Three illustrations of the expense of dealing with the disposal of trash was provided by action taken by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors this week.
In the first instance, the board put its imprimatur on the preliminary plans and specifications for what is referred to as the “Unit 2 Phases 3-2 and 4 Groundwater Protection System Composite Liner Construction Project” at the San Timoteo Sanitary Landfill. While the action in and of itself did not require any outlay of money, the approval of the plan as signed and sealed by a registered civil engineer in essence clears the way for the county public works division to advertise the project for bids.
According to a report put together by County Public Works Director Kevin Blakeslee and the division’s deputy director, Harold Zamora, “The project involves the construction of a liner for the Unit 2 Phases 3-2 and 4 landfill cells at the San Timoteo Sanitary Landfill. The project consists of excavation and grading to support the construction of 17 acres of regulatory agency-approved single composite geo-membrane liner, a retention basin on the northwest side of Unit 2, construction of an alternate haul road, as well as supplying electrical power through Southern California Edison to support the leachate pumping system. The San Timoteo Sanitary Landfill is located east of the City of Redlands at 31 Refuse Road and has been accepting municipal solid waste from various cities within the county since operations at the site commenced in 1980. The site occupies approximately 366 acres of which 114 are permitted for refuse disposal. The site consists of two waste management units with the project occupying a portion of the second unit. The current rate of trash disposal at the site necessitates the installation of additional liner to provide the operator with additional capacity. The Unit 2 Phases 3-2 and 4 Liner project consists of approximately 17 acres of single composite geo-membrane liner. The environmental management division of the county public works department has completed a California Environmental Quality Act review of the proposed Project. The currently proposed liner project specifically relating to Phases/Cells No. 3 and 4 is part of the project that has been previously analyzed in existing California Environmental Quality Act documentation and this liner work does not present a substantial change in the project as previously proposed and analyzed. Therefore, additional California Environmental Quality Act analysis is not required. Previous environmental documentation at the San Timoteo Laanitary Landfill has included:
• 1995 – Solid waste facilities permit update (mitigated negative declaration);
• 1997 – Construction of a landfill liner system (mitigated negative declaration);
• 1998 – Drainage improvements to improve on-site/off-site drainage conditions (categorical exemption);
• 1999 – Alternative cover material for county-operated landfills (categorical exemption);
• 2002 – Solid waste facilities permit update (mitigated negative declaration);
•  2012 – San Timoteo Landfill 5-year permit review (mitigated negative declaration).”
A mitigated negative declaration is an assertion by a governing board that all environmental impacts of a project have been adequately mitigated by the terms of approval given to that particular project, thus eliminating the need for a full-blown environmental impact report for the project to be undertaken and certified.
The report by Blakeslee and Zamora continued, “In 1998, a mitigated negative declaration was adopted by the board of supervisors for the specific purpose of reviewing potential environmental impacts resulting from the construction of a liner system at the existing San Timoteo Sanitary Landfill. The 1998 mitigated negative declaration describes that the proposed liner system is a requirement of the 1995 solid waste facilities permit, which imposed new regulatory requirements on sanitary landfills like the San Timoteo Sanitary Landfill. The 1998 project proposed to split Cell No. 3 into two additional phases/cells [creating phases No. 3, 4 and 5] with the phases/cells No. 4 & 5 making up part of the previously identified Cell No. 3 area. Other than these changes, no changes to the physical site are proposed that have not been previously analyzed in existing California Environmental Quality Act documents. In 2005, an addendum to the 1998 mitigated negative declaration was prepared to consider a “minor modification’ to the project description as presented in the initial study prepared for the construction of the liner system in Unit 2. To support the 2005 addendum, a biological site evaluation was prepared by an outside consultant. This biological site evaluation reviewed numerous previous studies of the San Timoteo Sanitary Landfill from 1995 to 2004 and included a site survey. The biological site evaluation concluded that no sensitive or listed plant or wildlife species of habitat will be indirectly or directly affected by the expansion of the landfill at the edges into previously undisturbed and disturbed areas. The 2012 mitigated negative declaration primarily addressed site life and maximum daily vehicle and tonnage solid waste facility permit revisions without discussion of the future Cell No. 5 excavation and liner project. Based upon the San Timoteo Sanitary Landfill California Environmental Quality Act documentation in total, it is concluded that the existing California Environmental Quality Act analyses prepared for the San Timoteo Sanitary Landfill, including adherence to the existing mitigation measures is sufficient and no new California Environmental Quality Act analysis is required. [The] Project will be advertised for bids in accordance with section 22037 of the California Public Contract Code. The solid waste management department anticipates returning to the board for an award of contract in September 2019.”
It is estimated that the project will cost anywhere from $18 million to $33 million to complete.
On Tuesday, the board also approved the expenditure of more than $37.5 million for what is referred to as both “routine” and “non-routine” operations, maintenance and monitoring and treatment systems for various county landfills and disposal facilities.
In dual reports, again put together by Blakeslee and Zamora, recommendations were made to provide a $24,014,939.25 contract with Long Beach-based Stearns, Conrad and Schmidt Consulting Engineers, Inc., doing business as SCS Engineers/SCS Field Services, for routine operations, maintenance and monitoring of the landfill gas extraction and treatment systems located at various county landfills and disposal sites and a separate $13,500,000 contract with Stearns, Conrad and Schmidt Consulting Engineers, Inc., Tetra Tech BAS, Inc. of Diamond Bar and Biogas Engineering of Signal Hill for non-routine operations, maintenance and monitoring of the landfill gas extraction and treatment systems and support services located at various county landfills and disposal sites.
Both those contracts are to run July 9, 2019 to June 30, 2024.
