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Sentinel 03-06-20

By Mark Gutglueck
The contretemps enveloping San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia intensified this week in the wake of a sixth personage at City Hall who is closely associated with him having retained legal representation to pursue a possible claim of damages against the city over the mayor’s conduct and abuse of his elective authority. The news electrified even the most jaded of observers when it was revealed that the person who had lawyered up is his chief of staff.
Matt Brown, who has been Valdivia’s chief of staff for nearly seven months, is now represented by attorney Tristan Pelayes, the legal counsel for four city employees who worked within the mayor’s office as well as a city commissioner nominated to two city commissions by Valdivia. Five of Pelayes’s six clients in the matter are current or former city employees who were or remain members of the mayor’s team, ones intended to carry out contact with city residents and businesses, represent him to his constituents or assist him in communicating with other public officials and help in the formulation and coordination of official policy. All six of Pelayes’s clients were people within Valdivia’s orbit and who were close to him on a regular basis. All six were formerly perceived, both inside and outside City Hall, as parts of the bulwark against recurrent suggestions that Valdivia, who in 2018 leapfrogged from his position as Third Ward councilman to mayor, was a self-serving politician angling to abuse the power and reach of his office to enrich himself and his cronies, while putting himself into position to seek higher office.
Ultimately, however,  Mirna Cisneros, Karen Cervantes, Jackie Aboud, Don Smith, Alissa Payne and now Brown are no longer serving to help maintain the mayor’s reputation. Rather, because they once held or still hold positions on his staff or can lay claim to a political affiliation with him, their claims of abuse at the mayor’s hands are being widely interpreted as confirming some of the most untoward of Valdivia’s personality defects and character flaws.
Former senior customer service representative Mirna Cisneros, 30, and Karen Cervantes, 24, who was Valdivia’s mayoral assistant, triggered the mayoral crisis with their dual simultaneous resignations on January 29, which were followed with their public statements as to why they felt leaving the city’s employ was necessary. Cisneros and Cervantes had retained Pelayes, a former San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy and one-time mayor of Adelanto who is now a principal in the law firm of Pelayes & Yu, to represent them prior to their resignations. While they were working for the city in roles that were answerable to Valdivia, they said, the mayor had subjected them to unwanted sexual advances, innuendo and crude remarks, sought to press them into compromising circumstances, insisted that they perform tasks outside their job assignments, and either sought to involve them in or acknowledged to them his skirting of the law pertaining to the use of public funds as well as his violation of the reporting requirements imposed on public officials relating to the reception of donations, money or services. Cisneros said that Valdivia had pressured her to work on political campaigns while she was serving in her capacity as a city employee, and that the mayor suggested that she should use the vacation time she had accrued to work on the now-concluded campaigns of two of the candidates in this year’s city council races Valdivia had endorsed, Juan Figueroa and Bessine Richard.
According to Pelayes, efforts to alleviate the circumstance through some order of acknowledgment that Valdivia was behaving inappropriately and then have him desist or move Cisneros and Cervantes into other assignments were not successful.
Last week, during a press conference called before San Bernardino City Hall, Pelayes announced that four others who had experienced mistreatment from Pelayes had retained his firm to represent them. Thereafter he introduced three of those four.
Jackie Aboud, a 23-year-old recent San Bernardino State University graduate who had gone to work as a part-time field representative for Valdivia in April 2019 and was fired on January 6, was one of Pelayes’s clients. According to Aboud, she had been provided with no training and was subjected to a circumstance which suggested that she was not hired for legitimate work in serving as a liaison between Valdivia and his constituents but rather as Valdivia’s courtesan. “He told me I needed to spend time with him after hours and invest in a friendship with him if I wanted to reach my career goals,” Aboud said. “He also told me that my job was not to serve the community but to serve him and meet his personal needs.”
According to Aboud, Valdivia was self-centered and abrasive, and his ego-driven ambition prevented him from being of service to his constituents. “The mayor doesn’t care about the community, only certain areas that supported him during his election,” Aboud said. “I was ordered to not help, support, or partner with parts of the community that didn’t support him in the election, like the 4th and 7th Ward.”
Valdivia had a vindictive and means streak, Aboud said, saying he was prone to “screaming,” which was vectored at her and others. “We were all walking on eggshells around him,” she said. Valdivia took recourse in threatening her with termination, belittling her in front of others and constant bullying, she said, observing the mayor found “joy in mistreating others, even talked about how much he loved firing people, and would call other employees names in front of me – making fun of them, based on their age, race, and even veteran status.”
Aboud said, “It was my dream to work in local government. The mayor turned my dreams into a nightmare.”
Don Smith, a part-time legislative aid and field representative assigned to the mayor’s office, said Valdivia “ordered me to work extra hours, while not getting paid, promising me a promotion opportunity. He had me run personal errands like getting his car serviced while on the clock for the city. He offered to pay me for side work, then would never pay me fully after I completed the work. He routinely threatened my job as a means to bully me.”
Smith said the mayor “told me my job was on the line if I didn’t do what he wanted. Even though I was not on call, he would call me and tell me to immediately report to work on days/times I wasn’t scheduled.  Anytime I questioned him, he again would tell me that I needed to do what I was told because he gave me the opportunity.”
According to Smith, “The mayor truly believes he is above the law and as a matter of fact, he told me one time ‘We are the law’ when I questioned him about the legal parameters of his actions.”
Alissa Payne, who in October 2019 was nominated by Valdivia and then appointed to both the Arts and Historical Preservation Commission and the San Bernardino Parks, Recreation and Community Services Commission, said, “I was subjected to inappropriate conduct and manipulation by the mayor. He went as far as offering to provide me an apartment, would tell me how to vote and what to say or do at the commission meetings, asked me to meet him alone in the evening after hours, and promised – guaranteed –  me a seat on the city dais as the 2nd Ward council member.”
Payne said Valdivia made inappropriate sexist comments about Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra and what she called “homophobic slurs” about a city council candidate she did not specify. Payne recounted that Valdivia “invited me to attend a dinner event as his personal guest where he was persistently trying to get me intoxicated, which I declined, and put his arm around me several times, touching my lower back and making me extremely uncomfortable, which eventually led to him pulling me in for an unwanted hug.
“The mayor was preying on me,” Payne continued, and she asserted that “council members were not only aware but enabled his behavior. Coincidentally, after I didn’t give in to the mayor’s demands and started to become distant with him, my apartment and one of my events for the homeless was reported to code enforcement.”
