William Lyon, the one-time Air Force general who became a residential developer and whose eponymous company left an indelible imprint on the Southern California landscape, has died.
Born March 9, 1923, in Los Angeles, Lyon attended the University of Southern California beginning in 1941. When he joined the U.S. Army Corps as a reservist in 1943, he was already a skilled pilot, having by that time also attended the Dallas Aviation School and Air College.
Lyon continued working as as a civilian flight instructor until June 1944, at which point he was given an appointment as a flight officer. He was assigned to the 6th Ferrying Group and flew aircraft to the Pacific and European theaters. In 1945 he was assigned to the North African Division of the Air Transport Command, returning to the United States in 1946. In 1947 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and participated in various reserve assignments. He was recalled to active duty in 1951 and assigned to Headquarters Air Training Command as a staff pilot. Thereafter, following his transfer to the Military Air Transport Service, he flew air evacuation and ferrying missions. In 1953 he volunteered for a tour of duty in Korea and flew 75 missions in the C-46 and C-47.
From 1954 to 1963, Lyon was assigned to various positions in the reserve and served as a flight commander and operations officer. In 1963 he was named commander of the 929th Tactical Airlift Squadron at March Air Force Base. He later served as the commander of the 943rd Tactical Airlift Group. Lyon was assigned as mobilization assistant to the commander, Sacramento Air Materiel Area at McClellan Air Force Base in June 1970.
He completed Air War College in 1971 and completed the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve senior officers orientation courses in 1972 and 1974.
In February 1972, he became mobilization assistant to the commander, Fifteenth Air Force at March Air Force Base. In March 1974 he was appointed mobilization assistant to the commander in chief, Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where he was involved in the planning of the transfer of designated KC-135 units to the reserves. In April 1975 Lyon was ordered to active duty to serve as chief of Air Force Reserve, Headquarters U.S. Air Force in Washington, D.C. He remained in that assignment until 1978.
Simultaneously with his military career, Lyon was a major fixture in the development industry.
Upon returning to Southern California in 1953 after his active duty assignment in Korea, he was persuaded by his father, Al Lyon, and his brother Leon, to join them in a homebuilding venture in Orange County. Their company, Luxury Homes, was created in 1954.
Luxury Homes proved quite successful. In 1968, Luxury Homes was sold to American Standard, whereupon William Lyon was given a role in that company as vice president for real estate. In 1971, he bought out American Standard’s California-based operation, transitioning it into the William Lyon Co. Based in Newport Beach, the company built homes all over Southern California, including San Bernardino County. With Lewis Homes, William Lyon was a major provider of housing stock in Rancho Cucamonga during that city’s explosive growth in the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed the company built over 100,000 single family dwelling units in California, Arizona and Nevada.
Along the way, Lyon made other investments. In 1981, he and George Argyros purchased AirCal for $61.5 million. In 1986, they sold the airline for $225 million.
Active in Republican political circles, the general, as he was called by those who knew him and those who did not, in 1999 co-founded with former Richard Nixon Aide-de-camp Larry Higby, South Coast Plaza developer Henry Segerstrom, Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren and George Argyros the New Majority political action committee.
Lyon, 97, died of what were called natural causes today, May 22 at his luxury home in Coto de Caza.

Fourteen of San Bernardino County’s 24 municipalities do not have their own police department but rather contract with the county sheriff’s department for the provision of law enforcement services. In all but two of those cases, those cities or towns simply maintained the sheriff’s department as their police service provider when they were incorporated as municipal entities, and they have maintained their contractual relationship with the sheriff’ department because the expense of developing and perpetuating an in-house police department would be more expensive than the status quo. In Needles and Adelanto, cities which at one time had their own police departments, a consideration in dissolving their police departments was the financial savings those cities realized by handing off the responsibility for policing to the sheriff’s department.
For these contract cities, there is at least a two-fold derivation in savings, the first being the economy of scale the sheriff’s department is able to secure as a consequence of its size, which involves 3,700 employees, over 2,600 of whom are sworn officers. Beyond the savings, ranging from marginal to more substantial, when it comes to the employment of personnel, the department is outfitted with equipment and facilities, including its scientific investigations division, which relieves contract cities and towns of the substantial expense of having to replicate. Historically, the sheriff’s department has supplied law enforcement services to the county’s contract cities for a price tag that is approximately 85 to 90 percent of the cost of what it would run those cities to field police departments of their own with a comparable number of officers.
