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Sentinel 08-09-19

By Mark Gutglueck
Discontent over the City of San Bernardino’s approval of the placement of a county welfare office in a residential neighborhood hit a crescendo this week. With both the processing of the project application and the project description marred by incomplete or misleading language, a significant number residents of San Bernardino’s Muscupiabe District already upset at the prospect of being saddled with what they consider to be an incompatible use in their neighborhood expressed suspicion that city officials may have deliberately misled them about the nature of the project to minimize opposition at a critical earlier point when the project’s approval could have possibly been prevented.
It now appears that the politically well-connected developer, who has already laid out millions of dollars to move the project along to its initial construction phase and who has secured financing to proceed with millions of dollars more in bringing the project to fruition, will, if the approval of the project is rescinded, embroil the city in litigation that would result in the city potentially being on the hook for at least $14 million, the value of the county’s lease on the building.
At the board of supervisors’ last meeting in 2017, held on December 19 of that year, the board was presented with a recommendation from the county’s director of real estate services, Terry Thompson, and the director of the county’s transitional services department, Gilbert Ramos, that the county enter into a $14,036,184 lease agreement with 27th Street TAD, LLC, for approximately 38,150 square feet of office space to be located at the northwest corner of 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive in San Bernardino, also described as Assessor Parcel No. (APN) 0148-021-66-0000, for occupancy by the transitional assistance department for the ten-year period beginning August 1, 2019 and running through July 31, 2029.
The transitional assistance department, which is sometimes referred to by its acronym TAD, provides a wide array of federal and state-mandated social services and income assistance programs to the residents of San Bernardino County, particularly those whose loss of jobs or income has put them at risk of becoming, or has rendered them, homeless.
A principal in 27th Street TAD, LLC is Scott Beard. For a generation, Beard has been a major player in development and property ownership circles active in the Central and Eastern Valleys of San Bernardino County, particularly the cities of Rialto and San Bernardino. As a consequence, he has been a major donor to the political campaigns of elected officials at the municipal and county level.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, the approval of the 38,150-square foot building at the northwest corner of 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive was considered and given go-ahead not by the city’s planning commission or the city council, but by the city’s development and environmental review committee, consisting of various members of city staff, primarily department heads and those from the community and economic development department.
At the county level the project was clearly defined as what it was – a building to house an office of the transitional assistance department, a division of the San Bernardino County Department of Human Services, referred to by some as the welfare department. At the internal city level, the project was also defined as being intended for use as a transitional assistance department office, but at one stage the city utilized an architect’s description line on a rendering for the building which substituted “resources” for services in the heading human services. This changed the implication to suggest that the building was intended to house the county’s human resources or personnel department.
A second misnomer unrelated to the blurring of services/resources nuances occurred when in the disclosure notifications to the residents living in proximity to the project, the building was referred to in the planning profession jargon as “office professional,” which in common parlance was taken to mean the structure would be a professional office building, which rubric, technically, a transitional services office falls within. Ultimately, however, a significant segment of the populace, including many people living within the Muscupiabe District were unaware of the actual intended occupant of the building.
There had been nevertheless, numerous public indications that the transitional services department would occupy the building. The January 5, 2018 edition of the Sentinel, for example, featured a front page article in which the county approval of the lease for the yet-to-be-completed building was referenced, together with the description of the project location at the northwest corner of 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive, along with the assessor’s parcel number.
While the intent of both the county and 27th Street TAD, LLC was for the building to be completed by late June or early July of this year so that it would be certified for occupancy by the first of this month, there were delays. It was only relatively recently that local residents took stock of the situation as construction got underway, and word spread throughout the surrounding neighborhoods that a “welfare office” was being erected at West 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive.
When City Hall was inundated with complaints, city officials posited the hurried and not fully thought-through defense that they were under the impression the building was to host a county human resources center, which was something of a prevarication.
Meanwhile, the anger and dissatisfaction of the residents of the Muscupiabe District were festering. The Muscupiabe neighborhood is nestled between the triangular intersection of the 210 freeway and 215 freeway in northwestern San Bernardino. A historic neighborhood, Muscupiabe’s entryway features large pepper trees and medium size homes, some of impressive architectural character.
The project, which actually lies within he city’s Second Ward, is very close to the confluence of wards Two, Five and Six, represented by council members Sandra Ibarra, Henry Nickel and Bessine Richard, respectively. Ibarra was not elected to the council until November 2018 and did not take office until December, by which time the project was approved by the city.
In recent weeks, Councilman Henry Nickel has emerged as the member of the council most animated about the pending project, and the one militating most heavily on behalf of the residents who have recently been galvanized against allowing the project, as it was approved, to proceed. Indeed, statements Nickel has made have been construed to imply that the county should be forced to utilize the building as a human resources center.
Nickel’s stance with regard to the project has, on multiple levels, provoked consternation within the county, which has $14 million riding on the project’s completion. First and foremost, the city in November gave final go-ahead to the project. Second, Nickel is a county employee. Third, Nickel is employed specifically as an analyst with the County of San Bernardino Workforce Development Board, a position that would very likely have clued him in to any project that would have involved the creation of a county human resources center, had there actually been plans for such a project. Moreover, Bessine Richard, the councilwoman in the Sixth District, which is a stone’s throw from the project site, has for three years been the manager of the County of San Bernardino Workforce Development Board and was for two years and eight months before that a supervisor on the County of San Bernardino Workforce Development Board’s staff. She, too, would have undoubtedly been aware of any county human resources center being built in San Bernardino.
At the August 7 Wednesday night San Bernardino City Council meeting, the first held at the newly established meeting chambers at the Norman Feldheym Library, Nickel asserted that on August 4 he had been provided with documents a constituent had obtained through a California Public Records request relating to the approval of the project which described it as a “human resources facility.” Pointing out that the applicant on the project was not the county but rather a private developer, 27th Street TAD, LLC, Nickel made a motion to “direct our city manager to issue immediately a stop work order on this project and take appropriate corrective action.” That motion was seconded by Ibarra, but before a vote was taken a discussion ensued in which Councilman Fred Shorett said, “I empathize and understand the concerns of the community.” Nevertheless, he said, “I think we’re setting ourselves up for some real trouble if we stop this,” indicating that he believed a stop work order would trigger litigation from Beard. Shorett said the situation presented the council with a “real conundrum.” City Manager Teri Ledoux said she had directed staff to “gather documentation and go over it with the city’s legal department,” indicating that issuing a stop work order might be premature at this point. “We’re certainly not ready to talk about it this evening,” she said.
Former City Attorney James Penman, speaking earlier as a member of the public,  said, “The city needs to preserve the status quo and freeze the situation. You protect the city from liability by issuing a stop work order. You also protect the developer, because he doesn’t continue to build and spend money.”
Penman said Beard would continue with the project based on the permits that were issued, whether they were lawfully issued or not. “You have to preserve the city’s position,” Penman told the council. “You have to stop and freeze everything in order that you can do a proper investigation to determine what happened. If you don’t issue the stop work order, the developer continues to build and acquires vested rights. Later [when] the residents get a writ of mandate and make him stop, he is going to sue the city for allowing him to continue to build and spend money. It’s a Catch-22 situation.”
Ibarra attempted to usher the council toward action before Beard proceeds with actual building activity beyond the grading he has done so far. Ibarra asserted that the nearby property owners “were misled by the notices they received in October. I think it is fair that we ask that property owner to apply for a conditional use permit and allow for a public hearing allowing the residents who are going to be greatly affected by what’s going to happen with that project being put up in their neighborhood.”
She said Beard had opposed a social services office being built across the street from his office in Rialto because of how it would negatively impact property values in that area. “But then he’s doing this to our city, right across from the only and last good neighborhood I have in the Second Ward,” she said. “We were highly misled. I don’t know how it goes from a human services building to a human resources admin building. The traffic is going to change drastically in that neighborhood. There is a preschool across the street and maybe two or three blocks over is Davidson Elementary, so a traffic study is needed. If he can apply for a conditional use permit the right way as it should have been, I have no objection, but it has to be done the proper way, noticing the residents in that area properly as well, not changing one word or a typographical error. That is unacceptable. We’re talking about litigation.”
Short of the council having the city manager slap Beard with a stop work order, Councilman Jim Mulvihill suggested that Beard be prevailed upon to voluntarily impose on himself a “good faith stop work order.”
City Attorney Sonia Carvalho cautioned the council against imposing a stop work order on Beard after the city had given him approval to proceed with the construction of the building. She advised the council that it could yet seek to impose on his tenant – the county – the need to obtain a conditional use permit to operate a social services office at that location. Putting Beard and his tenant on notice that the transitional services facility may not meet the city’s codes and standards could potentially give the city the leverage to head off the eventuality of the operation setting up at that location.
Sensing that there was not will on the council to move ahead with the stop work order, Nickel made a motion that the city council direct Ledoux and city staff to proceed with the ongoing investigation and in one week, on August 14 at 5 p.m. report its findings back to the city council.
The following day, the Muscupiabe and Blair Park Neihborhood associations held a joint meeting in a large classroom at Davidson Elementary School in which an overcapacity crowd of 179 attendees in addition to 14 city and county officials as well as Beard and one of his associates participated.