According to Blakeslee and Zamora, the services relate to “the landfill gas extraction and treatment systems for the Barstow, Big Bear, Colton, Hesperia, Landers, Mid-Valley, Milliken, San Timoteo and Victorville Sanitary Landfills and Heaps Peak and Yucaipa disposal sites. Services to be provided include, but are not limited to the operation and monitoring requirements set forth in the California Code of Regulations, Title 27, South Coast Air Quality Management District Rule 1150.1 and Rule 431.1, and Mojave Desert Air Quality Management Rule 1126. Review for compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act was conducted by the department of public works environmental management division. It was determined that the activities in the contract are not considered a ‘project’ as defined in Section 15378 of California Environmental Quality Act guidelines and no further environmental analysis is necessary.”
With regard to the routine operations, maintenance and monitoring and treatment systems services contract, a request for proposals was sent to 206 firms through the county’s eProcurement system. On April 2, 2019 a mandatory pre-proposal conference was held and attended by four firms. On April 16, 2019, SCS Field Services of Long Beach submitted a $24,075,505 bid and Tetra Tech BAS of Diamond Bar submitted a $36,171,445 proposal. A selection committee comprised of three representatives from the solid waste management division was assembled to evaluate the written proposals and rank the firms in order of desirability based on the professional qualifications and demonstrated competence for the services required in the request for bids. Oral interviews were not conducted due to there being only two written proposals. After reviewing and ranking the proposals, the selection committee found both firms to meet the minimum qualifications as set forth in the request for proposals. According to Blakeslee and Zamora, “Both firms satisfactorily presented their technical approach to the scope of work and experience with projects of similar nature and size. After a thorough review of the proposals, the selection committee elected to have only one firm perform the work. Based on the two written proposals submitted, SCS ranked first in demonstrating competence for the services required. After recommending SCS, the cost envelopes were opened in accordance with the county’s procurement policy, negotiations were conducted to determine a fair and reasonable cost for the scope of work. Solid waste management division staff, as well as representatives from SCS agreed to a total amount of $24,014,939.25 for the contract for a five-year period.”
The non-routine operations, maintenance and monitoring and treatments systems services contract pertained to dealing with unforeseen events or those occurring irregularly in scope and frequency which would interfere with achieving or maintaining in a timely manner compliance with various federal, state and local regulations at the Barstow, Big Bear, Colton, Hesperia, Landers, Mid-Valley, Milliken, San Timoteo and Victorville sanitary landfills and the Heaps Peak and Yucaipa disposal sites, and as needed maintenance and support services for the county’s disposal system.
A request for proposal was sent to the same 206 firms approached with regard to the routine services contract. On April 2, 2019, a mandatory pre-proposal conference was held and attended by four firms. On April 16, 2019, SCS Field Services, Tetra Tech BAS and Biogas Engineering of Signal Hill submitted proposals. A selection committee evaluated the written proposals and ranked the firms in order of desirability based on the professional qualifications and demonstrated competence to perform the non-routine operations, maintenance and monitoring of the landfill gas extraction and treatment systems services. After reviewing and ranking the proposals, the selection committee found all three firms met the minimum qualifications as set forth, and satisfactorily presented their technical capabilities and experience with projects of similar nature and size. After recommending that all three firms be considered for award of a contract, the selection committee evaluated their respective rate sheets and determined the costs presented were fair and reasonable.
-Mark Gutglueck

Some, though certainly not all, of the questions relating to the disappearance and presumed death of 6-year-old Duke Flores were answered during the July 10 preliminary hearing for Jackee and Jennifer Contreras, Duke’s mother and aunt, respectively, who are accused of killing him.
According to the testimony of San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Detective Narcie Sousa, Jackee Contreras in April said her twin sister Jennifer strangled the boy after he was caught attempting to use a pillow to suffocate his 9-month-old cousin, Jennifer Contreras’s daughter. Sousa indicated that Jackee Contreras made an equivocal acknowledgment of participating in her son’s killing by binding the 6-year-old’s hands during the ordeal.
Duke Flores’ death appears to have occurred on April 14 at the home in the 22000 block of Cherokee Avenue in Apple Valley the sisters shared and where Duke Flores resided. On Thursday, April 25, 2019, after extended family members requested that the sheriff’s department, which serves as the contract police department in Apple Valley, make a welfare check on the child, deputies went to the Contreras residence at approximately 10:06 p.m. When questioned, Jackee Contreras said that she had not seen her son for approximately two weeks. After conducting a search of the area, deputies arrested Jackee Contreras on child neglect charges.  She was later transferred to the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, where she was booked on suspicion of murder. On Saturday, April 27, following interviews with family members, detectives arrested Jennifer Contreras, who was booked for murder, as well. On Monday, April 29,  crews consisting of homicide detectives, sheriff’s deputies sheriff’s department volunteers, landfill personnel and search dogs began searching the Victorville landfill in an effort to find Duke Flores’ body. That search continued on a daily basis until June 21, at which point it was discontinued. The eight-week search concentrated on a specific area of the landfill 75 yards in length, 60 yards in depth and 20 feet in height, during which an estimated 6,500-to-7,000 tons, i.e., 13-to-14 million pounds, of material was searched. The child’s body was not found.
Sousa testified that on April 14 Jackee Contreras told her she and her sister were hanging laundry in the backyard of the house and went into the garage when they heard a disturbance, whereupon they saw Duke standing over his 9-month old cousin, trying to smother her. Jackee said her sister then declared her intent to kill Duke. Thereafter, Jennifer Contreras put a plastic bag over her nephew’s head and Jackee Contreras used another cord to bind her son’s hands. Jennifer used the power cord to strangle the 6-year-old, after which his body was wrapped in a blanket and placed in a plastic bag and buried in a shallow grave in the backyard. When their pit bulls began to dig up the grave, however, the sisters dug the body up on Easter Sunday, and that night used a wagon to transport it some three to four blocks south of their house where they threw the body into a dumpster.
Another detective, Julius McChristian, testified that during an interview with the two sisters, Jennifer Contreras said her sister’s version of events was accurate.