Generally, the county’s towns and cities enter into a contract with the sheriff’s department for a fixed number of years at a set rate based upon the number of deputies and other department personnel to be employed in that locale. Upon the expiration of a contract and the inking of a contract to extend the law enforcement service, the county has traditionally increased its contract amounts with those cities and towns it serves at a rate close to a percentage reflected in the consumer price index or the commonly accepted rate of inflation over the intervening years since the contract was last extended. Often, a new contract will call for upping the number of patrol deputies over the number that were employed in that jurisdiction during the just-ending contract period. It is common, as well, for adjustments or amendments to those contracts to be made to the contracts to pay for an increase in the number of deputies assigned to that city or town for the duration of the contract then in place.
Given that there are fourteen separate municipal contracts in San Benradino County – between the county and Chino Hills, Rancho Cucamonga, Adelanto, Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley, Grand Terrace, Highland, Loma Linda, Big Bear, Yucaipa, Yucca Valley, Twentynine Palms and Needles – there is rarely a year when one or more contracts are not on track to expire and be renewed, with negotiations ongoing at the same time between the county and the cities where the current contracts are set to expire the following year.
With the most recent crop of renewals and the negotiations ongoing for renewals in the year or two ahead, the county has proven hard-nosed, insisting on a steep contract increase in the realm of 10 percent to 10.5 percent, a cost escalation needed, the county claims, to cover the soaring price of salaries, pensions and benefits the county has committed to paying deputies, investigators, sergeants, lieutenants and captains over the next several years as a consequence of the employment contracts it had entered into with their labor bargaining units.
All 14 of the county’s municpalities contracting with the sheriff’s department, like the county’s other 12 cities, are experiencing severe income restrictions as a consequence of the drawdown in sales tax and the clearance that homeowners have been granted in postponing the payment of their property tax.  In all of those cities that were not flush with cash reserves when they headed into the coronavirus crisis, this is imposing a hardship.
Grand Terrace Assistant City Manager Cynthia Fortune on May 6 said tht in upcoming 2020-21, “The city is not requesting any service level reductions in public safety. Rather, we are requesting a delay in the increase to the sheriff’s contract.” Fortune said the city hoped to suspend the escalation in the rate the city will pay for the service until next year. “Hopefully [Fiscal Year] 2021-22 will be a much better year that we will be able to settle this issue,” Fortune said.
Also on May 6, Grand Terrace City Manager G. Harold Duffy said, “I did send the sheriff a letter indicating we would like to have some relief for a deferral of this because of COVID-19. He [Sheriff John McMahon] did speak with the City Manager of Rancho Cucamonga [John Gillison]. The city managers were all meeting together in conference calls. We are sharing the same issue. So, the sheriff did commit to presenting this policy issue to the board of supervisors, and they will have to address the issue.”
At its April 14 meeting, the Apple Valley Town Council renewed the town’s contract with the sheriff’s department, what was in actuality the 29th amendment the town has made to a contract with the sheriff’s department first entered into in 1994. That amendment committed the town to a 10.3 percent increase that will see the $14 million the town is paying in the current 2019-20 budget zoom to $15.5 million in 2020-21, which runs from July 1 of this year through June 30, 2021. It was noted that contract increase does not reflect the addition of deputies.
Mayor Scott Nassif questioned the increase in costs for the contract with no change in staffing levels.
Town Manager Doug Robertson said the contract, with what he called its “10 percent” increase, maintained the same level of service as the previous year.   Nassif expressed concern over the large increase which he said equates to almost 50% of the town’s general fund. This presents certain fiscal challenges to the town he said.
In their discussion, the town council members indicated they would have no choice but find the funding necessary to cover the increase, despite the impact on the town’s general fund. On a motion by Nassif, seconded by Council Member Art Bishop, the town council voted to approve the contract amendment for the period of July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021 and authorize the Mayor or his designee to process all documents required for the agreement. The motion carried 5-to-0, with Nassiff, Bishop and council members Larry Cusack, Kari Leon and Curt Emick in unanimous agreement.
-Mark Gutglueck

The western pine elfin (Callophrys eryphon) is a North American butterfly within the Arthropoda phylum, the Lepidoptera order, the Lycaenidae family, the Theclinae subfamily, the Callophrys genus and the Callophrys eryphon species. It ranges from British Columbia east to Maine and south to southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico. The wings are generally reddish-brown. The undersides of fore-wings and hindwings have very jagged dark submarginal bands. Males are brown and females are orange-brown, with both having bold patterned hind wings. The top of the wings have dark bars with a lighter chevron shaped margin. The body is three quarters of an inch to one and seven-sixtyfourths of an inch in length and has no tail. The wing span is typically one inch to one-and-three-eighths inches.