The joint meeting was coordinated by Muscupiabe  Neighborhood Association Chairwoman Lynn Wear and another local activist, Kathy Mallon. Emilia Lopez officiated the proceedings, using written speaker cards from the attendees to apportion them time to speak. The speakers were given two minutes to pose questions to the public officials present or to Beard or otherwise make comments. On occasion, Lopez articulated questions of her own. Among the public officials present were County Supervisor Josie Gonzles and two members of her staff; County Spokesman David Wert; San Bernardino County Redevelopment Director Terry Thompson and his assistant, Jim Miller; San Bernardino County Transitional Services Director Gilbert Ramos; San Bernardino City Manager Teri Ledoux and Community & Economic Development Director Michael Huntley.
The residents expressed anger and frustration at being saddled with the nearby presence of the welfare office, asking why the county had chosen to locate it in a residential neighborhood. Thomsposn and Miller sought to explain that the county had solicited proposals from potential landlords and that of the three responses, the bid for the Little Mountain location best met the county’s needs, and the city’s zoning at the site allowed the transitional assistance office to be built there. They and Ramos met the crowd’s questions about the decision to close the county’s exisiting San Bernardino Transitional Services Office on Massachusetts Avenue by explaining that the existing building is aging and of insufficient size to handle the growing caseload. Thomas said “This site was selected because it was best in comparison” to the alternatives. Ramos insisted that the facility was not intended to house homeless but serve as a venue for providing services to those in need between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Various residents of the neighborhood expressed their views, complaining that representing the project as a professional office building was both calculated and misleading, and that they were being treated like “peons” by a wealthy developer and well-heeled city and county officials who would never consider locating a welfare office in their own residential neighborhoods. Thomas angered the crowd when he avoided answering pointed questions about why the the county had not considered other locations away from residences such as existing vacant commercial buildings. When he did answer the question after considerable prompting, he focused on an empty Lowes hardware store, which he said could not be utilized because the owner was unwilling to entertain the county’s offers. Miller said the Carousel Mall was tied up with an ongoing proposal for its conversion to a mixed use residential and commercial project.
More than one resident said having the welfare office in the district would serve as a magnet for criminal activity. Officials said there would be security at the facility, around which there would be fencing, and that the clients would be cleared out after closing and the campus gate would be locked. Residents responded that the officials were more concerned about security for the building than they were for the safety of the community into which it was being inserted. Ramos said there will be no clients at the facility at night. “We will have security there,” he said. “The plan for this building is it will be fenced all around. The locked gate will not allow traffic in or out [after hours].”
“That will stop them from being in your building,” one resident shouted. “It’s not going to stop them from walking down our streets.”
Ramos insisted that the goal of the transitional assistance department was to reduce the social problems that lead to unsafe neighborhoods. “The services we offer are to serve families and get people back to work,” he said. “We supply the services they need to get to being self-sufficient.”
One woman complained that putting significant numbers of people at a transitional phase of their lives into the neighborhood was “saying to people that they will just have to stay in their homes” to avoid the danger the transitional assistance facility’s clients will represent.
When asked what the city’s response to the controversy was, San Bernardino City Manager Teri Ledoux said her office was conducting a seven-day investigation into the approval of the project, and that she was not prepared to provide answers until the probe was finished.
Other residents brought up the proximity of the office to a school, voicing concerns that there would be individuals at the social service office transitioning into the local community from institutions. They said the presence of such people was incompatible with a school setting.
Several expressed the view that the Muscupiabe District was a nice neighborhood that was going to be invaded by an undesirable element. One resident said the Muscupiabe District should be valued by the city as one of the “very few pockets left of what was a great community.”  Another called it a “hidden gem.”
Officials’ assurances that the City of San Bernardino would provide police services to combat any uptick in criminal activity perpetrated by the clientele of the welfare office as well as Ramos’s and Supervisor Josie Gonzzles’s statements to the effect that the communites in Ontario, Chino and Chino Hills coexist satisfactorily with the transitional assistance facilities there provoked from the crowd unfavorable comparisons between San Bernardino’s police department and its lengthy response times to the police departments and sheriff’s department contingent in the other cities.
One man, asserting that the neighborhood had already been plagued by a homeless encampment near the top of the hill beyond Mountain Drive, asked, “Who will be there after four o’clock if people are still camping and hanging out at midnight?”
He then demanded to know the identities of the city’s development and environmental review committee. “Who are the seven who reviewed this, the ones who decided what is going to happen in our neighborhood?” he asked. “Who are they?”
One resident accused the county and city officials of speaking in platitudes. “Give us real solutions,” she shouted. “Don’t give us vague words.”
Residents expressed anger at Mayor John Valdivia not being at the meeting, and they jeered Gonzales when she stated that the project was one that was legitimately approved, and that the residents were represented by their mayor and ward councilwoman.
Residents shouted that Valdivia was on the take. “San Bernardino does not have the best reputation,” One said. “The mayor’s shady.”
“You’ve totally abandoned us,” a resident shouted. “You should not be spending bankrupt money on building a new facility. Look at the abandoned buildings around here. Put it in one of them.”
One woman warned the officials, “This is a good neighborhood. I don’t want to be forced to move because I have homeless sitting on my curb. What plans do you have to guarantee safety for us? Our police department is overloaded with calls. We might have to take things into our own hands.”
When Gonzales said that what was being done was the best that the city and county could do, and “if you don’t like it, help us bring about something better,” a woman responded, “This isn’t problem solving. This is malarkey.”
Ibarra said that the project was already approved when she came into office. She called upon the city and county officials to take a close look at the existing transitional assistance facility in the city. “Visit the Massachusetts location,” she said. “You will see what they are talking about. That is what they are afraid of.”
Thompson was asked why the Massachusetts facility could not be expanded to accommodate the greater demand now being put upon it. He gave a less than clear response to that question. He was then asked what was to become of the building after the county left it, and would it become another empty eyesore.
“That is a question for the landlord of that building,” Thomas said.
One resident, picking up on Councilman Mulvihill’s suggestion from the previous evening, asked Beard if he had been asked by the city to impose on himself “a good faith stop work order.” Beard responded that he had not.
The moderator, Emilia Lopez, expressed her view that the approval process for the project was “flawed.”

By Gail Fry and Mark Gutglueck
Next month, a dozen years will have elapsed since charges were brought against the two alleged perpetrators in what was represented as being the most extensive misuse of public education money in the history of California. While the case remains active, the matter has yet to go to trial.
Between the turn of the millennium and 2004, according to prosecutors, Charles Steven Cox and Tad Honeycutt diverted some $23 million in public money that was intended for educational purposes to their own use, spending it on a lavish lifestyle for themselves and their associates and families, investing it in stock and bonds or whisking it into offshore bank accounts.
For reasons that are less than clear, the criminal case against them has languished. In the meantime, both defendants have, in one fashion or another, replicated diversions of public education money separate from their original depredations and converted at least $3.2 million more in public education money to their own use and that of their associates.
Charter schools exist as efforts in public asset privatization, and are semi-autonomous public schools that operate using public funds with only minimal oversight by the state school system. They are granted operating permits or are “chartered” in most cases under a written contract with a specific school district, and on rarer occasions under the authority of the California superintendent of schools or a county school superintendent, which are referred to as the authorizers or sponsors. Such a contract – or charter – details how the school will be organized and managed. The ostensible justification for charter schools is that charter schools can function outside the parameters of normal schools and can offer a curriculum and educational smorgasbord unavailable in traditional public schools while meeting the requirements of both special needs students and accelerated scholars.
Offering gullible parents the promise of an educational alternative that would allow their children to be educated in a wholesome and Christian environment free of the liberal claptrap espoused by teachers under the sway of the state’s teachers’ unions, Charles Steven Cox founded the ostensibly non-profit California Charter Academy in 1999. Using parent support and enthusiasm for his undertaking, Cox convinced the school board with the Snowline Joint Unified School District, consisting of 11 schools including two high schools, three middle schools, five elementary schools and one kindergarten through eighth grade school, to sponsor one charter school. The Snowline District exists in the San Bernardino County Victor Valley, Mojave Desert and northeastern San Gabriel Mountain communities of Victorville, Phelan, Pinon Hills and Wrightwood. Cox then utilized the enthusiasm garnered from that formation to get Snowline to charter another academy. Thereafter, based on expressions of parent confidence in the educational model he had developed, he obtained two more charter sponsorships, one from the Orange School District in Orange County, and one from the Oro Grande School District further north in the desert of San Bernardino County, to expand the academy into the largest charter school operation in California, with 51 campuses located throughout the state, including one as far removed from Southern California as San Joaquin County.
Simultaneous to his founding of the non-profit California Charter Academy, Cox created Educational Administrative Services Corporation, a for-profit company which was then hired by all four charter schools to manage the day-to-day operations of the charter schools and provide academic supplies such as books, paper, pens, pencils, chalkboards, desks, chairs, projectors, computers, etc. Cox inspired Tad Honeycutt, who in 2000 successfully ran for a position on the Hesperia City Council and in time acceded to the position of mayor, to work with the California Charter Academy as well and create his own set of companies, Maniaque Enterprises and Everything For Schools, which like Educational Administrative Services Corporation delivered educational materials and services to the non-profit charter schools at a profit.