The department used other means of verifying the story, according to testimony and evidence presented at the preliminary hearing. A security video from a  house across the street from where the Contreras sisters lived showed them transporting what appeared to be a body in a wagon on Easter night. Internet searches carried out that day and evening on Duke’s iPad indicate one or both of the sisters were attempting to determine the trash hauling schedule in the local area.
Detective Gary McWilliams testified that the Contreras sisters’ mother,  Ludia Gutierrez, grew suspicious later in April when Duke was not around nd her daughter concocted the unbelievable explanation that Duke had been placed in a mental hospital for observation.

Mireia La Laguna Royo

Alexandra Ivanovskaya

Edymar Martinez Blanco

Toni Garnn

Aoife Walsh

Laritza Párraga

Megan Chesterfield

Short is always good for summer, but long lengths are what’s happening right now. It’s almost a yearly tradition to wear the maxi long dress on a semi-daily basis during the summer months. It’s so much fun to wear them to work. The can look amazing on and add so much comfort. You can look stunning in a long dress with sandals or heels. I’ve noticed some long dresses that are more on the evening side being wrong during the day. Nevertheless, what fun! Some come in patterns but the solid colored ones look great belted or with a hat. Dresses down to the floor are a summer hit right now so be sure to explore this piece before summer ends. It’s all about long for the moment. but trends in California change dramatically. Enjoy!

“Say what you want about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins.” – Mae West

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the July 5 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 07-05-19

Chris Carrillo, who was widely considered to be the odds-on favorite to unseat Dawn Rowe in the race for Third District supervisor in 2020, precipitously withdrew as a candidate last month.
Contacted by the Sentinel, Carrillo asked not to be quoted but confirmed that he was not going to seek election next year, and indicated he would be devoting himself and his time to his family.
Carrillo’s strength as a candidate was multi-fold. He had previously served as James Ramos’s deputy chief of staff when Ramos was Third District supervisor.
Ramos, who was first elected supervisor in 2012 and was reelected in 2016, successfully ran for the California Assembly in the 40th District in 2018. With two years yet remaining on his second term as supervisor when he departed for Sacramento, Ramos had requested his board colleagues consider appointing Carrillo to replace him. Though Supervisor Josie Gonzales was favorably disposed toward Carrillo, supervisors Janice Rutherford, Robert Lovingood and Curt Hagman spurned Ramos in his request. In a particularly pointed show of disrespect toward Ramos, Rutherford, Lovingood and Hagman did not choose to interview Carrillo when they winnowed the field of 48 applicants to what they considered the 13 most serious contenders for the appointment – former Third District Supervisor Dennis Hansberger, Republican Central Committee Chairwoman Jan Leja, Loma Linda Councilman Ron Dailey, former San Bernardino Councilman Tobin Brinker, Barstow Mayor Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre, former Twentynine Palms Mayor James Bagley, former Yucca Valley Councilwoman Dawn Rowe, former Westlake Village Mayor Chris Mann, former Chino Councilman/current Big Bear Councilman William Jahn, then-San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis, former Assemblyman/State Senator Bill Emmerson, former Congressional Candidate Sean Flynn and Loma Linda Mayor Rhodes Rigsby.
This slighting of Carrillo damaged the once friendly relationship between Lovingood and Ramos. Penultimately, the board reduced the field once more to five, including Rigsby, Jahn, Emmerson, Flynn and Rowe. At that point, at Gonzalez’s insistence, the board allowed Carrillo to address them, but Lovingood and Rutherford in particular were so committed to Rowe that they would entertain no other possibility for appointment. Shortly thereafter, Hagman joined with them in advocating for the former Yucca Valley councilwoman. Gonzales, seeing the writing on the wall, voted with her colleagues to appoint Rowe, making the vote unanimous.
Rowe’s appointment featured a heavy partisan element.
Though local offices in California are defined as being nonpartisan ones, in San Bernardino County in particular, party affiliation is of significance in who holds office at both the municipal and county levels, as wells as on the boards of school, fire and water districts. For more than 40 years, San Bernardino County has been a Republican bastion, such that for the last two decades, it has been out of step with the rest of the state, which has grown overwhelmingly Democratic in its orientation, with the Democrats holding a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature, control of the governorship, the state attorney general’s office, and the California Secretary of State’s office. Both of California’ s two U.S. senators are Democrats. Of the 53 members of California’s Congressional Delegation, 46 are Democrats and seven are Republicans. In San Bernardino County, however, currently 16 of its 24 incorporated cities/towns have more Republican members on their councils than Democrats. Four of the five members of the board of supervisors are Republicans. The district attorney is a Republican. The sheriff is a Republican. While the number of registered voters registered as Republicans in San Bernardino County in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and into the first decade of the Third Millennium outran the number of those registered to vote as Democrats, in 2009 the number of registered Democrats in the county eclipsed the number of Republicans. Nonetheless, the GOP has continued to dominate San Bernardino County politically, even as the gap in favor of the Democrats in terms of registered voters has grown. As of this week, of the county’s 969,473 voters, 386,866 or 39.2 percent, are registered Democrats, while 284,380 or 28.8 percent are registered as Republicans. The number of voters with no political party association whatsoever, 252,738 or 25.6 percent, comes close to the number of Republicans, while voters registered with the more obscure parties such as the Peace and Freedom, Libertarian, Green and American Independent account for 6.4 percent of the total. Despite having a four-to-three advantage over the Republicans in the county number-wise, the Democrats have consistently found themselves outhustled and outmaneuvered by their Republican Party counterparts in San Bernardino County. The San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee sports highly motivated, highly coordinated and for the most part cooperative members who make concerted electioneering efforts, appealing to non-affiliated voters and those with the marginalized political parties to persuade them to support Republican candidates. The Republicans have proven more resourceful, energetic and generous in their efforts to raise money and endow the political war chests of Republican candidates than have the Democrats been effective in their support of their party’s candidates. Equally as important, registered Republicans consistently turn out to vote at the polls or through mail-in ballots at a clip nearly one-and-one third greater than Democratic Party-aligned voters in the county.