These butterflies are found in natural pine woods and evergreen forests in the territory they inhabit. In the northwest United States they are found nesting in lodgepole pines and can be seen perched on shrubs and smaller trees while searching for food. Males perch on shrubs and small trees to look for females. The western pine elfin is seldom seen outside its natural habitat. They feed on flower nectar including wild blueberries, milkweed, and clover. Caterpillars feed on young needles and catkins.
The chrysalids hibernate and adults emerge from the caterpillar hibernation stage and have one flight cycle in early spring from March to June and the female lays eggs on the base of new pine needles.
Caterpillar hosts include the young needles of hard pines including lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), limber pine (P. flexilis), and ponderosa pine (P. ponderosa); possibly black spruce.
Adult food for these butterflies consists primarily of flower nectar.
These insects’ preferred habitat is pine forests.

Click the blue portal below to download a PDF of the May 15 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 05-15-20

Ricky Felix, who in 2018 rode a crest of resident resentment toward his predecessor into a berth on the Upland City Council and then formed a political alliance with the sole remaining member of the council faction against whom the city’s voters had so virulently reacted, this week announced he will resign from his elected office by the end of the month.
The ostensible reason for his stepping down from the council, Felix said, was to avail himself and his family of an opportunity he did not specify. In recent weeks and months, however, there has been a building tide of anger toward Felix and the council majority which has coalesced as a number of controversial issues have presented themselves in the City of Gracious Living. In virtually all of those, votes by the council that were favorable to well-heeled interests proposing development projects or other action by the city which a growing and vocal contingent of city residents have opposed have created an atmosphere of contention between those residents and City Hall. Felix’s participation in those decisions as a reflexive supporter of the City Hall establishment had sparked serious talk of an effort to remove him from office. His decision to leave on his own volition will now likely divert the efforts of a determined group of civic activists toward seeking to moderate through persuasive means the action of the remaining members of the council clique of which Felix had become a part or, in the alternative, a potential recall effort against one or more of the remaining members of the council.
A relatively unknown entity, Felix in 2018 filed to run for council in Upland’s newly created Third District in what was the city’s first by-district election in its at that point 112-year history. Gino Filippi, who had originally been elected to the council in 2010 and reelected in 2014, was registered as a resident of the Third District, consisting of the southwest quadrant of the city. While Filippi enjoyed status as an incumbent, which normally confers upon a candidate for public office an advantage, his participation earlier that year in a string of efforts to reduce or shutter elements of the city’s parkland created a vicious backlash against him. Specifically, Filippi had endorsed selling off 4.631 acres of Memorial Park to San Antonio Regional Hospital for conversion to a parking lot and the outright sale of 16-acre Cabrillo Park, located off 11th Street between Mountain and Benson Avenue, to Lewis Homes so the property could be developed residentially. Filippi was one of the four-member council majority including Mayor Debbie Stone, then-Councilman Sid Robinson and then-Councilwoman Carol Timm that had cavalierly sought to dispense with city parkland to further the agenda of major business institutions in Upland. The firestorm of controversy over that issue proved so great that Robinson, who had originally been appointed to the council and was due to run for election that year to stay in office, chose not to run. Also on the ballot that year were Filippi, Timm and by her own choice because she had been elected to an at-large four-year term on the council in 2016, Councilwoman Janice Elliot, who sought election to represent the district in which she resided, that being the city’s newly-formed Second District in the city’s northeast quadrant. Elliott, who had opposed the parkland sale, the only member of the council to do so, was elected. Timm was voted out of office. Filippi, challenged by Felix and another resident of the 3rd District, Irmalinda Osuna, finished a dismal third in the balloting with 980 votes or 25.45 percent, retribution for his having consented to rid the city of a significant amount of its park acreage.
Felix managed 1,517 votes or 39.39 percent to Osuna’s 1,354 votes or 35.16 percent.
Once in office, Felix sought to be deferential to virtually everyone, and assiduously attempted, at least at first, to avoid committing to one side or the other in debates over policy or when occasional personality differences among his council colleagues manifested. Eventually, however, Felix could be seen gravitating more and more toward positions held by Mayor Stone, which generally lined up with the establishment and moneyed elite involved in activity in the city and projects or proposals that came before the city council.
