A month and 12 days after it removed Councilman Jeremiah Brosowske as the city’s Fourth District councilman and at the last public meeting prior to the elapsing of 60-day deadline for doing so, the Hesperia City Council filled that void by appointing Brigit Bennington to fill the post until the city’s next municipal election.
Bennington’s promotion to the council offsets her loss to Brosowske, which came during the 2018 election, four months after the council conferred on Brosowske an advantage in that election by appointing him in July 2018 to the vacancy on the council that ensued following the death of Hesperia Mayor Russ Blewett in May 2018. The appointment of Bennington puts a coda on what was an epic descent in which the then-27-year-old Brosowske was heartily embraced by the majority of City Hall’s leadership and in a relatively short course of events grew to become a persona non grata with the City of Progress’s political establishment. Simultaneously, however, Brosowske is moving ahead with legal action to contest his removal.
Brosowske, a political prodigy who was elected at 18 to serve as a member of the Associated Student Body Council and Senate at Victor Valley College and managed to achieve the posts of parliamentarian and ASB vice president, thereafter worked dutifully in the trenches on behalf dozens of local Republican candidates in the election cycles that followed. Brosowske so impressed former Chino Hills Mayor/former California Assemblyman/now Fourth District County Supervisor Curt Hagman with his youthful energy and enthusiasm for political campaigning that Hagman in 2014 hired the then-23-year-old Brosowske to serve as the executive director of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee when Hagman was that body’s chairman. Brosowske continued to make acquaintances among and then forge friendships and alliances with several of the region’s GOP officeholders.  Among those Brosowske assisted were Paul Russ, whose successful campaign for Hesperia City Council in 2014 led to him subsequently being elevated to mayor by his colleagues, and Rebekah Swanson in her successful 2016 bid for the Hesperia City Council. Though Brosowske failed in his own 2016 bid to get elected to the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, he continued to be well-thought of in GOP circles, by which point he had entered into a close working relationship with Bill Postmus, who was a decade-and-a-half ago one of the most powerful political figures in the region when he was simultaneously the chairman of both the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. Postmus would subsequently see his political career founder in scandal after he acceded to the position of county assessor, the highest ranking taxing authority in San Bernardino County, a position from which he had been able to induce business owners to provide political contributions to himself and Republican candidates and causes in exchange for his providing those businesses breaks on property and asset taxes.
Through a Wyoming-based company he had founded, Mountain States Consulting Group, LLC, Postmus remained highly involved in politics in San Bernardino County, particularly in the San Bernardino County desert region. Using Mountain States Consulting Group to take in money from various individuals, entities and companies who had an interest in San Bernardino County governmental decisions, Postmus then used the lax corporate reporting requirements that are applied to companies in Wyoming to pass that money through to local politicians in San Bernardino County and the High Desert in a way in which the actual original source of the money could not be identified when it reached the campaign coffers of the elected officials or candidates who received it. In this way, Postmus used Mountain States Consulting Group to traffic in political influence and the buying and selling of votes. He hired Brosowske as one of Mountain States Consulting Group’s political operatives. This killed three birds with one stone, allowing Brosowske to hold body and soul together, giving him the opportunity to engage in the time-and-energy-consuming efforts of instigating his foray into political office, and making it possible for Postmus to vicariously involve himself in San Bernardino politics through Brosowske, who in many ways replicated Postmus’s status as the boy wonder of San Bernardino County High Desert Republican politics who had been elected to the board of supervisors in 2000 at the age of 29.
A central element of Postmus’s political formula was conveying indirectly to business interests with deep pockets the understanding that the provision of money to politicians through him could achieve for them the results they were after in the governmental arena. Postmus mastered doing this in such a way that no overt statement was made but that it was clearly understood that the politician in question was amenable to supporting a donor’s project proposals or need for government action in exchange for monetary support in electioneering efforts.
Postmus and Mountain States Consulting Group immediately went to work in the aftermath of Mayor Blewett’s passing, lobbying through back channels to convince the Hesperia City Council that Brosowske should be brought in to fill the gap on the panel. In the cases of Russ and Swanson, no effort was needed to get them to accept Brosowske as Blewett’s logical successor, as both Postmus and Brosowske had previously established political relationships with them. Councilman Larry Bird, the sole member of the council advocating controlled growth and requiring builders of residential and commercial projects to provide a comprehensive range of infrastructure to service developments up front, was unwilling to support Brosowske, given his connection to the construction industry. The fourth member of the council, Bill Holland, who had acceded to being mayor following Blewett’s death, from the outset of his time on the council was highly accommodating of the building industry, and had been himself a recipient of campaign funds from Brosowske’s major backers. He at once agreed to support Brosowske’s appointment. Indeed, Holland played a crucial role in ensuring that the selection process in favor of Brosowske was rigged. Brosowske, along with Bennington, Victoria Dove, Russell Harris, Linda Holder, Robert Nelson, Anthony Rhoades, Veronica Rios and Chester Watts, applied for the council position appointment. On July 11, 2018 the city council held a specially-scheduled meeting to interview the candidates and thereupon make an appointment. All of the candidates participated in that forum except Watts, who was infirm and could not attend. The appointment candidates were excluded from the meeting chambers so they would not have an opportunity to hear the questions in advance of their own interviews. Holland, as the mayor, arranged to have Brosowske interviewed second last. Former Hesperia Mayor and Councilman Bill Jensen was a longtime Postmus associate and a close friend to Holland, for whom he had acted as the broker on the sale of one of his properties. Jensen was an early advocate for Brosowske’s appointment who in June 2018 had welcomed Brosowske as a roommate into his home at 8075 E Avenue so Brosowske could claim Hesperia residency there, register to vote at that address and thereby qualify to serve on the Hesperia City Council. After witnessing the interviews of the first four candidates on July 11, Jensen retreated to the foyer in City Hall, where Brosowske was waiting to be called in for his interview. He provided Brosowske with the questions being asked and an outline of the responses his rivals for the position had given thus far. With that advantage, Brosowske came in and gave a competent enough performance that appointing him would not appear unreasonable. The council voted 3-to-1, with Russ, Holland and Swanson prevailing and Councilman Larry Bird dissenting, to appoint Brosowske.
With the terms on the council that Russ, Holland and Blewett were elected to in 2014 drawing to a close, Russ and Holland were obliged to run for election and Brosowske was likewise obliged to stand for election in November 2018 for them to remain in office. With 2018 being the first year in the city’s 30-year history in which elections were held by-district rather than at-large, Holland sought the endorsement of the voters in the city’s newly created Second District, Russ vied in the Third District and Brosowske, having entered into a lease for a unit at 16784 Sultana Street in Hesperia within the Sultana Mulberry Apartment Complex in the city’s Fourth District, ran in that race. All three incumbents endorsed one another going into the election season.
For the entirety of his nearly eight years in office Holland had proven himself willing to reduce the infrastructure construction requirements imposed on those elements of the building industry developing property in Hesperia to make way for the City of Progress to, in his words, “move forward.”
Having already secured what he considered to be sufficient funding to fuel his campaign in 2018, Holland felt it would be to his benefit to show some distance between himself and the building industry as Hesperia’s infrastructure deficit which had been accruing for generations had manifested to become a severe negative impact on the quality of life in Hesperia, and his four opponents in the race were looking to make headway using that as a wedge to prevent his reelection. Somewhat abruptly, just as he was receiving final installments totaling $3,080.78 in funding originating with developmental interests that was laundered to him through the Inland Empire Taxpayers Association, Holland reversed course from what had been his pattern while in office and opposed using city funds to construct or pave roads intended to serve proposed residential projects in the city.  The Russ and Brosowske campaigns were the immediate beneficiaries of money from the development industry that was poured into independent expenditure committees, including those controlled by Postmus/Mountain States Consulting Group, which was used to generate and distribute fluff pieces lionizing them while encouraging voters to retain them on the council. Those same independent expenditure committees at the same time put out “political hit pieces” attacking both Holland and Bennington. Incensed at the rough play, Holland connected that the developmental interests bankrolling the attacks on him were supporting both Brosowske and Russ, at which point he publicly withdrew his support of both, and endorsed Bennington and Cameron Gregg, in their elective efforts against Brosowske and Russ.