Those for-profit companies greatly inflated the prices they charged for delivering those services and supplies. In some cases, educational materials that were paid for by the charter schools were never delivered. Instead, the money was used for a host of purchases that had no conceivable connection to the operation of schools.
By 2003, teachers at several of the schools were going public with accounts of how students’ educations were being neglected and books and other educational materials were not being provided. According to some of those teachers, Cox and Honeycutt, emboldened by the political connections they had in San Bernardino County, which was the base of operations for the California Charter Academy, Educational Administrative Services, Everything For Schools and Maniaque Enterprises, went so far as to take financial advantage of the teachers themselves in keeping the academy functioning while pocketing the state education system money being provided by the various sponsoring school districts.
According to Christopher Casey, who had been hired by Cox to run one of the academy’s vocational schools, “Steven Cox started out as if he was interested in improving education. Tad talked up the charter school idea to get more students and more schools, telling everyone charter schools were dedicated to better education. But when it turned into just a money-making venture, Tad didn’t have the personality or character to handle it and he just went along with everything Cox was doing.”
The California Charter Academy fell crucially short in the provision of key educational materials, Casey said.
Casey said, “With my own money – my credit card – I set up a home builders school in San Bernardino. I had thirty or forty students signed up. We had the class schedule set and I couldn’t get books. I was working with Jim Melton. I asked for the materials. We never got one book. I pleaded for the books. I didn’t see any results. I couldn’t get books. They weren’t focused on that. I said to them, ‘These are the texts I need.’ I asked them to provide resources. They never did. They just prolonged it and prolonged it and put it off. I started the school hoping they would be seriously focused on education, but when I found out what they were really doing, I lost heart and got out of it.”
Melton was one of then-San Bernardino County Supervisor Bill Postmus’s associates.
It was dishonest and reprehensible, Casey said. “A lot of money went into it,” he said. “They had a tremendous opportunity and instead they just used it to take money out of it. They had some outstanding people who wanted to do the job, but their hands were tied.”
Part of Cox’s formula, Casey said, was to “get heavy into politics. [Former California Assemblyman] Keith Olberg went to work for the California Charter Academy. Bill Postmus was their major political asset.”
Very early on, political angles with regard to the California Charter Academy manifested. In 2001, Bill K. Postmus, the father of Bill Postmus, who had been elected county supervisor the previous year, went to work for Cox as the director of/lead instructor in the academy’s criminal justice and leadership program.
In 2004, the superintendent of the California Department of Education, Jack O’Connell, suspecting financial irregularities, launched an investigative audit into California Charter Academy. The preliminary findings from that audit created sufficient concern for state education officials to signal to the sponsoring school districts that the California Charter Academy appeared to be grossly out of compliance with the regulations relating to charter schools.
In June of 2004 as the state was withdrawing funding from the California Charter Academy, Supervisor Postmus’s father was in danger of being thrown out of work. At that point, Postmus induced his colleagues on the board of supervisors to vote with him to have the county forward a $77,000 Workforce Investment Grant to the California Charter Academy in an effort to keep the school where the older Bill Postmus was the principal in session.
It was also at Supervisor Postmus’s insistence that Cox had previously hired former California Assemblyman Keith Olberg and had the Charter Academy and Educational Administrative Services Corporation pay him more than $375,000 over three years, ostensibly to develop an “honors program” for the academy’s schools. Olberg, however, did virtually nothing on that project and the so-called honors program was never instituted.
Postmus similarly insisted that Cox endow political action committees he and his chief of staff, Brad Mitzelfelt, controlled with money to support Mitzelfelt’s future political candidacies as well as those of another Postmus ally, Anthony Adams, who served two terms in the California Assembly.
In August 2004, more than four years after California Charter Academy’s creation, it ceased operations abruptly, throwing teachers out of work and forcing students to hurriedly matriculate back into public schools.
O’Connell intensified and broadened the audit, obtaining search warrants to seize the available financial books kept by the California Charter Academy, Educational Administrative Services, Everything For Schools and Maniaque Enterprises, and detailing investigators to speak with those involved in the academy, administrators, teachers, students and parents. The state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Team, augmented by an auditing firm hired by the California Department of Education, MGT of America, pored over the documents obtained.
On April 14, 2005, MGT of America and the California Fiscal Crisis and Management Team released their joint financial audit of the California Charter Academy, showing $23 million in taxpayer money provided to Cox through the academy and then largely paid out to the private management companies Educational Administrative Services Corporation, Maniaque Enterprises and Everything For Schools was misappropriated. Among the findings were that Cox had hired several of his family members into what were essentially do-nothing clerical and non-productive administrative positions, that Cox, his family members, other Educational Administrative Services Corporation and Charter Academy employees and Honeycutt were provided with luxury automobiles, and that among the expenses accumulated by the Charter Academy were accommodations in Las Vegas, at Disneyland and the Disneyland Hotel, studio musical recording equipment, spa visits, fishing trips and jet skis.
Cox made $5.5 million in payments to Honeycutt’s for-profit subsidiary without a vote by the academy board to approve the disbursements. Cox’s take was more substantial, around $17.5 million.
The audit detailed multiple conflict-of-interest violations, the improper conversion of private schools to public charter schools, and the falsification of documents and claims to receive public funds.
“The magnitude of waste of precious education funds outlined in the audit was appalling,” said O’Connell.
In late July 2007, a grand jury was impaneled and began inquiries into the California Charter Academy’s operations. On September 4, 2007, Honeycutt and Cox were arrested after being indicted by that special grand jury for their alleged roles in the collapse of the California Charter Academy.
Cox was indicted 55 felony counts of PC 424 embezzlement/misappropriation of public funds, each with six enhancements, 55 felony counts of PC 487 grand theft, all of which carried six enhancements each, another count of PC 424 misappropriation of public funds with no enhancement, another count of PC 487 grand theft with no enhancement, one count of violating California Revenue and Taxation Code 19706 and and six enhancements relating to the California Revenue and Taxation Code 19706 crime that Honeycutt was involved in.
Honeycutt was charged with 16 counts of PC 424, misappropriation of public funds, each with four enhancements; one count of PC 424 with no enhancement; 14 charges of of Pc 487 grand theft, each with four enhancements; three charges of California Revenue and Taxation Code 19706 tax evasion, each with two enhancements; and one charge of California Revenue and Taxation Code 19705 filing a false tax return, with two enhancements.
Cox’s bail was set at $1 million, while Honeycutt’s was logged at $500,000. Both were able to post bail. Law enforcement officials froze their domestic assets, but little of the missing money that officials thought might be recovered was present in their accounts in local banking institutions. It is known that Honeycutt had made multiple trips to Vanuatu, Spain and Argentina in the early and mid-2000s. Some of the taxpayer money provided to the California Charter Academy was used to fund lawsuits brought by Cox and Educational Administrative Services Corporation against public entities. In one case, Cox and Educational Administrative Services Corporation filed suit against the California Department of Education, contending the state had illegally withheld funding from the California Charter Academy. Cox and Educational Administrative Services Corporation did not prevail in that suit. Cox brought another unsuccessful lawsuit alleging impropriety and political motivation on the part of public officials whose actions led to the closure of the California Charter Academy.
A series of miscues, procedural and judicial, along with the corrosive pull of political influence prevented the criminal case against Cox and Honeycutt from being fast tracked from the start.
Honeycutt, through his parental connections as well as his affiliation with Bill Postmus, was active in Republican politics, and was involved in raising money that was used by a number of officials, including judges, to get into office. Honeycutt’s father, Theron, was Hesperia’s mayor in the 1990s. His mother, Kathleen, was California Assemblywoman from 1992 until 1994. Several judges at the Victorville Courthouse declined to hear the case involving Honeycutt or any of Postmus’ political allies, recusing themselves.
Cox and Honeycutt came before Judge Margaret Powers for arraignment. The case was then handed over to Judge Eric Nakata. An effort to recuse Nakata ensued, however, and at the intervention of then-Presiding Judge Larry Allen, the case was transferred back to Powers. Subsequently, the case was heard by judges Miriam Morton, John Tomberlin, Jules Fleuret and Arthur Harrison. Eventually the case went to Judge Jon Ferguson in Rancho Cucamonga. In more recent years, motions have been ruled upon and proceedings overseen by Judge Jon Ferguson, before whom it is anticipated the trial will take place, as well as judges Charles Umeda and Ingrid Uhler.
The trial timetable suffered a setback in November 2010 when Cox’s attorney, Earl Wade Shinder, committed suicide. That was more than eight years ago, however, and the delays continued. Attorney Grover Porter, who has represented Honeycutt for more than ten years, and Geoff Newman, Cox’s fifth lawyer, are sufficiently up to speed on the case to proceed to trial. Nearly five years ago, Porter made a motion to withdraw as Honeycutt’s attorney of record. That motion was denied by Judge Ferguson, who said there was no legal basis for the withdrawal. On occasion since that time, attorney David Goldstein has made appearances in court for Honeycutt.
There are roughly 52,000 pages of discovery and 459 anticipated trial exhibits. Some 80 witnesses testified before the grand jury, including Postmus, his successor as supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, Hesperia School Board Member Eric Swanson, and then-Victorville Councilwoman Joanne Almond.
