The city of San Bernardino this week went public with what officials believe might be the most powerful weapon in the city’s urban renewal arsenal: the use of receiverships to take control of and rehabilitate blighted properties.
Once proud San Bernardino, the county seat and the largest municipality in the county population-wise, has been spiraling downward for nearly a generation. After more than two decades of a deteriorating local economy and several budgetary cycles of deficit spending, the city filed for Chapter Nine bankruptcy protection in 2012. Accompanying the financial malaise, many properties have suffered from neglect as neighborhoods have deteriorated. Property owners, lacking the financial means, will or desire or all three to maintain their homes, yards, lots or buildings, have defied or ignored city code enforcement citations.
Even as the city council this week ratcheted up its citation power on errant property owners, an exchange between councilman John Valdivia and city attorney Gary Saenz referenced the city’s receivership program, which has existed in pilot form since last year.
Saenz deferred questions to deputy city attorney Jason Ewert, who said that 16 severely dilapidated properties are currently at some stage of the receivership process.
Ewert said the use of receiverships to redress the city’s blight problem comes as a last resort, after property owners have been contacted, warned and cited repeatedly about redressing conditions on the land and/or structures they own, at which point he said “if conditions warrant it, a receiver is appointed.”
Ewert said the process results in the property being declared blighted and then being entrusted to a receiver, he said, “willing to fix the property. Legal title is usually not transferred to the receiver. Instead, the receiver is granted possession and control of the property to rehabilitate the structure. Legal title is not transferred until the property is sold to a new owner after the rehabilitation process is complete.”
Thereafter, “The receiver then gets compensation for the property,” Ewert said. “Any money left over after the receivership is terminated is returned to the original owner.”
Ewert said the proceeds from the sale of the property will cover the amount spent to rehabilitate the property and a per hour fee charged by the receiver. Ewert said the receivership arrangement is processed in court under the supervision of a Superior Court judge, who will determine whether the receivership is to be granted to begin with and who will then consider the claims of the receiver once the rehabilitation process is completed.
Ewert said that “nine properties once contemplated for being redressed through the receivership process were subsequently determined not to be viable receivership candidates and have been slated for demolition.” Additionally, he said, “Four properties previously slated for receivership were brought into compliance by the property owners after notice of receiver actions was delivered.” He said “Dozens of receiverships are anticipated in the future.”
Ewert said it should typically take five to six months from the time a property enters into receivership until it is purchased by an eventual buyer.
The city council was laudatory about the receivership approach to curtailing blight. Councilwoman Virginia Marquez said she wanted to see “as many as possible. It is frustrating for taxpayers to live next to an empty building where squatters are there.”

Upland Mayor Ray Musser this week underwent a triple bypass procedure, but it is anticipated that he will have recovered sufficiently to preside over the September 14 city council meeting.
Musser underwent the operation just six days before the city council is set to vote on accepting the current draft of Upland’s general plan update. The general plan, which is described as a blueprint for the city’s future growth and development and the maintenance of ongoing zoning restrictions, was last comprehensively updated in Upland in 1992.
There has been considerable controversy over the general plan update in Upland over the last six months. As drafted, it envisions significant upratings in the intensity of land use, particularly residential densities which range as high as 55 units to an acre in certain areas of the city, and it lays out restrictions on design, landscaping and other choices traditionally left up to individual landowners. At least three waves of protest over it have buffeted the city, corresponding with public hearings on the update held over the last four months.
The update effort began in 2008 and languished for more than six years, during which five sessions or forums to obtain public input on future land use questions were held. But the effort accelerated sharply beginning in March, basically under the direction and guidance of Upland Community Services Director Jeff Zwack.
Scores of residents have lodged personal protests with the city council and planning commission over the changes envisioned in the city’s approach to development. The plan is viewed with skepticism by many others who have not made public statements against it but have gone on record by signing a letter that was widely circulated calling upon the city to rethink the process and not approve the update as drafted. In just two weeks earlier this year, 562 Upland residents affixed their signatures to that letter.
The update has garnered support from some quarters of the community, particularly developers, builders and real estate investors, who support it because its allowance of high density development would translate into a higher profit return on residential projects in the city. The plan’s favor with the development community has only increased the fervor of some already against it.
Meanwhile, the city council appears to be following the lead of the planning commission, which has in nearly all respects accepted the update as drafted by city staff – in particular Zwack – and an outside consulting firm, which was paid over $1 million for that work.
Some city residents this summer expressed disappointment and dismay with the council and Mayor Musser in particular because of their perceived blasé attitude toward the intensification of density inherent in the plan. Musser is a member of SANBAG – San Bernardino Associated Governments – which doubles as the county’s regional planning and transportation agency, as well as of SCAG – Southern California Association of Governments – a regional planning agency. His participation with these large scale planning agencies has exposed him to certain so-called progressive principles of urban planning now in vogue, such as the concept of “Smart Growth,” which provides for consolidating urban resources into smaller areas and increasing density and placing retail, service, entertainment and recreational amenities within walking distance of residential zones, while discouraging the use of automobiles and promoting the heavier use of public transportation.