On November 6, Holland emerged from the fray blooded but unbeaten, having managed to bring in 1,027 votes, which was good for 34.92 percent of the vote, well ahead of the second place finisher in Hesperia’s District 2, Dan Ramirez, who captured 22.92 percent of the vote. Russ, with 2,119 votes or 48.06 percent, was outdistanced by 28-year-old Cameron Gregg in District 3, who managed 2,288 votes for 51.96 percent. Five minutes after the polls closed on election night, with none of District 4’s 18 precincts having yet reported and only the mail-in ballots that had been received up to that point tallied, Bennington was out in front of Brosowske by a razor thin margin, 448 votes or 50.28 percent to 443 votes or 49.72 percent. At 10 p.m. that night, after 14 of the 18 precincts had reported, the voting was trending slightly in Bennington’s direction, and she remained ever so slightly ahead of Brosowske, 653 votes or 50.7 percent to 635 votes or 49.3 percent. There was no change at midnight. At 4 a.m. Wednesday morning, all precincts’ ballots were in and counted. The vote tally at that point stood 1,011 or 50.75 percent for Bennington to 981 or 49.25 percent for Brosowske.
Thereafter, however, the last minute blitz of highly negative attack mailers that had been put out by the Postmus/Mountain States team on Brosowske’s behalf and which had arrived in District 4 mailboxes just a few days ahead of election day had their full effect. At 4 p.m. on Friday November 9, with most of the mail-in ballots having arrived and some of the provisional ballots having been validated, Brosowske has moved to within two votes of Bennington, 1,115 votes or 49.96 percent to 1,117 votes or 50.04 percent. The following week, as more mail-in ballots arrived and were counted, Brosowske inched in front of her, and that trend continued all the way to the final official results were declared and certified in December, at which point Brosowske was declared the winner, with 1,688 votes or 52.08 percent to Bennington’s 1,553 votes, or 47.92 percent.
To Brosowske and his supporters, it seemed that he had succeeded in progressing to the next level with regard to fulfilling his ambition, which extended up the political evolutionary chain to perhaps include county supervisor and, more certainly, state and then federal office. His victory put him into an elected office that he would hold for four years, and which would provide him with the foundation to run as an incumbent for the Assembly, State Senate or Congress in 2020 or 2022. Neither Brosowske nor his supporters fully recognized the degree to which the ruthless tactics he had employed against Bennington, a 30 plus-year resident of Hesperia and former government employee whose participation in neighborhood-based improvement efforts as a non-politician had generally signaled to a large segment of the community her civic-mindedness and sincere nature, offended a major cross section of the community, a situation exacerbated by the consideration that Brosowske, as transplant to Hesperia, did not have his hand on the pulse of those he was actually representing. Virtually overnight, despite his victory, the perception of him as an earnest, young up-and-coming, clean cut conservative values officeholder well-thought of by his colleagues changed to that of a carpetbagger who was ready to maneuver in whatever direction necessary and use underhanded tactics to achieve his goals and ends, which were in no way consistent with the his constituents’ interests and priorities.
Brosowske did himself no favors when, anticipating the influx of future political donations from entrepreneurs in the nascent commercial cannabis industry,  he spoke openly about his support for allowing marijuana cultivation, processing, distribution and retail outlets as a means of boosting the regional economy. Such musings in Hesperia, which is dominated by conservative family and Christian values Republicans, including more than 10,000 members of both Baptist and Pentecostal congregations whose preachers exercise considerable influence of how those church members vote, did not sit well. The reserve of goodwill Brosowske once had went instantly up in smoke.  Accompanied by revelations of Brosowske’s connection to Postmus, who decades ago had similarly garnered the strong support of that deeply religiously-bent segment of the Hesperia population which then was critically disillusioned when it was revealed that he was a closeted homosexual whose lifestyle featured prodigious drug-fueled promiscuous hook-ups with different men on an almost nightly basis, the disenchantment with Brosowske metastasized.
In March, developmental interests, including Jim Previti, one of the developers most heavily involved in residential expansion in Hesperia over the last decade-and-a-half, initiated a recall effort against Holland, whom Previti had previously supported, in an effort to punish him for having reversed himself with regard to his previous support of having the city pay for infrastructure, including roads, needed for the conversion of undeveloped property into subdivisions. Holland’s first eight years as an officeholder had been built upon his previous willingness to do the bidding of the development industry. His refusal to go along with having Hesperia’s taxpayers continue to pay the freight on the cost of the public improvements accompanying that development had evolved out of his need to appeal to those taxpayers to achieve reelection in the recently concluded election. Once the development industry has its tentacles into a politician, he is finished if he thereafter seeks to act in an independent way that renunciates the interests of those who have backed him. Given Previti’s status as one of Mountain State’s and Brosowske’s major contributors and Brosowske’s status as one of Mountain State’s primary political operatives, it was widely presumed that he was involved in the Holland recall effort. When that accusation was first publicly raised, Brosowske issued a denial. Subsequently, however, as the contretemps between him and Holland deepened, Brosowske publicly threatened to find and back a candidate who would vie to replace Holland once the recall question against Holland qualified for the ballot.
Thereafter, talk of recalling Brosowske ensued. Unbeknownst to Brosowske, his lack of presence at the Sultana Street Apartment had been noted, and a determined effort to further research whether he was in fact residing in Hesperia was undertaken, with any eye to the consideration that he might be removed from office for non-residency. Monitoring his comings and goings, however, proved to be something of a challenge, as his work as a political operative did not necessitate that he function from a fixed address.
In May, Brosowske, who had no training, no licensing, no certification, no expertise and no experience with regard to water operations, was hired into the position of assistant general manager with the West Valley Water District in Rialto at an annual salary of $189,592 augmented by $62,500 in benefits and perquisites, swelling his total compensation package to over a quarter of a million dollars per year. It was simultaneously revealed that Previti was a major donor to the campaigns of Kyle Crowther, a member of the board of directors of the West Valley Water District.
Brosowske’s hiring by West Valley was perceived, both in Hesperia and in San Bernardino County’s political and governmental circles, as an egregious act of blatant cronyism. While the increase in income the job provided and the prestige of the position was of obvious benefit to Brosowske personally, his regular presence at the district’s headquarters made it far easier to track his movements, which ultimately redounded to his political detriment. Those tailing Brosowske reported that he was actually residing in Rancho Cucamonga, driving to work in the morning from a specific location there to the West Valley Water District headquarters and eventually returning to Rancho Cucamonga in the evening.
Hesperia Recreation and Park District Board Member Kelly Gregg, the father of Cameron Gregg and Hesperia School District Board Member Cody Greg, is the head of operations of True Liberty Protection Services. True Liberty’s personnel carried out a concerted around-the-clock monitoring of Brosowske’s apartment at 16784 Sultana Street. According to Kelly Gregg, Brosowske was a virtual no-show at his Hesperia apartment, making appearances there only on rare occasions. According to Kelly Gregg, Brosowske has claimed or established residences in Apple Valley, Brea and Hesperia.
In addition, the Sentinel has learned, the Hesperia City Council was provided with information, quite possibly provided to it by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which has given its members absolute confidence that Brosowske has been regularly residing at a location outside the city. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has the capability of collecting cell tower data relating to specific mobile devices, which allow it to compile a profile of the user of that phone’s precise whereabouts on a daily, indeed hourly and minute-by-minute, basis. It is believed that the department was able to assemble such a comprehensive tracing of Brosowske’s whereabouts going back to the time he was first appointed to the council. Because cellular signal emissions propagate over the airwaves rather than across a wire, no warrant is required in capturing them. Hesperia City Manager Nils Bentsen, prior to his hiring as city manager, was employed for 27 years by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, where he achieved the rank of captain and his final assignment was overseeing the Hesperia Sheriff’s Department Station, in which capacity he was serving as Hesperia’s chief of police. Hesperia contracts with the sheriff’s department for the provision of law enforcement service.
On September 3, the city council, with Brosowske and Councilwoman Rebekah Swanson dissenting, voted 3-to-2 to have Bentsen and City Attorney Eric Dunn provide the council with a list of both lawyers and investigators the council could contract with at a future date to carry out a probe into whether Brosowske was residing in Hesperia. Immediately thereafter and without having hired such an investigator nor having received or reviewed the report of just such an investigation, the council voted, again by the same 3-to-2 margin with Mayor Larry Bird and councilmen Bill Holland and Cameron Gregg prevailing, to remove Brosowske from office based on his presumed non-residence. Prior to that meeting, Brosowske’s Corona-based attorney, Chad Morgan, had submitted to the city 211 pages of documentation supporting Brosowske’s claim of residency. Included in that documentation was Brosowske’s eight page rental contract for Unit 7 at 16784 Sultana Street in Hesperia, signed by Brosowske on August 31, 2018 and L. Christensen, representing Sultana Mulberry Apartments LLC; electricity bills from Southern California Edison in Brosowske’s name for “16784 Sultana St. Apt 7 Hesperia, CA 92345” for 12 months from September 2018 until August 2019; similar bills from Southwest Gas to Jeremiah Brosowske for residential gas service to a service address at “16784 Sultana St #7” in Hesperia for the same timeframe; a bill from Spectrum for internet service in Brosowske’s name at the 16784 Sultana Street Unit 7 address for August 2019; and a color photocopy of Brosowske’s driver license, which gives his address as “16784 Sultana St 7 Hesperia, CA 92345.”