In the county’s Fifth Supervisorial District, where Democrat Josie Gonzales holds office, the Democrats hold a voter registration advantage approaching 3-to-1 over the Republicans, as 87,602 or 49.1 percent of the district’s 178,293 voters are registered Democrats and 32,744 or 18.4 percent are registered Republicans. In the Fourth District, Republicans, with 47,981 or 25.7 percent of the district’s voters, lag significantly behind Democrats, with 78,270 registered voters or 41.9 percent. Despite that, Curt Hagman, a Republican, is supervisor. In the Second District, which a generation ago was at the epicenter of the region’s rising tide of Republicanism, Democrats have opened up a significant lead over Republicans in terms of voter registration numbers, with Democrats claiming 82,777 party affiliates, or 38.4 percent, against the 64,448 Republicans, or 30.4 percent. Still the same, Janice Rutherford, a Republican, is county supervisor in the Second District. Only in the county’s First District do the Republicans have more voters registered than the Democrats, as the Grand Old Party’s 64,448 voters – 33.7 percent – outnumber the 33.3 percent, or 63,734, who are Democrats. Robert Lovingood, a Republican, rules the roost there as county supervisor.
As late as last year, the Republicans yet held a lead – a very slim one – over the Democrats in terms of voter registration in the county’s Third District. The Third District is the county’s most diverse district, consisting of the heavily urbanized metropolitan area entailing east San Bernardino and Redlands, the foothill community of Highland, while extending into the somewhat unique communities of Grand Terrace and Loma Linda, the rustic communities of Yucaipa, Mentone and Oak Glen, the mountain community of Big Bear and the desert cities of Barstow, Twentynine Palms and the town of Yucca Valley. Redlands was for a century a major cultural and social center and the home of the county’s Republican political machine. Within the last nine months, the Democrats have inched ahead of the Republicans in terms of voter registration in the Third District. Those numbers now stand at 74,483 voters or 34.7 percent for the Democrats to the Republicans’ 73,759 voters or 34.4 percent.
In 2012, James Ramos, who was at that time the chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, used his personal wealth and that of his tribe’s members to promote his candidacy for Third District supervisor. The tribe’s San Manuel Casino was by that time, as it remains, one of the most successful economic engines in the area. Ramos’s demonstrated willingness to fuel his candidacy with as much money as would be required for him to win, coupled with a rare internecine Republican Party dispute between then-incumbent Third District Supervisor Neil Derry and his predecessor as supervisor, Dennis Hansberger, who was a primary figure in the Redlands Republican Political Machine, led to a faction of the Republican Party withdrawing its support of Derry. In this way, Ramos, a Democrat with the support of a fragment of the Third District’s Republican base, ousted Derry as Third District supervisor in 2012, elevating Ramos to the vaunted position of supervisor. He handily won reelection in 2016 against the poorly-financed Donna Muñoz, a Morongo Valley resident.
It appears that Ramos felt that the mandates he had as a result of his elections in the Third District in 2012 and 2016 gave him, if not outright appointive power to choose his replacement to fill out that last two years of his term as supervisor when he departed to Sacramento to take up his newly elected post in the Assembly, then at least a voice in the selection process that should have been given careful consideration. When the board of supervisors undertook to carry out a recruitment effort to replace Ramos late last year – a process that was rigged from the outset in that both Lovingood and Rutherford were committed ahead of time to ensuring Rowe’s selection and Hagman, as a Republican, was fated toward supporting the consensus of his party colleagues on the board –  what was essentially a sham examination process was carried out in which the 48 applicants were reduced to 13, only one of whom – Dailey – was a Democrat, despite the consideration that 22 of those who applied were Democrats.
Ultimately, after Rowe was selected, it was suggested that Rowe might be able to ameliorate the affront to Ramos by reaching across aisle and naming Carrillo as her chief of staff. She did not do so, for among other reasons that she considers his Democratic Party-affiliation to be antithetical to her governance formula.
Carrillo, a member of the East Valley Water District Governing Board, almost at once began preparations for the 2020 Third District supervisor contest.  An attorney, his father is a wealthy licensed contractor/developer associated with the San Manuel Indian Tribe. With James Ramos in Sacramento, a Democratic town in the heartland of the Democratic Party, it was assumed that massive amounts of money would be coming Carrillo’s way, if not directly into his campaign fund, then to independent expenditure committees supporting him, which could sidestep the $4,400 individual contribution limit members of the board of supervisors several years ago imposed on themselves.
It thus appeared that Carrillo was cruising toward a showdown with Rowe in 2020 that he would have in all likelihood win.
As word spread last month that Carrillo was opting out of the race, suspicion at once fell upon the bevy of dirty tricksters who surround Rowe.
Before her appointment, Rowe had reportedly acceded to the position of chief of staff with Congressman Paul Cook, after serving on Cook’s Congressional staff and his staff while he was a member of the California Legislature. Upon her appointment as supervisor, Rowe hired as staffers two Republican Party political operatives – Matt Knox and Dillon Lesovsky – whose reputations as political hitmen proceed them. The most recent high profile example of their work is the “Dirty Donnelly” website that was utilized to blast a hole below one-time Assemblyman Tim Donnelly’s waterline after he placed second in the 2018 primary race in California’s 8th Congressional District, qualifying him for a runoff against Cook in November 2018.
The website, Dirty Donnelly.com, utilized doctored photos to paint Donnelly in the most negative of light, and alleging that he had a criminal record, was scamming senior citizens, had deserted his family, had engaged in “political fraud,” stole from his own wife and was unemployed. In violation of state law, the website had no identifying California Fair Political Practices registration number, a circumstance which was paralleled by signs attacking Donnelly that the pair were posting which did not bear the indicia required under California law for campaign signs and materials to show what entity, organization, committee or campaign paid for the materials. The anti-Donnelly campaign carried out by Knox and Lesovsky, which involved threads of fact interwoven into a tapestry of misstatements, exaggeration and overstatement, proved highly effective, as Cook trounced Donnelly in the November 6 election 108,414 votes or 60 percent to 68,370 votes or 40 percent.