Musser’s acceptance of the layering of Smart Growth elements into the general plan update has triggered a negative reaction among some Upland residents, who see the update as part of a strategy to move the city away from its traditional status as a bedroom community known as “The City of Gracious Living.” Accordingly, a showdown between those protesting the general plan update and Musser and the rest of the council was anticipated at the meeting at which the council was to consider approving it.
With his recent sojourn under the knife, questions have emerged as to the advisability of exposing Musser to a hostile crowd, just six days after three of his coronary arteries have been rebuilt. It was therefore thought that the consideration of the general plan update might be postponed beyond the September 11 date. On Thursday, however, Upland City Manager Rod Butler told the Sentinel that the consideration of the update and the council’s vote will go ahead.
“The mayor did have bypass surgery on Tuesday,” Butler said. “He is back at his home here in Upland and recovering. I can’t go into any more detail since it is medically related. I will let him decide on how much information about that he wants to release.”
As to the discussion and vote scheduled for Monday, Butler said, “It is his intention to participate as much as he can during the council meeting on Monday night. Whether he can participate fully or not, the general plan will go forward. The city’s intent is to have the item heard. Whether the mayor can fully participate or not obviously depends on how his recovery goes over the next couple of days. How well he is doing will govern how much he gets involved and participates in the meeting on Monday.”

County Chief Executive Officer Greg Devereaux has forged a modus vivendi with the  influential and hard-nosed union representing nurses working at the county hospital.
Within the last fortnight, Devereaux drafted a side letter agreement with the California Nurses Association to establish that eligible employees in the per diem nurses unit may receive the additional compensation consistent with their performance of higher level duties than normally associated with regular nursing assignments.
The county employs 1,247 nurses. Of those, 901 are in the nurses’ bargaining unit and 346 are in the per diem nurses bargaining unit.
Devereaux has been both lionized and demonized for his handling of county employee compensation issues since he was brought in to serve as the top manager of the county’s governmental structure in 2010. He arrived at the nadir of the economic downturn that gripped the nation, state and region toward the end of 2007 and persisted for more than a half dozen years. The financial malaise resulted in diminishing revenues to state and local governments, triggering a round of belt tightening that was not gladly received by public employee unions. Devereaux consistently held the line in refusing to grant employee raises over several budgetary cycles and went further, seeking concessions from county employee bargaining units that reduced benefits, in particular the county’s pick-up of employee contributions to their retirement funds, a perquisite that had been granted to many employees during previous economic boom years.
Devereaux had early success wringing concessions from the county’s firefighters’ union and bootstrapped that into similar concessions from the sheriff’s deputies’ union, largely because previously more generous salary and benefit terms had been confirmed upon the county’s public safety employees than others. Some other employee bargaining units followed suit but others were more recalcitrant.
Sore points with county-employed nurses are what they maintain are comparatively low wages and a high turnover rate among them as many go elsewhere for higher pay. Nurses claim they are paid roughly $17 an hour less than nurses in many of the region’s competing hospitals. This is exacerbated by the county’s employment of registry nurses.
Assembly Bill 394 mandates that hospitals maintain minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. The use of registry nurses at the county hospital has long been practiced.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 nurses who are permanent county employees work at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, the county’s main hospital campus, and more than 320 other nurses employed by the county work in public health capacities such as within the jails, juvenile halls and various clinics. When the need for nurses increases, the county turns to registry nurses, that is, those employed by private sector employers who provide nurses for a set fee on an as-needed basis.
In March 2008, the board of supervisor approved agreements for temporary help services, some of which included nurses, for a total not-to-exceed amount of $9 million from March 1, 2008 through February 28, 2011. In January 2009, the board approved ten nurse registry contracts at a cost of $1,500,000 per year, from January 27, 2009 through June 30, 2012. In March 2009, the board approved eleven additional nurse registry contracts with a $1.5 million expenditure limit, through June 30, 2012. In June 2009, the board approved ten additional nurse registry contracts, again with a $1.5 million expenditure limit through June 30, 2012. In March 2012, the board approved amendments with 8 of the 31 contracts, increasing the not-to-exceed amount by $6,882,041, from $1,500,000 to $8,382,041 through June 30, 2012. In August 2012, the board approved amendments with 14 of the 31 contracts, increasing the not-to-exceed amount by $3,000,000, from $8,382,041 to $11,382,041, and extending the termination date from June 30, 2012 to December 31, 2012.
In June 2014, the county’s contract with its nurses expired. Beginning in 2013 the county and the nurses association sought to negotiate terms of a new contract, but failed to reach a resolution.
In the five months after the expiration of the contract, the nurses staged three demonstrations. In November 2014, the leaders of the California Nurses Association, asserting the county was functioning with a budget surplus and should be able to provide pay increases and hire more qualified nurses, gave San Bernardino County notice that roughly 1,200 nurses employed by the county would initiate a two-day work stoppage on December 9, concluding on December 10.