Based upon multiple witness statements and the documentation in the MGT of America/California Fiscal Crisis and Management Team audit, the case against Cox and Honeycutt is a strong one, with bank records, receipts, hotel and resort registrations, airline ticket records and vehicle registrations demonstrating that millions of dollars in funding intended for educational purposes was diverted to pay for vacations, vehicles, recording and video equipment, jet skis, leases on or payments for real estate or to cover political campaign expenses.
The prosecutor on the case is Michael Fermin, who was a deputy district attorney when he was assigned to carry it forward in 2007. After the retirements of former assistant district attorneys Dennis Christy and James Hackleman, Fermin was elevated to the position of assistant district attorney under then-District Attorney Mike Ramos, a postion from which he oversaw a major portion of the office’s administrative duties, including its budget and human resources. Fermin remains as a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office following Ramos’s defeat in his 2018 reelection attempt and the ascension of Jason Anderson to the position of district attorney.
Today, Fermin remains as the lead prosecutor in the case involving allegations of $23 million intended for educational purposes being diverted to unauthorized, improper or illegal use, one of the most intensive white collar criminal cases in San Bernardino County history. Fermin has deferred a number of the district attorney’s office’s appearances in the case to deputy district attorneys John Thomas and Lynette Grulke.
For reasons the district attorney’s office has chosen not to clarify, it has delayed again and again and again and again in moving the case to trial, despite its potential for boosting Fermin into the legal stratosphere. Among various and sundry other motions and in-court actions, there have been 64 pretrial hearings scheduled and begun, abbreviated, postponed, suspended, partially held or delayed, without the matter coming to trial.
The case originated at a time when there was a much different political lay of the land than exists now. The shift in the political pecking order, and the degree to which the district attorney’s office shielded the now-defunct political dynasty that ruled the roost in 2007 when the case was filed, explicates at least in part the cause for the delay.
By 2004, Bill Postmus had acceded to the position of chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors. Almost simultaneously, he had become the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, exercising control over Republican Party endorsements and the delivery of GOP money to local Republican candidates for political campaigning purposes. In 2006, with two years left on his second term as supervisor, Postmus ran successfully for county assessor against the incumbent, Donald Williamson. Postmus thus acceded to the position of the highest ranking tax official in San Bernardino County, with virtual autonomy over how property and assets were to be assessed throughout the entire San Beranrdino County jurisdiction.
In 2007, while Postmus was yet one of the most powerful political figures in the county, Fermin made a politically-driven decision to leave Postmus out of the indictment. Since that time, information implicating Postmus that was then available to the district attorney’s office has become widely known to the public, information which shows Postmus was embroiled in the California Charter Academy Scandal at multiple levels.
Cox emerged as one of Postmus’ major early political supporters, having contributed $25,450 to his political war chest when Postmus was running for supervisor in 2000, utilizing California Charter Academy money to make those donations.
Early on, Postmus was appointed by Cox to serve as a member of two of the boards of the charter schools functioning under the aegis of the California Charter Academy. Postmus then used his status as a charter school board member as a feature in his resumé when he first ran for supervisor.
Action Postmus took, based upon his actual authority as a board member or carry-over authority as a former board member and close affiliate of Cox, became the focus of the grand jury that was impaneled in 2007 and which indicted Cox and Honeycutt. Irrefutable evidence emerged to show Postmus made efforts to ensure that members of his family as well as his political supporters were rewarded with jobs or contracts at or with the California Charter Academy.
Evidence was produced to show that Postmus directed Cox or otherwise arranged, both while he was a charter academy board member and afterward, for money to be diverted to Brad Mitzelfelt, who was Postmus’ chief of staff when he was supervisor, and Keith Olberg, a former state assemblyman who was a key Postmus political ally, in the form of questionable or illegal payments. Postmus worked as district director in Assemblyman Keith Olberg’s High Desert office from 1995 until 1999.
In 2002, Postmus was provided with an all-expenses paid trip to Florida by Cox, who used California Charter School funds to pay for the trip, accommodations and spending cash, which totaled more than $17,000. No explanation of what the trip was for was ever provided.
In 2001, Bill K. Postmus, Bill Postmus’s father, was given a lucrative position as the principal/director/lead instructor in the academy’s criminal justice and leadership program.
Ten years ago, Postmus fell from grace, having been downed by drug use, extortion and bribery scandals. In 2009, he resigned from the county assessor’s office. In 2010, he was indicted. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to 14 felony corruption-in-public office charges unrelated to the California Charter School case, along with a single misdemeanor narcotics violation. In November 2018, his sentencing having been deferred for more than seven years, the court considered and rejected a motion made on his behalf by his attorney Jeffrey Lawrence to vacate his 2011 pleas. Thereafter, he was sentenced to three years in state prison, where he is currently in custody.
Of note is that as the California Charter Academy prosecution languished, both Cox and Honeycutt repeated what they had carried off with the California Charter Academy, albeit on a less grand scale.
In 2009, the Postmus Political Machine was in its last throes, its leader having been exposed as a drug addict, a revelation which resulted in his February 2009 resignation as county assessor. But those who had manned his political machine were yet angling for money, even as political power was slipping from their grasp.
Cox, working as a quiet adviser functioning from the shadows, put together another charter school proposal, this time selling the idea to the Adelanto School District. Participating in the free-for-all were Cox; Postmus; Postmus’ one-time chief of staff, Brad Mitzelfelt, who had succeeded him and at that point remained as First District supervisor; Dino DeFazio, a friend of Postmus and the owner of D & D Real Estate and other real estate businesses, including Tri-Land, Inc, in which he was a partner with Postmus; Jessie Flores, a former field representative for Postmus and a then-field representative for Mitzelfelt; Adam Aleman, who was formerly one of Postmus’s field representatives and later one of Postmus’ assistant assessors; Hesperia Unified School District Trustee Anthony Riley, a Postmus political ally; Sentry Home Loans owner and Adelanto Boys and Girls Club President Helene Harris and her husband Hendon Harris; Mitchel E. Pullman, a principal in Arrowhead Properties, IV, LLC; and Peggy Baker, Charles Steven Cox’s sister-in-law.
After Cox prepared the articles of incorporation, the Adelanto Charter Academy was chartered by the Adelanto School District on August 19, 2009. Functioning on a model not very different from that used by the California Charter Academy but on a smaller scale, Cox, Postmus, Mitzelfelt, DeFazio, Flores, Aleman, the Harrises, Pullman and Baker utilized the position of trust they had been vouchsafed to funnel money to themselves or the companies they controlled. In the roughly 15 months the academy was running without any oversight, they managed to loot the operation of more than $2 million that should otherwise have gone toward the education of students but instead was diverted to activities, purchases and disbursements having no conceivable academic application, such as the provision of limousines to the participants by Flores, the owner of Diamond Limousine. The Adelanto Charter Academy contracted with Professional Charter Management, Inc. to have the latter perform administrative services in return for 15 percent of all Adelanto Charter Academy revenues.
According to the California Secretary of State, Professional Charter Management, Inc. was a corporation with Jessie Flores as its chief executive officer and Dino DeFazio in the capacities of chief financial officer and secretary and Kari Murdock as agent for service of process. Kari Murdock is a niece of Charles Steven Cox.
In December 2010, Jessie Flores filed, under penalty of perjury, a certificate of dissolution for Professional Charter Management, Inc. Records, however, show that Professional Charter Management, Inc. continued to receive payments from the Adelanto Charter Academy after that dissolution.
According to records obtained by the Sentinel, the Adelanto Charter Academy contracted with Educational Development, Inc. to perform administrative services in return for 5 percent of all Adelanto Charter Academy income from September 1, 2009 until June 30, 2014. It is not clear whether or how the administrative activities carried out by Educational Development, Inc. either meshed, or conflicted, with the administrative services provided by Professional Charter Management, Inc.
In November 2010, an audit cataloging significant shortcomings in the school’s operations was released, showing the academy had diverted some $2.2 million from educational purposes to the coterie of Postmus’ one-time political hangers-on. On May 17, 2011, the Adelanto School District revoked the charter it had granted to the Adelanto Charter Academy. The Adelanto Charter Academy immediately appealed the decision to the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, who upheld the Adelanto School District’s decision on August 1, 2011. The Adelanto Charter Academy appealed that decision to the California Department of Education and continued to operate until notified on April 17, 2012, that “your administrative remedies are exhausted” and “any further appeal of revocation must be sought in a court of local jurisdiction.”
Recognizing that moving the matter into such a forum might well lead to indictments, those behind the operation threw in the towel, having diverted somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.1 million to their own pockets and bank accounts.
The brazenness with which those involved acted is further illustrated by Honeycutt’s seemingly nonchalant behavior in the aftermath of the indictment, as well.
In 2012, a half decade after his indictment but with the case remaining in interminable limbo, Honeycutt sought to again exploit the loopholes in California’s charter school regulations to recreate what had been the most lucrative run of his life. Changing the vowel in his first name from a to e, and adopting his mother’s maiden name, Viera, Honeycutt founded Innovative Academies, billing it as “a learning network platform for private schools in the USA to globalize and connect to students throughout the world.”
