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Sentinel 07-31-15

By Mark Gutglueck
(July 31) Newly discovered and additional information regarding public conflict of interest violations engaged in by former Grand Terrace City Councilwoman Bea Cortes surfaced this week.
Details suggesting Cortes was mired in a more involved series of conflicts of interest than was previously publicly disclosed have now emerged, more than five years after district attorney Mike Ramos, who was widely alleged to be having an affair with Cortes, quashed the prosecution of the councilwoman on a previously known conflict of interest matter arising from Cortes’ activity as an elected official.
Both of the now-recognized conflicts of interest related to votes she made and action taken through her authority as a public official benefiting or potentially benefiting herself financially, which were prohibited under section 1090 of the California Government Code and defined as felonies.
The district attorney’s office’s failure to prosecute Cortes, given the facts known then and now, is particularly pointed, given that contemporaneous with the violations of the public trust engaged in by Cortes, the district attorney’s office took up and prosecuted a case against one of Cortes’ city council colleagues over an alleged Government Code Section 1090 conflict of interest violation.
An examination of documents and an evaluation of statements made by Cortes and other former Grand Terrace city officials demonstrate that the case against Cortes outlined in the documentation provided to investigators attached to the district attorney’s office’s public integrity unit exceeded the level of proof used as the standard Ramos applied in the prosecution of Jim Miller, who was serving on the city council with Cortes and was removed from office as a consequence of the charges filed against him.
The unpursued criminal case against Cortes and the district attorney’s personal relationship with her have resulted in the prosecutor’s office now being plagued with questions of favoritism and selective prosecution and attacks upon the integrity of its deputy prosecutors for having failed to prosecute, based solely upon the subject’s ties to Ramos, someone who would have otherwise been charged.
The criminal activity Cortes was entangled in consisted of two distinct matters, each of which was prosecutable as a felony or series of felonies. One of those sets of circumstances, relating to payments from the city of Grand Terrace to her employer that she had voted to approve as a member of the city council, was publicly known at the time. The other, pertaining to her purchase of property within one of the areas targeted for improvement by the city’s redevelopment agency, was not widely known.
Coincidentally, the matter involving Cortes came to the district attorney’s office’s attention within the same timeframe when a womanizing scandal besetting Ramos lurched into public view. While some members of the district attorney’s office, including those working in the public integrity unit, knew of Ramos’s liaisons with many different women, including three of his own deputy prosecutors, two of his office’s evidence technicians and two of his office’s clerks, some in the office did not know or claimed they were not aware or informed of the brewing scandal that fully manifested in May of 2009, when Ramos was publicly linked with a dozen women to whom he was not married.
Cortes was not identified as one of Ramos’s paramours in the initial public disclosure relating to his serial womanizing. But six months later, when according to Ramos himself his office was evaluating the mounting evidence against Cortes, the relationship between Cortes and Ramos was publicly revealed. The following year, Cortes, at least partially as a consequence of the negative publicity attending that revelation, was voted out of office.
In the intervening years, 12,352-population Grand Terrace has seen five city managers/interim city managers come and four go, into each of whose custody passed, at least temporarily, the files once kept by former city manager Tom Schwab, who served as city manager from 1989 until he was felled by a subdermal hematoma in 2008.
Two months ago, on June 1, G. Harold Duffey, the former city manager of Compton, was brought in as Grand Terrace city manager. Duffey has no link to previous city councils and no incentive to protect Cortes. Since Cortes was on the council, the composition of the council has entirely changed, with no member that was there during her tenure still in office. Indeed the turnover and transition in Grand Terrace over the last five years has been so rapid and complete that only one city employee who was working with the city when Cortes was a councilwoman is still employed there.
This changeover has obliterated any institutional and political protections previously extended to her and further information and details of the depredations she engaged in while in office are consequently coming to light.
One of those depredations was given a public airing in 2009 at the time her relationship with Ramos was revealed. For four years while she was on the city council Cortes had a professional relationship with Terra Loma Real Estate. She also consistently voted, as a member of the Grand Terrace City Council, to approve the city’s contractual arrangement with Terra Loma as well as the consent calendars that are a part of the council’s agenda at its twice monthly meetings. The consent calendar, in Grand Terrace as in all cities, typically contains multiple items pertaining to the function of the city government, all of which are deemed non-controversial and routine matters and are bundled together so they can be approved in a single yes or no vote of the council. It is unheard of, in Grand Terrace and elsewhere, for the consent calendar not to pass and it is generally approved by a unanimous vote of the city council, although on rare occasions, a member of a city council requests that a specific item on the consent calendar be removed from it so it can be voted upon separately. Occasionally, a dissenting vote on the passage of an item originally on a consent calendar is registered.
In Grand Terrace as elsewhere, the consent calendar contains the city’s check register, that is, a listing of the checks that have been written to the city’s various vendors and contractors.
During Cortes’ tenure on the city council, Terra Loma Real Estate provided property management services to the city. City payments to Terra Loma, as to all other companies, were made by check. Those payments were then ratified by the city council as an item on the consent calendar.
Records first obtained by the Sentinel in 2009 show that the city made 13 payments totaling $8,558.47 to Terra Loma between August 2008 and September 2009. Cortes participated in the votes to approve at least ten of those.
Cortes insisted she did nothing illegal in casting those votes. Government Code Section 1090, however, prohibits an elected official from participating in a vote on any matter in which he or she has a financial interest. A payment to a business owned by that official or a business that employs the official or one with which the official is professionally affiliated is construed as having a bearing on that official’s financial interest.
In August 2009, Cortes said she had not made any money in the previous 24 months as a real estate agent with Terra Loma so she therefore had no interest tied up with the company. “I have not received money from Terra Loma Real Estate,” she told the Sentinel at that time. “Due to the economy, I have not been able to sell any property. For two years I have not been selling any property in affiliation with them [Terra Loma]. I have never sold anything for them.” She said she had been working out of the Terra Loma office “a little over three years.”
The sales drought, Cortes said in 2009, had lasted “at least two years.”
Moreover, she said, “I spoke with the city attorney and he advised me there was no conflict.”
Then-Grand Terrace City Attorney John Harper told the Sentinel he had made no such finding.
Cortes acknowledged that she was professionally affiliated with Terra Loma Real Estate and its owner, Gene Carlstrom, but said that payments the city made to Terra Loma for property management services were not passed along to her. In August 2009, Cortes acknowledged, “I have my real estate license in his [Carlstrom’s] office. Whenever I sell any property, I have to have a licensed broker over me. He is the broker. I have my license under Mr. Gene Carlstrom.”
In September 2009, after a minor controversy broke out in Grand Terrace following publicity about Cortes’ votes to approve a contract for and payments to Terra Loma, Cortes ceased voting on the consent calendar items related to the company with which she was professionally affiliated and the city’s contract for services with Terra Loma was cancelled shortly thereafter. In the same time frame, Cortes obtained her own real estate broker’s license and ended her affiliation with Terra Loma.
In 2009, the councilwoman insisted that city attorney John Harper had examined the potential for conflict inherent in the circumstance that existed up until August of that year and found her in compliance with the law, including Government Code section 1090 and any other statutes that are applicable.
Cortes said that both she and Harper deemed her votes as a member of the Grand Terrace City Council to approve the contract with Terra Loma and make the payments to it as legal.
Those claims were not verified by Harper. No such opinion in writing by Harper absolving Cortes of criminal liability or a conflict of interest through engaging in such votes could be found in the files at Grand Terrace City Hall.
