all previous transfers of commercial airports between public agencies. We stand ready to work with Mayor Garcetti to determine a fair payment for the transfer of Ontario International Airport that makes LAWA whole with respect to any unreimbursed investments it has made in ONT.”​
Whether or not her departure will encourage Ontario to reevaluate its approach with regard to the airport, Lindsey will remain in place at LAWA for the next two to four months as Mayor Garcetti’s office and airport commissioners coordinate with Spencer Stuart, a leading executive search consulting firm, to identify Lindsey’s successor. After her replacement is brought in, it is anticipated Lindsey will remain with LAWA for a long enough interval to bring the new executive director up to speed.
Sean Burton, the president of the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners, said of Lindsey, “A good leader brings out the best in a team. Gina Marie has put together a strong and efficient team that is transforming Los Angeles International Airport into an airport the city can be proud of, responsibly managed costs and operations at Ontario International Airport through difficult market changes, and moved Van Nuys, a general aviation airport that had been losing money, into a brighter future. I am proud to have been able to work with her.” In a memo to LAWA staff, Lindsey summarized their achievements. Two of those touched on Ontario Airport directly.
“We’ve gradually reduced Ontario International Airport operating costs to maintain a relatively consistent cost per passenger despite significant passenger reductions,” Lindsey noted in one section of the memo, the context of which implied Ontario International’s expenses and operating costs are exceeding revenues.
Lindsey’s memo also stated, “There’s now an established, systematic process for determining capital investment priorities at each airport.”
Ontario Mayor Paul Leon said that “I wish Ann Marie all the best. I can say that she was dedicated and loyal and did a fine job for the ones who employed her. I hope she finds fulfillment as she moves on to the next season of her life.”

(February 3) Greenwood Village, Colorado-based Molycorp, Inc. this week reported that rare earth production in the fourth quarter of 2014 at its Mountain Pass Mine near the eastern extreme of San Bernardino County increased over that during the similar period in 2013 and nearly doubled that of the preceding quarter.
The Mountain Pass Mine completed the fourth quarter of 2014 with 1,328 metric tons of rare earth oxide equivalent production. That compares to 1,034 metric tons in the fourth quarter of 2013 and 691 metric tons in the third quarter of 2014. Full year 2014 production totaled 4,785 metric tons, compared to 3,473 metric tons in 2013. Per-unit cash production costs at Mountain Pass also declined sequentially in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Molycorp has intensified its effort to have the United States reassert itself as a major producer of rare earth minerals, based primarily on its mining operations in a remote area of San Bernardino County.
In recent decades, China has become the predominant supplier of rare earth metals. Molycorps is making strides in challenging Chinese rare earth production primacy.
Rare earth minerals, also known as lanthinides or rare earth metals, are a set of seventeen chemical elements, specifically scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, gadolinium, europium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, and ytterbium. They have a number of critical industrial and technical uses and applications, including serving as components in mercury-vapor lamps. high-temperature superconductors, lasers, microwave filters, high refractive index glass, hybrid electrical vehicles, flint products, battery-electrodes, camera lenses, carbon arc lighting, didymium glass used in welding goggles, polishing powder, ceramic capacitors, nuclear batteries, rare-earth magnets, memory chips, red and blue phosphors, green phosphors, fluorescent lamps, vanadium steel, x-ray machines and infrared lasers. Rare earth elements also facilitate hydrogen storage, fluid catalytic cracking, creating violet and yellow colors in glass or ceramics, catalyzing the refining of petroleum, oxidizing chemicals, neutron capture, and contrasting magnetic resonance images.
Company officials said that the higher production volumes they expect at Mountain Pass in 2015 should coincide with relatively strong demand the Company is seeing for products such as the magnetic rare earth material neodymium/praseodymium, lanthanum, and light rare earth concentrate (“LREC”).
According to a statement from the company, “Molycorp processes Mountain Pass LREC at vertically integrated downstream processing facilities into a variety of value-added engineered materials, including rare earth magnetic materials for multiple downstream markets and vehicle emissions catalysts that consume cerium and other materials.”
The company said that its onsite chlor-alkali plant at Mountain Pass is performing well in producing hydrochloric acid, a key chemical reagent used in rare earth production at Mountain Pass. Moreover, commercial availability also has improved, such that hydrochloric acid currently is no longer a significant constraint to production.
According to the company statement, “Molycorp’s Chlor-Alkali plant helps to lower cash production costs by generating chemical reagents onsite, reducing waste water disposal costs, and further shrinking the environmental footprint of rare earth production.”
Molycorp officials reported that repairs of construction-related issues with the facility’s newly expanded leach system are ongoing. Once fully operational, that system is expected to increase rare earth production and lower operating costs.