While public statements emanating from Devereaux’s office held that the situation was under control, the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center’s newly-hired director, William T. Foley, moved to declare a “state of emergency” at the county hospital ahead of the planned strike. Simultaneously, the county hospital reduced its patient count by 86, with 66 from discharges and 20 from transfers to other hospitals and the board of supervisors called an emergency meeting at which it authorized the expenditure of up to $4 million for nursing strike replacement personnel and the reimbursement of local hospitals and transportation providers for costs incurred for preparing to or accepting Arrowhead Regional Medical Center patients because of the strike.
The county then made three attempts to have San Bernardino County Superior Court issue an injunction prohibiting the strike, claiming it would put patients in jeopardy and that the hospital was in “dire straits” because registry nurses were reluctant to cross the picket line, and a major strike replacement firm would not be able to muster enough personnel to cover all nursing assignments at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. The first two comprehensive tries for an injunction failed but San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Pamela King issued a temporary restraining order, prohibiting about 60 essential nurses from participating in the strike.
An uneasy stand-off has ensued between the county/Devereaux and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United in the intervening months.
Last week, Devereaux reported to the board of supervisors that “Recently, Arrowhead Regional Medical Center has experienced increases in the number of patients, while staffing has not kept pace in certain specialty units within the hospital. This has resulted in the need to fill vacant or additional shifts to meet state mandated nurse-to-patient staffing ratios. In order to address the need to fill these shifts, the county and the California Nurses Association met and conferred regarding the terms and conditions of employment for employees in the nurses unit and per diem nurses unit. The meet and confer process resulted in a proposed side letter agreement to establish, consistent with the nurses unit employees, that employees in the per diem nurses unit filling those vacant or additional shifts in the specialty units shall be eligible for the additional compensation pursuant to the temporary performance of higher level duties article of the memorandum of understanding. The proposed side letter will maintain consistency between nurses unit and per diem nurses unit employees and assist Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in filling the vacant and added specialty unit shifts in order to maintain the required staffing levels.”

The staff for the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission last month issued a report in which it said the Daggett, Newberry, and Yermo community services districts remain out of compliance with at least some “generally accepted good governance practices” specified in the California Constitution and state law which had previously been remarked upon.
Last year, the commission recommended that the three districts merge, and it formulated a so-called “plan for service” that would make for consistent service levels, allow for the free distribution of resources between the entities and communities, streamline governance and management and reduce overall costs. A five-year projection made at that time showed the newly-formed district would remain fiscally solvent for at least half a decade, with no diminution of service levels in any of the three communities.
Daggett encompasses 26 square miles and is home to 487 residents. Newberry Springs covers 117 square miles and has 2,288 inhabitants. Yermo, at 74 square miles, boasts a population of 1,629.
Despite the size differences between the three communities, they have similar population densities. Daggett averages 18.7 people per square mile. Newberry Springs has 19.6 residents per square mile. Yermo has a per-square mile density of 22.
Within its confines, Daggett contains its own water company, which services an area beyond its borders, including several businesses and a few residences as well as Silver Valley High School, all located in Yermo.
In 2009, the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission, known by its acronym LAFCO, identified numerous issues bedeviling each of the districts. In January of this year, LAFCO revisited those problems. At its meeting last month, staff provided the commission with a study of the progress, or lack thereof, made by the districts in addressing those challenges. According to the study, dated August 12, 2015 and put together by LAFCO Executive Director Kathleen Rollings-McDonald and LAFCO Project Manager Michael Tuerpe, shortcomings yet exist.
McDonald and Tuerpe say that the Newberry Community Services District has yet to develop a basic accounting manual despite a recommendation by the county grand jury in 2013 that it do so.
Neither the Daggett nor the Yermo Community Services District have developed or adopted reserve policies.
McDonald and Tuerpe further said that the Daggett Community Services District had failed for years to adopt a budget and had further failed to file 2012-13 and 2013-14 audits.
Daggett Community Service District representatives disputed that in a published report, saying that while past boards may have failed to file their budgets with LAFCO, in recent years the board had in fact passed budgets.
Rollings-McDonald this week told the Sentinel, “We did not receive copies of the 2013-14 or 2014-15 budgets or audits, nor did the county auditor-controller, as the law requires. They may have passed budgets in those years and left them in their office but they did not file them with the auditor controller and did not submit them to us. We double checked.”
Rollings-McDonald did acknowledge that her office has “now received the 2015-16 budget from the Daggett Community Service District.”
Rollings-McDonald said all three community services districts – Newberry Springs, Yermo and Daggett – employed Db Whitford as their auditors.
Rollings-McDonald and Tuerpe’s report said the Daggett water system has a Chromium 6 violation.