Observable was that when interests or businesses whose principals were campaign contributors to members of the council either currently or in years past found  themselves before the council with business or project applications, Felix showed a pattern of voting with those council members, in particular Mayor Stone, in favor of those donors. Felix further found himself tending toward support of any items favored by high profile entities in the city such as the Chamber of Commerce.
Resident discontent hit its zenith and loomed into sharp focus this year with the city council’s consideration of two controversial development proposals, the first being  Bridge Development Partners’ 201,096-square foot Bridgepoint project, a distribution center for on-line retail giant Amazon that was slated for a 50-acre property slightly east of Central Avenue, north of Foothill Boulevard and south of Cable Airport. The second was the Villa Serena project, 65 single family detached residential units on 9.2-acres that lie within the footprint of the 15th Street Flood Detention Basin in the Foothill Knolls neighborhood on the eastern side of the city near Campus Avenue.
Both projects faced significant resident opposition. With the onset of the coronavirus crisis, Upland, as all other municipalities throughout the state, found itself subject to a mandate from Governor Gavin Newsom prohibiting social gatherings, which precluded the city from holding a traditional large-scale public hearing for either of the project proposals. A significant cross section of the city’s residents called upon the city council to delay or postpone its consideration of those projects and the accompanying public hearings. While Councilwoman Elliott and Councilman Bill Velto made public statements advocating that the council comply with the requests that the city and city council suspend the hearing and approval processes for the projects until the social gathering restriction mandates were lifted and hearings at which a full range of public input in a traditional meeting setting could take place, Felix joined with Mayor Stone and Councilman Rudy Zuniga in acceding to holding the meetings remotely and through an electronic video/audio hook up, during each of which there was no physical gathering of those participating. Those residents/citizens/members of the public who wanted to participate by providing input before the council engaged in its deliberative processes  were obliged to do so by arranging in advance of each meeting to receive a phone call from the city clerk while the meeting was in progress, whereupon members of the public could make their comments telephonically. The council proceeded with that format over further public objections that by distancing itself from its constituents in this manner its members were avoiding direct and personal interaction with those who had elected them and were thereby denying the city’s residents the opportunity to be fully heard and represented.
Ultimately, when the hearings for both the Bridgepoint and Villa Serena projects were held, the council voted 4-to-1 in both instances to approve the project proposals, each time with Elliott dissenting.
In the hearings for those development projects, a number of city residents remarked upon Felix’s demeanor and the nature of his participation. From the outset of his time in office, he had never evinced any especial oratory skill, and was accorded a reputation of being less than articulate. During the discussions for both the Bridgepoint and Villa Serena projects, however, he made a series of comments that while not grandiloquent, went well beyond the level of sophistication the citizenry of Upland had come to expect from him. Given that his input angled generally in favor of the project proposals, many came away with the impression that he had been coached in what to say or had otherwise been provided with a written script by the proponents. The limitation of the electronic meeting format prevented the public from knowing, precisely, whether Felix had been reading a prepared text when he was making his comments or posing questions during the course of those discussions. Coupled with his opposition to holding the meeting in a public forum and his votes in favor of the project, there was speculation among certain members of the Upland community about whether Felix had been provided with some form of inducement to secure his support for those proposals. That, in turn, fueled discussion with regard to the launching of a recall effort against him. Those tentatively discussing the recall expressed confidence that such an effort could succeed, since the city’s conversion to a by-district electoral system reduced to one-quarter the number of signatures that would be needed to force a recall election in Upland over what had been the case previously, when the members of the council were subject to election by all of the voters in the more than 77,000 population city.
This week, during the regularly scheduled May 11 city council meeting, which was likewise conducted remotely and electronically without a physical meeting and the public unable to be present, as the proceedings were winding to a close, Mayor Stone said, “Before I adjourn the meeting tonight, Mayor Pro Tem Ricky Felix has asked for a few moments to make a statment.”
“I’d like to express my sincere appreciation for the opportunity I’ve had to sit on this council and serve the City of Upland,” Felix said. “My family and I, we’ve been given an opportunity at this time that will take us out of the city. I’m grateful for the friendships and trust that I’ve received from so many in the community. I hope that even during the trials we are currently facing that there will be a much brighter future right around the corner. The next city council meeting will be my last city council meeting and May 31st will be the last day I will be a councilmember for the City of Upland.”