Under the guise of “Ted Viera,” and assuming the modest titles of manager and then director of field operations, Honeycutt did not hesitate to think big and go beyond the confines of California to cash in.
“We are actively seeking key ‘Sister School’ partnerships globally with schools, tutoring centers, student recruitment firms, and other education organizations,” he wrote in making his pitch.
The company had 17 employees and was actively pursuing partnerships with schools in mainland China and Taiwan, arranging to accredit students for classes taken in venues outside of the country where the academic institution they were attending was located.
The company offered, Viera told his prospective clients, specialized academic services such as a “dual diploma program, globalization, education management, and English learning.”
Students signing up with Innovative Academies could access the institution’s “Learning Network Platform,” its website claimed, and through it students could earn “a second high school diploma from an elite private school in the United States.”
The company’s website, InnovativeAcadamies.org, is no longer functional.
When California authorities learned of the operation, Honeycutt shut it down.
Last Friday, August 2, a pretrial hearing was held before Judge Jon Ferguson. There was no indication in the court record when the matter is scheduled for trial.
Fermin told the Sentinel he is constrained by the prosecutor’s canon of ethics from making any comment on the substance of the case. He said, simply,  “What I can tell you is I am involved in active negotiations with counsel for both Mr. Cox and Mr Honeycutt to resolve the matter. I would not say I am confident this will be settled short of trial, but I am hopeful we can reach an appropriate disposition.”

By Mark Gutglueck
Next Monday at the Upland City Council’s August 12 meeting, on display will be the degree to which the sweeping change Upland experienced with the 2018 election cycle will or will not impact a crucial element of governance in the 74,000 population city. With three of the council’s five positions filled with different office holders than this time last year, two appointments to the city’s seven-member planning commission will be made. The council is scheduled to ratify the two appointees arrived at by a selection committee, one of which is the reappointment of a member who has now served two terms. In addition, the council will make a determination if the planning commission’s long-serving chairman, whose current term does not expire for two years, should be allowed to remain in the leadership role his colleagues on the panel believe he merits.
While it would appear the city council is leaning toward continuity rather than a shake-up of the commission, there is a sizable contingent of civically active residents who feel that an infusion of new blood on the commission, which in a very particular way exercises nearly as much influence on the direction and character of the city as does the city council, is called for.
The City of Gracious Living has enjoyed top drawer status in San Bernardino County for generations. Set below picturesque Mt. San Antonio, and occupying the highland above Ontario, it was established as an upscale neighborhood where the movers and shakers in the Ontario business community at the turn of the 19th Century to the 20th Century moved to, a paradise of Victorian, then Edwardian and eventually Craftsman homes intersticed among citrus groves. From the time of the city’s founding in 1906 onward into the middle of the 20th Century and then into the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Upland rivaled Redlands on the county’s east side for the disputed claim to being the Inland Empire’s most stately city. Today, that section of Upland above Foothill Boulevard, Old Route 66, remains, along with sections of Redlands, Chino Hills, Rancho Cucamonga and some neighborhoods in Lake Arrowhead, among the most majestic of expansive San Bernardino County’s districts.
The planning commission has long served as the city’s primary arbiter of the development standards that apply to the builders of the city’s housing stock. For the greater part, the commission has acquitted itself admirably, despite some rough patches, including a scandal of major proportion when the city’s mayor from 2000 to 2011, John Pomierski, a contractor himself, utilized his position of trust and authority to shakedown those applying to build in the city, effectively in many cases denying the project applications of those who refused to pay him off, and arranging go-ahead for the projects of those who were willing to bribe him outright or engage in an elaborate ruse of kicking back to him by either hiring his construction company to do a portion of the work approved by the city’s planning department or otherwise hire him or one of his various associates and co-conspirators as a consultant or subcontractor on the project.
In the years prior to Pomierski’s reign, from the founding of the city’s planning commission in 1930, there was either by power of tradition, natural attrition or the rule of ordinance, regular turnover in the membership of, that is rotation onto and then off, the planning commission. Traditionally in Upland, the mayor selected or nominated the commission’s members, who were then ratified by the remainder of the council. Generally, a commission member would remain in place for a four-year term and on occasion be renominated and confirmed for a second term. Rarely did an individual stay in place on the commission for more than two terms, though in multiple cases the commission’s members graduated up the chain of command, as it were, to be elected to the city council, continuing their civic involvement there. Pomierski made a departure from that tradition. Carol Timm, who had made her mark in Upland in some measure as an advocate for historical preservation, was nominated and then appointed to the planning commission by the administration of the mayor who preceded Pomierski, Bob Nolan. During Pomierski’s tenure, Timm moved into something of an alliance with him and he reappointed her to a second term, then four years later to a third term, and then shortly before he was overtaken by the scandal that ended his political primacy in Upland, to a fourth term. Timm ran, unsuccessfully for city council in 2012. She persisted in her political aspiration and in 2014, shortly after her reappointment to a fifth term on the commission was blocked, she was elected to the city council.
Timm’s re-electoral effort last year failed. Thus, her legacy in Upland consists of her passionate efforts to preserve historically significant properties and structures, her four-year term on the city council and her list of accomplishments thereon, and perhaps most significantly, her having opened the way for planning commissioners to remain in place for more than the traditional maximum of eight years.
For a growing group of Upland residents, however, the wave of monopolizations of planning commission positions by a relative handful of Upland residents is not perceived as a positive but rather an undesirable trend.  Those feeling this way cite multiple reasons. Most simply, they say, a continuous rotation alleviates stodgy and staid repetition. It prevents the formation of clubby and entrenched networks that entail long-running political alliances with members of the city council that come uncomfortably close to being political machine-like in their appearance and function. Constant changeover brings in fresh ideas and is more likely to bring to the commission collective perspectives with regard to new concepts and change in societal orientation and evolution, those advocating constant commission changeover mantain. Moreover, change in the panel provides an opportunity for more people who want to be civically involved to do so and participate in a way that is vital to the community.
A similar rule relating to remaining in place beyond two terms applies to the chairperson of the planning commission. Chairmanships run in two-year terms. The commissioners themselves choose from among their ranks who will serve as chairperson. That selection, however, is subject to the confirmation of the city council. A chairman or chairwoman need get only three council votes to confirm his or her first two two-year tenures as leader of the panel. Upon a third nomination or any nomination thereafter, however, the council must ratify the chairmanship appointment by a minimum of four votes.
A post-Pomierski reform that was put in place was that the mayor no longer has sole nomination authority to the commission. Instead, the mayor, the mayor pro tem, the planning commission chairperson and the city’s development services director interview and evaluate the applicants, with the mayor, mayor pro tem and planning commission chairperson determining who the nominees are to be, with the development services director offering input.
A vestige of the previous principle of term limits yet exists. Any newly nominated individual need only obtain support of a simple majority of the five-member city council to be confirmed. Since it is a foregone conclusion that the mayor, who nominates the candidate, will support his or her own nomination, that means a new nominee need get only two votes of support from the remaining four council members to accede to the planning commission. The same standard applies upon the renomination of a commissioner who has come to the end of his or her first term, such that only three votes of the council are needed to remain in place at that time. However, after a commissioner has served two full terms, if renominated the commissioner must then receive at least four votes to stay on the planning commission.
Among those who feel that the incumbents on the commission who have been renominated and reapproved over and over again are monopolizing a privilege that should be shared more widely is Steve Bierbaum, an active member of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens of Upland.
“From my perspective and in the opinions of most of the members of the coalition, term limits are there for a reason,” Bierbaum said. “The city has gone through an electoral process last year to get new blood on the council. Since that time, we are noting that there have been a few changes in personnel. What we are now in the midst of is selections for the planning commission, and we believe the council should take a very close look at the number of people who did apply. There were more than a dozen applicants. We think there were some outstanding applicants on the list. The planning commission is a very important element of city operations. The commissioners make decisions on approving development applications before they come to the city council. To my knowledge, the city council has never second-guessed the commission. That trend is not likely to change. So the way things are going now, the commission is the gatekeeper for the development of the city. The problem is, when you look at it, there has been very little change on the commission going back over the years. You have the same people, with too few exceptions, in place. For the most part, if someone wants to stay, they stay. One council after another has continued to reappoint the same members. The change comes when someone either gets elected to the council or decides to leave on their own. You have these decisions being made, and I hate to say it, but it’s a little bit of an old boy network. You’ll see something that’s going before the commission and you know it’s a done deal because of that old boy network. Every once in a while you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised, but most of the votes are entirely predictable. No one who is on there is willing to really stir things up and deviate from what the groupthink is.”
An outgrowth of the contention on the city council going back the last couple of years, Bierbaum said, is that people are paying attention and making their views known on a scale heretofore unknown in the city, both by speaking at the city council meetings and by postings on social media.
“That’s not such a bad thing, in my opinion,” Bierbaum said.
What is apparent, Bierbaum said, is that the dynamic range of opinion and perspective in the city is not reflected in the membership of the commission.
This year, reflecting the dynamic Bierbaum referenced, there were 15 applicants for the two positions on the commission for which the terms expired at the end of June. That is significantly more than have applied on most occasions in the past, yet another indication of the widespread interest and attention for and toward the topic of development in the city.