Payne said she had been disrespected, betrayed and exploited. “When city council members and the mayor began to show their support, I felt like I was achieving something, that my hard work was paying off,” she said. “The more I was around these people, the more I began to realize the truth, and it hurt. The mayor didn’t recognize me because of my hard work and dedication, but because he was preying on me. The mayor wants power and his way at all costs. The mayor knew of my situation as a single mom and preyed on me, used me.”
It is against this backdrop that word now comes that Valdivia’s chief of staff, Brown, is also concerned about Valdivia’s mistreatment of him. At the press conference on February 27, Pelayes alluded to but did not identify a sixth client seeking refuge from Valdivia’s depredations. This week, the Sentinel has confirmed that sixth client is Brown.
Matt Brown hired on as Valdivia’s chief of staff in August 2019, roughly a month after the departure of Valdivia’s original chief of staff, Bill Essayli. Like Essayli, Brown has been heavily involved in politics, in particular Republican politics. Essayli was the Republican candidate for Assembly in the 60th District in 2018. A former member of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee and a former member of that body’s executive committee, Brown is the founder of several Republican Party political action committees, including the San Bernardino County Taxpayers Association and the San Bernardino County Young Republicans. Brown, who had been hired as assistant county recorder in 2010 as a consequence of his political activity and subsequently became assistant auditor-controller after the merger of the auditor-controller-recorder’s and treasurer/tax collector’s offices, was let go from the county last year after the election of Ensen Mason as auditor-controller/treasurer-tax collector in 2018. He was convinced by Chris Jones, a campaign consultant who had served as Valdivia’s campaign manager, to take the job as the mayor’s chief of staff.
This fall, when Cisneros, then Aboud and finally Cervantes lodged complaints about Valdivia’s comportment, Brown found himself in the middle of a difficult and delicate situation. At one point he attempted to intervene and fashion a solution which would have essentially entailed Valdivia moderating his behavior, but the mayor, who regarded himself to be the entity through which power at City Hall flowed, was having none of that. It became immediately clear that were Brown to seek to mediate any sort of a resolution, Valdivia would consider his action to be tantamount to accepting or interpreting Cisneros, Aboud and Cervantes as the mayor’s equals, and an act of disloyalty. In each of the cases, Brown either passed the complaints along to the city manager’s office or facilitated having the complaints lodged and registered. For some time the matter hung in limbo, as City Manager Teri Ledoux was reluctant to take any action that would challenge the mayor, whom she believed had control of the city council. After Cisneros and Cervantes went public with their complaints, the city council took up, during a closed session, whether the city should conduct an investigation into the accusations against the mayor. With members Ted Sanchez, Sandra Ibarra, Fred Shorett and Jim Mulvihill prevailing and members Juan Figueroa and Bessine Richard resisting and member Henry Nickel unwilling to commit one way or the other, the council elected to proceed with the investigation. Brown cooperated with the investigation. On February 20, Brown grew concerned that Valdivia was aware of his cooperation with the investigation, at which point he made contact with Pelayes.
At the council meeting on Wednesday evening, March 3, Brown declined to discuss the matter. “I can’t say anything until the after the investigation is concluded,” he told the Sentinel. “You’ll have to be patient.”
Brown’s disaffection from Valdivia and his involvement in the investigation into his conduct carries with it tremendous potential hazard for the mayor.
A decade ago, Brown was serving in the capacity of chief of staff to then Second District San Bernardino County Supervisor Paul Biane. After the district attorney’s office opened up an investigation into whether Biane and his fellow supervisors Bill Postmus and Gary Ovitt were accepting bribes, Brown agreed to wear a wire, i.e., a hidden audio recording device, with which he surreptitiously captured 85 conversations with Biane. Eventually, Biane became suspicious, and Brown, fearing some order of reprisal from his boss, filed a grievance with the county relating to Biane’s mistreatment of him. Brown’s grievance became public, and to manage what was a very awkward situation and protect the investigation, then-top county administrator Greg Devereaux arranged to have Brown transferred from his chief of staff post to the county recorder’s office. That led to the revelation of the investigation, which redounded to Biane’s political detriment, resulting in his losing his 2010 bid for reelection as supervisor. Biane and Postmus were criminally charged with bribe-taking. Postmus was convicted. Biane, after a nearly six-year delay in going to trial, was acquitted.
That the lawyer Brown turned to for legal representation is the same lawyer representing those having lodged complaints against Valdivia makes the situation doubly worse for the mayor.
The Sentinel has made repeated efforts to obtain from Valdivia his version of events. Valdivia, who has retained a lawyer and is being guided by Jones in an effort to salvage his political career, has steadfastly refused comment, citing the ongoing investigation. Individuals close to him have told the Sentinel that even after the investigation concludes, Valdivia will not be discussing the matter.
Former Mayor Carey Davis, who narrowly lost to Valdivia in the 2018 election, voiced his belief that Valdivia’s self-centered, dictatorial and domineering abuse of the power entrusted to him was apparent previously, before he was elected mayor. He said Valdivia was resistant to taking a team approach to governance and implementing policies that did not allow him to exert his own power.
“During my time in office, much of my focus was working to build a long term plan to successfully exit bankruptcy and address the city’s future course by implementing a more effective and modern government structure,” Davis said, referencing San Bernardino’s 2012 filing for Chapter Nine bankruptcy protection that took place 18 months before his election as mayor, and the move to redraft the city’s 1905 charter and present the new plan of governmental operations to the voters in 2016. “We established a new charter and memorialized operating practices for good government. John opposed many of our efforts. He was the only council member who did not sign the agreed-upon operating practices of good government. He was not an advocate for the new charter that rebalanced the power at City Hall by establishing a council-manager form of government, which gave more power to the city council versus the mayor.”
According to Davis, Valdivia “was opposed to the fiscally prudent and operational enhancement of outsourcing the fire department to the county. When I left office, the city had accrued approximately $40 million in reserves. We successfully exited bankruptcy and had a financial stability plan in place. Fire department response times had improved. The city received a substantial refund from the county fire division, but John wanted to give that money back to the county fire division. We didn’t do that.”
Valdivia’s full court press to place himself in a central position of power is recreating the circumstances that led to the city’s mismanagement and its plunge into a financial abyss that ultimately resulted in the city taking recourse in municipal bankruptcy, Davis said.