Within certain quarters of the city, discussion turned immediately to who would be chosen by the council to replace Felix, with several of those involved in the discussions expressing trepidation that Felix’s move will open the door for Filippi to once more assume a position at the council dais
-Mark Gutglueck

More than six months after the eminent domain lawsuit the Town of Apple Valley is pursuing against Liberty Utilities, the owner of that community’s water system, went to trial, the matter has yet to come to a conclusion.
It now appears that the trial will most likely resume next month, with a prospect that the hearings will conclude by early July.
Apple Valley’s attempt to use eminent domain to force the takeover of a utility is only the second such effort in California history where the matter is being decided in the forum of a trial by which a court is to be the arbiter of whether a local government can use condemnation procedure to take possession of a water utility
The circumstances that brought the matter to this juncture stretch back at least to the incorporation of the town some 32 years ago, and arguably three-quarters of a century ago, all the way to 1945, when Newt Bass and B.J. Westland founded the town on 6,500 acres they had acquired from the Southern Pacific Railroad. Simultaneously, Bass and Westlund created the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company, which was in part constructed using salvaged oil pipelines from a nearby failed petroleum mining operation.
By 1988, when the town was incorporated, the water system had been acquired and was being operated by the Wheeler Family. Shortly after the town was established as a municipal entity, the Wheelers offered to sell the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company – then consisting of 18 medium and deep wells, pipes, reservoirs, pumping units and appurtenances – to Town Hall for $2.5 million. The maiden town council – consisting of Nick DePrisco, Heidi Larkin, Dick Pearson, Carl Coleman and Jack Collingsworth – spurned that offer. Town officials thought the cost of maintaining the wells, reservoirs, pipes and hookups to be beyond the town’s means.
In 2011, the Carlyle Group, an American/multinational private equity and asset management corporation, acquired from the Wheeler Family at a cost of $102.2 million the Park Water Company, which in addition to its water system assets in Apple Valley included the water system serving Compton, Downey and Bellflower in Los Angeles County, as well as the Mountain Water Company, serving Missoula, Montana. Upon the Carlyle Group assuming ownership of Park Water, the town of Apple Valley impaneled a so-called blue ribbon committee to consider acquiring Apple Valley Ranchos. That committee advised against the acquisition. In 2012, Park Water, at the direction of the Carlyle Group, obtained from the California Public Utilities Commission permission to institute 19 percent rate increases on Apple Valley Ranchos customers to carry out what was said to be necessary upgrades to the aging equipment and facilities that delivered water to the then-74.99-square mile town’s then-70,000-plus residents.
In 2010, Park Water made $2.4 million in upgrades to Apple Valley’s water system. In 2011 the Carlyle Group undertook and completed $3.4 million in capital improvements to the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company; another $5.7 million in work on the system in 2012; $7.5 million in upgrades in 2013; $8.1 million in improvements in 2014; and $7.8 million in maintenance and additions in 2015. The Carlyle Group obtained from the California Public Utilities Commission clearance to institute another 30 percent rate hike on Apple Valley Ranchos customers to be implemented from 2015 until 2017. The previous 19 percent hike followed by the 30 percent increase caught the attention of town officials, who radically changed their collective position with regard to the advisability of the town taking possession of the utility.
Simultaneously, the City of Claremont in Los Angeles County was attempting to utilize the eminent domain process to wrest from the Golden State Water Company the water system that supplied water to that city.
Some 1,128 miles away, in Missoula, Montana, city officials there, who were likewise chaffing under the higher rates that Park had imposed on the Mountain Water Company’s customers, had initiated what in time would prove to be a successful effort to take possession of the water utility from its private owner by means of an eminent domain proceeding.
Apple Valley’s town attorney was and is an associate with the same law firm, Best Best & Krieger, with which the City of Claremont’s city attorney at that time is a partner. A discussion of the potential efficacy of the town using the eminent domain process to commandeer the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company ensued at that point, together with Apple Valley town officials trading notes with Missoula city officials. The town was a bit tardy in moving toward the eminent domain solution, as the Carlyle Group in the summer of 2015 purchased for $300,000 the water system serving some 900 residents in the desert community of Yermo, which lies roughly 36 miles from Apple Valley. The Carlyle Group then packaged a sale of the entirety of the water utilities it owned in California and Montana, which it labeled Western Water Holdings, to a Canadian company, Algonquin Power/Liberty Utilities, for $327 million.