“We were pleased to see our production increase in the fourth quarter relative to the preceding quarter and year-on-year,” said Geoff Bedford, President and CEO of Molycorp, Inc. “Optimization at Mountain Pass is ongoing, but our fourth quarter production demonstrates momentum in the right direction. Rare earth pricing softened in the fourth quarter with market uncertainty surrounding release of final details of China’s ongoing reforms to rare earth mining, separation, and export regulatory policies. However, given the relatively strong internal and external demand we are seeing for many Mountain Pass products, continuing to boost production there is a top operational priority.”
Because of their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found in concentrated and economically exploitable forms.
Until 1948, most of the world’s rare earths were mined in India and Brazil. In the 1950s, South Africa became the leading supplier of rare earth metals.
In 1949, the Mountain Pass Mine, which lies in the extreme northeast portion of San Bernardino County roughly 15 miles from the California-Nevada state line, was discovered by a uranium prospector. The Molybdenum Corporation of America bought the mining claims, and small-scale production began in 1952. Production expanded greatly in the 1960s, with the Mountain Pass facility becoming the world’s dominant producer of rare earth elements. From 1965 until 1995 it was an almost exclusive supplier of europium, which is used in color television screens. The Molybdenum Corporation of America changed its name to Molycorp in 1974 and was acquired by Union Oil/Unocal in 1977.
Unocal was served with an environmental cleanup order relating to the facility and sued by San Bernardino County’s district attorney’s office in a civil lawsuit. The company paid more than $1.4 million in fines and settlements and the mine was shut down in 2002, at which time China eclipsed the United States as the leading supplier of rare earth metals. After Unocal in 2004 obtained a new operating permit for the mine, it was acquired the following year by the Chevron Corporation.
By 2005, 96 percent of the world’s rare earth elements were mined in China. In 2007, China restricted exports of rare earth elements and imposed export tariffs. In 2008, Molycorp Minerals LLC, based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, was formed to revive the Mountain Pass Mine, and acquired the operation. On July 29, 2010, Molycorp, Inc. became a publicly-traded firm by selling 28,125,000 shares at $14 in its initial public offering. On September 22, 2010 China quietly enacted a ban on exports of rare earths to Japan. Later that fall, Congress passed legislation to subsidize the revival of the American rare earths industry, including the reopening of the Mountain Pass mine.
Initially, Molycorp lost money. But by the second quarter of 2011, the company was showing a profit. Molycorp acquired processing facilities in Arizona and Estonia. In March 2012, Molycorp Inc. acquired Neo Material Technologies Inc., a Canadian rare earth processing company, for $1.3 billion.
On August 2012, Molycorp initiated Project Phoenix at the Mountain Pass Mine, which included the addition of an on-site combined heat and power plant, which is now providing low-cost, high-efficiency electrical power and steam for the company’s extraction of heavy rare earth concentrate ore which is then processed into high-purity, custom-engineered rare earth products at Molycorp’s production facilities.
Within short order it is anticipated that the mine will be the major source of the world’s bastnäsite, calcite, barite, dolomite, cerium, lanthanum, neodymium and Europium.

(February 3) While council members in the desert municipalities of Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms are both seemingly collectively disinclined toward allowing the establishment of medical marijuana dispensaries within their jurisdictions, advocates of legal access to the drug are making steady headway in the town while the city has maintained its traditional line of prohibition against the substance.
Nearly nineteen years after California’s voters passed Proposition 215 to allow marijuana to be dispensed for medicinal purposes, the town of Yucca Valley and the city of Twentynine Palms, like the vast majority of cities in San Bernardino County, have refused to adjust their zoning codes to permit districts within their borders that would allow marijuana clinics to operate, thus preventing would-be drug sellers the opportunity to operate legally. In Yucca Valley, one enterprising entrepreneur tested fate, the law and the resolve of town officials when he flew in under the radar by using sleight of hand in obtaining a charter from the town to operate an ‘herbal shop.”
Upon town officials learning that the enterprise was a marijuana dispensary, they initiated efforts to close it but were met by the owner’s threat of litigation. The town and the clinic owner arrived at an agreement by which the owner was able to remain in business for a specified period. Before that deadline elapsed, the operation proved lucrative enough for the owner to reach his financial goals and he voluntarily closed.
Advocates for the availability of medical marijuana say that there is considerable demand for medical marijuana in Yucca Valley and that the town council, by its efforts to prevent the operation of dispensaries in town is forcing customers to purchase the product from criminals selling it illegally or travel to other cities where clinics are permitted and where those municipalities have tapped into the tax revenue available from the sales.
The demand for marijuana will remain whether the town facilitates local availability or not, and the city should take advantage of the potential tax revenue such operations present, advocates of the dispensaries say.