While the rental agreement and the bills established that Brosowske had made arrangements to live at the 16784 Sultana Street Unit 7 address, the evidence consisting of the utility bills was undercut by the consideration that the service address on the bills does not match the billing address, which is 16036 Tude Rd. in Apple Valley, corresponding to the home of Brosowske’s mother and father.
Also included in the compendium Morgan presented were a series of text messages that passed between Brosowske’s cell phone and that of Bill Jensen, including ones on June 12, 2018 and on June 28, 2018. Those on the former date show that Brosowske was earnestly seeking a place to live in Hesperia. Those text messages on the latter date seem to indicate that Brosowske was at that point living at Jensen’s Hesperia premises, with Jensen referring to Brosowske as his “roommate.”
According to Morgan, “as a matter of law” Brosowske qualifies as a Hesperia resident and Hesperia Fourth District resident based upon his intent to set up a domicile in Hesperia, and his residency is confirmed by his action in actually moving into the city and setting up his living quarters there.
There have been numerous challenges over the years of the right of various officeholders in California to hold their elected positions based upon their alleged lack of residency within the jurisdiction each was elected to serve within. Under California procedure, a so-called quo warranto examination is carried out by the California Attorney General’s Office, which hears the case against the officeholder in question as presented by a challenger counterbalanced by the officeholder’s defense or explanation, including the presentation of evidence. The attorney general’s office thereupon makes a determination either that the challenge lacks validity or that sufficient question about the validity of the officeholder’s residency exists for the matter to be taken up in a court of law. The court then makes a determination upon the hearing of evidence and arguments put forth by both sides in the dispute. In most cases, the issue at stake consists of the elected official’s continuation in office. In relatively rare cases, questions about an officeholders actual residence have led to a criminal prosecution of the officeholder based on fraud, perjury or election code violations. The outcome of those challenges and prosecutions have been varied, with some individuals being removed from office or convicted, and others allowed to retain their position or being vindicated.
The most celebrated case relating to the residency of a San Bernardino County elected official was that of Fontana City Treasurer Ron Hibble, who was elected to that post in November 1986. The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, then headed by District Attorney Dennis Kottmeier, charged Hibble with four felony charges of perjury and election fraud base upon the contention that he lied about his city of residence. At trial before Judge Robert Krug, Deputy District Attorney Karen Ferraro established that Hibble regularly spent the night at the Grand Terrace home of his girlfriend, Judith McBride, that he had rented out his Fontana residence to a tenant and that he had prevaricated about living in the garage of that home.
Judge Krug made several rulings in the case that were crucial to the outcome, one of those being that the case boiled down to not where Hibble lived on a constant day-to-day basis but whether he met the State of California’s criteria relating to what constitutes an individual’s legal domicile, and whether Hibble had met that bar when he ran for office and voted in 1986.  Making a finding that the utilities at the Fontana home were in Hibble’s name and that his driver license showed the Fontana home’s address, Krug ruled there was no evidence that Hibble’s intent was to move to Grand Terrace permanently, and that Hibble was not paying rent to McBride. Hibble was acquitted.
With the November 2 deadline for the council to act with regard to the council vacancy, the council had scheduled the discussion of the issue and naming a possible replacement for Tuesday night, October 15.
During the public hearing prior to the council’s vote, some residents recommended that Bennington be selected to replace Brosowske.
Victorville City Councilwoman Blanca Gomez characterized Brosowke’s ouster as an “illegal power move” by Holland, Bird and Gregg, seeking to remind them that Brosowske had been elected by Hesperia’s voters.
In their discussion, the mayor and councilmen Gregg and Holland indicated their belief that adequate consideration of the facts relating to Brosowske’s residency or lack thereof had been given to justify his removal.
“This goes back to what we talked about with this person’s residency,” Mayor Bird said. “We said numerous times, ‘Show that you live in the City of Hesperia.’ That did not happen. There were plenty of ways to do it. There was no rush to judgment,” Bird insisted, and then repeated, “No rush to judgment. The election was almost a year ago. We’ve given way more time than we should have to it.”
While Bird was generally and in some specific areas at one with and supportive of Holland, contrasting Holland’s undisputed and longtime status as a city resident with Brosowske’s questionable presence in the city and dubitable claim to being a citizen qualified to vote in the City of Progress and hold office, the mayor nonetheless made an oblique reference to the fashion in which Holland, while he was mayor in July 2018, had held the door open for Brosowske to allow him to make an entrance into Hesperia’s boardroom which the council majority now considers to have been illegitimate.
“We had a process when, sadly, our mayor, Russ Blewett, passed away,” Bird said. “We had maybe eight or nine candidates who did apply. One of those was accused and never responded – and that was the person who was appointed  – that they [sic] were given the questions out in the lobby by a person that’s in this room.”
Holland offered a limited and somewhat self-serving mea culpa, without acknowledging that he had actually militated to tilt the playing field in Brosowske’s favor last year.
“When you misrepresent yourself and you misrepresent where you’re at, where you live, and what you are about, sometimes people are fooled by the flash,” Holland said. “I can say openly… I made a mistake the night I voted to appoint Jeremiah to the council because I, too, was fooled by the flash. I don’t believe he lived in Hesperia.”
Gregg called Brosowske’s electoral victory last November an “unconstitutional election. It’s with that that I’d like to make a motion to appoint Brigit, based on she was the second highest vote-getter. There were no other candidates in that election at all.”
Councilwoman Rebekah Swanson said, “I don’t have any problem at all with Mrs. Benington. That is not my hesitation. My concern is that there was no attempt by the city or anyone else to show that position was open and people were asked to put their name in. So, we didn’t tell anybody. I don’t think there are any other people from District 4 who have applied for this appointment.”
Swanson said it was possible that “Somebody would come back and say, ‘You did not give everybody the opportunity [to apply].’ I just ask that maybe we put it on the website, maybe put it in the newspaper, so everyone would have an opportunity, so nobody could say that Mrs. Bennington jumped over anybody to get this position. It’s the process and the transparency that makes me uncomfortable.”
The council then voted on Gregg’s motion, which passed 3-to-0, with Swanson abstaining.
Bennington thereafter was sworn in.
After the meeting, Brosowske told the Sentinel he fully intends to move forward with the legal challenge of his removal.
He also responded to suggestions that he had engaged in a smear campaign against Bennington. “I ran a campaign,” he said, asserting that Bennington had utilized underhanded tactics against him as well. “She had surrogates attacking me,” he said. “Not coincidentally, all three of those who appointed her supported her failed candidacy last year. Larry Bird, Bill Holland and Cameron Gregg all endorsed her candidacy for city council last year. They never accepted her defeat. Now they are engaged in legally questionable maneuvers to unseat a duly elected public official and replace him with a rejected candidate. This is common in banana republics, not California.”
-Mark Gutglueck

By Mark Gutglueck
As governmental entities within San Bernardino County go, the West Valley Water District lags well behind more than two score of others in terms of the depth and breadth of its charter, its areas of responsibility, the range of the service it provides, its budget, the number of employees and its overall assets. All 24 of the county’s cities, the county itself, a dozen-and-a-half school districts and a handful of other water districts and an equal number of college districts can lay claim to greater assets and more employees than West Valley, which nonetheless represents a significant operation consisting of 17 active wells, 25 reservoirs 360 miles of pipeline, and five treatment plants, involving 20,000 service connections to serve approximately 66,000 residents living in portions of Fontana, Rialto, the unincorporated San Bernardino County community of Bloomington and a small portion of northern Riverside County.
Despite the district’s relatively modest numbers and the consideration that local governmental board races are officially classified as non-partisan ones, politics in the West Valley Water District is as intense and more sharply fought over than anywhere else in the county. Indeed, as one of the last remaining districts in San Bernardino County in which its elections are held in odd-numbered years, those contests have evolved into brutal proving grounds for the far more significant electoral battle fought in even-numbered years that correspond to the national presidential election, during which the county supervisor overseeing the Fifth District is chosen. The Fifth District comprises most of Fontana, all of Rialto, all of Bloomington, all of Colton and the western portion of San Bernardino.