While Algonquin/Liberty was before the California Public Utilities Commission in 2015 to get permission to proceed with the Apple Valley Ranchos acquisition, Apple Valley officials voiced opposition to the sale in an effort to block it. An element of that protest was that the town was interested in acquiring the water company, if necessary by condemnation.
Simultaneously, the town obtained from what it referred to as “an independent appraisal firm” the rather wishful “fair purchase price” of $45.54 million for Apple Valley Ranchos, and thereafter indicated it would be wiling to pay Park Water the somewhat unrealistic figure of $50.3 million for the Apple Valley Ranchos water system lock, stock and barrel.
A more pragmatic assessment was that the Apple Valley Rancho Water Company, representing roughly one third of the entirety of Western Water’s assets at the time of Algonquin/Liberty’s $327 million purchase, was worth, roughly, $109 million. Another calculation, one in which the $88.6 million fair market value for Mountain Water Company component upheld by the Missouri District Court in Missoula in June 2015 was subtracted from $327 million purchase price for Western Water, indicated that the Bellflower-Compton-Downey and the Apple Valley components of Western Water were worth $238.4 million in 2016 dollars. Assuming Apple Valley Ranchos, with its 24 deep wells throughout Apple Valley and three wells in Yermo, represented roughly one half of the remaining Western Water assets now in the possession of Algonquin/Liberty, its fair market value would have been, in 2016 dollars, approximately $119 million.
Ultimately, the California Public Utilities Commission in December 2015 allowed Liberty to proceed with the acquisition of Park Water Company.
With Apple Valley unwilling to offer anything approaching $109 or $119 million for the water system, and Liberty disinclined to sell its Apple Valley holdings in any event, Apple Valley officials moved forward with the eminent domain action.
When the case went to trial in October 2019 before San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Donald Alvarez, it was generally anticipated that the proceedings would entail 30 to 40 court days, and would thus conclude by January, and certainly no later than February. But a handful of delays, including more than two weeks between November 15 and December 1 when the courtroom was entirely shuttered and between December 18 and January 5, when there was no testimony, extended the trial into February.
In an eminent domain case, after opening statements, the defense presents its evidence and witnesses first. The defense concluded putting on its case on February 4, 2020, the 33rd day of the trial. The following day, February 5, the 34th day of the court proceedings, Judge Alvarez and the attorneys for both sides spent the entirety of the day going over exhibits to be admitted prior to commencing the plaintiff’s case. The following day, February 6, more time was devoted to going over the exhibits the town intended to utilize. That concluded, the defense rested, at which point the town began to put on its case, calling its first witness, former Town Manager Lori Lamson, on what was the 35th day of the trial.
To that point, the defense team, consisting of attorneys George Soneff, Edward Burg, David Moran and Lauren Fried, had managed to provide a relatively compelling case to Judge Alvarez, who was hearing the matter as a bench trial, meaning he would be the ultimate arbiter of both fact and the law without the involvement of a jury. Liberty’s legal team asserted, and managed to present evidence in the form of data and testimony, that the company has performed more than adequately in providing the town, its residents and businesses water.
Soneff characterized the company’s case in chief as having established that Liberty had served as the Apple Valley community’s water utility in a way that featured a “perfect water quality record with no water contamination or quality violations.” That, Soneff asserted, entailed service which is “better than that of all of the surrounding cities. We have demonstrated, I believe, that there is no public interest to be served by allowing the takeover. Doing so would create a threat to the quality of water delivered and the level of service. The city does not have the technical managerial or financial capacity nor anyone on staff with the knowledge or expertise to run a water system.”
Between February 5, the 35th day of the trial and March 16, the 55th day of the trial, there was some legal jockeying between the defense and plaintiffs with regard to exhibits, and the town brought in further witnesses in an effort to offset the defense’s showing that that the town would be incapable of handling water operations without significant augmentations to its current staff. The town’s witnesses further suggested that town residents would benefit by the town takeover of the water system because they would not be subject to being gouged by Liberty with regard to rates.
Steven Weissman, a professor of regulatory law at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Policy who worked three decades with the California Public Utilities Commission, including 15 years in the capacity of an administrative hearing officer, testified that there are inadequacies in the California Public Utilities Commission’s processes, extending to its regulation of rates. Weissman, who is also a fellow with the Center for Sustainable Energy, said the California Public Utilities Commission is plagued with understaffing and that it tended to rubberstamp rate increases requested by utility companies. Individual ratepayers, Weissman said, have insufficient political muscle, standing, gravitas or reach to have their concerns fairly heard by the commission, such that the public’s interest is better served by a primary utility such as that for water being controlled by a local public agency, which is more answerable to its constituents.