In the fall of 2009, a complaint about the matter went to the district attorney’s office’s public integrity unit. The investigation dragged on for months. On December 2, 2009 at the Colton Rotary Club luncheon, Ramos was directly asked about the Cortes investigation.
“I can’t answer that,” Ramos said. “There is an ongoing investigation.”
Confronted about his personal and sexual relationship with Cortes, Ramos offered no response at all, meeting the question with a stony silence.
In the same time frame, Cortes publicly offered a somewhat equivocal disavowal of a liaison with Ramos when she was directly approached with regard to the issue by the Sentinel.
“Of course, I am denying it,” she said of reports, including ones that had been posted on the Internet, relating to an affair between her and the district attorney and that they remained involved. “Who would intimate that? Who would say that?”
Cortes, who had been active in Republican circles within the county, acknowledged a public association with Ramos, who is also a Republican. Nevertheless, she said, “My relationship with Mike Ramos is a professional business relationship, a political one. It is not sexual.”
Under less formal circumstances, however, Cortes was far less discrete, engaging in rodomontade in which she claimed Ramos as her inamorato, or otherwise alluded to those within her circle that she enjoys an uncommon communion with the district attorney on both a personal and political level, bragging that her relationship with him provided her with a shield against prosecution. And, she claimed, her level of entrée with Ramos provided her with the ability to vector the prosecutorial authority of the district attorney’s office against others.
Indeed, that was the case in the matter of People vs. Miller, the prosecution of Cortes’ rival on the Grand Terrace City Council, Jim Miller.
An examination of documents released by the district attorney’s office indicates it was Cortes, along with then-Grand Terrace City Manager Steve Berry, who approached Ramos and his office’s public integrity unit with regard to Miller.
According to district attorney’s office investigator Robert Ransdell, on October 27, 2008, “the district attorney’s office public integrity unit received information, which had been sent to the district attorney’s office by an informant who wished to remain anonymous. This information alleged that Grand Terrace City Councilman Jim Miller had possibly violated Government Code 1090 by engaging in a conflict of interest.”
A little less than nine months later after Cortes and Berry approached the district attorney’s office, on July 15, 2009, Miller was arrested by San Bernardino County district attorney’s investigators and charged with violating Government Code section 1090. That charge stemmed from votes Miller had made to approve the consent calendar which contained check registers showing payments for the city’s legal advertisements that were printed in his wife’s newspaper, the Grand Terrace City News. Miller’s wife was the sole owner of that paper and two others, the Colton City News and the Loma Linda City News.
Shortly thereafter, Cortes was taking credit for having arranged, through Mike Ramos, to have Miller arrested
Miller, in fact, had not voted to authorize the city of Grand Terrace to purchase the ads that ran in his wife’s newspaper. The decision to run advertisements and legal notices in the Grand Terrace City News had been made by city staff members who had determined that the Grand Terrace City News, as the only adjudicated newspaper in Grand Terrace, was the sole venue in which legal notices for the city could run. Miller said he had relied upon an assurance provided by city attorney Harper that as long as the newspaper was his wife’s sole property, the city’s purchase of the ads from her represented for Jim Miller no conflict. Miller’s circumstance differed from that involving Cortes and Terra Loma in that Miller had not voted to approve the city’s contract with his wife’s newspapers as Cortes had voted to approve the city’s contract with Terra Loma.
By 2008 Miller’s formerly cordial relationship with Cortes had grown somewhat strained in that he had emerged as the leading opponent to promoting then-acting city manager Steve Berry to the permanent city manager’s position. Cortes was the most enthusiastic of Berry’s supporters on the city council.
As the effort to elevate Berry to the unquestioned top municipal management post progressed, Cortes, in conjunction with Berry, undertook to compromise Miller’s authority. Both began providing the district attorney’s office with information relating to the city utilizing Miller’s wife’s newspaper, as well as the consent calendar voting that ratified payment for city legal notices and ads that ran in that publication.
Brazenly, Cortes made this approach to the district attorney’s office despite her own parallel entanglement in the similar circumstance involving Terra Loma and the city, as well as another conflict, one which was not publicly disclosed at that time, but which had been recognized by both Harper and then-city manager Tom Schwab. That matter involved Cortes’ purchase, in association with her son, of a town home in the Cape Terrace residential development in Grand Terrace. Cape Terrace fell within one of the city of Grand Terrace’s redevelopment project areas. Municipal redevelopment agencies were banned by state legislation which passed in 2011 and was upheld after a court challenge in 2012. But at that time, redevelopment agencies were adjuncts to city governments and city council members were prohibited from owning or purchasing or otherwise acquiring any property in their city’s redevelopment project areas other than a primary residence.
Schwab this week confirmed that documentation on file with City Hall showing Cortes had run afoul of that law was valid.
“John Harper, who was the city attorney at that time, wrote Bea a letter telling her she had to be removed from the title of a residence, which was either a condominium or town home, at Cape Terrace she owned with her son,” Schwab said. “I don’t know if she every complied with that.”
The district attorney’s office, the Sentinel has learned, was informed of the Cape Terrace matter.
No charges were ever filed against Cortes, whose personal involvement with Mike Ramos explicates in good measure how it was that she had the confidence to seek a prosecution of Miller when she was similarly caught up in a matter involving a potential Government Code 1090 violation herself.
An apparent implication is that her relationship with Ramos provided her with de facto immunity from prosecution. What is more, her relationship with Ramos endowed her with the ability to influence the district attorney’s office to take action against her political opposition.
In the district attorney’s office at this point, there was no sense of urgency in dispelling the perception that a double standard had been applied with regard to Miller and Cortes or that the office had engaged in selective prosecution based upon the district attorney’s personal relationship with a target of a criminal investigation.
Supervising District Attorney Lewis Cope oversees the public integrity unit in the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office. He was highly guarded in discussing the Cortes matter, noting that he was constrained from disclosing any information about a matter that did not rise to the level of an actual prosecution.
“Unless there is a criminal filing, I cannot provide you with anything that is not a public document,” Cope said. “We do not comment on complaints made to our office. We do not say we are or are not pursuing an investigation. Usually an investigation is revealed when we file criminal charges. That is our unit’s policy.”
Informed that Ramos had acknowledged that the district attorney’s office had taken up an investigation of Cortes, Cope sought to deflect questions angled at the integrity of that investigation and whether it had adhered to the same standards applied in the Miller case.
“I am not allowed to make comment on what has occurred,” Cope said. “Your questions seek an answer that would give a confirmation or denial that there was an investigation. I am not at liberty to make that kind of comment. We conduct fair investigations when we are given a complaint. Our investigators do a thorough and impartial job. We are going to use the best professional judgment we have to call it the way the facts may play out. So, if there is a crime that has been complained about and the facts show that, that would result in a prosecution and charges are going to be filed. If the facts and law do not support a criminal filing, then we do not file.”
When queried directly about the seeming paradox between the charges lodged against Miller and the set of facts that would have informed a prosecution of Cortes, Cope claimed he was hamstrung by circumstance from resolving that contradiction, saying at one point, “That may or may not have occurred” with regard to Cortes’ purchase of property within the city’s redevelopment agency and her votes conferring payments upon Terra Loma Real Estate. At a different point in the phone interview, he seemed to take issue with the assumption of Cortes’ guilt. “You are making assumptions after you looked at the documents,” he said. “There is not much I can say. By implication, you assume a lot of facts that would indicate the law was broken. It seems you are not particularly well informed. Beyond that I should not go.”