Likewise, the Yermo Water Company has long been troubled. Formerly owned by Donald Walker, the Yermo Water Company fell into severe disrepair early last decade, a situation which was exacerbated by Walker’s departure to Florida. As the absentee owner, Walker did not have a licensed operator available to operate the system. Beginning in November 2012, the Yermo Community Services District took over operation of the company’s assets. The Apple Valley Rancho Water Company, a for-profit concern, has since acquired the system.
Daggett and Yermo resisted the local agency formation commission’s push for them to merge six years ago.
There have been similar consolidation imperatives and consolidations carried out involving those communities in the past. In the 1960s Daggett’s school district was forced into a shotgun marriage with the Barstow Unified School District. In 1978, the Daggett School District was able to reassert its independence, breaking away. But in that departure, Daggett had to forego assets and resources local residents felt rightfully belonged to Daggett and not Barstow.
Among some residents, there is concern that the dictates from the county seat in San Bernardino some 70 miles away will impose on them a management and operation plan that will run roughshod over local control and in some cases, at least, result in services, including emergency services, being based at locations that will be more remote and not conducive to quick response or sensitive response.

San Bernardino Superior Court Judge David Cohn on September 3 rejected Rancho Cucamonga resident Kim Segool-Earl’s legal contention that Rancho Cucamonga City Attorney Jim Markman’s synopsis of Measure A lacks impartiality.
Measure A, if passed, will impose on the residents of the city’s west side an annual $89 special tax.
At present, residents on the west side of the city pay at least $31 and as much as $200 a year, depending upon the location of their parcel and when it was first subject to assessment, to maintain streets and parks.
The city council in July approved the creation of a blanket Mello-Roos community facilities district intended to eliminate the seven existing smaller assessment districts and their inconsistent fee schedules on the 27,000 parcels, establishing a uniform assessment. In conjunction with that switchover, the city council further approved a resolution setting a special election in November for Measure A.
The replacement district would support maintenance and operations at eight parks and with keep 6,000 street lights in the city glowing.
Approval of Measure A would ratify the special tax and close out landscape maintenance districts 1, 3A, 3B and 5, assessment district PD 85, and street lighting districts 2 and 6.
Segool-Earl said in her reading of Markman’s analysis she detected a discrepancy in what the city council specified in the special election resolution it approved and the size-up  provided by the city attorney. In particular, Segool-Earl suggested, Markman states the  special tax will replace the existing assessment but the actual language in Measure A does not guarantee that outcome.
Segool-Earl went to court, asking that two of the sentences penned by Markman be removed. Those sentences read: “The special tax will replace existing assessments levied for such purposes. The resolution approved by the council in July does state that it would form the community facilities district to finance public services and facilities and refers to a previous resolution in which Rancho Cucamonga had ‘declared its intention to form a community facilities district.’”
Segool-Earl said that the city should not have entrusted Markman to provide an “impartial analysis” of the measure because Markman, who is paid by the city, is not unbiased in the matter.
Segool-Earl said she wanted unequivocal language in the measure stating the existing assessment districts are going to be eliminated.
Stephen Lee, representing the city of Rancho Cucamonga, on September 3 told Cohn that in Section 7 of the measure, it is specified that the services that were previously funded by the assessment will be funded by the special tax.
Segool-Earl responded by asserting that Section 7 was “misleading because there is not one word about these districts and/or that they are going to be terminated.” She claimed that no reasonable reading of the analysis gives that impression, asserting, “If you don’t have an assessment, then you wouldn’t need a district. The misleading part is that [for] the average voter and resident on first take, this is a confusing resolution. I did not see [anything] in the measure or the resolution 15:112 that guarantees the assessment and assessment districts will be eliminated. I feel, being a voter, that it was misleading to me. Others said that, too. The resolution does not terminate anything.”
Lee responded that there was no ambiguity whatsoever in Resolution 15:112 and it was “not misleading as written. It can go to the printers. We now actually need a judgment…that the materials as written may go to the printer.”
Judge Cohn concurred, saying he found no ambiguity or confusing language and determined that Markman’s impartial analysis was not false and misleading. Cohn ordered that the measure could go to the printer.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
Fourteen years ago today, 19 people who were welcomed into this great country engaged in one of the most overtly destructive acts ever perpetrated against it. I have some thoughts on this, because I too, was welcomed into this country. In the end, my own thoughts confound me, because try as I might, I can’t understand why those 19 did what they did…
They used four planes, completing their missions with three of them. One, because of the heroics of several of those on board, dived into a field in Pennsylvania, killing all aboard but sparing the lives of many others, most likely in our nation’s capital. All told, the attacks claimed the lives of 2,977 victims, and the 19 hijackers. Of those killed, 343 were firefighters and 72 were policemen…
Responsibility for the attack has been placed with al-Qaeda. That in itself is troubling for me. Al-Qaeda originated as a movement in resistance to the Soviet Union when it invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Day in 1979. That was a sneaky thing for the Soviets to do. They chose perhaps the one day in the entire year when people in the West are least prepared to make a reaction to such a deed…
My heart was with the Afghan resistance. More than my heart really. There were things I did in conjunction with some others that made that resistance effective. I won’t get into that now. Suffice it to say that before it was over there were a whole bunch of Soviet aircraft that were on the ground in a gazillion pieces. That was a simpler time. The Soviets and all they stood for could be clearly demarked as antithetical to the values I and others I know, love and respect hold dear. We were in league with Osama bin-Laden and his cohorts. We weren’t on the ground with them. We didn’t bleed when they bled, but we provided them with the means to make the Soviets bleed, and by God, the Soviets bled. They bled so much that after seven years, they backed out of Afghanistan…
Afghanistan was a victory we had in common with al-Qaeda and bin-Laden. We were comrades. What went wrong? How did our allies become our enemies?