Moreover, Weissman suggested, a public agency is less driven by the profit motive than a private utility company, which would likely ensure lower rates for customers.
Furthermore, according to Weissman, water utilities routinely request that the California Public Utilities Commission grant them increases beyond what they need to cover their operating costs and achieve a reasonable profit.
Weissman did, however, acknowledge that the California Public Utility Commission generally adjusts the rate increase requests downward as a function of the review process, which entails input from the commission’s Office of Ratepayer Advocates. A local governmental entity granted ownership of a public utility, Weissman said, would be far more responsive to the constituents within that jurisdiction than a corporate entity, as publicly elected officials are answerable to those who vote them into office.
Another expert witness testifying for the town was Michael Busch of Urban Futures, whose expertise lies within the realm of municipal finance and bonding as a means of securing adequate capital to undertake public improvements. Busch testified that the town had $51 million in investments and cash liquidity which could be redirected toward defraying the cost of purchasing the water utility, and that the town’s current enterprise funds are debt free. He testified that the town, through hiring Liberty’s current employees working as Apple Valley Ranchos staff members, would be able to take on the task of operating a municipal water division.
After March 16, further testimony in the trial was delayed with the advent of the coronavirus crisis and the subsequent state mandates relating to the general suspension of all but the most essential of court proceedings.
According to Soneff, the town’s legal team is now involved in an effort to establish a justification for the takeover, including making a case that the town’s ownership of the water utility will translate into fairer and lower rates for customers.
That will be an uphill climb, Soneff said, as “looking at the water rate evidence shows Liberty’s water rates are just as reasonable as those charged by surrounding cities. The rates are set by the California Public Utilities Commission. Some have claimed the rates are too high, but we have already placed an auditor’s report into evidence explaining that in some of those communities the municipalities [which operate their own water utility divisions] either don’t invest in keeping the water systems up or they are subsidizing their water divisions with other public funds.”
Moreover, Soneff said, the prevailing evidence presented at trial thus far is that the combined cost of the town’s acquisition of the water system and its recruitment and employment of adequate personnel to carry out water operations will entail a degree of expense that will require the town to charge Apple Valley’s residents at least as much if not more than Liberty is charging them for water.
“The city is doubly challenged,” Soneff said. “We presented evidence from a leading national water economist that the requirements of bond financing and obtaining an operator competent to run a water system will require that the town raise the rates now being charged for water. The town officials won’t say they can lower rates. They can only say they can stabilize them. In all likelihood, they will have to raise rates.”
Of note is that in 2016, Soneff represented Golden State Water Company in its defense of an eminent domain takeover bid by the City of Claremont in Los Angeles County. In that matter, Claremont was represented, as is Apple Valley, by lawyers with the law firm of Best Best & Krieger. Soneff and Golden State ultimately prevailed in that litigation, with Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard Fruin finding it would be contrary to the public interest – and detrimental to the City of Claremont’s residents – to allow the city to wrest ownership of Claremont’s water supply system from Golden State. He entered an order that Golden State was to remain the water provider in Claremont, opining that municipal ownership of the water system was not “a more necessary public use” on numerous grounds, a primary one of which was that Claremont had failed to establish that it could ensure Claremont residents with a safe and reliable water supply, a service Golden State had proven it could provide. In virtually every respect, the case playing out in Judge Alvarez’s courtroom mirrors that put on before Judge Fruin, the one exception being that Apple Valley intends to take on ownership and operation of the utility, and Claremont was seeking ownership of Golden State’s Claremont-based utility but intended for the neighboring City of La Verne to operate the water supply system.
Of issue and importance to Apple Valley residents is how much Apple Valley will need to pay for the water system, if indeed Judge Alvarez rules in favor of granting the town’s eminent domain petition.
At present, the town, through annexations that have occurred since 2015, has expanded to 77.13 square miles. Its population has zoomed to more than 74,000. The Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company’s assets include 34.5 acres of land, 470 miles of water mains, 20 currently active groundwater wells and four inactive ones, 11.7 million gallons of water storage capacity, 11 reservoirs, 27 trucks, three backhoes, a firetruck, tow-trailer-mounted evacuators, six large portable generators, nine stationary generators, 24,000-gallon diesel fuel storage capacity, booster pumps and mobile booster pumps, an extensive customer records computer system and a computerized data and operations system.