Curiously, though the population within the geographical boundaries of the West Valley Water District leans heavily toward the Democratic Party, four-fifths of its board members are Republicans. The current Fifth District Supervisor, Josie Gonzales, who has held that post since 2004 and must leave office next year as a consequence of term limits, is the only Democrat on the board of supervisors at present.
Between the mid-1960s and 2009, registered Republicans in San Bernardino County outnumbered registered Democrats. Throughout that era, Republicans dominated politics at the local level. Despite the number of registered Democrats eclipsing the number of registered Republicans within the county a decade ago, Republicans have continued to hang onto control of the county’s governmental institutions. In addition to four of the five county supervisors be adherents to the Party of Lincoln, in seventeen of the county’s 24 municipalities, Republicans outnumber or equal Democrats on those city or town councils. Republicans outnumber Democrats on the boards of the lion’s share of the county’s water and school districts, with Democratic majorities on those panels only in major Democratic strongholds.
Republicans have consistently evinced a higher degree of participation in San Bernardino County’s elections than Democrats, turning up in greater percentages at the polls on election day and casting mail-in ballots in greater numbers, as well. In addition, the Republican Party in San Bernardino County through its central committee has proven far more sophisticated, coordinated and energetic than its Democratic counterpart, investing a far more substantial amount of money in promoting its party’s standard bearers than its rival.
Countywide, as of this week, of the county’s 1,002,804 registered voters, the Democrats held what appeared to be a substantial advantage, with 397,346 or 39.6 percent of the county’s voters affiliated with their party, well ahead of the Republicans, whose ranks numbered 288,353 or 28.8 percent. Only somewhat less numerous than Republicans in the county are registered voters who declined to declare an identification with any political party, 250,185 or 24.9 percent. The more obscure parties such as the American Independent Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Green Party and the Libertarian Party collectively accounted for 66,920 voters or 6.67 percent.
That the Republicans are in control of the West Valley Water District’s elected offices is remarkable from the standpoint that they are outnumbered by the Democrats in the district by a ratio of more than two-and-a-half to one. Of the West Valley’s 39,829 total voters, 19,307 or 48.5 percent are Democrats and 7,704 or 19.3 percent are Republicans. Of note is that within the jurisdictional boundaries of the West Valley Water District voters unaligned with any party, 10,526 or 26.4 percent, outnumber Republicans. Despite those numbers, current Board President Mike Taylor and board members Cliff Young, Greg Young and Kyle Crowther are Republicans. Board Member Don Olinger is the sole Democrat on the board.
Despite, or maybe even because of, the GOP’s domination of the district, the West Valley Water District in the last year or so has proven out as the scene of more Republican on Republican political violence than any place else in San Bernardino County and perhaps even the State of California or the entire nation. With the district’s November 5 election approaching, that mayhem is nearing a crescendo. All of this is occurring in defiance of the 11th Commandment, which was tacked onto the original ten by the great Republican prophet Ronald Reagan: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.”
The pantheon of Republican demigods that lead the West Valley Water District are impressive. The longest-serving among the four is the venerable Dr. Clifford Young, who can lay claim to be either the leading African-American Republican, or among the top two or three African American Republicans, in San Bernardino County. Born in Midland, Texas, Clifford Odell Young, Sr. moved to California at the age of 15, graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles and then California Baptist College in Riverside, where in what he now considers to have been an act of youthful indiscretion he hooked up with the Democrats and formed a group called the Riverside Young Democrats. Following his graduation he went to work for the Shell Oil Company. By the early 1970s he had obtained a masters degree in divinity, was ordained as a minister and converted to Republicanism, running for Congress in 1976, gaining the GOP nomination for the 32nd Congressional District but losing in the general election. In 1980, he was appointed by the Reagan Administration to the post of deputy director of minority business in the Department of Commerce. He thereafter spent the next seven years as the pastor of the Hope Presbyterian Church and in 1989 began his career as an educator when he joined the faculty of Cal State San Bernardino, teaching public administration and business, rising to become head of the department.
In 2004, Young was selected to serve as Fifth District San Bernardino County Supervisor when Jerry Eaves, a Democrat, was removed from office as the consequence of his prosecution on political corruption charges. Young did not seek election at the end of that term but remained at Cal State San Bernardino as a professor and special assistant to the college president.
In 2013, Clifford Young reentered politics in earnest when he ran for a post on the West Valley Water District Board of Directors. In doing so, he succeeded and struck a blow for the Republican Party, displacing Don Olinger, a long-serving Democrat on the board.
In 2015 Greg Young, who is no blood relation to Clifford Young, a longtime member of the Republican Central Committee, was elected to the water board. That same year, Olinger staged a comeback, succeeding in his bid for election.
In 2017, Clifford Young threw his support behind Dr. Mike Taylor, a law enforcement professional who had risen to the pinnacle of his profession when he obtained the position of police chief in Baldwin Park. A political neophyte and a Republican, Taylor emerged victorious in the race, as did Clifford Young in his reelection bid.  Also successful in an accompanying race that year for a two-year term that was necessitated by the resignation of  Board Member Alan Dyer who had most recently been reelected in 2015 was Kyle Crowther, another Republican who had the assistance of Cliff Young in the form of shared electioneering resources, along with the backing of the crucial elements of Fontana’s Republican political machine, Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren, Fontana city councilmen Jesse Armendarez  and John Roberts, as well as Fontana political activist Phil Cothran, Sr.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2017 election, the quartet of Young, Young, Taylor and Crowther established Clifford Young in the capacity of board president. They then together flexed their rejuvenated GOP muscle, initiating the firing, suspension or eventual resignations of five of the district’s highest ranking staff members – General Manager Matthew Litchfield, Assistant General Manager Greg Gage, the district’s human resources manager, Karen Logue, and the board’s secretary, Shanae Smith, and Chief Financial Officer Marie Ricci. The board had also, on a motion by Taylor seconded by Crowther, and approved in a 4-to-1 vote with Olinger in opposition, hired a general legal counsel for the district with whom Taylor was comfortable, Robert Tafoya of the law firm Tafoya & Garcia. Tafoya was also the city attorney for the City of Baldwin Park. Based on Taylor’s further recommendation, the district hired Baldwin Park Councilman Ricardo Pacheco to serve as West Valley’s assistant general manager.  Taylor would later play a central role in hiring Clarence Mansell, who had extensive experience well-established credentials in dealing with municipal water issues with the Los Angeles County Sanitation District and the cities of Los Angeles, Corona and Rialto, to serve as West Valley’s general manager.
In time, chairmanship of the West Valley board of directors was handed over from Dr. Clifford Young to Dr. Michael Taylor. Either shortly before or shortly after that transition, a schism developed between doctors Young and Taylor. While that contretemps was apparent to many, though perhaps not all, within the inner circle of the West Valley Water District, it went generally unrecognized by the general public, as Republicans are constitutionally reluctant to wash their linen openly. What was perhaps the first hint of dissension came earlier this year when Dr. Young and Dr. Taylor locked horns on an item calling for the district to send a formal request to the state controller’s office to conduct a full financial audit of all of the West Valley Water District’s fiscal dealings over the previous two years, including all contracts and contractors used by legal counsel. Taylor suggested that instead of having the state auditor go over the district’s books, the district have the district’s previous auditing firm carry out the examination. When Greg Young, who had gravitated toward Dr. Young’s position with regard to most of the differences that were emerging between Drs. Young and Taylor, insisted on the board voting on the original motion to seek the state audit, that motion failed 2-to-3. Taylor then motioned to have the district’s contract auditor carry out the audit to cover the period from the end of the last audit completed to the current date. That passed 3-to-0, with Young and Young abstaining.
On February 19, 2019, Clifford Young, acting in conjunction with West Valley Water District Chief Financial Officer Naisha Davis and West Valley Water District Assistant Board Secretary Patricia Romero, planted a ticking time bomb at West Valley when they quietly, under seal, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, referred to as a qui tam action, which alleged a host of wrongdoing within the district.
As plaintiffs, represented by attorneys Rachel Fiset and Erin Coleman of the law firm Zweibach, Fiset & Coleman, Young, Davis and Romero alleged Tafoya, as the district’s general counsel; West Valley Water District Special Counsel Clifton Albright and his law firm, Albright, Yee & Schmit; West Valley Water District Special Counsel Martin Kaufman and his law firm; and West Valley Water District consultant Robert Katherman, as defendants, had violated the California False Claims Act. In the suit, Taylor, Assistant West Valley General Manager Ricardo Pacheco, Crowther and Mansell were identified as coconspirators.