“It is unfortunate the city is once again suffering from dysfunctional government, when it was on a much better trajectory before John’s election as mayor,” Davis said. “John does not seem to understand his role as mayor within a council-manager form of government. The actions he has taken since becoming mayor have been to once again place the city’s power with the mayor. This is not what the city’s residents wanted when the voters adopted the new charter. His efforts to gain control over the city council demonstrate his disdain for the new charter.”
Valdivia’s instincts are to undercut those who represent a check on his own authority and ability to wield the power of government, Davis said.
“Before John’s election, the city was being well served by a highly competent city manager, Andrea Miller, who was helping to build a healthy council-manager structure,” Davis said. “It appears John derailed that progress by working to terminate her contract, which had been unanimously approved by the council. I fear the city has been set back and faces a long and difficult road to recovery.”
While Davis said “there is cause for concern” and “things are pretty bleak right now,” he said the scandal overtaking the mayor has a silver lining in that it just might prompt the city council to reassert itself and implement its vision rather than deferring to Valdivia’s commandeering of the ruling process.
“I believe the city council should be taking action to regain the power vested in them by the residents of the city through the city charter,” Davis said.
At this week’s council meeting Wednesday night, Valdivia was on his best behavior. In the past he has wielded the mayor’s gavel to bully the members of the council with whom he has had disagreements, in particular Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, who was elected to the council at the time he was elected mayor and who was originally a member of the ruling coalition he initially led. Ibarra, however, parted company with him some six months after the 2018 election. On numerous occasions previously, he has ignored Ibarra when she sought to be recognized to bring forth a motion or a topic of discussion. This week there was no hint of Valdivia’s past willingness to lord it over the others on the council, and he indulged all of the council members when they sought to register their comments. Even when the issue pertaining to the accusations against him was brought up, Valdivia did not flinch, treating the matter as if it were routine.
“Something has come up and I would like to agendize something,” Councilman Ted Sanchez said toward the end of the meeting, just as Valdivia was set to adjourn the proceedings to a close.
“Sure,” said Valdivia. “Go ahead, sir.”
“”I’d like the council to consider agendizing the current status of the mayor’s staff,” Sanchez said, signaling what appeared to be an intent to trim the mayor’s reach.  “The mayor’s staff right now is on the third floor, and I’d like a discussion as to their status in the city and what they’re doing. So I’d like to make the motion we agendize discussion on this matter, and see if the other council would entertain several options as to what we do with the mayor’s staff moving forward.”
“I’d like to see something like that,” said councilman Jim Mulvihill.
“So, thank you,” said Valdivia. “”I’d like to discuss that with [City Manager] Teri [Ledoux] before we proceed with an agendized item,” said Valdivia.
“I’m going to support [Councilman Sanchez] on this item, at least to have some kind of report back on it,” said Councilman Fred Shorett.  “It may fall under budgeting and staff at that level.”
Councilwoman Ibarra noted that the city council was exercising its authority under the city charter by pursuing an investigation in the mayor’s office.
After a vote to support Sanchez’s motion passed 7-to-0,  Valdivia said, agreeably, “That’s a very timely topic, and we will agendize it.  So, we thank you.”

Voters countywide this year shut the door on the imposition of new taxes.
Of the nine measures on Tuesday’s ballot calling for the creation of new taxes or perpetuating an existing one, not a single one passed.
Measure Z was a bond proposition that needed to be approved by 55 percent of the voters in the Mountain View School District in southeastern Ontario to authorize $33 million in bonds for school facilities improvements, by means of assessing on property owners 2 cents per $100 of the value of their property.
It fell short with 49.82 percent of the district’s voters endorsing the measure and 50.18 percent turning thumbs down.
Measure A was a bond proposition presented to residents within the Rim of the World School District in the San Bernardino Mountains that needed the assent of 55 percent or more of the district’s voters to authorize $55.5 million in bond sales, the proceeds from which were to go to repair deteriorating school facilities, including roofs, plumbing and electrical facilities and improve classrooms and labs for math, science, engineering, arts, skilled trades and college readiness. It would have levied on property owners 3 cents per $100 assessed value of their properties.
It failed to pass, with 47.48 percent of the district’s voters in favor of it and 52.52 opposed.
Measure B, was a bond proposition within the Beaumont School District, which barely overlaps into San Bernardino County from Riverside County, to improve safety and security systems and replace roofs, plumbing and electrical facilities and improve classrooms and labs for math, science, engineering, arts, skilled trades and college readiness. It called for levying on property owners $50 per $100,000 of assessed value of their property. It failed to pass, with 3,258 votes in favor of issuing bonds to pay for the improvements and 6,397 votes against doing so.
Measure C, which needed the approval of 55 percent of the voters within the boundaries of the Morongo Valley School District, sought the issuance of $55.6 million in bonds to improve schools in Morongo Valley.
It failed with 39.56 percent of the district’s voters in assent and 60.44 percent opposed.
Measure D was a $48 million bond proposition needing the agreement of 55 percent of the voters to benefit the Victor Elementary School District by relieving overcrowding in the district’s schools, and support science, technology, math and engineering education. It called for an assessment upon property owners of $19 per $100,000 of assessed value of their property.
It failed, with 48.73 percent of voters in favor and 51.27 percent rejecting the tax.
Measure E asked the residents of Yucaipa to increase the city’s existing sales tax rate by 0.5%, or one half of one cent, on every dollar of taxable sales of goods in the city, and on the taxable storage, use or consumption in the city of goods purchased. It needed but a simple majority, that is, fifty percent plus one vote, to pass. Yucaipa citizens would have none of that, though.
The measure went down to defeat, with 36.37 percent willing to tax themselves more and 63.63 percent in opposition.
Measure F proposed the City of Barstow creating a municipal tax on the sale of marijuana and marijuana products within city limits. It needed to be passed by two-thirds of the city’s voters, and would have subjected on those growing marijuana within the city an annual tax of $30 per square foot of cultivating area, and was to further exact on businesses engaged in selling marijuana a 15 percent tax on their gross receipts.
Measure F garnered majority voter support in Barstow, but the 55.34 percent approval did not meet the two-thirds passage requirement. The measure therefore failed.
Measure H was a special tax proposition applicable only within the confines of the San Bernardino Mountains Community Hospital District, encompassing Twin Peaks, Grass Valley, Rimforest, Agua Fria, Crest Park, Lake Arrowhead, Skyforest, Cedar Glen, Enchanted Forest, Fredalba, Smiley Park, Running Springs, Arrowbear Lake, Snow Valley, Green Valley Lake and Deer Lodge Park. Measure H called for making permanent an existing tax to subsidize operations at the Mountains Community Hospital in Lake Arrowhead, one that is in place now but which must be renewed every four years. The Measure H tax would as of 2021 have imposed for each calendar year an assessment of $40 per unimproved parcel, $80 for each parcel containing a single family residence or multiple dwelling units, and $200 per parcel for each parcel developed for commercial purposes. Measure H required approval by two-thirds of the district’s voters. The measure failed with 58.1 percent of the district’s voters supporting it.