Accordingly, the Alliance 4 Safe Access cropped up, led by Jason Elsasser, which gathered petitions calling for the city of 20,700 to place an initiative on the ballot that would allow one dispensary to operate in the city for every 10,000 residents. Elsasser and his group obtained the requisite number of signatures on the petitions to force the town to hold an election on the initiative. After the county registrar of voters verified that 1,873 of those signatures were valid endorsements of the initiative by registered voters in the town, the city council had the choice of simply passing the initiative using its own authority, delaying the matter for thirty days for further study or scheduling an election. The council elected to delay the matter while a study was undertaken, while simultaneously drawing up an initiative of its own, drawn along similar lines as that of the one put forth by the Alliance For Safe Access, but containing other elements. The town’s initiative, like that of the alliance, would permit the operation of a maximum of two dispensaries in Yucca Valley. But the town’s initiative would further require a security guard be present on the premises during operating hours, prohibit onsite consumption or cultivation and disallow a dispensary being located within 600 feet of a school.
The town’s measure would draw a more conservative line on signage, hours of operation, the labeling of the product and have more exacting ventilation requirements. The town’s measure also spells out its right to impose fees or taxes, on the operation, including a fee to recoup the administrative and law enforcement costs entailed in doing background checks, issuing permits, carrying out inspections and enforcement.
Based on the past statements and actions of the town council, it appears that four of its members do not favor the idea of marijuana clinics being able to set up shop in town. What has recently emerged is that councilman Bob Leone, a former police officer whose opposition to the initiative was widely assumed, stated he supported medical marijuana availability in some measure because he believed the drug had eased the suffering of his son in the last years of his life.
Given the totality of circumstance, it appears that a decision on the local sale and availability of marijuana for medical purposes is moving toward a referendum by voters, though passage of the measure is by no means assured as the two most powerful political entities in town, the Reverend Roger Mayes and the Reverend Jerel Hagerman, who can deliver a massive block of votes that is large enough to sway the election, have previously indicated their opposition to any effort to liberalize marijuana availability.
Thirty miles up Route 62, in Twentynine Palms, the city council there sent a strong signal last month that indicated there is a 4 to 1 majority among its ranks opposed to allowing marijuana dispensaries to operate there. No citizen group such as Alliance For Safe Access has taken up the cause in Twentynine Palms, and as such, the leverage to force the council to act contrary to its own sentiments is non-existent.
One member of the Twentynine Palms Council, Cora Heiser, indicated she was in favor of undoing the city’s ban on marijuana dispensaries.
Heiser, who intimated but did not directly state that she had herself used medical marijuana when she disclosed that she had two personal bouts with cancer, at the January 27 city council meeting pushed her colleagues to take up the issue of undoing the city’s existing ban on dispensaries. She appealed to the council to put on a future council agenda looking at providing more definitude to the language in the ban, making clear what specific operations are deemed out of compliance with the city’s codes. She made the suggestion that the council schedule a future public hearing to discuss adding language to an existing ban on medical marijuana dispensaries, which was passed on February 23, 2010, defining the activities and uses of medical marijuana dispensaries.
Her aim seemed to be to float the concept of allowing mobile dispensaries, i.e., marijuana delivery services, to operate in the city. The 2010 ordinance bans both dispensaries operating from traditional brick and mortar stores and mobile dispensaries.
Heiser said the provision of medical marijuana to patients who can benefit from its use “is a legal enterprise.” She urged the council to hold a public hearing to get feedback from the community, calling it “irresponsible if you don’t let the public have a say,” she said.
Councilmen John Cole and McArthur Wright were particularly dismissive of Heiser’s request.
Ultimately, the council voted 4-1 against taking up the issue at a future council meeting.

(February 4) Greg Devereaux’s tenure as San Bernardino County’s chief executive officer appears to be safe despite the indefinite continuation of this annual performance review last week.
On January 29, the board of supervisors held a specially scheduled closed session meeting, with the sole agendized issue being the board’s evaluation of Devereaux’s performance.
No action was reported out of that closed session, which was agendized by newly selected board chairman James Ramos, the county’s Third District supervisor.
The Sentinel has learned that the evaluation has been continued to a meeting date that has yet to be determined but which is anticipated within the next two months.
The lack of a report of action at the January 29 session prompted speculation that Devereaux, who was appointed to the newly created position of county chief executive officer to succeed the county’s former top executive, Mark Uffer, who carried the title of county administrative officer, was on his way out.
That speculation flew in the face of previous indications and conventional wisdom. Upon his hiring in January 2010, Devereaux was given, in addition to the enhanced title of county chief executive officer, a measure of job security heretofore unheard of in that his contract stipulated that he could not be terminated on a simple 3-2 vote as was the case with all of those who had served as county administrative officer. Rather four votes of the board were needed to fire him.
In addition to that level of job security, the currently composed board and those that preceded it have deferred to Devereaux in nearly all particulars pertaining to county governance. The entire county budget is essentially a document Devereaux works up with assistance from the county’s various department heads. He is essentially unfettered in giving direction to the county’s lower echelons with regard to policy and operations. Whereas under previous county administrative officers, board members would have direct dealings with department heads and were free to take up with each of the county’s divisions specific issues or complaints lodged by the supervisors’ constituents, any hashing out or ironing out of constituent problems now go through Devereaux and board members are no longer at liberty to talk to department heads. This is seen as both a sign of Devereaux’s domination of the governmental machinery and the degree to which the supervisors want to be disengaged from the nuts and bolts running of the county.