A writ of qui tam is a private individual’s or individuals’ petition, advocating a prosecution and a court order against those the petitioner or petitioners alleges or allege have engaged in prohibited acts. The petitioner in a qui tam action can receive all or part of any penalty imposed on those adjudged guilty. The suit filed by Young, Davis and Romero names the district as a plaintiff despite the consideration that the district board never voted to file the suit and, in fact, three of the board’s members – Taylor, Crowther and Olinger – are adamantly opposed to the prosecution of the suit, disagree with the upshot of the suit, and have not empowered the law firm Zweibach, Fiset & Coleman, nor Rachel Fiset nor Erin Coleman to act on the district’s behalf. According to Coleman, however, Young’s, Davis’s and Romero’s assertions of whistleblower status taken together with the nature of the false claim allegations they are making against the defendants endow the complainants with the legal entitlement to sue on behalf of the district and its constituents.
The lawsuit alleges that Taylor, who had been chief of the Baldwin Park Police Department from 2013 to 2016, was subsequently re-hired to a one-year contract to again serve as Baldwin Park police chief on December 1, 2017, some 25 days after being elected to the water board and six days before he was sworn in. Taylor’s contract to resume his duties as police chief was drafted by Tafoya, who was also Baldwin Park’s city attorney, according to the lawsuit. Upon being sworn in as a water board member and assuming his duties in that capacity on December 7, 2018, according to the suit, Taylor effectuated the hiring Tafoya as the West Valley Water District’s general counsel on a contract with no end date. In the ensuing 18 months, according to the lawsuit, Tafoya’s firm billed the West Valley Water District approximately $395,000.
Further, according to the suit, less than four months later, after Taylor assumed his position on the West Valley Water Board dais, Pacheco, a Baldwin Park City Councilman who had voted for Taylor’s reinstatement as police chief, was hired by the West Valley Water District as the “assistant general manager of external affairs.” He was later moved without board approval to the newly created position of “assistant general manager,” earning a salary of $192,000 per year, the suit alleges. Since his hiring, Pacheco and the California Education Coalition Political Action Committee he controls have donated a total of $8,000 to Taylor’s campaign and $1,000 to West Valley Water District Board Vice President Kyle Crowther’s campaign, according to the lawsuit.
According to the suit, in 2018, Taylor spearheaded the effort to hire Mansell, whom the suit characterizes as Taylor’s associate, as the West Valley Water District’s interim general manager and subsequently as the permanent general manager, at an annual salary of $225,000.  The lawsuit alleges Mansell was hired by a 3-to-2 board vote without a recruitment effort.
The lawsuit alleges that Tafoya and other entities working in a consultant or special capacity on behalf of the district, including Albright, Yee & Schmit, the Kaufman Law firm and Robert Katherman, have made contributions to Crowther’s and Taylor’s campaign war chests or otherwise assisted them in their campaigns and provided them with gratuities. According to the suit, Taylor, Tafoya, Pacheco, Crowther, Mansell, West Valley Water District Human Resources and Risk Manager Deborah Martinez and other law firms and consultants connected to Taylor and Tafoya  “have engaged in illegal kickbacks and bribes to ensure contracts with the district and subsequent approval of invoices for payment.”
Since the suit was filed, Maribel S. Medina, representing the West Valley Water District as a real party in interest in the lawsuit, has refuted most of the elements in the suit. According to public records, Clifford Young voted to hire both Mansell and Pacheco.
In June, the ticking time bomb in the form of that suit exploded, when it and its contents were publicly revealed. The adverse publicity that attended the revelation of the lawsuit has triggered widespread violations of the 11th Commandment, including ruthless jockeying among Republicans for the inside track in the race to replace Josie Gonzales as Fifth District San Bernardino County Supervisor next year.
Of San Bernardino County’s five supervisorial districts, the Fifth district is the one most heavily weighted in favor of the Democratic Party. Of the Fifth District’s 181,809 voters, 89,954, or 49.5 percent, are registered as Democrats, with 33,241, or 18.3 percent,  registered as Republicans. Another 47,638, or 26.2 percent are registered with no political affiliation.  The remaining 6.1 percent are registered with the more obscure parties, including Peace and Freedom, American Independent, Green, and Libertarian. The number of voters in the Fifth District affiliated with the Democratic Party approaches three times as many as those who are registered Republicans. Not since 1988, when Bob Hammock prevailed, has a Republican been elected Fifth District supervisor. From 1992 onward, Jerry Eaves, who was previously a steelworkers union representative, Rialto’s mayor and a member of the California Assembly, was elected to the post and reelected twice. For less than a year, Clifford Young in 1994 temporarily broke the Democratic grip on the office when he was appointed to fill out the remainder of Eaves’ term. But from 2004 onward, Josie Gonzales, has held onto the post. She is obliged to leave that office next year because of term limits, and will be going out with a substantial amount of money in her political war chest, a good portion of which she will use to assist her choice to succeed her, Dan Flores, her chief of staff. Flores has already raised $262,000 of his own money, which he and his supporters believe at the very least boosts him to the head of the pack of Democratic competitors and will potentially ward off any other Democratic candidates altogether.  Democratic pollsters are confident that given the Fifth District’s registration numbers, no Republican can win the Fifth District supervisor’s seat.
Nevertheless, the Republicans for some time have been salivating at the opportunity to sponsor a charismatic Republican candidate who can capture the imagination of a wide cross section of the electorate in the Fifth District, including making major inroads into the Democratic Party-affiliated majority, and through a more energetic, coordinated and sophisticated effort than the Democrats typically engage in, claim the Fifth District seat on the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors for the GOP.
Such a coup would require, the Republicans recognize, finding the right candidate and then hitching all of the Republican Party’s horses to the same side of the wagon, while cleverly undercutting the leading Democratic candidate with classic electioneering attack tactics. It is believed that Flores, with all of his ostensible advantages going toward the upcoming election year, yet harbors certain vulnerabilities that if exploited in a well-timed and orchestrated fashion, could change the election outcome from the easily achieved Democratic victory most political pundits and observers believe is coming, to a Republican breakthrough.
Quietly, for the last 18 months, the Republican forces had been lining up with regard to thrusting Clifford Young into the fray as the GOP standard bearer in the Fifth District, representing him as someone who carries the full range of credentials, experience, wherewithal and gravitas, to say nothing of the voter appeal, to achieve the objective. Key to Young’s success were three elements. One of those was his presumed appeal in the San Bernardino portion of the district, where his status as a college faculty member is a factor in his favor. Second is his gravitas as a community leader in Rialto, where he lives, buttressed by his membership on the West Valley Water District Board of Directors, which functions from the district headquarters on Baseline Avenue in Rialto. Every bit as important as the first two considerations is his presumed ability to tap into the base of support that would be offered by his foremost ally in Fontana, Mayor Acquanetta Warren. Remarkably, Warren has constructed a lock-tight hold on Fontana’s politics, having seized and maintained primacy as mayor for the last two-and-one half election cycles, having first been elected to the city’s top spot in 2010, and having served on the city council for eight years before that, after she was appointed to a vacant position on that panel in December 2002, and was re-elected in 2004 and 2008. While Fontana is overwhelmingly Democratic in its political orientation, with 43,528 or 48.1 percent of its 90,431 voters registered as Democrats and 16,388 or 18.1 percent affiliated with the Republican Party, Warren’s political machine has kept her coalition in power over the years. At present, that coalition consists of four Republicans – herself, Councilman John Roberts, Councilman Jesse Armendarez and Councilman Phil Cothran, Jr., who is the son of political activist Phil Cothran, Sr.  As one of Clifford Young’s longtime political allies, Warren is thought to be able to intercede with Fontana’s voters and deliver a sizable percentage of votes to him in the upcoming 2020 election.
The falling out between Drs. Young and Taylor has overturned the Republicans apple cart in the Fifth District, undoing crucial alignments that the GOP had been counting upon in 2020.
Within the West Valley Water District itself, Greg Young, for the most part, has sided with Cliff Young. Crowther has hewed to Taylor’s side of the divide. This has made Olinger, the Democrat, the crucial swing vote. Olinger, who was displaced from the board in 2013 by Clifford Young, now finds himself in the fold with Taylor and Crowther, such that Taylor is now in ascendancy in the district.
Crucial Republican electioneering assets, such as the independent expenditure groups Inland Empire Taxpayers Association and the Citizens Against Wasteful Spending Political Action Committee, which previously Clifford Young might have utilized for his own electoral efforts and to assist those in league with him, are now aligned with Taylor, cutting Young off from crucial support. The upshot is that those organizations are being used against Clifford Young’s sole remaining ally on the board, Greg Young, and in support of both of Greg Young’s opponents, Jackie Cox and Angel Ramirez.