Measure I was a special tax proposition presented to residents within the Big Bear Fire Authority Community Services District. It needed passage by a two-thirds vote to levy an annual six cents per square foot assessment on developed property floor area, with a minimum of $35 per assessor’s parcel and a maximum of $2,500 per assessor’s parcel upon developed properties, residential rental properties and hotels, together with a $78 per room hotel tax. It was also to have imposed on two of the area’s ski resorts $375,000 annual assessments. The proceeds were to be used to provide fire protection services.
Measure I went down in flames, supported by 42.14 percent of the district’s voters and rejected by 57.86 percent.
-M.G.

In an illustration of the degree to which name recognition and occupancy of a high profile public office have a powerful impact on the electorate, Rialto City Councilman Joe Baca Jr. and Fontana City Councilman Jesse Armendarez on Tuesday proved to be the two top vote-getters among four candidates in the race to succeed Josie Gonzales as 5th District county supervisor.
The 5th District race provided a remarkable political test tube, as Gonzales, a former Fontana councilwoman who was first elected supervisor in 2004 and was then reelected handily in 2008, 2012 and 2016, was obliged, by the passage of term limit-instituting Measure P in 2006, to leave office as of this year. In this way, all of those competing in the race this year could not claim the advantage of being the incumbent. All four, however, brought to the electoral table certain relative advantages and disadvantages.
The Fifth District, which encompasses the eastern half of Fontana, all of Rialto, Bloomington and Colton as well as the western half of San Bernardino, is a heavily Democratic and Latino district. All four candidates who entered the race – Armendarez, Baca, Dan Flores and Nadia Renner – are Hispanic.
Among the 5th District’s 183,780 voters eligible to vote in the election, 92,245 or 50.2 were registered as Democrats, while 34,156 or 18.6 percent were registered Republicans. At the same time in the 5th District, voters with no political affiliation – 45,636 or 24.8 – outnumbered the district’s Republican voters. And while city and county elections in San Bernardino County are officially considered nonpartisan, party affiliation in those contests has historically been a primary factor in their outcome.
Both Baca and Flores are Democrats. Armendarez is a Republican. Renner has no party affiliation.
At the same time, Renner currently holds no public office. Baca and Armendarez fill their respective council posts. Flores is a public officeholder, as well, a member of the Colton Joint Unified School District Board of Trustees. In addition, Flores is employed by Josie Gonzales as her chief of staff. In the run-up to this week’s election, Gonzales had endorsed Flores.
Another factor in the race was that Baca’s father, Joe Baca, Sr. is a longtime politician who represented different portions of the Fifth District in different capacities for two decades, first as a member of the Assembly, then as a member of the California State Senate and then for more than a decade in Congress. This, perhaps, gave the younger Baca greater name recognition than any of his rivals in the race.
Despite his greater name recognition, however, Baca stood well behind both Armendarez and Flores in terms of funding for this year’s campaign. As of last weekend, Baca had deposited a total of $116,443 in political donations into his 5th District campaign fund. Flores had $312,966.39 in his campaign war chest, including a $15,000 loan to himself. Arrmendarez outperformed the others in terms of his fundraising effort, accumulating into his electioneering account $336,299.86, of which $91,076.83 was a loan to himself.
Renner banked, overall, $19,100 to carry out her campaign.
–Mark Gutglueck

Republicans extended their domination of San Bernardino County Government for at least two more years this week when appointed incumbent Dawn Rowe and Congressman Paul Cook won outright their respective races for county supervisors in the Third District and First District.
While in California local elective offices – those at the municipal and county levels as well as those boards overseeing school, water and fire districts – are considered nonpartisan, in San Bernardino County party affiliation is a major factor in all elections. And unlike 54 of California’s 58 counties where the Democratic Party has the upper hand, San Bernardino County is a GOP bastion.
As it now stands, four of the county’s five supervisors are Republicans – Rowe, First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood, Second District Supervisor Janice Rutherford and Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman. Only Fifth District Supervisor Josie Gonzales is a Democrat. She is leaving office at the end of the year, as she is termed out, having served four and three-quarters consecutive terms since she was first elected in 2004. In 2006, the passage of Measure P significantly raised the pay and benefits of county supervisors, while imposing on them a three-term limit from that point forward. Gonzales’s first term, which initiated prior to Measure P going into effect, was not counted toward the three-terms she was allotted beginning with her 2008 reelection.
Rutherford was first elected in 2010, reelected in 2014 and in 2018. She is scheduled to remain in office until December 2022, but is not eligible to seek reelection that year. Hagman, who was formerly a member of the Assembly and was termed out of California’s lower legislative house in 2014, successfully ran for supervisor that year and was reelected in 2018. He will be able to seek reelection in 2022. Lovingood was elected supervisor in 2012, his maiden foray into politics. He was reelected in 2016 and could have sought reelection this year, but is choosing to return to the private sector, where he was successful. His decision touched off a round of political musical chairs among several of the county’s established Republican officeholders in the desert region. Cook, who was originally from Connecticut, served 26 years in the U.S. Marines before retiring as a colonel and then entered politics, first on the city council in Yucca Valley. He served six years in the California Assembly before running successfully for Congress in the 8th Congressional District in 2012. With Lovingood’s departure, the 77-year-old former Marine jumped at the chance to leave Congress and the biweekly cross country air travel that entailed, and declared his candidacy to succeed Lovingood. Jay Obernolte, the one-time mayor of Big Bear and a member of the Assembly since 2014 who somewhat disingenuously maintains he is not a career politician, instantaneously moved to declare he would vie for the position in the House of Representatives that Cook was abandoning. When Lovingood did not, as some thought he might, seek to move into Obernolte’s Assembly slot, former Hesperia Mayor Thurston Smith declared his candidacy for that position.
In state and federal races in California, the two top finishers in the primary election automatically qualify for a November run-off even if the first place finisher captures a majority of the votes. At the county and city level in San Bernardino County, however, a candidate can gain election outright by getting a majority of the vote in the primary election. That is what Rowe and Cook did on Tuesday.