Cope declined to spell out why, precisely, no charges were filed against Cortes.
Cope said, “In our office we get a lot of complaints. We believe [the cases taken up] are well investigated and well researched. We follow the law. It is easy for some people to draw conclusions that are not accurate. The nature of these cases is they are very complicated and very fact specific. We have to evaluate each one in light of the facts and in light of the law that exists at the time. Some people are not happy with our decisions. It is difficult to make a blanket statement. The Miller case is on the record and I would refer you to that. There is nothing I can give you about the other [Cortes] case.”
Cope referred any further questions to Ramos himself and his spokesman, Christopher Lee. Neither Lee nor Ramos responded to phone calls to their respective offices this week seeking information and comment.

(July 21) Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company’s pending acquisition of the long-troubled Yermo Water Company has tossed a monkey wrench into the works as the town of Apple Valley persists in its bid to acquire the currently privately-owned water company.
The circumstance relating to the town of Apple Valley’s move toward becoming a full service municipality – in this case involving owning its own water utility – comes across as a tale of lost opportunity on the part of a slow-learning and even slower-moving governmental bureaucracy being constantly outhustled by the more dynamic and profit-motivated private sector.
The Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company was created in 1945 by Newt Bass and B.J. Westlund as an adjunct to their real estate company, Apple Valley Ranchos. Apple Valley Ranchos was their undertaking to develop Apple Valley after they acquired 6,500 acres from the Southern Pacific Railroad for $2.50 per acre. Their intention was to install the minimum amount of infrastructure to support the construction of subdivisions and make the community grow, anticipating that as Apple Valley matured, that infrastructure would be replaced by higher quality pipes, reservoirs, pumping units and appurtenances. It would turn out, however, as the town was built piecemeal, the water company merely expanded with it, a hodgepodge of water mains and lines built one after the other, patched together in correspondence to the new development it was called upon to serve.
In 1987, Park Water Company, which was then owned by the Wheeler Family and provided water to Compton, Downey and Norwalk in Los Angeles County, acquired the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company. When the town incorporated in 1988, city officials had the opportunity to purchase the company for $2.5 million, but declined, choosing not to convert the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company to a municipal division, concerned less about the initial expense of acquiring the utility than with the projected ongoing and constant costs of having to repair, upgrade and maintain the system. In 2011, the Carlisle Group acquired from the Wheeler Family at a cost of $102.2 million the Park Water Company, which in addition to its Los Angeles County and Apple Valley holdings, also owns the Mountain Water Company, based in Missoula, Montana, serving some 50,000 people there. The acquisition of Park from the Wheeler Family was part of the Carlyle Group’s long term investment strategy of acquiring assets that can immediately return money in terms of sales of a commodity, in this case water, to a reliable customer base, while representing a future sales profit potential, whether those assets are spun off individually or collectively.
In 2011, the town of Apple Valley impaneled a so-called blue ribbon committee to consider acquiring Apple Valley Ranchos, which ultimately advised against the acquisition. Prevailing sentiment abruptly changed in 2014, however, when Park, after beginning to implement in 2012 rate increases on Apple Valley Ranchos customers totaling 19 percent and then completing $8.1 million in capital improvements to the Apple Valley Ranchos water system in 2014, instituted another 30 percent rate hike on Apple Valley Ranchos customers to be implemented from 2015 until 2017. Shortly thereafter, town officials began trading notes with Missoula city officials, where Park Water’s Mountain Water Company had likewise escalated rates.
Subsequently, the city of Missoula utilized its power of eminent domain to condemn and seek to acquire Mountain Water Company from Park Water Company. Mountain Water fought the takeover, but when the matter went to trial before Judge Karen Townsend in April it resulted in Townsend on June 15 entering a judgment in favor of Missoula.
Even before Missoula prevailed in that case, town of Apple Valley officials began angling to take Apple Valley Ranchos away from Park Water Company. As articulated by the town, it believes it will be able to purchase Apple Valley Ranchos through a financing strategy involving issuing bonds and that it will be able to service the bonded indebtedness and carry out improvements to the water system by means of the payments made to the town by water users/customers, i.e., the town’s residents. The town’s officials maintain that the revenue from the water sales will be dedicated solely to this bonded debt service and water division operations and maintenance. The town further maintains this can be effectuated without any water rate increases.
This scenario is highly dependent upon Park Water’s willingness to sell the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company’s full assets for a price of the town’s choosing, i.e., around $50 million. In support of this, the town obtained from what it referred to as “an independent appraisal firm” the rather wishful “fair purchase price” of $45.54 million.
Decades ago, further out in the desert in Yermo, Donald Walker had acquired the Yermo Water Company. Walker saw the water company, which had exclusivity in the Yermo desert community, as a profit generating entity, one that could be maintained with very little devotion to maintenance or upgrades. By the late 1990s the company’s pipes and pumping systems were falling into a state of disrepair. The situation was exacerbated in the early 2000s when Walker relocated to Florida, leaving the neglected and undercapitalized company in the hands of a resident of the area with no expertise or real understanding of how to run a water company, who served as its part-time manager. Despite the importuning of customers and local authorities, Walker refused to hire a licensed operator to look after and 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. At that time, however, a community-based prospective buyer had surfaced and the receivership was suspended while it appeared that a sale of the system was possible.
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. In August 2012 the California Public Utilities Commission filed to take control of the water company. Three months later, the Superior Court entrusted operation of the Yermo Water Company to the Yermo Community Services District and appointed California Public Utilities Commission Attorney John Richardson to act as receiver. The Yermo Community Services District then made $40,000 in emergency renovations to the system to keep it functioning.
The receivership arrangement that took place in November 2012 was contested by Walker’s family. His wife, Charlene, filed an opposition to the appointment of a receiver, raising a number of claims that were ultimately denied by the Superior Court on March 6, 2013.
In July 2013 Apple Valley Ranchos, acting on behalf of Park Water Company, bid $300,000 on the purchase of the Yermo Water Company. Subsequently, Bob Smith, president of the Yermo Community Services District, acquiesced in Richardson’s decision to accept Apple Valley Ranchos’ offer.
Despite those developments, there have been delays in Apple Valley Ranchos getting full clearance to make the acquisition of the company. Officials with the town of Apple Valley, sensing that Apple Valley Ranchos taking full possession of the Yermo Water Company would significantly increase the value of Apple Valley Ranchos and make any effort to acquire it yet more expensive, moved to prevent that eventuality, including petitioning the California Public Utilities Commission to require that Apple Valley Ranchos conduct a California Environmental Quality Act review to proceed with the purchase. The Public Utilities Commission ruled that Apple Valley Ranchos is exempt from performing such a review and in February approved the sale.
On July 15 Apple Valley Ranchos officials met with Yermo residents at the Yermo Community Service District’s meeting hall to provide information relating to the company’s takeover of the Yermo water system, indicating the San Bernardino County Superior Court approved the purchase on June 24. That was followed up with an announcement on July 20 that the company has tendered a $300,000 final offer for the water system and that it anticipates closing escrow late next month.
Park intends to move ahead with widespread improvements immediately after taking possession of the system. Funding for those improvements will come from Carlisle Group/Park Water Company investments as well Proposition 1 grant funds.
This throws a kink in the town of Apple Valley’s plans to subsume Apple Valley Ranchos.