After reports surfaced to indicate that Rowe had hired Knox and Lesovsky as members of her supervisorial staff and had given them license to engineer her 2020 election campaign from their county offices, Rowe, pointedly, did not move to squelch those reports. This was widely perceived as an effort to ward off opposition next year. Suggestions were that messages had been conveyed to Carrillo, threatening him with treatment similar to that accorded to Donnelly last year, inducing him to discontinue his pursuit of the Third District supervisorial seat.
Carrillo’s departure from the race may have a wider implication.
Last year, prior to Rowe’s ascension to the board, the county board of supervisors in a controversial 3-to-2 vote, with supervisors Lovingood and Rutherford dissenting, placed the entirety of the county’s unincorporated areas into a fire service assessment zone that was initially formed more than a decade ago to fund the provision of fire service in the county’s Silverlakes and Helendale districts. That action, which impacted more than 94 percent of the county’s 20,105-square mile expanse, involved the imposition of $157 per parcel yearly assessments on all property owners in that 19,000-square mile area. Those now hit with the assessments were not given an opportunity to approve the new tax being levied upon them, which triggered widespread anger and legal challenges. Mindful of the approaching 2020 election, Rowe has signaled what she represents as her disapproval of the expansion of the assessment district, known as FS-5. Given that both Rutherford and Lovingood are on record against the assessments being layered onto property owners without their approval, the inference has been drawn by many that the expansion of FS-5 might be rescinded and that the county will seek some other funding mechanism for the county fire district. That has not been fully committed to, however. Nevertheless, the Third District is host to the second largest, after the First District, expanse of unincorporated county land. Rowe appears to be courting the voters in those areas by tantalizing them with the suggestion that she might give them a reprieve from the FS-5 assessment.
Now, however, with Carrillo no longer running and Rowe unlikely to face a stiff challenge in 2020, her need to appeal to those landowners in her district’s unincorporated areas has subsided somewhat, meaning she is now much less likely to push for the rescission of the FS-5 assessments.
Two prospects for removing Rowe as Third District supervisor yet exist, consisting of legal challenges filed in the aftermath of Rowe’s appointment by the board of supervisors. One of those was filed by Ruth Musser-Lopez and the other by Inland Empire United. Both of those lawsuits maintain that the board of supervisors did not follow the proper protocol in appointing Rowe and had violated the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law, in making its choice. The Musser-Lopez and Inland Empire United challenges are based on the same set of facts and make the same legal arguments. Both assert that the board violated the Ralph M. Brown Act by voting in secret on December 10, 2018, when each supervisor lodged his or her individual choices with the clerk of the board instead of taking a public vote to winnow a field of 48 eligible candidates down to 13 candidates, thus failing to properly agendize that action. It was on the following day that the board interviewed the 13 candidates and narrowed the list further to five “finalists” but not before Musser-Lopez publicly accused them of violating the Brown Act in doing so. Two days later a special meeting to appoint the winner was postponed as a result of a written challenge and a “Brown Act Demand to Cure and Correct” letter sent by Musser-Lopez.
Five days later on December 18, 2018, at a regular meeting of the board, Dawn Rowe was appointed during an agenda item referenced “Selection of Third District Supervisor” at which time the board rescinded the list of 13 and the list of five finalists, mentioning in the background information contained within the report relating to the item that was contained in the meeting’s agenda packet the need to “mitigate public concern with regard to the process,” but failing to reference on the agenda the actual Musser-Lopez demand letter received five days prior or giving direct notice that it was to be deliberated and acted upon.
Thirty days after she lodged the complaint with the board, Musser-Lopez filed a mandamus petition with the court within what she believed was the statutorily required filing period on January 22, 2019. Nevertheless, on June 19 Judge Janet Frangie dismissed the Musser-Lopez petition, finding it to be “untimely” for having been filed more than 15 days after she received a notice of board action sent to her from County Counsel Michelle D. Blakemore. On July 1, Musser-Lopez filed a motion for reconsideration requesting the court to invalidate Blakemore’s correspondence as amounting to “fraudulent concealment” of the fact that the board had not taken lawful action with regard to her December 11-13, 2018 communications. She said that if the Blakemore letter is not invalidated as a “notice of decision,” then the court’s determination amounts to a confirmation that the board took action without putting her Brown Act complaint on the agenda, which is thus tantamount to another Brown Act violation and a breach of her First Amendment rights to redress the board. “No one could have guessed that my Brown Act demand letter was the subject of the agenda item titled ‘Selection of Third District Supervisor.’ The complaint letter was not included in the background information and the public was never given valid notice or an opportunity to be heard with regard to it. Now the court is saying that the board made a decision? Well, making a decision on an item not on the agenda is another violation of the Brown Act. There is no evidence that the board ever directed county counsel to send notice or that there had been deliberation or a decision with regard to the specific and particular challenges actually in my letter.” The motion for reconsideration is scheduled for a hearing on August 7
Musser-Lopez intends to take the matter up on appeal and file another Brown Act claim at the same time to cover both bases.
Meanwhile, the Inland Empire United petition was filed within 15 days after the Blakemore correspondence was sent and was not dismissed on the issue of timeliness, but the court has yet to make a determination based on the merits of the claim. A ruling is anticipated on that suit on August 5.
In both cases, the court is asked to determine that the appointment of Dawn Rowe should be invalidated as it was based upon a process that was in violation of the Brown Act and that the “ceremonial” rescinding of the list of 13 interviewees and five finalists did not cure or correct the illegal acts.
-Mark Gutglueck

Bilal Essayli’s tenure as San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia’s chief of staff has ended, after six months of a relatively successful but sometimes chaotic power transition.
What, precisely, led to Essayli’s departure was unclear, as both he and Valdivia resisted making any public utterances once it became public that Essayli was to leave.