Rowe was challenged by four Democrats –  Redlands City Councilman Eddie Tejeda; Kaisar Ahmed, who previously ran for Redlands City Council in 2016 and for Congress in the 31st Congressional District in 2018; Karen Ickes, a human services manager; and Latron Lester, a minister from Barstow. As of press time today, Rowe had captured 39,028 votes or 55.61 percent, giving her the victory. Tejeda had the strongest showing among the also-rans, with 12,822 votes or 18.27 percent. Ahmed came in third with 10,439 voters or 14.87 percent. Ickes claimed 6,731 votes or 9.58 percent. Lester’s 1,172 votes was equal to 1.67 percent.
Cook chalked up an impressive win, pulling in 37,434 votes or 65.52 percent in a field of four that included Victorville Councilwoman Rita Ramirez-Dean, Adelanto City Councilwoman Stevevonna Evans and Marcelino Garza, a special assistant to the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools. All of Cook’s opponents, like all of Rowe’s, are Democrats. Ramirez-Dean had the strongest showing, with 12,040 votes or 21.07 percent. Garza corralled 4,594 votes or 8.04 percent. Evans managed to get 3,063 votes or 5.36 percent.
When Cook is sworn into office and takes his place on the board dais in December, he will be reunited with Rowe, this time as an equal. Previously, Rowe worked in Cook’s congressional office as a field representative. Rowe now employs two other former Cook staff members, Dillon Lesovsky and Matt Knox, the former as her policy advisor and the latter as her chief of staff.
–Mark Gutglueck

At last acknowledging what many residents have known for over two months, Upland city officials have conceded without elaboration that the city will not be tapping into any of the State of California’s Proposition 68 largesse to improve Memorial Park.
Rather than simply reduce the scope of the $8.5 million grant that the city had asked for, the California Department of Parks and Recreation shut the City of Gracious Living out of the running from any grant money whatsoever.
City officials were unwilling to respond to requests for comment, a far cry from the verbal abuse the city’s former recreation services manager and other city officials heaped on city residents or members of the press for asking what undergirded the city’s confidence that the state would provide the full $8.5 million grant the city was seeking. Posing such questions, Upland Recreational Services Manager Doug Story insisted, was irresponsible, reckless, unethical and potentially libelous. He said the state would free the full $8.5 million for release to the city by the end of December 2019. Those who suggested otherwise were either lying or being unrealistic, he said.
The city’s application for the Proposition 68 grant was one hatched in desperation last year as part of an effort to head off mounting resident anger over city officials’ acquiescence in San Antonio Hospital’s move to carve away a 12 percent portion of Memorial Park for use as a parking lot. The hospital’s need had grown out of its failure to make adequate planning to accommodate the influx of patients and patient family members that ultimately accompanied the completion of the energetic effort to expand the hospital that began in 2011 and concluded in 2017, involving adding the $160 million four-story Vineyard Tower at 999 San Bernardino Road, increasing the number of beds at the institution from 271 to over 400, upping the number of stations in the hospital’s emergency room from 34 to 52, outfitting 12 more intensive care units, and constructing another $30 million, 60,000-square-foot structure at 1100 San Bernardino Road which included quarters for a satellite City of Hope oncology clinic. Provision for parking was not included in the application/plans approved by the City of Upland for any of these projects as required by law.
On March 26, 2018, with 72 hours notice from city staff, the city and the city council were presented with a proposal that had emanated from Story’s immediate boss, then-Development Services Director Jeff Zwack, along with then-City Attorney Jim Markman, then-City Manager Bill Manis, then-Assistant City Manager Jeannette Vagnozzi, and the city’s management consultant, Marty Thouvennell, the city’s one-time police chief who had served as interim city manager from July 2016 until January 1, 2018. The Zwack/Markman/Manis/Vagnozzi/Thouvennell proposal called for the city selling 4.631 acres of the southwestern portion of Memorial Park, which contains a baseball field that is actively used by the city’s youth sports leagues. The main campus of the hospital immediately adjoins the park, and the hospital wanted to convert the baseball diamond and some of the greenland around it to a parking lot to accommodate the hospital’s burgeoning clientele.
In compliance with the recommendation by Manis, Zwack and Markman, the city council voted 3-to-1 to approve a purchase and sale agreement between the hospital and the city, with San Antonio Hospital committing to paying $906,931.55 per acre, or a total of $4.2 million, to acquire the 4.631 acres. 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, who normally voted in lockstep with Stone, Filippi and Timm, was not present at the meeting.
Manis, Vagnozzi, Thouvennell Zwack, Markman and the three prevailing members of the council, sensitive to San Antonio Hospital’s status as the city’s major institution and largest employer, considered accommodating its needs to be paramount.
In approving the sale, the city council also authorized City Attorney James Markman to undertake 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. A 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 those favoring the sale 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 and hospital officials, Marjorie Mikels, an attorney living in the city, as well as the Inland Oversight Committee represented by Cory Briggs, an attorney based in both Upland and San Diego, filed answers to the validation action. Those responses took issue with the sale on multiple grounds, among which was that the city selling off a slice of the park – in particular the one sold by the council on March 26, 2018, which included the 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.
Faced with not one but two challenges to the sale he had not anticipated, City Attorney Markman sought to convince Judge Cohn that the city council, acting on its own authority, was within its rights to sell off city land. In response to 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 city’s filing, dismissed its petition for validation. Judge Cohn’s ruling cleared the way for anyone with standing – meaning essentially any city resident – to file a lawsuit challenging the sale.
Penultimately, hospital officials have resigned themselves to the necessity of subjecting the sale of the property to a citywide vote. It earlier appeared that balloting would take place in conjunction with the March 2020 California Primary Election. Now, however, it appears that the vote, if it is to take place at all, will not come until the November 2020 General Election.
Before 2018 had fully run, the fallout from the move to sell the city park property was settling hard. In June of that year, Zwack abruptly retired as the city’s development services director. In September, Manis resigned as city manager, effective November 1, 2018. Councilman Sid Robinson, whose status in Upland had largely been based upon his involvement in the city’s youth sports leagues, suddenly found his position as a member of the city council whose voting record was virtually indistinguishable from those of Mayor Stone and council members Filippi and Timm untenable, given Stone’s, Filippi’s and Timm’s support of eradicating one of the city’s baseball diamonds. He announced he would not seek election that November. When that election was held, Filippi and Timm, who had become the object of a large number of voters’ wrath in part due to their March 28 vote to sell off 12 percent of Memorial Park, were voted out of office, while Councilwoman Janice Elliott, who had opposed the parkland sale, emerged victorious in her effort to gain election in the city’s newly created Second District, as the city held its first by-district election.