On May 7, 2013, the board of supervisors extended Devereaux’s contract as chief executive offcer to March 2017. Yearly performance evaluations, however, are a routine element of the relationship between the board and the top administrator and they present the only point at which the board’s members have any leverage over the CEO.
Because the call for the evaluation originated with Ramos and was encouraged by First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood, it would appear that the issue that might be under examination is the board’s loss of its discretionary spending, a move championed by Devereaux as a cost cutting measure to balance the county’s budget. Previously, each supervisor was given a $450,000 allowance to spend as he or she deemed fit within her own district without having to obtain full board approval on those appropriations. In some of the districts, that money was not fully spent. But in both the First and Third districts, which have the most unincorporated county territory of the county’s five districts, that money has been traditionally spent to provide services to residents who do not live in incorporated municipalities. The Second, Fourth and Fifth districts cover ground that has been largely annexed by cities, which provide their own level of services to their residents. For that reason, Ramos and Lovingood may be intent on having the discretionary finding formerly allotted to supervisors restored, as that would give them the opportunity to provide a modicum of services to their constituents without having to get the approval of Devereaux or their board colleagues.
To a certain extent, Devereaux’s dominating methods may have rubbed some the wrong way, in particular some of the more outspoken or aggressive members of the county’s employee unions. Devereaux sought and achieved from all of the county’s union’s contract concessions that he claimed were necessary to balance the county’s budget. In his role as negotiator, Devereaux was essentially serving the board members, who did not themselves want to assume the role of being hard nosed with the unions, who have proven to be major source of campaign donations to county elected officials in the last decade, rivaling or outrunning the development community, which was paralyzed by the foundering economy. Despite some grumbling from a relative few of their members, the county’s employee unions are not pressuring the members of the board of supervisors with regard to pay and benefits policy. Thus, the board does not need to nudge or force Devereaux to change his approach. The last time the county’s employee unions felt the need to make an example of a member of the board of supervisors was in 2000, when they rallied behind Bill Postmus in his move to oust incumbent supervisor Kathy Davis. That ploy indeed succeeded and the unions derived some degree of benefit from it. Nevertheless, Postmus would eventually crash and burn, admitting to political corruption that included 14 counts of bribe taking, conflict of interest, conspiracy, perjury and related crimes pertaining to his term as supervisor. For that reason and others, the unions do not have the will to utilize heavy handed political tactics to influence members of the board, who in any case, are highly dependent upon Devereaux for running the county.
Technically, Devereaux’s security vis-a-vis the 4-1 requirement to terminate him may not be ironclad. While his contract does contain that requirement, that contract was ratified by the board in early 2010, which was then composed of Neil Derry, Josie Gonzales, Paul Biane, Gary Ovitt, and Brad Mitzelfelt. Four fifths of the board has now left, so that only Gonzales remains. According to the California Constitutions and the county charter, a board cannot by its actions restrict the action of a future board. It would thus appear the board has the authority, if it were to so choose, to cashier Devereaux on a 3-2 vote. In that event he could sue the county and he would most likely be due the balance of his contract, but he could most likely be forced to depart as CEO if such a vote were taken.
That point is moot, however, since the will to remove him is not present.
What seems most likely is that at the January 29 meeting, board members may have sought information from Devereaux which he was not then prepared to provide and the game plan now is to allow him to return at a later date to tie up whatever loose ends remain with regard to restoring the supervisors’ discretionary spending authority or whatever issue they are currently interested in. At that point, his evaluation, for the current year, will have been concluded.

(February 5) Two different superintendents in two of San Bernardino County’s High Desert school districts have been accorded far different treatment as those districts have been met with challenges.
In the Barstow Unified School Dis­trict, Sci­ence Technology Engineer­ing and Mathematics Acad­emy Principal Mark Has­sell was arrested last month by Barstow police on suspicion of having sex with a 17-year-old student. Hassel resigned. This week Barstow Unified board members lavished praise upon superintendent Jeff Malan for how he has managed the district through the controversy.
At the time of Hassell’s arrest, Malan offered only minimal information and virtually no comment beyond saying that the district would “follow proper protocol” in dealing with the matter.
On February 3, Barstow Unified board member Barbara Rose publicly thanked Malan for his calm and steady leadership, a sentiment that was echoed by other board members.
“Thanks for all you do for us,” said board member Ben Rosenburg.
In Victorville’s Excelsior Public Charter School District, superintendent Bill Flynn did not fare as well this week. He and assistant superintendent of student services Minda Stackelhouse were abruptly placed on leave February 2. No reason for that action by the board was publicly disclosed. Peter Wright, the assistant superintendent of educational services was temporarily upgraded to acting superintendent to replace Flynn.
The action was taken by the Excelsior School Board minus board member Felix Diaz, who was not in attendance at the meeting.