The timing of Essayli’s exit added to the confusion, as it comes after a series of advances for Valdivia in terms of his consolidation of power but also shortly after the emergence of what may yet prove to be the most daunting challenge to Valdivia’s mayoralty, consisting of a recurrence of the financial crisis that felled San Bernardino’s last two mayors.
A child of Lebanese-American immigrants,  Essayli was raised in Corona and graduated from Centennial High School there. He obtained his law degree from Chapman University School of Law and passed the California bar in 2010. He obtained a position as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Riverside Branch Office, where he garnered some minor notoriety in trying cases against drug traffickers, the prosecution effort against the associates of the perpetrators of the December 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack and led the prosecution of a Santa Barbara doctor unlawfully prescribing opiates. Restricted by the Hatch Act, Essayli left the U.S. Attorney’s Office to vie in 2018 for the Assembly in California’s 60th District, which encompasses the northwestern corner of Riverside County, including Corona, Coronita, Eastvale, El Cerrito, Home Gardens, Jurupa Valley, Norco and a portion of Riverside. Essayli, a Republican, used rhetoric that was sharply critical of Democrats to advance to the general election on November 6, 2018 with a second-place finish in the June primary, but was handily defeated by Democrat Sabrina Cervantes 67,950 votes or 54.1 percent to 57,710 votes or 45.9 percent in a district in which voter registration is 39.51 percent Democratic to 31.58 percent Republican.
Essayli took a position with the Irvine-based law firm Pacheco & Neach, where he was considered of counsel, a status usually reserved for attorneys with decades of experience who are in a near-retired or retired state.
While in that status, Essayli was free to serve as Valdivia’s chief of staff.
Valdivia represents a noteworthy political paradox. Elected to the position of Third Ward councilman in 2011 largely on the strength of the support of the city’s firefighters union that was in opposition to then-incumbent Tobin Brinker because of Brinker’s assessment that overly generous salaries and pensions to the city’s employees were threatening the city’s financial viability, Valdivia was in office for only five months when the city filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. The city remained in bankruptcy for just short of five years, stiffing its creditors, vendors and those to whom it was in arrears for $350 million over that timeframe. In the meantime, Patrick Morris, who was the mayor in 2012, was replaced by a certified public accountant, Carey Davis, as mayor. While many had hopes that Davis would infuse the city with the fiscal discipline needed to right the city’s listing financial ship, that did not come about as the city continued its profligate spending, largely because of a failure to rein in high salaries and extravagant pension benefits to city employees. One reform Davis managed to push through, against Valdivia’s wishes, was a redrafting of the city’s original 1905 charter. The previous charter had instilled in the mayor relatively broad political control which did not feature an ability to routinely vote but did give him veto power on 4-to-3 and 3-to-2 votes of the council, which was tantamount to two actual votes on the seven-council member panel. In addition, the mayor under the 1905 charter had the ability to hire and fire personnel, which made the mayor along with the city manager a co-regent of the city. In 2016, Davis, in conjunction with a wide range of others, pushed for the charter redraft, which took from the mayor the administrative clout the position once possessed, in the main the ability to hire and fire employees. Valdivia, who at that point already had designs on the mayoralty for himself, opposed the change. The city’s voters, however, endorsed the charter rewrite.
The new charter also pushed the city’s municipal elections from odd-numbered to even-numbered years. Valdivia was elected mayor in the city’s first even-numbered year election cycle last year in large measure based upon his identity as a Hispanic candidate in a city where 72 percent of the population and 57 percent of those voting are Latino. Some Valdivia campaign literature sent to Democratic voters dwelt on the consideration that Davis was a Republican, which proved effective, since 47.9 percent of the city’s voters are Democrats and 22.5 percent are Republicans. Conveniently sidestepped was that Valdivia was himself a Republican.
Valdivia came into office holding a grudge against then-City Manager Andrea Travis-Miller, who had maneuvered behind the scenes during the 2018 election to support Davis. As early as the day the new members of the council were sworn into office, December 19, an effort was afoot to fire Travis-Miller. Valdivia had the support of the two newly elected members of the council in the 1st and 2nd wards, Ted Sanchez and Sandra Ibarra, both of whom were elected with the assistance Valdivia’s political machine. Valdivia had two other presumed allies on the council, Councilman Henry Nickel and councilwoman Bessine Richard. The move to jettison Travis-Miller that early, however, was complicated by a section of the city code and contractual requirements that mandated a 60-day lag between the election or seating in of a new council member and the firing of the city manager. Moreover, Nickel and Richard were reluctant to rush toward such an eventuality.
There ensued an awkward four-month duration during which Valdivia and those in his camp were pressing ever harder to undo those elements of the new city charter which reduced the mayor’s authority. This entailed beefing up the division of staff employees assigned to serve as liaisons to the city council and mayor. Valdivia, at one point was seeking to have his staff expanded to as many as 14. There was inevitable pushback on this from the two members of the council most at odds with Valdivia, Councilman James Mulvihill and Councilman Fred Shorett. On a number of occasions, Shorett had raucous public run-ins and Essayli and Valdvia with regard to fleshing out the mayor’s staff.
When Nickel expressed reluctance to endow the mayor with the substantial staff Valdivia was seeking, Valdivia’s effort to consolidate his control over the council was temporarily suspended, as it appeared the alliance between Valdivia and Nickel might end.
With Essayli playing a key role behind the scenes, three votes to suspend Travis Miller materialized – those of Richard, Ibarra and Sanchez. When Shorett, Mulvihill and Nickel opposed that, Valdivia used his tie-breaking authority to put Travis-Miller on paid administrative leave. In May, the vacant Ward 3 council position was filled with a candidate backed by the Valdivia political machine, Juan Figueroa. At that point the council featured four candidates it was believed to be solidly behind Valdivia – Ibarra, Richard, Sanchez and Figueroa – giving the mayor a virtual lock on policy decisions going forward. Nickel, faced with political irrelevancy by remaining in opposition to Valdivia, returned to the fold, giving Valdivia unquestioned dominion over the city.