Both Assistant City Manager Jeannette Vagnozzi and City Attorney Jim Markman, the other architect of the parkland sale, managed to survive the close of 2018. Indeed, at the last meeting in November 2018, just before the lame ducks Filippi, Timm and Robinson departed from their elective posts, with Timm participating by means of recommendation while she was in North Carolina visiting her parents over the Thanksgiving holiday, Vagnozzi was elevated to the position of city manager. Some six months into her tenure as city manager, however, Vagnozzi was forced out by the newly composed city council, a little more than two weeks before Judge Cohn’s ruling dismissing the validation action the city had filed to keep the sale of the park property from being challenged. At that point, Markman found himself under siege. Not only was his legal expertise and judgment subject to question, it was painfully obvious that his militating on behalf of the hospital in its effort to obtain the park property for a parking lot was out of step with a sizable cross section of the most civically-active residents of the city. In October, as the city council was making preparations to terminate him, he resigned as city attorney.
A month before Markman’s forced departure, San Antonio Hospital CEO and President Harris Koenig had been fired by the San Antonio Hospital Board of Directors. Koening had been named the president and CEO of San Antonio Hospital in June 2011 and, using financing that consisted in large measure of $125,000,000 in certificates of participation issued using the City of Upland’s bonding authority, immediately thereafter embarked on the earlier-described six-year-long series of planned expansion stages intended to transform San Antonio into a regional hospital. Among the board’s concerns that had brought about Koenig’s termination was the hospital’s continuing lack of profitability two years after the expansion had been completed in 2017.
Last summer, with the hospital’s parking lot no longer able to accommodate the number of people seeking care who check in to the hospital, either on an in-patient or out-patient basis, to say nothing of those accompanying or visiting the hospital’s patients, the new administration at Upland City Hall, led at that point by Rosemary Hoerning, who had been elevated to acting city manager to replace Vagnozzi, felt put upon to do something to aid the hospital, the city’s leading institution.
Story, had begun with the City of Upland in October 2015 as a development services specialist and was provided with a promotion to the position of Upland’s recreation manager commencing in October 2017. A condition of his promotion to that post by Thouvenell was that Story had to do the bidding of a number of city higher-ups. Thus, Story found himself, as the city’s recreational services manager, obliged to accommodate San Antonio Hospital and engaged in the paradoxical giveaway of a portion of the city’s premier recreational amenity – Memorial Park – and the compromising of the function of the municipal division Story had been promoted to lead. Story gamely sought to carry out the assignment he had been given, boldly seeking to obtain an infusion of state money to offset the reduction in parkland the city was sustaining in its effort to provide the hospital with property for parking and future expansion.
Story applied for the maximum amount of money the city could get under Proposition 68, which was passed by the state’s voters in 2018 and reallocated a portion of California’s $7.545 billion in general obligation bonds for expanding and enhancing parks around the state. In his application, Story put together an energetic park makeover plan to utilize the $8.5 million Upland was requesting under Proposition 68 to refurbish or replace Memorial Park’s playground equipment, add a water feature splash pad, an amphitheater and an artificial turf multi-sports competition field, augment the park with walking and exercise trails, a basketball court and an intensified outdoor nature conservancy with trees and plants hospitable toward bees, hummingbirds and the like. In this way, Story hoped, Upland’s citizenry would look beyond that accompanying the park enhancements would be the reduction of the 38.5 acre park by 4.631 acres.
The game plan was that the city’s park aficionados would be so enthusiastic about the improvements to the park the city would accrue that they would essentially ignore that 12 percent of it was being lopped off to create a parking lot. Some residents and members of the press expressed skepticism about Story’s confident pronouncement that the state would provide the full $8.5 million grant to Upland. When he was questioned and asked specifically how he could guarantee that the park grant money would be forthcoming, Story insisted that Upland had the money sewn up. When it was pointed out that the grant application process was a competitive one, and that the state would have the option of reducing the award in accordance with grant money availability and the strength of other applications, Story said that such a question was beneath the dignity of someone in the position of a municipal official, and he went so far as to suggest that the question itself was tantamount to accusing him of lying, which bordered on slander. Putting such a question into print, Story said, would cross the line into the province of libel, and would therefore be actionable.
Story’s reaction prompted inquiries into the grant application itself to be undertaken with the California Department of Parks and Recreation. Those inquiries prompted the state to take a serious look at the numbers provided by the city in its application. Upon review of the city’s submitted grant application, it was determined that some of the data forwarded to the state by the city as part of the application process had been falsified.
Two criteria are applied by the state in releasing Proposition 68 money. One test pertains to an applicant demonstrating that it has a “deficit” of parkland throughout its jurisdiction such that its park area is less than three acres per 1,000 people in the city overall. A second test relates not to the entire city but to the specific park for which a grant is being sought. That test uses a factor of determination in which the park is considered as providing recreational opportunities for a specific “service area” within the city, county or jurisdictional entity making the application. If those living within that service area can be demonstrated as having an average per-household annual income of less than $51,000, the state considers that park to be eligible for improvements a Proposition 68 grant could provide. An examination of both the grant application and city demographic data showed the city had fudged numbers in an effort to qualify for the grants. The Sentinel is informed that by the end of November, state officials had made a determination that the grant application should be rejected, and informed Story of such. Story checked out of Upland the first week of December, bound for the City of Beaumont, where he was to take on an assignment similar to the one he had in Upland, effective in January.
In the meantime, Upland municipal officials withheld from the public that the state had denied the city the grant. Councilman Bill Velto in December insisted the city was yet waiting for the grant money – all $8.5 million of it – to arrive. On January 2, Councilwoman Janice Elliot said it was yet the city’s official position that the Proposition 68 grant might come through.
Subsequent to the Sentinel’s January 3 publication of an article which relayed a report that the state had uncovered misrepresentations in the city’s grant application and that the application had as a consequence been rejected, Councilman Ricky Felix referred to the Sentinel as a purveyor of “fake news.”
Reached by the Sentinel today for a statement with regard to the state’s rejection of the city’s Proposition 68 grant application, Felix indicated it was a “bad time” for him to discuss the situation. “I’m with my family right now,” he said.
–Mark Gutglueck

In the 17 races to represent San Bernardino County in the state and federal legislature held this week in conjunction with California’s March 3 Presidential Primary Election, 14 incumbents were vying.  All of those incumbents captured sufficient votes to compete in the run-off for their respective positions to be held in November in conjunction with the Presidential General Election. That left three races where all those competing were newcomers.