This year, the three contests in the West Valley Water District are being conducted using by-district rather than at-large balloting, as was previously the case.  In the district’s Division 1 race, Crowther is opposed by former board member Linda Gonzalez, who was defeated by Taylor in 2017, and Bloomington Municipal Advisory Commission Member Betty Gosney. In Division Four, Olinger is being challenged by another Democrat, Channing Hawkins, who served as an appointee to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Office of Civil Rights, during the Obama Administration. In the Fifth District, Greg Young is faced with candidacies by Bloomington Municipal Advisory Commission Member Jackie Cox and Angel Ramirez, a Fontana resident who this summer moved to Bloomington to qualify his candidacy in Division Five.
As of earlier this month, Taylor’s campaign committee had provided Olinger’s campaign with $14,110.28. While Taylor’s support of Olinger, a Democrat,  is significant, it does not appear to be a violation of the 11th commandment, per se, as Olinger is running against Hawkins, another Democrat.
While Taylor is not up for election in this year’s race and Crowther is, early this week, on October 14, Crowther made a $3,000 contribution to Taylor’s campaign fund. That provision of money can be put into perspective with the consideration that on September 13, Taylor’s campaign fund made a $7,500 contribution to the Citizens Against Wasteful Spending Political Action Committee. The Citizens Against Wasteful Spending Political Action Committee in April provided Fontana City Councilman Jesse Armendarez with $4,0222 for his campaign for San Bernardino County supervisor, the maximum amount a supervisor candidate can receive from an individual donor.  All of this puts Taylor and Crowther firmly in Armendarez’s camp, which is fully consistent with their enmity toward Clifford Young.
While Armendarez is a member of Mayor Warren’s ruling coalition and her political machine, he appears to be moving in defiance of her support of Clifford Young in next year’s race for supervisor. Similarly, Warren has thus far supported Crowther in his electoral efforts in the West Valley Water District. Yet Crowther’s standing as a member of the coalition that includes Taylor and Olinger runs counter to Warren’s support of Clifford Young as well as her affiliation with Greg Young. Both Crowther and Taylor are heavily supporting Angel Ramirez in his bid for the Fifth Division West Valley Water District Board position.
In recent weeks, there have been a flurry of political hit pieces landing in the mailboxes of West Valley Water District Fifth Division voters. Three of those attack Greg Young, with two of those having been paid for by the Inland Empire Taxpayers Association. One of those references a series of headlines from local newspapers which appear to be critical of the water district. The backside of that mailer touts Ramirez and his candidacy, stating “Demand accountability. Demand ethics. Demand transparency.” The second hit piece targeting Greg Young from the Inland Empire Taxpayer’s Association contains three photos, several or all of which are possibly Photoshopped, which show someone who looks like Young holding cocktail, wine and a large margarita glasses, and refers to Young as “the ultimate bully” who missed three board meetings in August and September of this year. “End the abuse of power,” the flyer commends the reader. “Stand up to Greg Young” A third hit piece concerning Greg Young was paid for by Taylor’s election committee. Bearing the phrase “Greg Young Caught Redhanded,” it references a newspaper article which the mailer says provided a “report [of] how politician Greg Young is improperly using your money to fund his political campaign.” Young, the mailer states, engaged in “dishonest and desperate campaign tactics. This election, let’s clean up Bloomington’s water company. Reject Greg Young and his dirty politics.”
Simultaneously, a mailer went out from the Inland Empire Taxpayer’s Association touting Jackie Cox and her candidacy, calling her “Our proven leader in water,” noting that she was formerly a West Valley Water District board member, and crediting her with “working harder to get water rates lowered.”  That mailer was matched by one paid for by Taylor’s campaign fund which lionized Angel Ramirez as “the best choice for West Valley Water District.” The mailer pictures and quotes Taylor, “Angel Ramirez is the right choice for Bloomington water customers. His proven commitment to our families demonstrates his leadership abilities and he will apply those principles and values in ensuring the safest water for our children, seniors and families. Angel Ramirez is the real deal and will be a tremendous asset as your advocate.”
Greg Young did not take that supinely. He fired back with a hit piece of his own. The front side of that 11 by 8.5 inch cardboard missive referred to “Your ratepayer’s champion: Greg Young.” The reverse side, while intended to combat Ramirez’s candidacy, took as much aim at Taylor as Ramirez. Characterizing Taylor as a “disgraced former chief of police,” it accused him of having “taken control of the water district,” asserting he was in cahoots with Tafoya and Pacheco.  Ramrirez, the mailer charged, was Taylor’s “bought and paid for candidate.”  Ramirez’s claim of being an educator was bogus, according to the mailer. “Angel Ramirez has no college degree nor any practical experience in the water industry,” the mailer states.
In what Almendarez’s forces hope will be a presaging of what is to come with endorsements the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee will make next year with regard to the Fifth District Board of Supervisors race, Armendarez and his allies within the local Republican establishment, including Fontana Councilman Phil Cothran Jr.’s father, Phil Cothran, convinced the central committee’s executive directors to withhold the party’s endorsement from Greg Young, who is himself a member of the central committee and the chairman of the Fifth District delegation, and provide it to Ramirez.
Armendarez is now working toward having the central committee ace Clifford Young out of the party’s endorsement in the race for supervisor and instead have that accolade conferred upon him.  Clifford Young’s forces are gearing up for a battle royal over that issue.
The way in which Greg Young was denied the Republican Party’s endorsement is not sitting well with a substantial number of active Republicans. They are mindful of Greg Young’s efforts in support of the party over the last decade, and are alarmed that as an incumbent he was not given the same preference normally accorded to Republican officeholders seeking reelection.
The contretemps in the West Valley Water district carries with it the potential of undercutting or perhaps even obliterating the toehold the GOP is maintaining in Fontana, as Warren’s loyalty to both Clifford Young and Greg Young is hardfast, and the maneuvering by Armendarez and Crowther is testing her resolve and ability to keep her coalition in Fontana intact.
Despite the party registration advantage and demographic forces that have been running against it for a decade now, the Republican Party in San Bernardino County has been able to maintain its edge over the Democrats through its cohesion and higher order of coordination among its disciplined forces while the less focused and highly fractious Democrats have squandered there political might in petty squabbles, including fighting amongst themselves over leadership and personal advancement. Now, with the division in the West Valley District pitting Republican against Republican, that situation has begun to reverse itself as the hidden dynamics of resentment, irritation and rivalry that were previously tamped down upon and sublimated toward the overriding interest of the party have broken out into the open among Republicans and are mushrooming to the point where events are about to overtake the GOP countywide, threatening to destroy one of the last bastion’s of Republicanism in the Golden State.
The meltdown among Republicans in Rialto is now threatening to expose GOP electioneering activity taking place within the halls of government.
Word has come that evidence has surfaced, consisting of some form of electronic media or documentation, demonstrating Assistant West Valley General Manager Jeremiah Brosowske was engaged in work on the premises of the West Valley Water District Headquarters at 855 West Baseline Road in Rialto on behalf of one of the district’s board candidates. At press time, the Sentinel was unable to confirm that the evidence, believed to be a video, was turned over to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Public Integrity Unit. Brosowske, the former executive director of the Republican Central Committee and former Hesperia city councilman, was hired as the assistant general manager of the West Valley Water District in May. In the wake of the accusation that he was engaged in partisan electioneering activity during work hours performed at the district’s premises has provoked calls for his suspension. Prior to his employment by the district, Brosowske was a political operative for Mountain States Consulting Group, LLC.  Since April, Pacheco, one of the district’s other assistant general manager, has been on paid leave.

James Markman, who previously was employed as Upland city attorney from 1996 to 2003 and returned to that post in 2017, resigned Monday night. Markman’s move to quit came while the city council was holding a closed door discussion in which his performance was being considered and the option of terminating him was on the table.
Since his hiring in February 2017 by then-interim City Manager Marty Thouvenell to assist the city in its arrangement to close out its 111-year-old municipal fire department and clear the way for the absorption of the entirety of the city into an assessment zone so residents would be forced to pay a $150 per year tax to cover the county’s costs on providing the 76,000-population city with fire protection service, Markman’s presence in Up-
land has been resented by a large segment of the city’s residents.
The imposition of that assessment was challenged in a lawsuit and found by a Superior Court judge to have been illegally imposed. The city suffered another defeat in court after Markman sought to validate the city’s sale of 4.631 acres of Memorial Park, including a long-extant baseball diamond, to adjacent San Antonio Hospital for conversion to a multi-story parking structure.