The most immediate manifestation of Valdivia’s newfound grip on the political situation in San Bernardino was a vote by the council majority – Ibarra, Sanchez, Richard, Nickel and Figueroa – to cashier Travis-Miller. The ostensible reason for unloading Travis-Miller was her ineffectual handling of the city’s finances. She had been hired into the city manager’s position in 2017, just two months after the city had emerged from bankruptcy. A year-and-a-half later, the city was in a circumstance in which expenditures on an annual basis were outrunning revenue by more than $11 million. While that figure was significantly less than the $49 million operating deficit the city was faced with in 2012 just prior to its Chapter 9 filing, Travis-Miller had been less than forthcoming in presenting the dreary financial picture to the council, partially in hope of a turnaround manifesting prior to the close of fiscal year 2018-19.
Yet, in relieving Travis-Miller of her command over city staff, the city council had not taken any action toward confronting in a practical way the financial wolves baying at the city’s door. Prognostications, based on the best figures available, indicated that the city was again on a slippery slope moving headlong toward, in the best scenario, a second bankruptcy, and in a more dire reading of the circumstance, toward disincorporation of the city altogether if the bankruptcy court should come to a determination that the city has demonstrated, after skipping out on more than $350 million in debt once, an inability to make the necessary financial reforms to maintain itself as a going concern. Without a drastic shift in the city’s focus and approach, the best Valdivia might hope to achieve is staving off a second bankruptcy until after his term ends in 2023. In any case, he recognized, bankruptcy would not only ruin his mayoralty as had happened to Morris and Davis before him, but dash any hope of his political future. The reality facing Valdivia, however, was that personnel costs in the city entailed in excess of 91 percent of the city’s budget. Moreover, the prospect for a significant enough enhancement in revenue coming into the city to fill the void between money available to pay the city’s bills and the city’s actual expenditures was, based on all past performance, so dim as to be nonexistent. The only hope Valdivia has for political survival at this point is to absolutely reverse the wave he first rode into office on in 2011 when he pledged to the city’s firefighters that he would ensure that their high salaries and benefits would not be touched, and either convince the city’s current workforce to voluntarily take pay cuts in the 20 percent to 30 percent range or show the requisite mettle to have the city impose those salary and benefit reductions unilaterally or otherwise effectuate cost savings by massive layoffs.
Valdivia, Essayli and the rest of his political team then hatched a bold move which was intended to set the stage for across-the-board 25 percent pay cuts within the San Bernardino municipal workforce. The charter revision passed in 2016 had transformed the city attorney and city clerk positions from elected to appointed ones. Last year, the bulk of City Attorney Gary Saenz’s staff, including four assistant or deputy city attorneys, had been displaced in favor of a contractual arrangement with the law firm of Best Best & Krieger for the provision of legal services. Ultimately, upon the expiration of Saenz’s elected term as city attorney at the end of March 2020, Best  Best & Krieger will move into the role of city attorney. Similarly, City Clerk Georgeann Hanna’s tenure in her elected post is to end at the close of March 2020, at which point it is anticipated an appointed city clerk will take command of that office. As an object demonstration of the current regime’s intent to bring municipal personnel costs into line with the city’s revenues, Valdivia and Essayli last month placed before the city council a proposal to reduce by 45.8 percent the compensation Saenz is to receive during the nine months of 2019-2020 that he will remain in office and to further reduce the compensation Hanna is to receive during the remaining duration of her tenure by 59.2 percent. Ultimately, at a specially-called city council meeting on June 11, the council voted 4-to-2, with Councilman Jim Mulvihill absent, to ratify the compensation reductions as proposed. Thus, Saenz, who was being provided with $246,266 in total annual compensation as city attorney, including salary, benefits and add-ons, has seen the amount of pay he is to receive between July 1, 2019 and March 31, 2020 reduced from $184,700 to $100,000. Hanna, who was receiving $171,466 in total annual compensation as city clerk, including salary, benefits and add-ons, is now seeing her compensation over the same nine-month span reduced from $128,600 to $52,500,
Downsizing Saenz’ and Hanna’s pay was intended as a prelude to an effort that will call upon city employees to voluntarily reduce their paychecks by 25 percent. The gameplan is to start with San Bernardino municipal employees whose functions are not deemed critical who refuse to voluntarily accept reductions in pay and either lay them off or eliminate their positions entirely. Those employees who hold positions that are indispensable to the city’s operations will be kept in place if they willingly take the pay reductions asked of them. Those who do not will remain in place only long enough for contract employees to be substituted into their places. A critical element of the plan is to get Teri Ledoux, who had been the assistant city manager under Travis-Miller and who was elevated to the post of acting city manager when Travis-Miller was suspended, to agree to accept a salary and benefit package that is roughly two-thirds of what Travis-Miller was provided.
Miller pulled down $307,941.56 in total compensation on a yearly basis, consisting of her $262,542.50 annual salary and $45,399.06 in annual benefits.  Thus, it is surmised, the council will offer Ledoux $175,028.34 in annual salary, coupled with $30,770.61 in benefits. If Ledoux, who is currently being paid $172,000 per year in total compensation, were to accept this arrangement, it would leave her with the situational and moral authority to ask the rest of the city’s workforce to voluntarily take 25 percent pay cuts. On July 17, a closed-door negotiating session between the council and Ledoux is scheduled to take place. If during that exchange she expresses a willingness  to accept a total annual compensation package in the $205,000 range and take on the assignment of reducing city employee salaries by 25 percent, the city manager’s job is hers. If she balks at those terms, Valdivia will seek to have the council undertake a search for a city manager willing to accept that assignment at the reduced paygrade.