Earlier this year the town publicly declared it “would like to purchase the company in a negotiated transaction.” That was met by Park’s response that Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company is not for sale. To town officials’ consternation, they learned that Park is in discussions with Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp., a Canadian utility company, for the sale of all of its California and Montana assets. A publicly disclosed offer was $327 million.
The $45.54 million the town’s “independent” appraiser said Apple Valley Ranchos is worth previously appeared unrealistic; Apple Valley Rancho’s expansion to include the Yermo Water Company now makes it appear even more so.
Word leaked out two months ago that despite Park Water’s insistence that Apple Valley Ranchos was not for sale separately, the town made an informal $50 million offer to purchase the company. That offer, the Sentinel is informed, was met by derision from Park Water corporate officers.
Consequently town officials have undertaken a more realistic assessment of what will be required to persuade Park Water to sell Apple Valley Ranchos to the town. According to town officials’ analysis, “Based on our understanding of the announcement by Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp., the purchase price was $257 million ($327 less $70 million in assumed debt) – well more than double the $102.2 million purchase price paid by the current owners, the Carlyle Group, just three years ago.”
Calling that number “over-inflated,” the analysis moves on to state “any discussion of the acquisition of Apple Valley Ranchos must begin by separating it from the other two entities in the Park Water portfolio: Park Water in Los Angeles and the Mountain Water Company in Missoula, Montana. The town is interested only in Apple Valley Ranchos – one third of Park Water. One third of the announced purchased price by Algonquin is $86 million, which is within the range of possible values anticipated.”
Armed with Judge Townsend’s ruling on the Missoula case, the town is yet considering its eminent domain options. That strategy would entail convincing a judge that the public benefit of a forced sale would outweigh Park Water’s property rights. To that effect, the town has already propounded such a theory, stating publicly, “Apple Valley Ranchos is not a normal company. It has a government-granted monopoly over the provision of drinking water in its service area. As a customer, you don’t have the opportunity to buy your water from someone else, which means you are at the mercy of the company and the California Public Utilities Commission when it comes to how much you will pay and how much profit Apple Valley Ranchos makes. Choice, a fundamental component of the free market, is non-existent when it comes to Apple Valley Ranchos. With a municipally owned water system, you have a voice. Eminent domain gives municipalities the ability to acquire private property if it is determined there is a compelling public interest in doing so. If Apple Valley Ranchos refuses to sell our system to the town, this might be an option. The final purchase price under eminent domain would be set by a court based upon ‘just compensation’ – a fair purchase price.”

(July 29) The Upland City Council’s approval of its $43 million 2015-16 budget revealed a somewhat baffling political realignment, which observers were unable to discern as being merely temporary or one of perhaps lasting significance. What is yet more puzzling is that even as the realignment was taking place, two of the newly emerging allies continued to fling caustic barbs at one another, making it seem to all the world that they were poised at opposite ends of the local political spectrum. Nevertheless, after the sound and rhetoric died down, both found themselves on the winning side of a 3-2 vote.
Since even before he was elected to the Upland City Council in 2012, Glenn Bozar has represented himself as a “taxpayer advocate.” Until he retired earlier this year, Bozar was a logistics manager for the major West Coast distribution center for Tyco Connectivity, a $13 billion company. As a councilmember he has continuously pushed the council and the city into adopting fiscal management procedures and accountability standards as are normally applied in the private sector. His fiscally conservative approach has included calling for the elimination of municipal employees who cannot be clearly identified as providing service to the city’s residents and he has committed himself to what some consider to be a “crusade” to head off a pending future pension crisis that will result in the city spending more money annually on the pensions of retired employees than on the salaries of current employees. This has earned Bozar the enmity of the city’s employee unions.
Meanwhile, Gino Filippi, who was elected to the city council two years before Bozar was, enjoyed from the outset the support of city employee unions, most notably the unions for the city’s firefighters as well as its policemen.
This week, as the city council considered the 2015-16 budget prepared for the city by city manager Rob Butler and finance director Scott Williams, more than four dozen domesticated animal lovers flooded into City Hall in what would inevitably prove to be a futile effort to dissuade the city council from significantly paring back animal control and protection operations run out of the Upland Animal Shelter. For years, Upland’s previous animal shelter was considered to be an inferior one. That changed in 2010, however, when the city completed, at a cost of more than $6 million, what is now considered to be the Inland Empire’s premier municipally-run animal housing facility. Last year the city spent $950,000 on its animal control operations, almost 2.5 percent of its overall $39 million budget. With Upland’s budget zooming to $43 million this year, it was the hope and wishful expectation that the city council would continue with and perhaps even increase the amount of money to be provided to such operations in 2015-16. Over the last month and a half, as preliminary discussions over how the budget would shape up were ongoing and then after the council missed the customary June 30 deadline to settle on the budget before the initiation of the governmental fiscal year beginning July 1, word spread that the council likely would reduce the animal shelter’s budget. Such an economy in that operation was necessary, city officials said, in the face of increasing pension costs and the desire of the council collectively to at least partially meet newly appointed police chief Brian Johnson’s request for an increase in his department’s budget.
As the chairman of Upland’s finance committee, Bozar was the prime mover toward wielding the budget ax in the direction of the city’s animal control division, a role which has made him decidedly unpopular among that portion of the city’s populace who see the humane treatment of animals as a first line indication of Upland to live up to its reputation as The City of Gracious Living.
Layered into the budget the city council was scheduled to vote on Monday night was a $350,000 cut to the animal shelter, with a provision that the savings from that move be utilized to partially defray a $529,632 increase in police department operations, which on paper is intended to pay for four new police officers and four part-time police service technicians.
In a last-ditch effort to prevent the animal shelter from seeing its budget reduced, over 25 people pleaded, cajoled and alternately demanded that the council keep the animal shelter funded to its traditional level. That lobbying effort delayed the final vote on the budget until Tuesday morning.
Along the way, Filippi and Bozar got into something of a tiff over what Filippi suggested was Bozar’s tightfistedness. Notably, however, Filippi did not take issue so much with Bozar’s unwillingness to keep the animal shelter funded at the level to which it has become accustomed, but rather over an additional $50,000 in funding Filippi wanted to have go to the library.
In recent months, a coalition involving Bozar, Mayor Ray Musser and councilwoman Carol Timm, who was elected last year, appeared to be solidifying with regard to many city issues, leaving Filippi and councilwoman Debbie Stone on the outside looking in.
On Monday night/early Tuesday morning, however, Musser appeared to be angling at a compromise that would have taken money out of the anticipated $413,000 surplus in the budget worked out by Butler and Williams to satisfy Filippi as well as the animal lovers in the house. The mayor proposed reducing the $350,000 in reductions to the animal shelter by half – $175,000 – while restoring the $50,000 to the library’s budget that Filippi was asking for. This would have reduced the $413,008 budget surplus to $188,008. But Bozar, relying upon the authority and status he possesses as the chairman of the city’s finance committee, resisted. He suggested the animal shelter should tighten its operations and that the budget surplus should remain in the city’s reserve accounts rather than being frittered away on dogs and cats and books, all of which are, he suggested, less than crucial to the city’s municipal operations.
This, and Bozar’s insinuation that Filippi was seeking the extra $50,000 for the library out of some base political motive, which he derided as “horse trading,” nearly sent Filippi into orbit. Filippi criticized Bozar’s earlier insistence that the city spend $2 million on a computerized accounting system to be used by the finance department for monitoring spending activity in all of the city’s departments. The council had originally rejected investing in such a system but Bozar had persisted in resurrecting the idea, and when it was reintroduced, the council voted to approve making that purchase.