There has been no explanation given as to what the grounds for the board’s action was.
Excelsior Charter Schools is a public entity, chartered under the authority of the Victor Valley Union High School District. It consists of five schools, two in Victorville and one each in Phelan and Barstow as well as in Norco in Riverside County.

I hope my readers will indulge me in a bit of self-indulgence this week as I use, or is it abuse, this space for what is a blatantly personal fixation…
Many, many years ago, although to me it seems not really that long back, almost as if it were just last week or last month, I crossed paths with this woman who with all of her earthly charms just outright caught my fancy, captured my imagination, indeed took prisoner of my heart and probably my soul, if the words of the poets are true. Because of some monumental stupidity on my part or perhaps some twist of fate or circumstance that is beyond my frame of reference or meager realm of understanding, we fell out of touch with one another. Rarely has a day or night passed when I have not had cause to think about her, what she had gotten herself up to, where she was, whether she as often as I of her or indeed ever thought of me and, if indeed she did, what it was that she thought…
There were some geographical and cultural points of commonality to our lives, and I would once have been too embarrassed to admit it, but there was a time that I, like the fool I am, found myself going solo at the opera, or the ballet, and on occasion at the cinema or other spot, places all where I hazarded a guess she might turn up. For four years I spent thousands of dollars on season tickets for an entire opera box. I would arrive well before show time, and there I would perch, using my opera glasses to scan the incoming crowd, searching high and low for a glimpse of her. I would continue to make a spectacle of myself once the performance began, using the glasses not to focalize upon the stage, but to pore over the audience despite the dimmed house lights, hoping to find her among the multitude. In my overly imaginative mind’s eye she would be there, and I, as if I were some gallant, would then rush to the foyer to meet her, by chance she would think, and I would resume what had once seemed for us irretrievably lost. Alas, but this played out only in the too fertile halls of my creative cortex, and never I ran across her using any of these stratagems…
Some years later, I hired a shamus, a private investigator, to see if she could be found. That too came up empty…
Well now, after all of these decades, and my having moved to and fro about the globe, back to Europe, to Hong Kong and again to this continent and now across it to my mountain redoubt, what are the chances that she is anywhere to be discovered? What are the chances that she has ever read the Sentinel, and if she has, will have picked up this edition? Not very likely, I should think, but as I am old and desperate, I will, as you Yanks are wont to say, throw up a Hail Mary…
If your eyes cross this, Christine Amélie Bettencourt, contact me, by means of this newspaper. After all of these years, I would think we should scarcely recognize one another. I will be the one with the monocle. And I will know it is you if you can answer these two riddles: What kind of birds had nested in hedge between the pond and the row of apricot trees? And what item was it that we absentmindedly left behind us in the Metro that caused us to be so damnably late to the performance of La Traviata? Send with your answers where you are, and I will come to you or make arrangements for you to come to me, as you prefer…

(February 3) Former Second District San Bernardino County Supervisor Cal McElwain has died.
McElwain, a Democrat and former union organizer, used those connections as a springboard into politics. He served two terms on the board of supervisors during which he grew to be the dominant member of the board, but was felled by the transition of the district he represented into a Republican stronghold as, well as attacks he sustained over his loyalty to his supporters and family members.
Born in Painterville, Pennsylvania on April 25, 1929, Calvin McElwain grew up in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, leaving school prematurely to enlist in the U.S. Army at the age of 16 during the last year of the Second World War. After serving in the Army from 1945 to 1947, he returned home to finish high school, graduating from Mifflin County High School in 1949 at the age of 20.
McElwain married his wife Juneta, with whom he would have six children, on July 11, 1949. From 1949 until 1958, McElwain ran a service station and operated a restaurant in Pennsylvania.
In 1958, he moved with his family to California, moving to a house in San Antonio Heights just above Upland. He obtained work at the Kaiser Steel Mill in Fontana, moving up to the position of metallurgical quality control specialist. While at the plant he became a union steward, and he went on to become a legislative analyst for the United Steel Workers of America.
He attended classes at Chaffey College, U.C. Berkeley and Harvard, many of them in disciplines related to his union role, such as labor management, labor management relations, business law, psychology and collective bargaining.
In 1978 he ran for Second District supervisor against Joseph Kamansky, eking out a victory in the November 7 general election.
His union associations stood him in good stead in the portion of Fontana in the Second District, which included the Kaiser Steel Mill. He hired John Casey, a former union steward as his field representative for Fontana. He cultivated close relations with other elected officials within his district, including then Rancho Cucamonga councilmen Chuck Buquet and Dick Dahl, and county officials such as assessor Gordon Young.
He constructed an impressive political machine which included strong Democrat and union support and cruised to a comfortable reelection in 1982.
He commanded an impressive political fiefdom, was elected to serve as chairman of the board of supervisors and held positions on over a dozen state and county committees and boards, including the National Association of Counties, San Bernardino Associated Governments, and Omnitrans’ board of directors.