A perhaps inadvertent and certainly unanticipated offshoot of the June 11 specially-called meeting to kickoff the salary reduction effort with the clipping of Saenz’s and Hanna’s pay was that Ibarra, who was widely seen as a steadfastly reliable member of the Valdivia team, parted company from Valdivia over the pay reduction issue. During the debate on the matter, Ibarra offered a contrary motion which called for keeping Saenz’s and Hanna’s remuneration intact and instead eliminating Essayli’s chief-of-staff position. Ibarra’s defection is of larger significance than her single vote on the seven-member council. Should her move toward the positions held by Shorett and Mulvihill persist, the dynamics would return to the circumstance that existed before Figueroa’s election to the council in May, when Nickel sided with Shorett and Mulvihill to block several of Valdivia’s and Essayli’s initiatives. With Richard, Sanchez and Figueroa on one side and Shorett, Mulvihill and Ibarra on the other, Nickel’s vote becomes a potential deciding factor in how many items to be considered by the council will play out. In numerous such circumstances in the past, Nickel has defied expectations to exercise power that under normal conditions his role of casting one vote among seven does not afford him.
Whether Ibarra’s show of independence and her move to essentially fire Essayli had an impact on Essayli’s decision to move on is unknown, as neither he nor Valdvia have deigned to address that specifically or Essayli’s departure in general.
Of Essayli’s leaving, Councilman Shorett said, “My belief is he was not the right fit for San Bernardino from the beginning. I wish him well in whatever he is going to do now. My understanding was the relationship between him and John [Valdivia] was something that grew out of their both vying for election at the same time last year, and the Republican money that was involved in both of their campaigns. He lost in the 60th [Assembly District] and they were introduced through a common fundraiser who worked on both of their campaigns. I don’t know the details, but their connection had a lot to do with the Republican Party.”
Shorett said that Valdivia indicated he and Essayli had “parted on good terms, but I don’t accept that. He left because he wanted to. I believe, and it’s just my belief, that Essayli may have been seeing things about John he didn’t like. He’s a lawyer with maybe a political future and he’s being cautious by disengaging from Valdivia while he can.”
Shorett said, “John has put out he is in the course of interviewing four people to replace him [Essayli]. It was John’s initiative to create this chief-of-staff position under the new charter. Well, I’m going to take it as my initiative to eliminate that position. We don’t need a chief of staff. I can tell you I will be working hard to eliminate that out of our budget and not support it financially.”
Continuing, Shorett said, “As a group, the council and the mayor, we are a legislative body. John talked about and Essayli talked about being an executive. Well, the mayor is not an executive, not under the new charter. The new charter does not require the mayor to have a lot of impact on or responsibility for day-to-day operations. He is, and I accept that he is, the spokesman for the city council. But he is not the spokesman for the city. He should be part of the legislative body working together to set policy for the city. He doesn’t need an entourage to do that. In addition to the chief of staff he has these three bogus field reps. I don’t need any field reps. That’s why I’m elected. I’m the field rep for the Fourth Ward. I don’t need a field rep to go to meetings for me. I’ll go to the meetings myself. If somehow I can’t make it, I’ll have one of my council colleagues go for me.”
Nickel said of Essayli’s departure, “It wasn’t a surprise. He has been talking about moving on for a while, over the last couple of weeks. I know it has just become public now. People move on, obviously. He was a prosecutor who ran for office. He left his post as a government employee when he ran for office. I have been there and done that. Running for office is disruptive to your life in general and your career. Immediately after going through the process it takes a while to get recalibrated. At this point he may have opportunities in terms of offers from a law firm.”
Asked if Essayli’s leaving would disrupt the function at City Hall, Nickel said “I don’t think so. He was part of our building process. He is a former prosecutor who knows how to ask tough questions. He was investigating things that quite honestly needed to be investigated and he did a decent job. There were a lot of things brought to light I suspect we never would have known about that we learned of because of his work. The council recently has made decisions based by and large on the work he did, bringing to light things we weren’t aware of.”
Councilman Ted Sanchez said of Essayli, “He left on good terms. When he started we did not expect he would stay very long. He came here just after the new council was in place. We and the mayor understood what he was being asked to do was make sure the mayor could do what he was trying to do, which was to get the train on the right track. Once the heavy lifting was done, he was going to be gone. We knew after the election we would have some serious opposition. We finally had a mayor from the south side. We had two people on the council who would not appreciate the new mayor or the people in the mayor’s circle. We knew his [Essayli’s] time would be limited. He managed to get us through the first budget.”
Moreover, Essayli “found a way to make city staff accountable for the decisions they are making,” Sanchez said. “He was able to get a budget passed. Staff was well aware there was an $11 million deficit. We ran into that much later than we should have basically because the staff was actively hiding it. They had made policy decisions that pertain to our budget and fiscal integrity, and lots of things were kept from us. This was my first time on the council, my first term in office, and when I came in, I was stunned. The atmosphere was ‘Okay, you just sit back and approve everything put in front of you.’ When the council started to assert itself, we were accused of micromanaging. That was because all of the authority had been taken away from the council. The staff had taken over. Bilal Essayli came in and asked some very tough questions. He then asked us if we knew about this $11 million deficit. He brought it to our attention. Staff would have continued to move numbers around in such a way that without him, this would not have come to light.”
Sanchez said, “With this new mayor we now know what staff is doing. We have a new city manager in place. I think we are seeing a new trend. We have to remain aware of everything that is going on in the city. The previous city manager was selectively providing information and large elements of the budget were actively hidden from us. Keeping us, the council, in the dark no longer works in our city.  Before, too many decisions were made by staff and the council was expected to just rubberstamp everything put in front of us. The new mayor and the new council did not believe that was how things were supposed to work. We have in place staff members who are willing to work with the council in executing its vision of what is best for the city. Those that don’t believe that is how the city should be run are no longer with us. The city council is again in charge. In the past the role of the mayor and the city council was abdicated to the staff. The policy of the city was being dictated by staff. There has been a giant reset in the first six months that we have been here. You can credit much of that to Bilal Essayli.”
-Mark Gutglueck