Filippi sought to remind Bozar that the city has already wrung some $200,000 in annual savings from the library program by outsourcing it to a private company.
“We’re trying to honor the agreement we made the public for library services and you say I’m up here politicking? That’s not true,” Filippi said.
When Stone, who is with Bozar and city treasurer Dan Morgan a member of the city finance committee, vectored attention to the need for belt tightening, she seemingly, and somewhat remarkably, herded Filippi into line with Bozar. “We have to look at the whole city,” she said. “We have to look at what’s beneficial. Running the shelter as we are right now is no longer status quo. We can’t do it, we can’t afford it.”
Filippi then voted, as is his wont, in lockstep with Stone, with whom he has been firmly aligned for more than two years. The unlikely troika of Bozar, Stone and Filippi voted to approve the budget as put together by Butler and Williams, with the $350,000 cut to animal services, the $529,632 increase for the police department, no restoration of money to the library and with the $413,008 surplus intact. Musser and councilwoman Timm dissented in the vote.

(July 29) Food truck vendors made an even further inroad into the once-hostile territory of San Bernardino County this week, with the board of supervisors liberalizing existing regulations to allow licensed operators of the vehicles to temporarily set up at virtually any location in the county’s unincorporated areas.
Until 2012, the county and a number of cities in the county refused to give food trucks operation permits altogether, the ostensible reason being that they were deemed a potential health threat. More pointedly, however, the ban was aimed at preserving the livelihoods of traditional restaurateurs operating out of brick and mortar establishments. This was in stark contrast to neighboring Los Angeles County, where mobile food operations have flourished since the turn of the millennium
In 2012, the board of supervisors approved an ordinance allowing food trucks to ply their owners’ trade at special events, conditional upon the operators obtaining temporary special use permits.
Last fall, the board revisited the issue, hearing from Tom Hudson, the director of San Bernardino County’s Land Use Services Department. Hudson said at that time, “Chapter 85.19 Food Truck Event Permits allows food trucks to operate only at designated, organized events at pre-approved fixed locations, subject to the operator obtaining an approved food truck event permit.”
In October, the board did away with the need for operators to obtain a temporary permit if there were fewer than 100 people in attendance at the event, based on employers, contractors and persons hosting private parties with a small number of attendees having expressed concerns that the food truck event permits process was too restrictive and costly. An amendment created two levels of events – minor ones involving 100 to 499 people and major events involving 500 or more. The requirement that the trucks serve an event remained.
The action taken by the board of supervisors this week dispensed with the requirement that the trucks could only operate in connection with an “event” and freed the food trucks to go beyond an area near some pre-scheduled public gathering and essentially park and sell their goods anywhere within unincorporated areas of the county. The county has 24 incorporated cities.
In the words of Corwin Porter, a division chief of the county’s department of environmental services, the action by the board “amend[s] San Bernardino County Code sections 33.0402 and 33.0408 to remove the definition of a food truck event and the remaining prohibitions related to food trucks.” Thus food trucks are able to sell their wares at any location in the unincorporated area whether or not any special public events are being held.
On July 2, the county planning commission recommended allowing food trucks full autonomy within the unincorporated county areas. On Tuesday, with supervisor Robert Lovingood absent, the board voted 4-0 to revise the ordinance.
The trucks are still prohibited or substantially restricted within many incorporated county cities. These incorporated sectors, with their significantly greater populations and population densities than unincorporated county areas, represent what are potentially the most lucrative trade locations in the county for the food trucks.

(July 30) Five of the most undesirable places to live in California are in San Bernardino County, according to a website that makes such evaluations.
Claiming to have “used science to determine which places in The Golden State are the real pits,” the creators of the website RoadSnacks has published an online report which purports to identify “the 10 Worst Places to Live in California.”
The survey touches not just on the 478 incorporated cities in the state, but identifies 621 places or communities in California. RoadSnacks says five of the ten worst places to live in California are in San Bernardino County.
Given those dubious distinctions were Lucerne Valley, ranked as the second worst place in the whole state in which to live, followed by Adelanto, the third worst place, Joshua Tree, the seventh worst, then San Bernardino, the ninth worst in the state, and Hesperia, which finished tenth.
Going into the evaluation, according to RoadSnacks, are crime rates, educational opportunities, weather, entertainment choices, and unemployment rates. Nevertheless, the website qualifies its rankings by stating, “This article is an opinion based on facts and is meant as infotainment. Don’t freak out.”
On its first page, the website intones, “California. The American dream. The state where you can get the sun, surf, mountains and deserts. Where dreams are made and movie stars bask in the glory of their own self worth.”
It then continues, “Where you have to ration your water. Sit in traffic. Pay too much for your house. While California is overall, a glorious state, it has some serious, glaring issues, just like most other states. But most of the people reading this live there, and are already aware of this fact, so we won’t dwell on it. Instead, let’s have some fun and look at only certain areas where things are the absolute worst.”
According to the website’s authors, “After analyzing all 630 cities with a population over 5,000, we came up with this list as the 10 worst places to live in California:
1. Desert Hot Springs
2. Lucerne Valley
3. Adelanto
4. Hemet
5. San Jacinto
6. Clearlake
7. Joshua Tree
8. Mendota
9. San Bernardino
10. Hesperia.”
As if the San Bernardino County seat had not already developed an inferiority complex by virtue of reality, a 2012 municipal bankruptcy filing and a recent Los Angeles Times article that labeled it as the worst city in America, RoadSnacks seemingly went out of its way to rub all that in by choosing it as the one city to reference when talking about the bottom ten cities in the state, delivering a backhanded compliment as it did so. “It looks like San Bernardino (9th worst) actually isn’t as bad as you might think.”
Further down, in its summary of Lucerne Valley, the website says, “Lucerne Valley is another desert town on the fringes of society where there’s nothing to do, residents earn meager salaries, and have long drives to their jobs when they can find them. But when you consider the fact that 28% of the homes in Lucerne Valley are vacant, and the public school system is ranked in the bottom 20% for financial support, a case can be made that Lucerne Valley is a real pit. If you haven’t been here, don’t bother. It’s not even worth the extra 20 minute detour on your way to Vegas to see.”
Adelanto merited this comment: “Adelanto has the exact same problems that Lucerne Valley has, and it’s located only a half hour away. Except, the crime in Adelanto is far worse than it is in Lucerne Valley. Its residents most likely work in nearby Victorville or make the trek through the Cajon Pass to shlep into San Bernardino or Riverside. Most people have only been to Adelanto while driving on 395 on their way up north, or because they got talked into attending a baseball game at Maverick Stadium.”
As to Joshua Tree, the website states, “There’s a good chance you’ve never been to Joshua Tree, unless 1) you were a Marine stationed at Twentynine Palms or 2) you took a family day trip to the far corners of the desert. Who are we kidding? No one takes vacations to the desert. No one takes vacations at all in California.”
The web posting continues, “An idea of a day trip is heading to the beach or, perhaps, a hike in the mountains every now and then. You can see pictures of Joshua trees online, you don’t need to see them in person. An internet search can’t determine exactly what people who live in Joshua Tree do for a living, but there’s a big chance the economy there isn’t booming. And remember, people, science doesn’t measure beauty. It measures facts, and the facts about Joshua Tree speak for themselves.”