But in 1984, he was damaged by revelations of his links to fireworks magnate Patrick Moriarty and his connection and efforts on behalf of ambulance franchise holder Mercy Ambulance. The coup de grace to his political tenure came when it was revealed that six of his seven immediate family members had obtained employment with the county. In 1986, he was challenged and beaten by then-up-and-coming politician Jon Mikels, the mayor of Rancho Cucamonga.
McElwain remained a political entity thereafter, but worked through other elected officials, such as Dave Eshleman, city councilman and later mayor of Fontana, who was also a Democrat.
He was active in the Al Malaikah Shriners in Los Angeles, the Upland Masonic Lodge, the Ontario Elks Lodge, the Fontana Rotary Club, American Legion Post 772 in Fontana, and the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in San Bernardino, where he attained the rank of a 32nd-degree Mason.
His son Mick died from injuries he sustained in January 2004 when he had rushed to his parents home in San Antonio Heights during the Grand Prix Fire. The younger McElwain, then 53, had risked his own safety in an effort to check on his parents, who had already left. Mickey Stephen McElwain died eleven weeks later at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton after an extended stay in the hospital’s burn ward.
Cal McElwain was diagnosed with cancer in May of last year and succumbed on January 17.
He is survived by his wife of 65 years, Nita and their five children, Bradford Allen, Daira Lee, Eric Dane, Erin Jo, and Jason Cohan, 16 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. Feb. 27 at Life Bible Fellowship Church, 2426 N. Euclid Ave., in Upland.

By Mark Gutglueck
Isaac Wilson Lord was born on June 10, 1836 in Warrenville, Illinois, some twenty-five miles east of what was described as the “squalid village of Chicago,” on the east bank of the DuPage River. Born into comfortable circumstance, he was the only son of Dr. Israel S.P. Lord and Mary G. (Wilson) Lord, the daughter of the Congressman Isaac Wilson, a close friend of the future president, James K. Polk.
In 1839, Dr. Lord sold his claim of one hundred and sixty acres on the DuPage River for two hundred dollars and moved seven miles west to the east bank of the Fox River, buying there a remote four-room log house and one hundred acres of prime land for one hundred dollars. He essentially founded a settlement at this spot, which he named the “Batavia” after his hometown in New York. He set about attracting others to the area and with the arrival of other families the following year, established what would grow into a thriving community.
Though he was reared by well-educated parents, Isaac Lord’s early education was somewhat limited in scope. He had the advantage of ample experience in connection with the labors and interests of the pioneer community in which he was raised. In 1853, when he was seventeen, he journeyed on foot to a place in Indiana roughly 200 miles south of Chicago where he found employment as a cattle drover. His first major assignment in this capacity was to work with eight men who herded three hundred and sixteen head of cattle from Shelbyville, in eastern Illinois, to California. This sojourn lasted six months and two days. No tents were provided for shelter, nor were the drovers furnished with horses or mules to ride. Food and other provisions were nonexistent, poor and scarce. The job entailed driving all day and standing guard every other night. Twice Indians stampeded the herd, but only three cows were lost in the brisk skirmishes which ensued. The exhausted party, with the cattle, reached Hangtown, California on September 16, 1853.
At that point, the placer mining of the 1849 Gold Rush was diminishing and rock-mining was just starting. There was little or no agriculture, horticulture, manufacturing or commerce in California. Thousands of people who had flocked to the Golden State seeking quick fortunes were penniless, flirting with starvation and unable to get back East to what they now knew as “God’s Country.” After his arrival in September, young Isaac Lord spent seven weeks washing pots and dishes at a Sacramento hotel, a menial, fourteen-hour-a-day task that was done in exchange for board and shelter in the hotel’s barn. He stayed at this job until he had advanced to the more dignified position of chief cook with the impressive stipend of $100 per month. Leaving this employ after saving up a small fund, he went into the mountains to try his hand at placer-mining. In this, he was an abject failure His nest egg was soon exhausted. He returned to cowpunching and with a few other enlisted with a band of Mexican vaqueros, driving cattle from what is now Bakersfield to Stockton. One trip took them to the Cahuenga Valley, the present site of Hollywood, where the 29 drovers secured thirteen hundred head of cattle.
In 1856, the twenty-year-old was informed that back in Illinois, his mother’s health was failing. He purchased a riding horse, mule and pack horse and set out alone for Batavia. This proved one of the defining undertakings of his life as he became the first man to cross the mountains and great plains alone. Before he reached St. Joseph, Missouri, on October 8, 1856, he was waylaid and held captive by the Shoshone Indians for three weeks. He arrived at his parent’ place of residence on November 2 and two days later headed the parade in honor of the famous surveyor, mapmaker and pathfinder, Colonel John C. Fremont. Mr. Lord still lacked by six months further maturity being old enough to vote for Fremont who was, that year the first nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States.