In the race for United States representative in California’s District 8 where the incumbent Paul Cook has decided to leave Washington, D.C. in favor of serving as a county supervisor, current 33rd District Assemblyman Jay Obernolte, a Republican, captured the top spot with 40,127 or 36.13 percent of the vote. Democrat Christine Bubser captured 30,035 or 27.4 percent for second place. Obernolte and Bubser will vie against each other in the November run-off.
Six others competed in the 8th District, a Republican stronghold. Tim Donnelly, a Republican, captured third with 21.34 percent, followed by Democrat Bob Conaway with 6.41 percent, non-aligned Jeff Esmus with 2.69 percent, Democrat James Ellars with 2.48 percent, Republican Jeremy Staat with 1.54 percent, Republican Jerry Laws with 1.47 percent, and Republican Justin Whitehead with 0.89 percent.
In the race for United States Representative in California’s District 27, which extends beyond San Bernardino County, Judy Chu, the Democratic incumbent, captured 4,585 votes cast within San Bernardino County, or 45.63 percent. Johnny Nalbandian, a Republican garnered 3,401 San Bernardino County votes or 33.84 percent. Beatrice Cardenas, a Republican, claimed 17.02 percent and Christian Daly, who expressed no party preference, polled 3.51 percent.
In the contest for United States representative in California’s District 31, Democratic incumbent Pete Aguilar pulled down 63,678 votes or 61.3 percent to Republican Agnes Gibboney’s 40,185 votes, or 38.68 percent.
In the race to represent voters as the United States representative in California’s District 35, incumbent Democrat Norma Torres captured 42,543 votes in San Bernardino County or 68.3 percent, and Republican Mike Cargile received 19,749 votes or 31.7 percent.
In the California’s Congressional District 39 race, San Bernardino County’s voters favored challenger Young Kim, a Republican, with 6,851 votes, or 51.46 percent over the incumbent, Democrat Gil Cisneros, who received 6,008 or 44.86 percent of the votes cast in San Bernardino County. Non-aligned Steve Cox received 3.98 percent of the vote in San Bernardino County.  In District 39 overall, which straddles Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino Counties, Kim is ahead with 62,018 votes or 50.1 percent to Cisneros’s 55,729 votes or 45 percent, followed by Fox with 4.8 percent.
In State Senate District 21, incumbent Republican Scott Wilk captured 27,231 votes or 57.87 percent in San Bernardino County, more than three-and-a-half times more than the 7,764 votes or 16.5 percent for Democrat Kipp Mueller. Warren Heaton, a Democrat, was third with 11.94 percent, followed by 9.37 percent for Dana Lamon, another Democrat. Steve Hill, a fourth Democrat in the race, polled 4.32 percent.
In State Senate District 23, which covers a portion of both San Bernardino and Riverside counties, five candidates vied to replace Republican Mike Morrell, who is being termed out at the end of the year. Democrat Abigail Medina was the top vote-getter in San Bernardino County with 31,872 or 29.51 percent. Republican Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh captured second with 29,297 or 27.13 percent. Republican Lloyd White managed to bring in 17.74 percent and Democrat Kris Goodfellow had 16.7 percent. A third Republican in the contest, Cristina Puraci, pulled down 8.91 percent. Districtwide, Medina topped Bogh 44,330 or 26.9 percent to 41,418 or 25.1 percent.
In State Senate District 25, where Democrat Anthony Portantino is running unopposed, he gathered 9,211 votes or 97.98 percent in San Bernardino County.
In the State Senate District 29 race, incumbent Republican Ling Ling Chang claimed 7,037 San Bernardino County votes, or 53.31 percent. Democrat Josh Newman received 3,649 or 27.65 percent in San Bernardino County. Joseph Cho, a Democrat, captured 19.04 percent of the San Bernardino County vote. Districtwide, including Orange, Los Angeles and San Berrnardino counties, Chang was ahead of Newman 73,284 votes or 49 percent to 49,288 votes or 32.9 percent.
In the race to succeed Republican Jay Obernolte in Assembly District 33, a mix of four Democrats and three Republicans competed. Republican Thurston Smith came out on top, with 27,724 votes or 38.57 percent. Rick Herrick, also a Republican, garnered 12,571 votes or 17.49 percent for second place, meaning the Democrats are locked out of the race for the Assembly in District 33 in November. Democrat Socorro Cisneros captured 13.51 percent, followed by Blanca Gomez, a Democrat, with 10.17 percent and Anthony Rhoades, another Democrat, with 8.56 percent. Roger La Plante, also a Democrat, polled 6.57 percent. Republican Alex Walton claimed 5.18 percent of the vote.
In Assembly District 36, which covers only a small portion of San Bernardino County, Republican incumbent Tom Lackey comfortably outdistanced the seven others in the race with a whopping 68.68 percent of the vote in San Bernardino County, translating to being chosen on 2,827 ballots. Capturing second in San Bernardino County was Democrat Steve Fox with 499 votes or 12.12 percent. Johnathon Erwin, a Democrat, received 5.9 percent; Lourdes Everett, a Democrat, received 3.33 percent; Michael Rives, a Democrat received 1.48 percent; Democrat Eric Ohlsen received 2.31 percent,  Democrat Diedra Greenaway received 3.38 percent and Democrat Ollie McCaulley garnered 2.79 percent.
In the contest for Assembly District 40, Democratic incumbent James Ramos outdistanced Republican Jennifer Tullius, 42,473 votes or 58.33 percent to 30,346 votes or 41.67 percent.
In the race to represent Assembly District 41, of which less than one third lies in San Bernardino County, incumbent Democrat Chris Holden, with 10,253 votes or 47.82 percent from San Bernardino County voters, lost in San Bernardino County to Republican challenger Robin Hvidston, who claimed 11,189 votes or 52.18 percent of those cast in San Bernardino County. In the district overall, however, Holden was comfortably outdistancing Hvidston 66,973 or 67.1 percent to 32,899 or 32.9 percent.
In State Assembly District 42, where incumbent Chad Mayes, formerly a Republican, is now running as an independent, he is being challenged by a Republican and a Democrat. In San Bernardino County, Mayes, with 8,118 votes or 33.66 percent, was bettered by Republican Andrew Kotyuk, who received 9,833 votes or 40.78 percent. Deniantionette Mazingo, the Democrat in the race, polled 6,164 votes from within San Bernardino County or 25.56 percent. Throughout all of District 42, which crosses into Riverside County, Mayes fared better, capturing 34,217 votes or 35.9 percent for first place to Kotyuk’s 32,282 votes or 35.9 percent. Mazino had 30.3 percent.