San Bernardino is referenced thusly: “Perhaps the only thing surprising about San Bernardino being 9th is that it wasn’t higher. Crime here is horrible, more than 1 in 10 residents are without jobs (and that’s conservative), and well…we could go on and on about San Bernardino’s issues. You’ve heard it all before. When considering the data, the only reason San Bernardino is only 9th is that there are some areas of the city in which residents earn professional salaries, and, frankly, there’s a lot more to do in the San Bernardino region than there is in the desert. And no, dodging bullets isn’t one of them. But as professionals continue to flee into the nearby enclaves of East Highlands, Yucaipa and Redlands, the city of San Bernardino, which saw its glory days spike in the late 1970s, will continue to head down the drain and unfortunately, become an area only for those who have no aspirations to exceed in life.”
As to Hesperia, the site states, “Since Adelanto and Lucerne Valley are on here, it’s not surprising to see Hesperia here as well. Don’t fret, Hesperians, your sublings Apple Valley and Victorville aren’t too far behind. It’s just that Hesperia’s residents have a lower income and its schools are rated slightly lower than their neighbors.” Two other San Bernardino County cities that did not fare well in the rankings were Colton, at 67th worst in the state and Ontario, 80th worst.
The San Bernardino County cities treated most favorably were Rancho Cucamonga, the 453rd worst in the state or 177th best, Grand Terrace, the 436th worst or 194th best and Chino Hills, the 405th worst or 225th best.

(July 27) It turns out Governor Jerry Brown will not be coming to Yucaipa next week after all. On July 16, members of the governor’s staff led locals to believe that on August 7, Brown would be in attendance at the festivities being held to honor the Yucaipa High School girls softball team that beat Mission Viejo High’s team on June 5 for the CIF Division II title.
The Yucaipa High nine, coached by David Kivett, beat the odds to take the championship. Twice earlier in the year the Yucaipa Thunderbirds lost to the Mission Viejo Diablos. The Diablos, in fact, had a perfect 30-0 record going into the championship game. The Thunderbirds were 30-3 going into the final contest.
The Thunderbirds eked out a 1-0 victory, on a gutsy call by Kivett, who elected to have pitcher Brooke Bolinger, who had scattered six hits throughout the game while walking one and striking out seven, pitch to the Diablos’ Alyussa Palomino, who is the second leading home run hitter in California history. Palomino lined out to the shortstop.
Offensively, the Thunderbirds were in some measure stymied by Diablos pitcher and Gatorade National Player of the Year
Taylor McQullin, who struck out nine. Nevertheless, they also managed to get eight hits and one run, which was sufficient for the win.
A few days after his office said Brown would be in attendance at the ceremony in Yucaipa next Friday, his schedule was reworked and school officials were informed he would not show up.

For those of you who are interested in such things, this week John Billings touched down in his Cessna Cutlass 172RG at Southern California Logistics Airport. This would be no big thing, except that John is 91 years old. More than that, he is who he is, which is a remarkable individual. He last landed in Victorville on November 15, 1945 while piloting a B-24 Liberator Bomber when the facility where the landing strip is located was then known as the Victorville Army Airfield…
John Billings occupies a somewhat obscure if nonetheless significant spot in history. In addition to being an Army Air Corps flyer during World War II, in which capacity he flew 14 bombing missions, he was simultaneously a pilot for the Office of Special Services, the forerunner of the CIA. His most noteworthy accomplishment that we know about is that he was the pilot who delivered the three-man operating team that carried out Operation Greenup during the latter stage of the war in Europe…
Billings, when he was just 20 years old, on the night of February 26, 1945 piloted a small craft over German-occupied Austria, and three Office of Strategic Service operatives, Friedrich Mayer, Hans Wynberg and Franz Weber bailed out of the plane into a relatively remote valley not too distant from Innsbruck. “If they are crazy enough to jump there, I will be crazy enough to take them there,” Billings is said to have remarked before the mission…
In the course of Operation Greenup, Mayer, who happened to be a German Jew who had moved to the United States in 1938, was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. Mayer’s captors never quite put together that he was Jewish, though. As it turned out, the Gauleiter of Tyrol and Vorarlberg, Franz Hofer, had come to the conclusion that Germany was going to lose the war. When he heard that an American spy – Mayer – was in the custody of the Gestapo, he ordered Mayer to be brought to him. Hofer desperately wanted to have the Americans rather than the Russians occupy Austria, so he worked with Mayer to tender a surrender to the Americans. He arranged to have a message from Mayer delivered to Allen Dulles, an Office of Strategic Services agent (and later head of the CIA), who was stationed in Bern, Switzerland…
On the morning of May 3, 1945, as the American 103rd Infantry Division of the Seventh Army was descending on Innsbruck, its soldiers were met with an approaching car flying a white flag. In the car was Mayer, who took the division’s commanding officer, Major Bland West, with him to accept the German surrender, thus avoiding tremendous bloodshed…
John Billings is a remarkable fellow. Right now he and his copilot Nevin Showman are engaged in what they call their “Flight Around America” tour, which is intended to make people aware of the charitable services offered by the nonprofit group Angel Flights…
Do you ever see some sort of cosmic connection between random events? Life, someone once said, is a succession of one sensation or experience after another after another after another upon another. Some are profane. Some are profound. Some are full of meaning. Others less so. Is there a connection between everyone of them? No connection at all? We of course perceive a causal connection between some of them, and I am myself convinced of such causality and relation. But are there connections impossible for any of us, or most of us, to discern? I have heard, though I have not really looked into it, that whenever the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series, the stock market goes up significantly over the next 12 months. Somehow, as long as the Cardinals are the world champions, again based on what I was told, it is the bulls as opposed to the bears who are loose on Wall Street. I never checked it out. It seems possible that such a pattern might hold true for a while, but it seems doubtful to me that there is some cosmic dictate that links the fortunes of the St. Louis ball club, the second most successful team in modern Major League Baseball in terms of World Series victories, with national prosperity, decade in and decade out for more than a century. But what do I know? Maybe there is some cosmic relationship between seemingly random and ostensibly unrelated events…
I offer the following…
On Thursday and Friday of last week, July 23 & 24, Michael Hearn of Hesperia made appearances in Bakersfield I am quite certain he would rather not have made. On those days he came before Judge Charles Brehmer in Bakersfield Superior Court for a preliminary hearing on charges that he murdered Robert Limon of Helendale/Silver Lakes. Kern County Deputy District Attorney David McKillop plied Brehmer with 40 separate pieces of evidence to suggest that Hearn is guilty as charged…
The case against Hearn is largely circumstantial, which is something that Brehmer remarked upon before he bound Hearn, who is now 25, over for trial. McKillop’s evidence in part consisted of photos, videos, recorded phone conversations and text messages, letters and a motorcycle McKillop suggested played a part in Limon’s killing. McKillop’s theory, which he will yet need to prove to a jury, is that Hearn was having an affair with Limon’s wife, Sabrina…
A letter to one of Limon’s friends, Jason Bernatene, from Hearn was obtained by the prosecution. In it, Hearn essentially expresses remorse to Bernatene for having manipulated him to get close to Sabrina. In the letter, Hearn, who was a Redlands firefighter before things went awry, refers to “my mistakes… having such horrible and dangerous consequences.” McKillop suggested this came very close to being an admission that Hearn was responsible for Limon’s death…
Hearn’s attorney, Clayton Campbell, however, did get one of the investigators on the case, Randall Meyer, to acknowledge the letter does not explicitly mention Limon’s death and contains no direct apology…
The evidence perhaps most suggestive of guilt consisted of recorded phone conversations and text messages between Sabrina Limon and Hearn. At one point in one of the exchanges, Hearn stated, “You and I will be in eternity together and all this will seem like nothing. And hopefully in two or three years all of this will be done and over with…”
Timestamped surveillance videos taken on August 17 of last year at the railroad yard in Tehachapi where Limon worked were among the evidence McKillop presented. Limon was gunned down inside a maintenance shop at the rail yard that day. The video shows an individual believed to be Limon’s assailant in the yard. The image on video could have been Hearn. There was also photographic and videographic evidence of a motorcycle in the area of the rail yard near the time of the murders. That motorcycle in all particulars is similar to one Hearn possessed…
Sabrina Limon was arrested in connection with her husband’s murder but she has not been charged…
Brehmer made a finding that there was a relationship between Sabrina Limon and Hearn. “It does appear that there’s sufficient evidence to hold the defendant to answer,” Brehmer said in binding him over to trial on a charge of murder, lying in wait and discharging a firearm causing death. He is scheduled for a post-hearing arraignment on August 5…
Three days after Hearn was bound over for trial, the High Desert Mavericks on July 27 made an appearance in Bakersfield they would rather have avoided. On that day, the last place Bakersfield Blaze, which had routinely lost to the Mavericks previously this season, having won only one of the eight games the two teams had played, obliterated the Mavericks, 11-5…
Is there some cosmic relationship between random events?