In both the fire department closure/assessment zone annexation and the parkland sale actions, Markman structured those procedures to prevent the city’s residents from having a say in approving them or nixing them by means of a vote. In the legal challenges of those actions that ensued, complaints were lodged that Markman was using his legal expertise to render opinions and craft contracts which violated citizens’ constitutional rights and due procedure protections.
With the 2018 election there was a changeover in three of the city council’s members.
“Mr. Markman is shutting down our democratic process,” said Irmalinda Osuna, a city resident, during the public comment portion of the meeting prior to the council adjourning into its discussion of Markman and his performance conducted out of the earshot of the public. “He must go.”
After the council’s closed-door discussion, Assistant City Attorney Steven Flower appeared in Markman’s place on the dais within the council’s meeting chambers. Flower announced that in the course of the closed session Markman’s resignation as city attorney had been accepted unanimously on a motion by councilwoman Janice Elliott seconded by councilman Bill Velto. Flower, who with Markman is a member of the law firm of Richards Watson & Gershon, speaking in the third person, said that the council had also voted unanimously “to appoint Assistant City Attorney Steven Flower as interim city attorney.”
The council will discuss seeking bids for legal services at its next meeting.
-Mark Gutglueck

The Baptist congregation in Wrightwood has made what appears to be a complete break with Sunrise Church, Inc., the Baptist offshoot that absorbed it in 1996.
It now appears that the faithful in Wrightwood will need to find a new venue somewhere in Wrightwood at which the assemblage can continue to worship.
By 1995 the Wrightwood Baptist Church had fallen on hard economic times, and was unable to consistently satisfy the financial demands facing it. At that point the Sunrise Church based in Rialto swooped in, offering to be of assistance.
Certainly initially there was a degree of affinity between Sunrise and the Wrightwood Baptist Church.
The Sunrise Church was founded in the Rialto area in 1956 as the Rialto Community Baptist Church, one that was affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. After a small gathering of Baptists discussed the prospect of setting up a church in the area, the church held its first modest service, with 27 in attendance, at the home of founding Pastor Wayne Frase on September 9, 1956, with 27 people attending. The church was organized officially under the name of Rialto Community Baptist Church on January 27, 1957, with 21 charter members. Frase led the flock for thirteen years, whereupon he was replaced by Pastor Raeburn Woodson, who remained in that capacity until his December 1987 retirement. In January 1989, Reverend Jay Pankratz became senior pastor.
In March, 1995, the church, while remaining oriented basically along the lines of the Southern Baptists, reinvented itself as being nondenominational, adopting the name Sunrise Church, taken from Luke 1:78-79: “Because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the sunrise will come to us from Heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
It was the next year that Pankratz and Sunrise, learning of how events were about to overtake the Wrightwood Baptist Church, came in to save the day. Given the Sunrise Church’s Baptist roots, the Wrightwood assembly, gladly accepted the hand up, and the church grounds were retrieved from what seemed to be certain foreclosure.
By coming under the guardianship of the Sunrise Church, the Wrightwood church was able to keep its doors open and its followers intact. Initially, this entailed only a minor loss of autonomy and little in terms of doctrinal compromise. Over the years, the Sunrise Church grew more and more independent of the Southern Baptist Convention. Some, though not all, of the reforms that took place in the Sunrise Church, which came to include another parish in south Rialto, one in Ontario, one in Victorville and another in Banning, were applied to the Wrightwood Baptist Church. There was an understanding, at least initially, that the Wrightwood church would endeavor to get back on its legs financially, and after doing so it would recompense Sunrise for its assistance and then return to being its own entity once more. That took far more time than was initially anticipated, and with the departure of Pankratz, the understanding that had been in place for more than a decade eroded as the institutional memory he represented was lost. In recent years, Sunrise Church, Inc. had become more and more insistent on its doctrine being propounded during worship sessions and services, including the form of the services, the sermons and Sunday school lessons. The leadership of Sunrise had come to assume that the Wrightwood Church was to become, indeed had become, a Sunrise congregation, with virtually all of any differences or disputes between the elements of worship in which there were marked differences distinguishing the Sunrise approach and traditional Baptist observances being resolved in favor of the Sunrise Church. This occurred despite the vast majority of those attending the Wrightwood Church identifying themselves as Baptists.  As Sunrise became increasing rigid, strict, dogmatic and dictatorial in straitjacketing the mountain community into accepting the manner in which the church was to be run, including the music and hymns used during services and even the configuration and arrangement of chairs during worship, the two pastors in Wrightwood, Todd Marcy and Wayne Robbins, importuned Sunrise to allow the services to be held more in accordance with the Baptist tradition. They were met with refusals. When the church members in Wrightwood sought to assert at last independence and initiate the buyback of the church, Sunrise declined.
Things reached a turning point late this summer when Pastor Wayne Robbins sojourned on September 10 to a meeting at Sunrise Church in Rialto. At that point he was given an ultimatum: resign. Without the power of holding title to the Wrightwood Church, Robbins had no other alternative.
On Sunday, September 15, Sunrise Rialto Pastor Jeff Gonzalez was present to conduct that morning’s service at the Wrightwood church, without Robbins or Marcy participating. Things grew tense as the congregants questioned Gonzalez, who informed the multitude that Robbins had tendered his resignation. When church members later asked Robbins if that was accurate, he insisted his resignation had not been voluntarily made. Ultimately Pastor Marcy also left, having been forced out. On September 18 Gonzalez and another Sunrise pastor were at the Wrightwood church, at which point the church members were informed that the house of worship was being shuttered forthwith and that the Bible study group that met there would have to make other arrangements. Three days later, the gates and doors to the church were locked, and new locks were installed throughout. On September 28, church members were given three-and-a-half hours to retrieve food for the food bank, and to take out any personal property.
Pastor Robins has carried on, conducting what are yet well attended services at Swarthout Creek, across from the church. The new worshiping venue is known as Christ’s Church of the Canyon. Meanwhile, the congregation is casting about to find another building into which a shelter from the world can be inlaid.
Luke 12:27 reads: “Consider the lilies of the field: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
Repeated efforts by the Sentinel to reach Gonzalez, including messages left at the church in Rialto, did not elicit a response.

The San Bernardino City Council this week gave the first sign that it is prepared to test whether developer Scott Beard was bluffing when he threatened to initiate  legal action against the city if any effort is made  to obstruct the completion and occupation of a county welfare office at the intersection of Little Mountain Drive and 27th Street.
The county resolved, in December 2017,  to have Beard build that facility, to accommodate an office of its transitional assistance department.  Eleven months later, after former San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis lost his November 2018 bid for reelection, the city rushed the approval for building the 38,150 -square foot project through by having it considered not by the city’s planning commission in a highly public setting, but rather before the city’s more obscure design and environmental review committee during a hearing held at an hour of the day when members of the public were not likely to participate. The approval came during the last leg of Davis’s tenure in office. Beard had been a major donor to Davis’s campaigns. In considering the project, its nature was misrepresented as a human resources (personnel) office rather than a human services (welfare) office. When residents of the Muscupiabe residential neighborhood that surrounds the site learned, well after the project had been approved, that the building in question would be one that served hundreds of welfare recipient clients per day, they objected to the project as one that was incompatible with their living environment.
Former City Attorney James Penman recommended to the council in August that it slap Beard with a stop work order on the project while legal issues relating to the validity of the project approval were
examined. Current Deputy City Attorney Sonia Carvalho recommended against that, saying instead the city could insist on subjecting Beard’s tenant – the county – to the process of obtaining a conditional use permit for the welfare office before the building could be occupied.  Beard informed the city at that point that if it took any action whatsoever that interfered with the project, he would sue the city.
For nearly two months, city officials have been reluctant to engage with Beard or any of the Muscupiabe neighborhood residents on the matter, or take any action that might trigger the lawsuit Beard had threatened.
Further, City Manager Teri Ledoux is engaged in a host of dealings and negotiations with the county over other issues and projects and proposals, leaving her loathe to challenge the county with regard to the welfare building or to subject the county to a conditional use permit process on a project it is already committed toward seeing completed.
While Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, in whose Ward 2 the project is located, and Councilman Henry Nickel, whose District 5 borders the project property, have been animated about what they and the Muscupiabe neighborhood residents feel was a flawed process in which political favoritism was shown and the city’s regulatory corners were cut, the remaining five members of the council and Mayor John Valdivia have been less sympathetic toward those protesting the project, feeling objecting to development in the city is not advisable.