Fourteen of those 15 turned out to participate in the interview process. Those 14 were Linden Brouse, Grant Genge, Thomas Grahn, Stephanie Guide, Susan Higgens, Brigitte James, Candice Moffitt,  Allen Nicely, Beverly Reyes, Sid Robinson, Brinda Sarathy, Lois Sicking-Dieter, Shelley Verrinder and David Wade.
Of those 14, Verrinder is a current member of the commission, having served at this point the entirety of her two terms.
Following the interviews by the panel that included Mayor Debbie Stone, Councilwoman/Mayor Pro Janice Elliott, Planning Commission Chairman Gary Schwary and Development Services Director Robert Dalquest, both Verrinder and Candice Moffitt-Bowcock were nominated.
Verrinder has 25 years professional experience in transportation planning in the public and private sectors, and is currently the executive director of First Transit Access Services, one of the largest providers in Southern California of transportation services to the disabled.
Moffitt has 20 years experience in municipal planning and has a bachelor’s degree in urban and regional planning and a master’s degree in public administration. She has worked for the City of LaVerne for the past 17 years and is currently that city’s principal planner. Her father is Robert Bowcock, who is a Chino Basin Watermaster.
At its Monday evening meeting, the city council will vote upon confirming the Moffitt-Bowcock and Verrinder appointments.
The council will also take up ratifying the extension of Planning Commission Chairman Gary Schwary’s tenure as the commission’s chairman for another two years. Generally, a chairperson is limited to serving in the chair capacity for two consecutive two-year terms. To remain as chairman beyond that point, the city council must ratify the extension by a vote of at least 4-to-1. Schwary has been a member of the planning commission since 2002 and has been chairman continuously since 2010.
While acknowledging that both Schwary and Verrinder have exhibited competence and dedication during their respective periods on the commission, Bierbaum opined that it is time nonetheless that they leave in favor of bringing other applicants in to serve who otherwise are being prevented from making their own contribution to the Upland community.
“The selection committee has recommended that Gary Schwary be allowed to stay in place as chairman, assuming of course the full commission will again elect him to serve in that capacity, which is very likely to happen,” Bierbaum said. “He is not due to leave the commission for another two years, but it does look like he will stay as chairman until 2021. I think you could say he has done a fantastic job in his role as a commissioner and as chairman. Having said that, I think he should step down as chairman at this time and let someone else move in there. And I think in two years time we should say to him ‘Thank you very much for your outstanding service’ and tell him, sincerely, how much we appreciate what he has done for the city. Then someone else should be appointed. He is in, I believe, his fifth term on the commission. He has been on the commission since the Pomierski era. There are others, very qualified people, who are deserving of a chance to serve.”
With regard to Verringer, Bierbaum said, “I think her time to leave has come. There is nothing personal about that. Realistically, I think as a member of the commission she has made good decisions. She has been straightforward and forthcoming in her decision-making process. But she is ending her second term, and I think to be fair, it is time for us to give others the opportunity that we gave to her.”
Bierbaum is not alone in his view that Upland should share the opportunity to contribute that is being offered to only a limited number of those who have been honored with an appointment to the planning commission. Some of those others are harsher in their assessment of the planning commission’s performance than was Bierbaum.
Many consider the commission’s members to be lapdogs for the powers-that-be at City Hall, who have bent the city’s development standards too readily to meet the dictates of senior staff or project applicants who are politically well-connected or members of the council showing favoritism toward those project applicants. This has resulted in some project approvals that have hurt the city, those critics and observers say.
One case-in-point is the William Lyon project on 8th Street near Campus Avenue. Realistically, Upland has three major east-west arterials – 16th Street, Foothill Boulevard and Arrow Highway. Previously, conditions were such that 8th Street, which is considered a minor east-west arterial, could have have been transformed, in the future if the need materialized, to a major arterial. At a few spots along its length, some homes, garages or other structures were built relatively close to the roadway, such that the street narrowed at those spots. Nevertheless, the possibility of widening the street the entirety of its length across the city existed, had such been deemed absolutely necessary by condemnation of or alterations to those relatively few properties. Furthermore, paralleling 8th Street just to the north is a railroad track that runs the entire expanse of the city east to west. During the city’s highly contentious general plan update in 2015, then-Development Services Director Jeff Zwack pushed the city toward providing for maintaining the width of that rail corridor so a second rail line could potentially be accommodated there to ensure that a future commuter rail system tying San Bernardino County with Los Angles County could become an eventuality. Not six months after the general plan update was passed, Zwack inexplicably reversed himself in seeking to accommodate William F. Lyon in constructing a condominium/attached townhome development along 8th Street east of Euclid approaching Campus that encroached on 8th Street to the south, virtually ending any future possibility that 8th Street could be widened to four lanes at some point, while encroaching on the railroad right-of-way to the north, compromising the possibility of augmenting the railroad corridor there with a second line. No one on the planning commission nor the planning commission as a whole was willing to stand up to Zwack and prevent him from allowing the William F. Lyon Company to effectuate its agenda at the future expense of the Upland community.
Another example of the docile nature of the planning commission in the face of action being pushed by political or administrative forces is the Upland Central complex on Central Avenue. The setback on that building is extremely narrow, such that no possible future widening of Central Avenue at that spot could take place. Moreover, the doors into and out of the westernmost units there are so close to the street that allowing young children to reside in the complex is inadvisable, given the danger that ensues from the consideration that those exiting the building are merely yards away from passing traffic on Central Avenue. The planning commission failed to use its authority to insist that the Upland Central setback be increased. Among planning professionals, Upland Central is considered to be an illustration of incompetence, negligence or graft within the Upland planning division.
One of the 13 applicants for the planning commission apparently overlooked in the current selection go-round was David Wade. Wade over the last two years has made statements that have been critical of the stewardship of the city under Mayor Stone’s watch. It is Wade’s contention, and that of his supporters, that the evaluation of his application had less to do with his qualifications and his avowed interest in the city than it did with political considerations.
In recent weeks and months, the criticism of the city on social media has ramped up. Among those targeted by those postings, including some identifying themselves by their true names, those using avatars and those posting anonymously, has been Schwary, who fairly or not, has been associated with Stone.  Stone, who was elected to the city council in a special election in 2011, then defeated in a mayoral run in 2012, reelected to the council in 2014 and elected mayor in 2016, headed a four-member council coalition which engaged in a number of ultimately unpoplular acts, including closing out the city’s fire department in 2017 while imposing on the city’s residents a parcel tax to pay for the county fire department’s takeover of fire service in the city, along with the selling off of more than four-and-a-half acres of parkland in 2018. All three members of the council who were part of her coalition were displaced with the 2018 election, either through defeat at the polls or by not seeking reelection.
Schwary told the Sentinel today he believes he merits, by virtue of his performance as a commissioner and as chairman, to remain in place as both.
He cited his consistent reappointment to the commission on four occasions, including three occasions when that reappointment could take place only by virtue of at least four members of the council voting for him. On two of those three reappointments, Schwary received unanimous support. Since 2010, Schwary’s commission colleagues have elected him once and reelected him four times to serve as chairman. “That has happened without any campaigns or rallies or anything like that,” he said. “The past councils have approved those selections. The chair isn’t appointed by the council. It’s the commissioners the chair works with who make that decision. Taking that into consideration, I have been the chair without opposition since 2010.”
Schwary said, “I honestly just want to serve. If the council doesn’t want me to serve as chairman, then I’ll serve out the remaining two years of my term as a commissioner and then go from there. If the council doesn’t allow me to be eligible to stay as the chairman, I’ll be disappointed, but I’m not going to throw a hissy fit. I recognize that is the council’s decision to make. I do believe I am qualified and I want to continue to serve in that capacity.”
Schwary acknowledged that “In past years there may have been people appointed and reappointed who were not qualified.” He said he did not consider himself to be among those.
The criticism being vectored at him, primarily that on social media, Schwary said, was undeserved. “There are things that are said, or posted, that are not true,”  he said. “A lot of it is casting a black cloud over the city. They are within their rights to express what they feel. But many of  the things being said are outright false and vulgar. For residents of the City of Gracious Living, they are not being very gracious. Some of it is coming from people who have never actually been to the meetings I have chaired.”
Were those critics to see the board in action while he is conducting those meetings, the criticism would melt, he said.
“I have gotten the confidence of a wide range of people from both sides of the aisle, so to speak,” Schwary said, “on the way I conduct the commission meetings. Whatever the positions are, I give both sides a voice. I don’t run a three-minute clock. I give them five minutes. If the five minute buzzer goes off, I ask if they are close to finishing and let them do so. People just want to be heard. In my opinion, that is the secret to the success of our commission. We are not a rubberstamp. The commission is very diverse.”
Both he and the commission as a whole have defied the preconceived notions of certain elements of the public who have made what turned out to be inaccurate assumptions of the direction the commission was going to take, Schwary said. He referenced a recent decision by the commission to deny the permitting of the erection of a cell tower.
“It was all over social media and everywhere else that it was going to be a 4-to-1 vote to allow it,” Schwary said. “There was one guy in particular who made that prediction and said a few other choice things. It ended up we rejected the application 3-to-2. Afterward, he came up to me and apologized.”