(July 30) In 1998, the city of Upland did away with the position of assistant city manager, essentially putting then-assistant city manager Mike Matlock out of work. The city council at that time reasoned that the assistant city manager’s position and its expense were not justified, given the competence and reliability of the city manager.
In 2005, however, then-mayor John Pomierski was seeking to solidify his hold on the reins of power and he moved to oust the two strongest personalities at City Hall, city manager Mike Milhiser and police chief Marty Thouvenell. He then installed Robb Quincey, an individual amenable to his direction, as city manager. The difficulty was that Quincey, despite having bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a doctorate in public administration, was not long on municipal managerial experience. His only time in that role had been in the slightly more than four years he had put in as Hesperia city manager. In Hesperia, Quincey enjoyed the title of city manager but it was assistant city manager Rod Foster, who had far more municipal management experience than Quincey, who actually ran the City of Progress. Within two weeks of his arrival in Upland, Quincey convinced Pomierski to lure Foster away from Hesperia to serve as city manager in Upland.
Under Pomierski and Quincey, a whole host of questionable and illegal acts took place, including bribery, the tweaking of city policy and the planning and approval processes for illicit purposes, improperly instituted salary and benefit adjustments to the city manager,together with fraudulently reported and unauthorized expenditures of city money. Along the way, Pomierski and Quincey corrupted and involved multiple high ranking city department heads in their depredations, including the community/planning division head, who assisted Pomierski in shaking down individuals with project proposals and permit applications before the city and the city clerk who processed documentation for Quincey outside normal channels.
Just as Pomierski relied upon Quincey to keep city operations in sync with his corrupt activities, Quincey relied upon Foster to keep City Hall’s legitimate operations running on a day-to-day basis. After Foster departed Upland to take the position of city manager in Colton, Pomierski and Quincey’s span of control over both the normal and illicit elements of Upland’s municipal government became compromised and events soon overtook both of them. The FBI raided City Hall in June 2010, leading first to Quincey’s suspension, then to Pomierski’s resignation, then Pomierski’s indictment and conviction and then Quincey’s indictment and conviction.
Quincey was replaced by then-finance director Stephen Dunn, who stayed as city manager until June 2014. He was succeeded by Martin Lomeli, who served in an interim capacity. Rod Butler is now the city manager.
Neither Dunn nor Lomeli had an assistant city manager. Until now, neither did Butler.
As of August 19, Jeannette Vagnozzi, the current assistant to the city manager of La Verne, will be Upland’s deputy city manager. She will take on much of the function of Stephanie Mendenhall, Upland’s former administrative services director, who retired July 16. Of note is that Vagnozzi, will receive roughly $100,000 per year less than Mendenhall. Vagnozzi will be provided with $130,628 in annual salary and benefits. By 2010, Mendenhall was one of the highest paid city clerks in the state of California, receiving a base salary and add-ons of $175,606, plus benefits of $55,624 for a total annual compensation package of $231,230. When Dunn became city manager, he contemplated terminating her as one of the key functionaries in the Pomierski/Quincey regime, but elected not to. Instead he increased her duties, making her the city’s administrative services director and risk manager. Mendenhall later added human resources director to her titles. Vagnozzi will function in all of those capacities as well as Butler’s chief designee.
Vagnozzi said she was cognizant of what had occurred in the past with regard to the assistant city manager’s position but that “You can’t compare the current operation with the past or how it was organized in the past.”
She said that despite the resolve of the 1998 council to do away with the assistant city manager’s position, there now exists a need for augmenting the city’s administrative echelon beyond its relatively thin ranks of the past several years. “If you look at any similarly sized cities in this area, you will see they have a deputy city manager or assistant city manager or administrative assistant to the city manager,” she said. “The position of city manager requires a significant amount of support. Upland just had its administrative services director retire. That position basically translates to a deputy city manager position. With this reorganization, I will have authority over human resources, risk management, the city clerk’s office, financial operations and any other projects Rod Butler would bring me in on. Sometimes those positions are filled by multiple people but in a lean staffing model such as in Upland they will be consolidated.”
Vagnozzi said she was not prepared to pass judgment on how things had been run in the past. “I can’t really comment on anything done before,” she said. “I was not part of the operations at that time.”
She said she preferred looking forward rather than back. “Upland is where I grew up,” she said. “I am exited to be coming back to Upland to be part of the team that will be part of the solutions for the challenges Upland has faced.”

Edith Head is quite possibly the most famous daughter of San Bernardino, a costume designer who won a record eight Academy Awards for best costume design, starting with The Heiress and ending with The Sting.
Her status as a California girl and her proximity to and familiarity with Hollywood assisted her in breaking into the business, but it was her natural feel for fashion at multiple stages of history as well as in different cultures, not the least of which was contemporary America, that made her what she was.
She managed to get a job as a costume sketch artist at Paramount Pictures without any relevant training and bootstrapped her way up, first acquiring notice for Dorothy Lamour’s trademark sarong dress, and then became a household name after the Academy Awards created a new category for costume designer in 1948. Head was considered exceptional for her close working relationships with her subjects during her heyday, practically every top female star in the American movie business with the exception of Marilyn Monroe, with whom she consulted extensively and tirelessly.
She was born Edith Claire Posener in San Bernardino on October 28, 1897, the daughter of Jewish parents, Max Posener, a haberdasher in San Bernardino, and Anna E. Levy. Her father, who was born in January 1858 in Germany, came to the United States in 1876 and was later a naturalized American citizen. Her mother was a first generation American, having been born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1875, the daughter of an Austrian father and a Bavarian mother. Max and Anna married in 1895, according to the 1900 United States Federal Census records.
Max Posener’s San Bernardino haberdashery went out of business in 1898. Max Posener did not raise his daughter beyond the age of six. Rather, young Edith went with her mother when her parents parted. In 1905 Edith’s mother married mining engineer Frank Spare of Pennsylvania. The family moved frequently as Spare’s jobs moved. The Spares lived for a time in Searchlight, Nevada. Frank and Anna Spare passed Edith off as their mutual child. As Frank Spare was a Catholic, Edith converted.