In Democratic-friendly Assembly District 47, incumbent Democrat Eloise Gomez Reyes, with 37,528 votes or 70.37 percent, trounced Republican challenger Matthew Gordon, who received 15,804 votes or 29.63 percent.
In Assembly District 52, incumbent Democrat Freddie Rodriguez outpolled Republican Toni Holle on the San Bernardino County side of the district divide, 23,079 votes or 63.73 percent to 13,129 votes or 36.25 percent. Rodriguez fared even better districtwide, with 32,261 votes or 67.5 percent to Holle’s 15,502 or 32.5 percent.
In Assembly District 55, covering San Bernardino, Orange and Los Angeles counties, Republican incumbent Phillip Chen, received 7,423 votes or 57.21 percent in San Bernardino County, and Democratic challenger Andrew Rodriguez received 5,551 votes or 42.79 percent. In the entirety of the district, the overall vote went Chen’s way as well, 47,034 or 57.7 percent to Rodriguez’s 34,498 or 42.3 percent.

One of the three incumbents up for election in this year’s Loma Linda City Council race was displaced. Ovidiu Popescu, who was first elected to the council in 2008 and served four years in the capacity of mayor pro tem from 2010 to 2014, placed fifth in a field of five candidates.
Bhavin Jindal will succeed Popescu.
Gaining reelection were Rhodes Rigsby and John Lenart.
Loma Linda is an Adventist community, and historically there has been relative stability in its political leadership. In 2012, 2014 and 2016, the city held no election either because no one challenged the sitting incumbents or because no more candidates filed to run than there were offices up for election.
This year, Jindal and another challenger, Gabriel Uribe, ran. Uribe had run previously, in 2018.
In Tuesday’s polling, Lenart, who was previously on the city’s planning commission and was first elected in 2012, was the top vote-getter with 1,951 votes or 23.21 percent. Rigsby, who has been the mayor appointed by his council colleagues since 2010 and has been on the council since 2006,  received 1,793 votes or 21.33 percent. Jindal polled 1,698 or 20.29 percent. Uribe claimed 1,663 votes for 19.78 percent. Popescu, who was the city’s representative on the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, collected 1,302 votes or 15.49 percent.
-M.G.

A little  after 2 a.m. on the morning of April 15, 1994, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Walter Watterson was patrolling along a section of Highway 62, also known as  Twentynine Palms Highway. About a half-mile east of Canyon Road, he saw an eastbound van driving erratically, its high beams and emergency flashers on.  After effectuating a stop in which the driver, 22-year-old Enrique Muñoz, came to a halt in the middle of Highway 62 west of Rawson Road and then lost consciousness, Watterson strode up to the side of the van and peered inside.
Muñoz was covered in blood, and appeared to have suffered severe trauma to his head, what would later be determined to be a gunshot wound. More shocking still, in the back of the van were the dead bodies of two others, Muñoz’s brother Jesus Muñoz, 17, and Portorio Chavez Cardenas, 24.
After backup and an ambulance arrived at the scene, the still breathing and barely conscious Muñoz brother was transported to Desert Regional Medical Center, where he was treated for what turned out to be multiple gunshot wounds.
Initially, the department allowed the public to believe that Chavez and both Muñoz brothers were dead. In reality, Enrique Muñoz had survived, seemingly miraculously, and an armed guard was stationed in the hallway in front of his hospital room. As Muñoz was making his recovery, detectives were able to coax from him an approximation of what happened. According to Muñoz, he, his brother and Chavez, all of Los Angeles, had been lured to a house in the Coachella Valley by two brothers,  Mario Montes Banuelos and Noe Montes Banuelos. While in Coachella Valley, Muñoz,  Muñoz and Chavez were assaulted and overpowered, forced into the van and driven to Morongo Valley, whereupon they found themselves on a dark and remote dirt road. It was there that the Banuelos brother shot the victims multiple times, Muñoz related.
Muñoz, Muñoz and Chavez were left for dead inside the van. According to Muñoz,  another unidentified individual drove up the dirt road, picked up the Banuelos brothers, and they drove off in that vehicle. Through a Herculean effort, Enrique Muñoz was able to start the van and make his way down the dirt road and onto Highway 62.
Investigators were able to confirm the pertinent elements of what Muñoz had told them. Furthermore, they were able to connect the events of the evening of April 14/morning of April 15, 1994 to circumstances relating to another double slaying in the region that had occurred the previous month. In that case, the bodies of Sergio Robledo Magaña, 19, and Juan Francisco Morquecho, 14, had been found, bullet-ridden, on March 27, 1994 in Thermal, eight days after they had disappeared in the early hours of the morning on March 19, 1994 from the Copacobaña nightclub in Coachella.
Warrants were issued for the arrests of Mario Montes Banuelos and Noe Montes Banuelos in connection with the killings. After several weeks, however, efforts to locate them at any of their known haunts proved unsuccessful, and it was believed they had fled to Mexico. Over the next months and years the case grew inactive.
Twenty-four years passed. In July 2018, with the matter having long lain dormant, investigators learned from the U.S. Marshall’s Service Fugitive Task Force that Noe Montes Banuelos, then 45, had been fatally shot in Sonora, Mexico.
Eighteen months later, at the border crossing in Yuma, Arizona on January 19, 2020, authorities took Mario Montes Banuelos, 49, into custody on a long-extant warrant. When Banuelos waived extradition, San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies went to Yuma to retrieve him to stand trial in the Muñoz and Cardenas murders.
Banuelos was initially booked on murder and attempted murder charges into the  Central Detention Center in San Bernardino. The cold case file on the Muñoz and Cardenas murder case has been handed over to Sheriff’s Detective Art Alvarado. Deputy District Attorney Justin Crocker is prosecuting Banuelos.
Indications are that the district attorney’s office is ready to proceed with the case at the Joshua Tree Courthouse in rapid fashion, with a pretrial hearing set for 8:30 a.m. on April 28, and if no continuances are requested by Banuelos’s attorney, Gary Wenkle Smith, trial commencing on May 4.
Smith told the Sentinel Banuelos “is not” guilty based upon the facts of the case. “I’d rather give you the details when we have three counts of not guilty,” Smith said.
-Mark Gutglueck