At school, when teachers are providing students with lessons, the underlying orientation of those being taught can change what is being learned…
Here in the West, we come out of the Christian tradition. For us, Christmas is a special day. It has meaning and emotional import. What the Soviets did in violating the peace and sanctity of December 25 redounds differently, I now recognize, to us Westerners than it does to a non-Westerner. I must have missed that at the time…
Our erstwhile Afghan and al-Qaeda allies saw exactly what we saw, although they experienced it a little more closely than we did, when those paratroopers dropped into Kabul, soon to be followed by tanks and troop carriers. But they drew a different lesson than we did. They saw us caught flatfooted, out of position, distracted, unable to react. Christmas had no emotional or cultural significance to them. Its only significance was that it illustrated that at certain times, some more than others, we are very vulnerable…
Who knows why they chose the date of September 11. Maybe why they did does not matter. September 11 is not Christmas, December 25. It was just ten days before the end of summer. All that mattered was we were unprepared, unprepared to react to such a deed by 19 people we had welcomed into our country…

Montclair police appear to have solved the double homicide case involving killings in the southwest sector of the city last February heavily laden with gangland overtones.
On Sunday night February 8 Livied Arturo Sanchez, 33, of West Covina and Mario Padilla, 34, of Pomona were executed, with their hands bound by duct tape, in a detached garage behind the only home on an unlit gravel road that ran east from the 11000 block of Monte Vista Avenue in the southwest part of the city.
A third man, since identified as Edgar Rivera Calderon, was able to escape the assailants with his hands yet bound by duct tape behind his back. Bloodied and terrified, Calderon fled on foot southward down Monte Vista and was last seen by witnesses near the Monte Vista/Howard Street intersection.
Only sketchy information was publicly available at the time and there was widespread speculation that the third man had been overtaken by his assailant or assailants and executed elsewhere.
Calderon would turn up very much alive and now, two of the three people implicated in the murders are in custody. The third is yet at large.
According to Montclair Police Homicide Sergeant Bryon Kelly, Richard Corry Roach, 37, was arrested on August 13 at the Riverside Hotel and Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Fugitive Recovery Task Force. Roach waived extradition and has been transported to West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga.
The second suspect in the homicides, David Nash McKell, 35, was in custody at the Los Angeles County Jail for an unrelated homicide when he was identified as a suspect in the Montclair murders. He was arrested at the Los Angeles County Jail in connection with the slayings.
As to the motive in the killings, Kelly told the Sentinel, “The suspects and the victims knew each other and were involved in illegal narcotics activity.”
Of Calderon, Kelly said, “We have talked to him. I don’t want to go beyond that.”
Kelly said the case was solved by “using witness statements and applying some of the technical assets we possess.”
Kelly said there was a “third suspect we have not been able to locate who was most likely the getaway driver. We do have one me lead we are following.”
In another matter, a bitter falling out between a now divorced couple who moved to Twentynine Palms soon after Pennsylvania authorities now say they murdered a man in Monroe County, Pennsylvania in 2002 has led to their arrests.
On July 12, 2002, the owner of a trucking company was at a disposal site his company used to dispose of sewage sludge on a secluded property on North Road in Jackson Township when he spotted two barrels that he had not placed on the property, in one of which the contents were still smoldering, He called authorities, who determined that the barrels contained the corpse of an unknown man who had been decapitated. An autopsy determined that the deceased had been stabbed eight time in the chest and once in the right thigh. The remains had been mutilated so thoroughly that authorities were unable, for 16 months, to ascertain the dead man’s identity. It was not until November 2003, that it was determined that it was Robert Roudebush, who was 46 at the time of his death, whose remains were in the barrel. Roudebush, of Luzerne County, was a petty criminal whose disappearance went unremarked for some time.
A little more than a month later, on August 24, 2002, James Arthur Britton, then 23, and Stacy Marie Britton, then 33, destroyed their Wilkes-Barre home by means of arson, and immediately pulled up stakes and moved cross country to California, settling in Twentynine Palms.
The Brittons’ relationship was a rocky one. Three days before Roudebush’s identity was publicly released, James Britton was in jail and requested an interview with his probation officer. He told the probation officer he was in possession of information relating to a man named Bob who was ‘burned in a barrel around July 2002.’ He related to the probation officer the victim was killed for having an affair with another man’s girlfriend. Britton identified the killer, who was convicted of a killing in an unrelated case.