In 1919, Edith received a bachelor of arts degree in letters and sciences with honors in French from the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1920 earned a master of arts degree in Romance languages from Stanford University. She became a language teacher with her first position as a replacement at Bishop’s School in La Jolla, teaching French. After one year, she took a position teaching French at the Hollywood School for Girls. Subsequently, she taught art there as well, though she had no training in art outside of high school at that time. She began taking evening drawing classes at the Chouinard Art College.
On July 25, 1923, she married Charles Head, the brother of one of her Chouinard classmates, Betty Head. She and Charles divorced in 1936, but she was known professionally as Edith Head throughout her life.
Even though she had no art, design, and costume design experience, in 1924 the 26-year old borrowed some other student’s sketches for display during a job interview and was hired on the spot as a sketch artist at Paramount Pictures in the costume department. She began designing costumes for silent films, starting with The Wanderer in 1925. By the 1930s, she had established herself as a real workhorse among Hollywood’s costume designers. She worked at Paramount for 43 years until she went to Universal Pictures on March 27, 1967, possibly prompted by her extensive work for director Alfred Hitchcock, who had moved to Universal in 1960.
Initially, Head was over-shadowed by Paramount’s lead designers, first Howard Greer, then Travis Banton. Head was instrumental in conspiring to have Banton leave Paramount. After his resignation in 1938, she became a major asset in the Paramount stable of designers. In 1937, she designed the “sarong” dress for Dorothy Lamour in The Hurricane, which overnight rendered her well-known among the general public. Although successful, she was not as flamboyant as either Banton or Adrian Adolph Greenberg.
Head’s marriage to set designer Wiard Ihnen, on September 8, 1940, lasted until his death in 1979. Over the course of her long career, she was nominated for 35 Academy Awards, annually from 1948 through to 1966, and won eight times – receiving more Oscars than any other woman.
Her design flew in the face of wartime austerity when she came up with the mink-lined gown worn by Ginger Rogers in 1944’s Lady in the Dark. The creation in 1949 of the category of an Academy Award for costume designer advanced her career. She dominated the category for the next generation, as she garnered a record-breaking run of award nominations and wins, beginning with her nomination for The Emperor Waltz.
Unlike many of her male contemporaries, Head worked closely with the female stars for whom she designed. She was, paradoxically, a very plain dresser, preferring thick-framed glasses and conservative two-piece suits. She was indisputably the designer of preference of Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Shirley MacLaine, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor during the 1940s and 1950s. Despite her contract with Paramount, she was sometimes “loaned out” to other studios at the request of their female stars.
Head authored two books, The Dress Doctor (1959) and How To Dress For Success (1967), in which she expounded upon her career and design philosophy.
In 1967, at the age of 70, she left Paramount Pictures and joined Universal Pictures, remaining there for the rest of her life. In 1974, Head received a final Oscar win for her work on The Sting.
During the late 1970s, Edith Head was asked to design a woman’s uniform for the United States Coast Guard, subsequently receiving the Meritorious Public Service Award for that work. Her designs for a TV mini-series based on the novel Little Women were among the last of her design efforts. Based on her expertise in 1940s fashions, she was chosen as the designer for the Steve Martin comedy, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, which was filmed in black and white. The movie was released just after her death in 1982.
Among the actresses Edith Head designed for were: Mae West in She Done Him Wrong, 1933; Myra Breckinridge, 1970; Sextette, 1978; Frances Farmer in Rhythm on the Range, 1936, and Ebb Tide, 1937; Dorothy Lamour in The Hurricane, 1937; in most of “The Road” movies; Paulette Goddard in The Cat and the Canary, 1939; Veronica Lake in Sullivan’s Travels, 1941; I Married a Witch, 1942; Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve and Ball of Fire, both 1941; Double Indemnity, 1944; Ginger Rogers in Lady in the Dark, 1944; Ruth Hussey, Gail Russell in The Uninvited, 1944; Ingrid Bergman in Notorious, 1946; Betty Hutton in Incendiary Blonde, 1945; The Perils of Pauline, 1947; Loretta Young in The Farmer’s Daughter, 1947; Bette Davis in June Bride (1948); All About Eve, 1950; Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress, 1949; Hedy Lamarr and Angela Lansbury in Samson and Delilah, 1949; Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, 1950; Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun, 1951; Elephant Walk, 1954; Joan Fontaine in Something to Live For, 1952; Carmen Miranda in Scared Stiff 1953; Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, 1953; Sabrina, 1954; Funny Face, 1957; Ann Robinson in The War of the Worlds, 1953; Grace Kelly in Rear Window, 1954; To Catch a Thief, 1955; Rosemary Clooney in White Christmas, 1954; Jane Wyman in Lucy Gallant, 1955; Shirley MacLaine in Artists and Models, 1955; The Matchmaker, 1958; What a Way to Go!, 1964; Doris Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956; Anne Baxter in The Ten Commandments, 1956; Marlene Dietrich in Witness for the Prosecution, 1957; Rita Hayworth in Separate Tables, 1958; Kim Novak in Vertigo, 1958; Sophia Loren in That Kind of Woman, 1959; Rhonda Fleming in Alias Jesse James, 1959; Natalie Wood in Love with the Proper Stranger, 1963; Sex and the Single Girl, 1964; Inside Daisy Clover, 1965; The Great Race, 1965; Penelope, 1966; This Property Is Condemned, 1966; The Last Married Couple in America, 1980; Tippi Hedren in The Birds, 1963; Marnie, 1964; Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park, 1967; Claude Jade in Topaz, 1969; Katharine Hepburn in Rooster Cogburn, 1975; Jill Clayburgh in Gable and Lombard, 1976; Valerie Perrine in W.C. Fields and Me, 1976
She received eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, more than any other person, from a total of 35 nominations.
1949 – Color – The Emperor Waltz
1950 – Black and White – The Heiress – won
1951 – Color – Samson and Delilah – won
1951 – Black and White – All About Eve – won
1952 – Black and White – A Place in the Sun – won
1953 – Color – The Greatest Show on Earth
1953 – Black and White – Carrie
1954 – Black and White – Roman Holiday – won
1955 – Black and White – Sabrina – won
1956 – Color – To Catch a Thief
1956 – Black and White – The Rose Tattoo
1957 – Color – The Ten Commandments
1957 – Black and White – The Proud and Profane
1958 – Best Costume Design – Funny Face
1959 – Best Costume Design, Black and White or Color – The Buccaneer
1960 – Color – The Five Pennies
1960 – Black and White – Career
1961 – Color – Pepe
1961 – Black and White – The Facts of Life – won
1962 – Color – Pocketful of Miracles
1963 – Color – My Geisha
1963 – Black and White – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
1964 – Color – A New Kind of Love
1964 – Black and White – Wives and Lovers
1964 – Black and White – Love with the Proper Stranger
1965 – Color – What a Way to Go!
1965 – Black and White – A House Is Not a Home
1966 – Color – Inside Daisy Clover
1966 – Black and White – The Slender Thread
1967 – Color – The Oscar
1970 – Sweet Charity
1971 – Airport
1974 – The Sting – won
1976 – The Man Who Would Be King
1978 – Airport ’77
Edith Head died on October 24, 1981, four days before her 84th birthday, from myelofibrosis, an incurable bone marrow disease. Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6504 Hollywood Boulevard.