He thereafter began studying, under his father’s tutelage, medicine. While yet in Batavia he proved himself eligible to practice as a physician, and engaged in the private practice of the medical arts for two years. He would conclude that the work was not to his liking and he then accepted employment as a bookkeeper for the Marshal Field and Company mercantile firm in Chicago. Eight months later he began working as cashier and bookkeeper in the freight department of the Great Northern Railroad, remaining in that post for about five years. In the meantime, he married. In March of 1872, accompanied by his wife and two small children, he returned to California.
He settled in Los Angeles, where he engaged in the furniture and carpet business as a member of the firm Dotter and Lord.
Lord’s first wife, with whom he had three daughters and a son, died after their move to Los Angeles in 1872.
He next entered into a partnership with Judge Robert M. Widney, promoting the building of the first streetcar line on the south coast of San Francisco. This proved profitable and together with Widney, he undertook to build the San Pedro streetcar line from Santa Monica Station to the River Station of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Lord was the president of this line.
Widney and Lord then turned their attention to the growing and harvesting of eucalyptus trees for firewood and owned two hundred acres of trees near the San Gabriel River. This venture, too, was successful. When the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce was organized in 1882, Widney was named its first president and Lord secretary and treasurer. Among other notable accomplishments, Lord was responsible for the construction of the first cable car line in Los Angeles.
In 1883, he married the widowed Mrs. Julia Emma (Stoddard) Scott, daughter of William Moses Stoddard of Sacramento. They had one daughter, Mrs. J.J. Vandergrift.
In 1885, Lord retired from active business and moved to Cucamonga, where he engaged in the planting of olive and citrus groves. In 1887, he founded the town of Lordsburg in Los Angeles County, which in August 1917 was renamed LaVerne.
In 1890, Lord was elected to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, representing the Second District, serving from January 5, 1891 to January 7, 1895. He was succeeded by Judge George R. Holbrook of Ontario. During his tenure, the board approved the construction of a granite courthouse, a new jail, a large hospital and seventeen bridges. The bridges were built at the impetus of Jacob N. Victor, a member of the board of supervisors whose only term in office coincided exactly with Lord’s. During the first two years of the 1891-95 San Bernardino County administration, there were more miles of roads opened in the county than had been thus improved during the entire preceding forty years of the county’s existence.
In 1907, Lord and his family returned to Los Angeles where he virtually retired from any business activity whatsoever, yet retained his civic zeal and was active in various organization until his death on March 16, 1917, at the age of 80. One daughter, Cornelia, and his son, Isaac, predeceased him. Two widowed daughters, Mrs. Hannah Randle and Mrs. Brooks, along with Mrs. Vanergrift and his second wife, survived him.

(February 4) In its immediate aftermath, there was varying opinion as to whether a botched robbery at an illicit marijuana dispensary in Upland on January 30 will impact the outcome of a referendum on permitting pot clinics to operate openly in the city.
On Friday night, January 30 sometime before 11 p.m. two adults, later identified by police as Christopher Baca, 30, of Covina, and Diego Sanchez, 19, of Upland and two 15-year-old boys approached three male employees of a medical marijuana dispensary located at 759 N. Mountain Avenue as they were leaving the just-closed establishment. At gunpoint, the three clinic employees were forced to reopen the clinic. Inside, one of the employees was pistol whipped and another was shot in the leg, before Baca, Sanchez and their two accomplices seized money and marijuana, tied the three victims up and then left, taking the Lexus owned by one of the clinic employees.
One of the victims untied himself and called the police.
Police obtained information that by 4:40 a.m. on January 31 led them to an apartment in the 1300 block of Randy Street, less than a mile away from where the crime had occurred.
In response to commands that they surrender, the suspects barricaded themselves in the apartment. A six-hour stand-off ensued, which was brought to a close after the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department sent its paramilitary team to the location and a negotiator with that unit persuaded three of the suspects to surrender. The fourth suspect was found yet hiding in a neighboring apartment.
The incident took place less than a month after the California Cannabis Coalition, led by that group’s president, Craig Beresh, and one of its board members, Randy Welty, obtained a sufficient number of Upland’s registered voters’ signatures to qualify an initiative calling for the permitting of cannabis dispensaries in Upland in a zone along Foothill Boulevard between Airport Drive to the east and Monte Vista Avenue to the west. While informal surveys of Upland’s voters indicate a majority of city residents are opposed to the legalized sale of marijuana in the city, organizers of the petition drive are hopeful that they can network with that portion of the citizenry who cast a more favorable eye on the substance to drive them in large enough numbers to the polls during a special election where there is anticipated to be lackluster voter turnout to have the initiative pass.
The 759 North Mountain Avenue dispensary was an illicit one, operating without a city permit, as are some eleven or twelve other dispensaries. The city effort to shutter them has proven ineffective, in part because previous legal maneuvering by the city to close other dispensaries, while ultimately successful, proved costly, and the city lacks the resources to find and identify the black market operators let alone take them to court.