Authorities had determined that the property where the barrels were found had on it a residence where Stacy Britton’s brother had lived.
Focus on the Roudebush killing faded in and out over the years. In 2008, James Britton was brought before a grand jury, to whom he repeated the story about Roudebush having been killed by a jealous boyfriend, the man who was in prison for another killing.
The matter might have gone unsolved but for an argument that broke out between the Brittons, now divorced, in July. From three quarters of the distance across the continent, Stacy, still in Twentynne Palms, and James, again residing in Pennsylvania, grew irate with one another and in a series of phone calls and text messages, the contretemps escalated.
At one point Stacy brought up the subject of Roudebush’s murder. James responded with a text message that read: “OK so you brought up the murder lets go there.” He reference the murder again and gave a description of an injury his ex-wife sustained during Roudebush’s execution. The phone and text exchanges left Stacy Britton seething. In early August she contacted police and told them she and her ex-husband used knives and hammers to kill Roudebush after he had stolen drugs and money from them. She gave a description of the murder and said they cut and chopped Roudebush’s body and put it in the two barrels, which her husband then transferred to the property on North Road and set on fire.
The Pennsylvania State Police brought James Britton in for questioning on August 20, at which point he confirmed, with some deviation in detail, what his wife had confessed to. According to him, it was Stacy who attacked Roudebush after the alleged thefts. He said it was Stacy who bludgeoned and stabbed Roudebush to death and that he had allowed Roudebush to pray before Stacy Britton killed him. He said that Stacy then went through Roudebush’s pockets to find any money or drugs on his person. According to both Brittons, the killing took place at their Wilkes-Barre home.
The two are now awaiting preliminary hearings in Pennsylvania after they were charged with homicide, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, abuse of a corpse, perjury, false swearing and hindering prosecution by concealing or destroying evidence. District Judge Colleen Mancuso sent them to Monroe County Correctional Facility without bail. Stacy Britton’s hearing is scheduled for September 11 and her ex-husband’s will be held September 18.

By Mark Gutglueck
In January 1921, the city of Pasadena initiated an effort to appropriate water rights along the Mojave River. After buying or securing options on some riparian properties along the river, Pasadena filed an application with the California Water Commission to allow it to divert 110 cubic feet per second from the Mojave River by means of a 70-mile long aqueduct to provide water and power services in that city. Upon learning of the move, land and water rights owners in the Victor Valley pooled their interests and lobbied the board of supervisors to protest Pasadena’s move and oppose the application. Attorney Ralph Swing was hired to represent the county before the state water commission.
On June 3, 1921, seven seniors graduated from Victor Valley High.
On October 5, 1921 the California Highway Commission awarded a $226,219 contract to R. T. Shea & Company of Riverside to construct a 16-foot wide and six-inch deep road of bituminous macadam between Cajon Summit and Victorville.
In the spring of 1922, the Mojave River Irrigation District asked a judge to set for trial the district’s request for condemnation of the Arrowhead Reservoir & Power Company’s land holdings along the Mojave River. Since 1909, when the Arrowhead Reservoir & Power Company had abandoned its plans to divert a large portion of Mojave River water southward, thousands of acres of land that company had secured in the Victor Valley had remained in its possession. The city of Pasadena’s filing to divert Mojave River water to Los Angeles County in 1921 had spurred the Mojave River Irrigation District to take action to ensure that water rights along the river be secured by interests which would not allow the water to be diverted to irrigation or municipal uses outside the local area.
Throughout late 1921 and early 1922, the Mojave Irrigation District along with a collection of Victor Valley residents lobbied San Bernardino County officials to use the authority of the county to prevent the city of Pasadena’s effort to divert Mojave River water to that municipality while a filing to do just that was yet pending before the California Water Commission.
In June 1922, the First National Bank of Victorville installed radio equipment, including a 75-foot high antenna, giving the savings and lending institution the ability to receive market reports from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Denver.
In June 1922, interests in San Bernardino, in apparent reaction to Pasadena’s effort to secure water for itself from the Mojave River, undertook an effort to divert an annual flow of 2,000 inches of water from Lake Arrowhead and an additional 4,000 inches from Deep Creek to San Bernardino, Redlands, Colton, Rialto and other cities south of the Cajon Pass.
On October 12, 1922, the new state highway completed between Cajon Summit and Victorville was opened.
On May 25, 1923, ten member of the Victor Valley High School Class of 1923 graduated.
In 1923, the city of Pasadena abandoned the idea of obtaining water from the Mojave River.
In August 1923 corporate officials with the Arrowhead Lake Company signed an agreement to allow water it held rights to to be used to irrigate 27,000 acres of farmland in Apple Valley. Pursuant to the agreement, surveys were made to determine the feasibility of constructing a reservoir on the Mojave River’s west fork near the junction with Deep Creek.