Schwary said he understood that there were plenty of others who wanted to serve on the commission. He said that many of those people are qualified to be appointed. Others, he said, had potential. Still, he insisted, he was a proven entity, and he offered the same assessment of Verrinder. “I am of the opinion that Ms. Verrinder is extremely well qualified,” Schwary said. “She comes to every meeting well prepared, and in discussions she is always on point and uncovers things the average person would not uncover. She has a background in city operations.”
Schwary said he was “puzzled” over suggestions by those opposed to his reappointment as chairman or Verrender’s reappointment to the commission that there was something wrong with them having achieved the favored status they have with the council.
“I would think most cities would appreciate someone who has had a long tenure and has contributed what they can based on their skills and talents,” he said. “When I hear people say that we should be ashamed for having worked so closely with the city’s leaders over the years, I just don’t get that,” he said.
He and Verrender have a well established track record and that is something the community can bank on, he said. He said there were people who had worked to effect the removal of some of the former council members and on behalf of some of the current council members who had now set their sites on him and Verrender. “They’re all for change and their attitude is out with the old and in with the new, but at what cost?” he asked.
On Monday night, Schwary said, he would come before the council and “during my three minutes or four minutes cover everything I can in requesting permission to be reappointed chairman. I’m not going to get crazy, but I am going to tell them I love serving on the planning commission and I am qualified to do so.”
Councilwoman Janice Elliott said that it was her belief that since the commission positions are appointed rather than elected ones, it was appropriate that a limit be imposed on how long those individuals can hang on to the posts they were selected to. “The people in those positions have a lot of clout and the public does not get to vote them in,” she said. “I think we should ensure that they not stay in place forever, no matter how qualified they are. We have a lot of others who are just as qualified interested in serving in those positions, as well.”

More than 16 months after Upland city officials sought to bypass the city’s residents and sell more than four-and-a-half acres of Memorial Park to San Antonio Community Hospital, they have relented in the face of potential legal challenges and will allow the matter to go to a vote during the 2020 California Primary, the Sentinel has learned.
The hospital wants to use the property in question to construct a multistory parking structure to alleviate the increased flow of patients following the hospital’s expansion and its partnership with the City of Hope to establish an oncology facility on the hospital’s campus.
On March 26, 2018, with 72 hours notice, the Upland City Council as it was then composed voted 3-to-1 to reduce the grounds of historic Upland Memorial Park by more than four-and-one-half acres, handing the difference off to San Antonio Regional Hospital to be used for the parking structure.
That came after months of quiet, indeed private and secret, discussions between the city’s senior staff and the management of the San Antonio Regional Hospital. At the March 26, 2018 meeting, after the city council adjourned into a closed door session with then-City Manager Bill Manis, then-Development Services Director Jeff Zwack and City Attorney James Markman, the final terms of the sale of the park property were explicated to the council. At the council’s open public session for its regularly scheduled meeting that took place later that night, the council approved selling 4.631 acres of park property to the hospital, the primary grounds of which adjoin the 38.5 acre park.
In approving the purchase and sale agreement, the council authorized Manis to execute all necessary documents to approve the sale, with San Antonio Hospital paying $906,931.55 per acre, or a total of $4.2 million to acquire the property.
While Mayor Debbie Stone and then-council members Gino Filippi and Carol Timm went along with making the sale, Councilwoman Janice Elliott opposed it. Then-Councilman Sid Robinson was not present at the meeting.
Because it was anticipated that the sale would raise the hackles of the community, the council followed City Attorney James Markman’s recommendation to authorize him to file a so-called validation proceeding intended to foreclose any procedural or future legal challenge to the sale. In its validation action filed with the court, the city invited anyone opposed to the sale to lodge a protest, which would then be heard by a judge rather than being subjected to a vote. The challenge to the validation had to be filed within 60 days. Once the court validated the sale, any future lawsuits contesting the sale would be barred. The calculation by Markman and of the city council majority and senior city staff, which then included Manis and Zwack, was that no one would go to the expense of hiring an attorney to make an answer to the validation petition.
The validation procedure was directed to the courtroom of Superior Court Judge David Cohn in San Bernardino. To the chagrin of city officials, Marjorie Mikels, an attorney living in the city, as well as Cory Briggs, an attorney based in both Upland and San Diego, filed answers to the validation action. Mikels did so on behalf of herself and some of her sister and fellow residents. Briggs did so as an attorney retained by other Upland residents.
Those responses took issue with the sale on multiple grounds. Among those was that the city selling off a slice of the park – in particular the one sold by the council on March 26, 2018, which includes a long extant and actively used baseball field – is tantamount to abandoning public property. Such abandonments, under state law, cannot be effectuated without a vote of the citizens residing in the jurisdiction that owns that property.
Having miscalculated in his assumption that no one would come forward to contest the sale in the course of the validation proceeding, Markman was obliged in the face of Briggs’ and Mikels’ filings to make a convincing case to Cohn that the city council, acting on its own authority, was within its rights to sell off city land. Faced with the argument that a municipality’s abandonment of property it owned and was putting to beneficial public use had to be subjected to a vote, Markman asserted that selling the property did not constitute an abandonment.
Ultimately, some 14 months after the sale of the park property was approved by the city council, on May 29, 2019, Judge Cohn, after hearing the responses to the validation action, dismissed the city’s petition for validation. In effect, anyone with standing – meaning essentially any city resident – was yet at liberty to file a lawsuit challenging the sale.
Meanwhile, in the November 2018 Upland Municipal Election, both Councilman Gino Filippi and Councilwoman Carol Timm were turned out of office, at least in part as a consequence of city resident outrage over the sale of the park property. In addition, Councilman Sid Robinson, who had not been present for the March 2018 vote to sell the park property but who was politically aligned with Filippi and Timm and could generally be counted upon to support them, had not chosen to run in the election.  Councilwoman Janice Elliott, who had opposed the sale, had gained election at the same time by competing in the race as a candidate in the city’s newly created District 2 in accordance with Upland’s switch to an electoral ward system. Replacing Timm on the council was Rudy Zuniga, who viewed the sale of the park property unfavorably. The two other replacements on the council – Ricky Felix and Billy Velto – were either not strongly or in any way supportive of the parkland sale.
At its July 8, 2019 meeting, the Upland City Council considered whether the city should appeal Cohn’s decision. The council, with Elliott, Zuniga and Velto prevailing, voted 3-1 against doing so, with Mayor Stone dissenting and Councilman Felix abstaining.
Thus, were San Antonio Regional Hospital to proceed with the purchase of the 4.631 acres under the terms approved by the city council in March 2019, it would do so at its own peril, since a legal challenge to that action would likely occur.
The Sentinel is reliably informed that San Antonio Hospital’s corporate officers have resigned themselves to the need to obtain city voter approval of the purchase for them to proceed. They have made a request of the city that the city council use its authority to request of the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters that it schedule a vote on the matter at the next logical occasion for such a vote to take place, that being next March.
Confirmation that such an election will be held emerged this week in a staff report from City Manager Rosemary Hoerning to the council prepared by the city’s recreational services manager, Doug Story, in conjunction with the presentation of the conceptual master plan for Memorial Park being previewed to the city council at its meeting on Monday, August 12. Contained on page 32 of that report is the following statement, “San Antonio Regional Hospital is interested in acquiring the existing southwest quadrant of Memorial Park for a potential joint-use parking lot sponsored by San Antonio Regional Hospital per an agreement with the City of Upland. This acquisition and agreement is subject to voter approval of a ballot initiative scheduled for the March 2020 election.”
While there are elements of the Upland community who are opposed to any reduction of the footprint of Memorial Park, the Sentinel has learned that San Antonio Regional Hospital officials and their advisors are confident that opposition can be overcome by an energetic informational campaign just ahead of the election targeting the city’s high propensity voters explaining the value the hospital represents to Upland as well as the West San Bernardino County community in general, and that enhancing the availability of parking facilities at the hospital is a key component of delivering the services the hospital has to offer.
-Mark Gutglueck

A year after the City of San Bernardino entrusted the bulk of its legal representation to Best Best & Krieger, the city council this week initiated what appears to be the first step toward jettisoning the law firm as its city attorney.
For 113 years, beginning with San Bernardino’s organization along the lines of its charter adopted in 1905, the city had a city attorney elected by the city’s voters, who functioned in conjunction with an elected mayor, an elected city council and an elected city clerk together with the city’s hired staff. In 2016, after 111 years of governing, administering and running the city using the 1905 Charter as its model, a charter redraft was presented to the voters which left the mayor’s political power intact but detracted from the post’s administrative capability, changed the city’s election cyle from one based on odd-numbered years to even numbered ones and dispensed with the elected city attorney and city clerk positions in favor of making those posts appointed ones.
Because City Attorney Gary Saenz had been reelected in 2015 to a four-year term running from April 1, 2016 until March 31, 2020 under the provisions of the 1905 Charter, he was entitled to remain in that elected post until  April 1, 2020. The city attorney’s office, well prior to Saenz’ election to the city attorney’s position as the result of a recall effort against the previous city attorney in 2013, had grown to involve a significant degree of support staff, including four attorneys, investigators, paralegals, and clerical personnel. Saenz had dispensed with the investigators shortly after his election, but had continued to manage the office located on the top floor of City Hall with the assistance of his staff attorneys and the remainder of those employed in the office.