All the same, some city officials and some citizens are dead set against the initiative and they are preparing to launch an effort to win the hearts and minds of the city’s voters to convince them to vote against it.
In this way, the robbery of the Mountain Avenue dispensary could prove a rallying point for those who will argue against marijuana liberalization in Upland, providing an argument that such operations will attract violent crime. In an open forum devoted to Upland, some city residents expressed the belief that any business operations that engage in cash sales are going to attract crime and that closing down the current illicit dispensaries or preventing the opening of legal ones in Upland is not going to discourage armed or strong arm robberies. Others weighed in by saying that because pot shops keep cash and drugs on premises, they are more likely to draw violent predators to them.
City councilman Gino Filippi, who appears to be the elected city official least resistant to permitting marijuana clinics to operate within the city, said, the January 30 robbery had not impacted his views on the advisability of tolerating and licensing medical marijuana clinics in Upland.
““I don’t think this unfortunate incident strongly changed my mind,” Filippi said. In my view, medical marijuana dispensaries are not broken into because they are places of iniquity, but rather because they generate large amounts of money and financial institutions have been reluctant at best permitting them to open business checking accounts. Unfortunately this most serious incident of crime happened near a residential area. The fact that it took place when the least number of dispensaries over the past several years were operating in the city could invalidate the ‘dispensaries equal crime’ theory. For that reason alone, I think that drawing a direct line between operating dispensaries and this type of crime incident could be a false connection.”
Filippi said the die is cast with regard to the initiative.
“I see two options for the city,” he said. “We can 1) adopt the proposed ordinance, or 2) prepare and pay for a special election. I agree with former city manager Stephen Dunn when he recommended several months ago that the city sit down and talk with the authors of the ordinance. The city could have provided a unified approach not only amongst the city council but also with the group of citizens who authored the petition. Unfortunately the city dropped the ball, in my view. For several years, I’ve been dedicated to balancing the budget and saving the city money wherever possible. There’s not much I can do about whether this item goes to the voters or not. It appears that the initiative does in fact have over the 15 percent needed for a special election, and California law essentially forces a city to pay for a special election.”
The city needs to husband its resources and spend its money judiciously, Filippi said.
“The city had spent approximately $500,000 in legal costs on the medical marijuana issue alone as of 2014,” he said. “As stated a few years ago, I am concerned with the amount of financial resources and attorney’s fees the city of Upland paid in dealing with medical marijuana dispensaries operating in the city, when funds are needed for the operation of vital general services, public safety and public works that the city provides to residents and businesses.”

(February 5)

All of Verizon’s landline assets in San Bernardino County are being taken over by Frontier, part of Verizon selling off its wireline operations in California, Florida and Texas.
Verizon will continue to deliver cellular phone service in those territories.
“The transaction includes Verizon’s FiOS Internet and Video customers, switched and special access lines, as well as its high-speed Internet service and long-distance voice accounts in these three states. Frontier will continue to provide video services in these states after the completion of the transaction,” Verizon said.
This development is of import to current Verizon customers as well as Verizon employees. In other states such as Delaware and Vermont where Verizon sold off substantial chunks of its wireline customer base, problems with the quality and availability of service ensued in some areas, with landline phone service ceasing altogether in some districts. Such difficulties are not anticipated in this takeover, as Frontier is seeking to vantage itself as a primary line service provider nationally.
Questions remain as to how the $10.54 billion sale will shake out with regard to those currently working in Verizon’s landline divisions in the three states.
One controlling factor in this regard may prove to be the policy of Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter, who has enunciated a philosophy that embraces community responsibility and contributions to the positive progress of the wider economic milieu in which the company must function. Wilderotter, for example, has stated she is in favor of keeping Frontier’s domestic employees with the company rather than hiring less expensive labor overseas. Initial statements given to local Verizon workers was that their employment status would be maintained throughout the continuum of the Frontier takeover.
At present, Verizon workers in Southern California are represented by the Communication Workers of America on a contract that runs through 2016. The lion’s share of Frontier workers are represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Verizon currently employs 15,473 workers in California in both its wireline and wireless divisions. 11,000 Verizon employees will transfer to Frontier in all three states pursuant to the spin off. It is unclear whether those wireline employees who will transition into being Frontier employees will change unions after the current employment contracts they are working under expire.
Under its former CEO Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon took a two-track approach, aggressively moving into the provision of wireless service while doubling down on the wireline market by installing high speed fiber optic systems in areas where an existing customer base demanding such service already existed and in areas where residential and commercial growth was anticipated.
While the wireless side of the equation paid off mightily for Verizon, the investment in fiber optic infrastructure was far less profitable, as the lingering recession from 2007 onward prevented new development from occurring in many areas, including San Bernardino County.
By offloading its landline division in places like California, Verizon can surge forward at least temporarily as it is making much more money from its wireless operations while it is paying its wireline employees more than its wireless workforce.
Verizon lost $2.23 billion in its most recent quarter and committed to spend $10.4 billion in an auction of wireless airwaves last month.