On Sunday, August 19, a petition signed by thirty Victorville property owners was forwarded to the county asking that the board of supervisors impose a special tax to fund the construction of a sewer line between First and Ninth streets and the river bank and Yucca Avenue.
In November a vote for the formation of a sanitation district in downtown Victorville was held, passing 80 in favor and 15 opposed.
On June 20, 1924 a vote on the issuance of $30,000 in bonds to build an outfall sewer in the Victorville Sanitary District carried by 107 to 10.
In October 1924 L. Weiss of Victorville was given a $1,226.50 contract to deliver cement pipe to be used in the construction of the sewer. His low bid consisted of 45 cents per foot for 7,350 feet of 14-inch pipe, 20 cents per foot for 500 feet of 8-inch pipe and 19 cents per foot for 3,150 feet of 6-inch pipe.
In November 1924, the Ontario-based firm of Cox & Teggett was awarded the contract for doing the excavation necessary for the city’s sewer system based upon its low bid of $10,826.
In January 1925 work on the Victorville sewer system began.
Building upon legislation for a public highway system first enacted in 1916 and revised in 1921, Congress passed a comprehensive highway act in 1925. A Chicago-to-Los Angeles route which would correspond with a major portion of the National Trails Road was identified as a major component of the system. San Bernardino County officials, eager to facilitate tentative plans to incorporate a Victorville-to-Barstow leg into the route, allocated money to make improvements to the desert’s roadways.
In May 1926 Victor High graduated seven.
In January 1926, the highway census staff checked 368 cars as an average daily number through the Cajon Pass.
On March 23, 1926, at a Victorville Lions club meeting, assistant district attorney M. O. Hart, who had served for 18 years as the city attorney in Colton, gave a presentation on the process of municipal incorporation, including petitioning for an incorporation vote and the transference of tax revenues and responsibility for managing local affairs to a duly elected city council.
In June, 17 students graduated from Victor High School.
In January 1927, the highway census staff checked 443 cars as an average daily number through the Cajon Pass
In January 1928, the highway census staff checked 461 cars as an average daily number through the Cajon Pass
In January 1929, the highway census staff checked 603 cars as an average daily number through the Cajon Pass. On Sunday January 13 1929 1,818 cars were checked through the pass in one 24-hour period.
At noon on April 19, 1929 the Southern Sierras Power Company and the Interstate Telegaraph Co established phone service to Lucerne Valley.
In May 1929 Western Air Express inaugurated air mail service to Victorville as part of its Los Angeles to Albuquerque mail rout. Using Fokker triplanes, pilots for Western Air Express would fly daily routes, dropping mail at prearranged sites.
Eighteen members of the Victor Valley Union High Class of 1929 graduated on June 6.
On June 10, improvement on Cajon Pass Road began. The project, which entailed the widening and straightening of some curves, involved the removing of more than 401,000 cubic yards of earth.
On June 17, 1929, a new post office was opened in Victorville.
On June 28, 1929, Thirty-six land owners with property adjacent to the Mojave, represented by the law firm of Byron, Waters, Swing & Wilson and P. N. McClosky filed suit against the Adelanto Farms Company with demands that the concern be restrained from taking or using water and that the rights of the landholders be given official recognition. The suit claimed the Adelanto Farms Company had sunk wells and taken water from the stream to the detriment of adjacent lands. The plaintiffs maintained that the action of the Adelanto Farms Company caused and threatened to cause the land owned by the plaintiffs to become dry, arid and worthless. The suit asked for a court order and judgement forever barring the defendant concern from taking water from the Mojave River or its tributaries to distant and non-riparian lands and that the company be barred from interfering with the surface or subsurface flow of the Mojave.
In July 1929, the Bell Telephone Company brought 160 workers into Victorville to assist in the construction of that company’s trunk line, which passed the city on the east side of the river
In the September 6, 1929 edition of the Victor News-Herald there was a page two article on methods of controlling green alfalfa caterpillars, the offspring of the yellow butterfly, which were extremely damaging to the desert’s alfalfa crops.
In May 1930, the State of California , through the highway commission, began condemnation proceedings against B. N. Dunning, Oliver and Clara Knudson, W.E. Robinson, Jas. Katcherside, W.T. Ball and W. E. Leonard. Dunning, the Knudsons, Robinson, Katcherside, Ball and Leonard were the owners of four properties who had declined to sign deeds for land necessary to widen Seventh Street and the National Old Trails in the vicinity of the high school grounds. All other owners of property necessary to make the thoroughfare 100 feet wide had deeded the necessary frontage to proceed with the project.
On May 29, 1930 Alfred Johnson was the valedictorian for the Victor High Class of 1930, which numbered 14 graduates.
In June 1930 Pickwick-Greyhound Stage Lines purchased the Motor Transit Company’s routes, buses and equipment and applied to the state railroad commission for a permit to operate a local service from Los Angeles and San Bernardino to the cities and communities on Route 66 to Needles and also on the Arrowhead Trail to the Nevada state line and onto the eastern cities and all connections east and west. With the Greyhound line’s permit application pending, on Friday night June 13, a 53-passenger bus came through Victorville and Barstow enroute to Chicago. The application for a bus permit was made to the state railroad commission because at that time, the railroads operated bus lines.