Two years after the new charter’s passage, in compliance with the gradual adaptation to the new terms of the charter that were to be implemented until they were fully in place as of April 1, 2020, Saenz began to shed his support staff, with all of the office’s attorneys leaving along with all but two of his clerical staff. At the same time, the city began to look toward hiring a firm to serve in the role of city attorney.
After considering a host of applicants for the assignment, an ad hoc committee winnowed the competitors, not surprisingly, to the four largest municipal representation firms in Southern California: Best Best & Krieger, Burke Williams Sorensen, Jones & Mayer, and Richards Watson & Gershon. After interviews with attorneys from each of the four with the exception of Burke Williams Sorensen, the committee gravitated toward selecting Best Best & Krieger. Under the contractual arrangement between the city and Best Best & Krieger, Thomas A. Rice, an attorney with the firm who speaks in a clipped British accent, was designated as the assistant city attorney. Rice, as the city’s legal showhorse, is rarely present at city offices or functions and is trotted out only when city officials are seeking to put an urbane foot forward to make a superficial impression on those it is dealing with. Sonia Carvalho, another of the firm’s lawyers, was designated as the assistant city attorney. Carvalho is the workhorse who reports to the mayor and city council. She is serving during the remainder of Saenz’s term as city attorney as his chief assistant, and she is in attendance at city council meetings.
Best Best & Krieger appeared to be a good fit for those running the show in San Bernardino. While Burke Williams Sorensen, Jones & Mayer and Richards Watson Gershon have raised to the level of art being able to read the political relationships among elected city leaders to detect who on any particular governmental panel constitutes the ruling coalition, how firm those alliances are, and what the prevailing attitudes are with regard to the issues before that particular city so to tailor the legal advice they provide to please their client and keep their contracts, Best Best & Krieger has refined the same talent and technique to the level of science.
Indeed, throughout most of the first year that Best Best & Krieger has been serving in the role of San Bernardino’s office of city attorney, it has carried out numerous assignments of instructing those in charge – essentially the ruling majority led by Mayor John Valdivia – how to thread the needle to accomplish its goals. Among those was the firing of City Manager Andrea Travis-Miller, with whom Valdivia had differences. Best Best & Krieger also helped Valdivia and his team engineer a show of power by which Saenz’ rate of pay, based on a total annual compensation package including salary, benefits and add-ons of $246,266 was reduced 45.8 percent over his final nine months in office from $184,700 to $100,000. Best Best & Krieger likewise assisted Valdivia and company in reducing City Clerk Georgeann Hanna’a final nine months of pay from $128,600, based on her total annual compensation of $171,466, to $52,500. Best Best & Krieger, in particular Carvalho, assisted Valdivia and his former assistant chief of staff, Bilal Essayli, in discontinuing the city’s relationship with the law firm of Straddling Yocca, Carlson and Rauth, which had billed the city and received over $25 million for legal services between 2012 and 2018 in conjunction with guiding the city’s action with regard to its 2012 Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing. In return, Valdivia has arranged for the city to vector even more legal work to Best Best & Krieger. It thus seemed that there was an entirely copacetic, indeed symbiotic, relationship between Best Best & Krieger and Valdivia’s political team.
This week, however, on Wednesday night at the city council’s August 7 meeting, a coordinated effort involving Valdivia and one of his council allies, Second Ward Councilman Ted Sanchez, put the city’s continuing relationship with Best Best & Krieger into both sharp relief and future question.
Sanchez timed his move, bringing the matter up just as Valdivia was adjourning the meeting. Valdivia recognized the Sanchez’s request to address the council.
“I’d like to move to direct the city manager to place an item on the next agenda to send out a request for proposal to handle the city’s prosecutions, advise code enforcement, represent the city before the hearing officer and handle the city’s abatement actions,” Sanchez said. “In conversation with my colleagues, it has become clear that we have become frustrated with the slow response and the weak prosecution of those repeat offenders of our [codes]. If I am wrong, I’d love to hear one of my colleagues speak up about that, because they have all been adamant, at least with me, that this has been a major issue, and we need to tackle this.”
Sanchez continued, “My second council meeting, we terminated the contract with Jones and Mayer. We put in place as a stopgap B B & K [Best Best & Krieger] as our prosecutor. I want an RFP [request for proposals] to go out to have law firms submit proposals to the city to do code enforcement prosecutions.”
In actuality, at the January 2, 2019 council meeting, which Sanchez referred to as his second meeting after his December 19 swearing in, the council had authorized then-City Manager Andrea Travis Miller to execute the first amendment to an existing legal services agreement between Jones & Mayer and the city to provide legal services for code enforcement and prosecution services. Sanchez’s reference to the termination of the contract with Jones & Mayer more accurately relates to an action that took place subsequently, when dissatisfaction with the performance of Jones & Mayer manifested. On June 19 the council adopted a resolution consigning the city to contracting with Best Best & Krieger to provide code enforcement legal services. The agreement with Jones & Mayer expired on June 30.
City Manager Teri Ledoux responded, “If I may, it wasn’t a stopgap,” she said. “We actually approved a contract with B B & K to provide those services now. So that just started July 1.”
Sanchez noted that Best Best & Krieger had more than a month to perform and had not done so satisfactorily.
“I believe this council wants an aggressive approach to code enforcement violations and I want an RFP to go out for those prosecutions,” he persisted. “I want a law firm that’s going to go after [egregious code violations].”
Carvalho attempted to mount a defense of her firm’s performance, saying there were “six or seven other law firms under contract to the city” involved in handling the city’s legal issues, which had led to a diffused approach to the code enforcement issue. She sought to assure Sanchez that her firm was “going through the process at the direction of the council to try and consolidate as much as we can so we have one cook in the kitchen, and where necessary we bring in special council. We still have special counsel, so we can coordinate services better.”
Continuing, Carvalho said, “The code enforcement operation was getting direction from like three different sources. They were getting code enforcement direction from Jones & Mayer. They’re getting some sort of code enforcement direction from Cole Huber because there were still some attorneys from that firm that were advising the city on cannabis enforcement issues and then they stated to get some code enforcement or administrative enforcement advice from Best Best & Krieger. That information was brought to the city council two weeks ago. You had an option. You could have renewed the contract with Jones and Mayer, you could have [given] the work to someone else. You could have RFPed it. The recommendation at that time was to contract the digital services with Best Best & Krieger to see if that might get this stuff moving, the code enforcement service, the prosecution of code enforcement services. So that agenda item was brought to you, I believe it was two meetings ago, the 17th of July. The contract’s about one month old, so we’re trying to make up some time and show you some progress.”
“Well, in all honesty, until I see that action from the city council, I cannot recall that action being taken,” said Sanchez. “All I can remember is we had terminated the contract with Jones and Mayer. That was the second council meeting that I attended, the first council meeting in January. It was presented to us as a stopgap. So BB&K would do prosecutions as a stopgap so that there wouldn’t be a lapse in prosecutions of code enforcement violations.”
Carvalho insisted that “Best Best & Krieger did not provide any prosecution services at all until July 1.”
Pressing the issue, Sanchez said, “My motion was to have staff come back with a draft RFP proposal that could be sent out.”
Valdivia remarked that Sanchez was “gaining some votes in support” of his position, but suggested he allow staff to come back with a report on code enforcement.
Sanchez was adamant. “No, my motion stands” he said. “I do want a draft RFP to come back to this city council at the next council meeting, because what will happen is we will get a report and it will be a receive and file, and that will be it. I want the city to take a proactive approach.” He then accused Best Best & Krieger of indolence and not living up to the standards it had espoused in convincing the city to expand its contract with the firm for legal services, including those relating to code enforcement.
“I heard from counsel [Best Best & Krieger in the person of Carvalho] argument after argument about how prosecutions are not aggressive enough, and now, we’re standing back,” Sanchez said. “I want this RFP to go out.”
“Councilman, councilman,” Valdivia said. “I appreciate your passion. I thank you for your eagerness to get at and resolve issues. We need to work with staff here.”
Councilman Henry Nickel said, “I do have concern about our overall code enforcement regime in terms of how we are conducting enforcement, how we are paying for code enforcement, how we are enforcing code enforcement. I want to get a sense of what the plan is. What I’m hearing from a lot of constituents is a frustration that items are getting reported [and not being acted upon]. I am also concerned that we are using general fund dollars to subsidize code enforcement. I’d like to explore the use of an enterprise fund, a mechanism that we can recycle those funds that come from our code enforcement operations back into expanded code enforcement.”
Nickel continued, “I think what I’d like to do is initiate a conversation as to what that would look like if staff can provide some sense of where we are currently with our code enforcement operations and whether or not we can anticipate some kind of discussion in terms of some other types of models we can look at really to step up and increase code enforcement citywide, if possible. So, I do support in concept exploring what options are available in terms of code enforcement and assessing how we can improve the program.”
Sanchez was not dissuaded form moving toward finding a more aggressive firm to handle enforcement at the court and procedural levels.
“My motion stands,” he said.
The council then voted on whether to send out a request for proposals to find a new enforcement attorney.
The motion failed, 3-to-4 with Sanchez, Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra and Councilman Juan Figueroa casting the yes votes.
-Mark Gutglueck