During the city council’s closed session prior to its public meeting Wednesday night, however, the council took up the issue of the welfare building project. It instructed the city attorney to explore the implications of imposing on the county a requirement that it obtain a conditional use permit to operate the transitional assistance office at that location, and what range of conditions can be imposed on the completed building and its occupants. Valdivia and council members Fred Shorett and Jim Mulvihill, the members of the council most dismissive of the Muscupiabe neighborhood residents’ concerns, were not in attendance at the meeting.
The council did not immediately inform the public of the action it had taken behind closed doors, but had Carvalho do so after Councilman Ted Sanchez suggest that disclosure be made when Muscupiabe residents during the meeting’s public comment period registered criticism of the city’s inaction on the matter.

Following a build up that was widely interpreted as an indication that the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors had agreed on who would serve in the capacity of county fire chief over the next several years, the board took no action in that regard this week.
What was represented as a special meeting of the board was held on Tuesday, not in the county’s normal venue for public meetings, the Robert Covington Chambers  on the ground floor of the county administration building, but rather on the fifth floor in the Magda Lawson Conference Room, beyond the earshot of the public. The advertised purpose of the meeting was the hiring of a fire chief to replace former County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig, who departed on March 15 to become the fire chief of Santa Barbara County.  Since Hartwig’s departure,   Don Trapp  has filled in as the interim chief.
There has been considerable negative publicity relating to the county fire department, stemming from the county’s imposition of never-before-charged $154 annual assessments on the property owners of 94 percent of the county territory, intended to defray the cost of providing fire protection service.  One of Hartwig’s last accomplishments as chief was to put that comprehensive assessment zone in place.
Supervisors Janice Rutherford and Robert Lovingood are opposed to the assessment regime. Supervisors Josie Gonzales, Curt Hagman and Dawn Rowe favor it.    No decision on finding Hartwig’s replacement was reached on Tuesday, and no announcement relating to the ground covered in the meeting was made, which is perhaps a signal that an increasingly bitter divide on the board over the assessment issue is escalating.

Grant Holcomb, a scion of one of first and foremost families in San Bernardino history, lived up to his familial tradition and passed the torch on to the succeeding generation.
Born October 8, 1888, Grant Holcomb was the only child of William W. Holcomb and a grandson of William F. Holcomb.
Grant Holcomb’s place in San Bernardino can be put into context by a consideration of the feats of his grandfather, whose adventures as a frontiersman, pioneer and explorer are legendary. William F. Holcomb, popularly known as Billy Holcomb, ventured far and wide as a hunter and miner, prospecting at multiple locations between Vancouver, British Columbia and Arizona, culminating in the discovery of the Vulture Mine in Maricopa County, Arizona, from which more than eight million dollars worth of gold was extracted. An original 49er, he crossed the plains to California in the midst of the Gold Rush. He uncovered placer gold deposits in what is now known as Holcomb Valley, in the valley adjacent to Bear Valley, present day Big Bear. Within six months after his discovery there were two thousand men in the valley, working claims there. Billy Holcomb worked successfully at mining in Bear Valley for several years. It is a matter of historical debate as to whether he or the Mormon Church, which dispatched a large contingent of settlers from Salt Lake City to California where they established a colony in San Bernardino in 1851, did more to attract people to what soon became, in 1853,  San Bernardino County.  William F. Holcomb was elected and remained for several terms county clerk, treasurer and assessor, in which capacity he took on, and prevailed over, the California Southern Railroad Company that had refused to pay the local taxes levied upon it.
Billy Holcomb married Nancy Stewart, who had come to San Bernardino from Utah with her father. Their son, William Winfield Holcomb, was born in San Bernardino and attended the local schools, such as they were in those days and then served as a deputy clerk under his father as a young man. Thereafter William Winfield Holcomb became a logger, finding success in the lumber business as San Bernardino grew, later selling both feed and fuel from his lumber yard. He eventually hired on as a deputy sheriff, and later served in the capacity of the bailiff of the Superior Court in San Bernardino. In Santa Maria, California he married San Bernardino native Miss Isabella Grant, the daughter of John and Margaret Grant née Nish, whose family owned a cattle ranch and crop farm near San Bernardino.
Grant Holcomb was William Winfield and Isabella Holcomb’s only child, born at the couple’s house, located at Ninth and G Streets.
Grant Holcomb attended San Bernardino’s high school, during which he participated in the National Guard. He graduated in 1907, and then attended Stanford University, where he was a member of the Delta Chi fraternity. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1911 and then his juris doctorate from Stanford in 1913. He was admitted to the bar in 1913, and set up his practice in San Bernardino, with a suite of offices in the Andreson Building. He worked in the same court where his father was the bailiff. A general practitioner, he had a large clientele, with a considerable caseload handling probates. Additionally, he served as a director of the California State Bank, the Gill Storage Battery Company and the San Bernardino Building & Loan Association. He was also on the advisory board of the Bank of America National Trust & Savings Association.
John Steven McGroarty in the Clarke Publishing Company’s California of the South Volume III, published in 1933, stated, “Closely applying himself to the work of his profession, Grant Holcomb is classed with the most talented and successful lawyers of San Bernardino, his native city.”
On June 15, 1916, at San Francisco, Holcomb married Miss Eleanor Frances Burkham, a native of California and a daughter of S. B. and M. L. Burkham, of Bodie. Earlier in his life, Mr. Burkham owned the stage line and the general store at Bodie, and operated a stage between Bodie and Carson City, Nevada, where the transportation of passengers and mail was constantly beset by the danger of highwaymen. Mrs. Holcomb was graduated from Sanford University as a member of the class of 1914, receiving an A. B. degree. By her marriage she became the mother of four children: Grant, Jr., Kathryn Lee, William Robert and Theodore.  She was a member of the Young Women’s Christian Association and a director of the Woman’s Club of San Bernardino.
Grant Holcomb was a Baptist and served as his church’s treasurer. Gregarious and active, he was a charter member of the San Bernardino Rotary Club, and a director of the Chamber of Commerce, of which he became president. While he was serving in the capacity of the chamber’s civic development committee he secured funds for the erection and outfitting of the Sisters’ Hospital. He was a member of and eventually the president of the Young Men’s Christian Association, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and was a Knight Templar Mason.
A committed Republican, he was active in the party as a member of the Republican Central Committee, of which he was at one point elected vice chairman.
He was a member of the San Bernardino County Bar Association and the American Bar Association, as well as the state bar committee that served in an advisory capacity to the judicial council.
In 1925, San Bernardino Mayor S.W. McNabb resigned to accept an appointment to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. Grant Holcomb was appointed to replace him and he was sworn in on February 9, 1925. Two months later,  Holcomb ran in the municipal election and was retained in office.  He served an elected term that ran from May 11, 1925 until May 9, 1927, when he was succeeded by Ira Gilbert.
In 1928, Grant Holcomb’s wife, Eleanor, passed away. In 1931, he remarried, to Miss Beulah Hartman.
Two of Grant Holcomb’s sons were personages of note. His son William Robert “Bob” Holcomb was a newspaper publisher and mayor of San Bernardino from 1971 to 1985 and again from 1989 to 1993.  His son Grant Holcomb, Jr.  was an actor, best remembered for his role as a reporter on the 1950s television series You Are There hosted by Walter Cronkite. He began his career as a performer on radio drama programs,  after which he was offered a position on CBS television, acting in the early television drama series Studio One in Hollywood in 1948, appearing on Channel 2 Action News, and the TV documentary series Eyewitness to History.  He also appeared in the 1961 film, X-15  and on  CBS News Extra: Project Mercury flight of Friendship in 1962.
Grant Holcomb, Sr. died on February 5, 1943 at the age of 54.
-Mark Gutglueck

We’re between summer and winter and it’s time to revamp with sweaters. The sweater weather is all about being comfortable and. of course, warm. Sweaters match with anything –  jeans, skirts, over dresses and they’re easy to wear.  The sweater is a basic staple and its what makes it strong. This is the season for a great knit and they come in all forms. You can try a basic bold black knit with a pair of boots. There are fringes on sweaters that can augment your appearance, according to your taste or if you just want to make that kind of edgy statement. And, let’s not forget the cardigan, that is a multi-usage piece with denim, pencil skirts, tights, dresses and regular skirts. The chance to wear a sweater is here and ‘Oh, what fun!’ There are so many styles to wear that you won’t get tired of wearing different knits.

“A long sweater, good boots, and stretchy jeans are my fall fashion must-haves.” -Sofia Richie