On August 26, 1930, Arthur Doran defeated R. B. Peters in the race for First District Supervisor, 3583 to 946.
On the same day, Stanley Mussell, who was formerly in practice in Victorville as an attorney, defeated the incumbent, George H. Johnson in the race for district attorney, 12,393 to 11,128.

By Ruth Musser-Lopez
NEEDLES-Objections from two Needles citizens at the city’s Tuesday night council meeting did not change the minds of the Needles City Council members, who by unanimous vote extended by four years and increased the $197,000 employment contract of city manager Rick Daniels. By June 30, 2018 Daniels’ contract is scheduled to increase to $217,000. The council also voted in public session to provide Daniels with California Public Employee Retirement System benefits in the same amount as all other city of Needles managers and increase Daniels’ present salary by $10,000 as of July 1, 2016. In each subsequent year, Daniels’ employment contract will increase by $5,000 per year and he will receive the same benefits and vacation time as if he were a 20-year employee. Daniels began with the city in 2013.
Needles, with its 4,844 residents, is the smallest city in San Bernardino County population-wise and has the smallest tax base. Many of its residents are impoverished and/or live on fixed incomes. In addition to Daniels, Needles has six other manager level employees receiving annual salaries of over $100,000. In addition, the city is laying out substantial consultation payments to economic development advisers.
Economic development is a sore point with Needles, which is at a disadvantage in competing with other businesses that lie across the nearby Arizona and Nevada borders, in that those states have lower sales and gasoline taxes. California’s higher tax rates induce many customers to avoid shopping on the California side of the Colorado River altogether. As a result, Needles’ last grocery store, Basha’s, closed its doors last year. Basha’s closure came after Daniels was hired as city manager amid assurances he would be able to turn the city’s financial circumstance around by retaining existing businesses and attracting new ones.
Councilman Shawn Gudmundsen praised Daniel’s work, saying that the job of Needles city manager is more complicated than one might expect and that Daniels had cut some costs in many areas that more than offset his salary increases. Gudmunsen then boasted that for the first time in years the city manager has been able to find a way to get well deserved pay raises for all city employees.
The Sentinel has learned that the city of Needles budget for fiscal year 2015-2016 provides $210,526 in salary and benefits for the city manager, $147,407 for the assistant city manager, $117,500 for the finance director, $127,894 for the finance assistant, $116,829 for the senior utility accountant, $111,892 for the director of public works, $104,400 for the chief water plant operator, $90,900 for the water foreman, $96,400 for the golf park superintendent, and $94,900 for the golf PGA pro.

Salazaria mexicana or Scutellaria mexicana, which is commonly known as the bladder sage or paperbag bush, is a shrub of the mint family Lamiaceae, with many woody, branched, overlapping stems bearing small, greyish-green leaves at opposite intervals.
It is remarkable for its distinctive calyx lobes that develop into small bag- or bladder-like shells around the fruits and its unusual flowers.
It is widespread in sandy and gravelly slopes, desert dry washes, and canyons in the southwestern deserts of North America, including in creosote bush scrub and Joshua tree woodland plant communities in the Mojave, Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts in southern California, Nevada, southwestern Utah, Arizona, western Texas, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California.
These bushes often grow intermixed with other shrubs. They are relatively common; although both the foliage and flowers are sparse. Their distinctive pattern of bags makes them easy to spot from a distance.
This plant takes the form of a rounded shrub, typically twenty inches to forty inches high, sometimes larger.
The stems form a spreading rigid pattern, with the tips often becoming spine-like. The branching pattern is distinctive, with opposite side branches forming right angles to the main stem. The plant is drought deciduous, that is, it drops its leaves in dry conditions
The leaves are opposite, small, 3–15 mm long and 2–8 mm wide, ovate to elliptic, have smooth edges, and with a very short or nonexistent petiole.
The flowers have an upper lip which is white or very pale purple in color and shaped like a hood, plus an intense purple lower lip, divided into three lobes. The upper lip has an even covering of short hairs.
The calyx below the corolla is reddish purple at first, and traditionally shaped, but gradually lightens in color as it ages and becomes inflated, widest towards the base, expanding into its distinctive bag shape, 1–2 cm across, the dried flower eventually falling out of the hole in the end.
The fruit inside the dried calyx bags is composed of four nutlets. The plant drops its leaves in dry conditions. The dried bags help with seed dispersal by wind. Flowering is generally April through June, but the bags are durable and may last on the plant into winter, becoming dry and papery.
The plant is rather delicate, though able to continue to grow, if not thrive, under very dry conditions, such as with less than two inches of rain per year. The plant under such parched conditions can become ethereal or ghostly in appearance.
The genus is named after astronomer José Salazar y Larregui, Mexican commissioner for the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey of 1848-55.