The town, having moved beyond the $45.54 million valuation it put forth in 2015, has suggested the lowest reasonable price of the Apple Valley Ranchos Water assets is around $100 million at present. A countervailing possible price put forth by Liberty is in the $200 million range. Assuming that Judge Alvarez would halve the difference, the town will have to come up with $150 million to make good merely on the water utility takeover. That would not include the town’s costs of hiring, either into its public works division, or into a newly created water department, administrators, managers, supervisors, at least some of whom would need extensive training and certification, as well as field employees.
Tentative indications are that San Bernardino County’s courts might reopen as early as June 8, though there has been no definitive resumption schedule posted. Under the most optimistic of circumstances, the trial could resume in front of Judge Alvarez as early as June 9.
Indications were that the town will need at least six further court days to finish with its case in chief. Judge Alvarez will have up to 90 days to contemplate the trial’s proceedings before rendering his written findings and final ruling on whether the town should be permitted to take possession of Apple Valley Ranchos. If Judge Alvarez allows the town’s acquisition of the company to take place, Liberty is entitled to a jury trial in which those jurors would be empowered to make a determination of the value of the company assets.
-Mark Gutglueck

With the number of cases of coronavirus escalating along with the number of deaths therefrom, San Bernardino County Public Health Director Trudy Raymundo will depart from her position prior to the end of the month.
CaSonya Thomas, the county’s assistant executive director of human services, to whom the public health department is answerable, in a memo dated May 4 to the sheriff, district attorney, county treasurer, assessor, county chief financial officer, the county’s deputy executive officers and all county department heads announced Raymundo’s departure.
“The purpose of this memo is to share with you that Trudy Raymundo has announced her intention to resign from her position as the county’s director of public health effective May 29,” Thomas wrote.
No explanation for Raymundo’s abrupt departure was given. There were hints that the county’s two top administrators and the members of the board of supervisors were apprised of the move toward Raymundo’s departure some time ago, as Thomas’s memo was not directed to them, but provided to them as an electronic carbon copy.
Much of the memo was laudatory toward Raymundo, who has been an employee with San Bernardino County since 1990 and moved into a position within the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health as a program coordinator in 1997. Over the next dozen years she served in the capacity of administrative analyst in the department and then promoted into the position of assistant director. In 2010, she was elevated to serve as interim director of the department. In 2012, the qualifier “interim” was dropped from her title and she became the public health department’s director.
There were hints in Thomas’s memo that Raymundo’s departure was forced upon her, which is supported by the context and timing of her exit.
Raymundo is neither a nurse nor a doctor, and she has no extensive training in the field of medicine or the biological sciences. Rather, she holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and business management from California State University San Bernardino. Her elevation to the head of the public health department appears to have been a calculated one, freely entered into by one of the county’s previous chief executive officers as well as the board of supervisors in 2012, which as it was composed then involved two of the board’s five current members.
The calculation at that time was that Raymundo, as a numbers cruncher who had no training or especial interest in medical or public health issues, was someone who would not get abstracted into the minutiae of, or worry about, the latest trends in public health maintenance and medicine and addressing any single individual’s or groups of individuals’ medical needs but who would instead focus on the bottom line, concerning herself with economic management of the department and constraining her underlings to conforming to the budget the board of supervisors and the county CEO had laid out for her to remain within.
There were repeated indications over the years that Raymundo was essentially unschooled with regard to public health issues, per se. As the head of the department, Raymundo was called upon to present reports to the board of supervisors with regard to items that body needed to consider and vote upon relating to the public health department. Raymundo was credited with having authored those reports, most of which dealt with the topics in question on a relatively superficial level without going into great depth, and giving the board members only a basic orientation and voting recommendation. Occasional press inquiries made directly to Raymundo, however, laid bare that she had no command whatsoever of the contents of those reports or the technical considerations upon which they were based. Indeed, after a relative handful of such inquiries, the county made a practice of routing any further such inquiries away from her to either the county’s official spokesman or a woman specifically hired to serve as the public health department’s spokesperson.
Had circumstances remained as they were previously, the county’s strategy of employing an individual with no expertise in public health issues as the head of the department of public health might have proceeded without consequence. The advent of the coronavirus crisis, however, resulted in a series of inadequate responses by the department which ultimately appear to have had fatal consequences.
In the crucial month-and-a-half to two-month run-up to the pandemic manifesting locally in March, Raymundo, who is provided with a base annual salary and add-ons equal to $196,349.73‬ together with $103,046.36 in benefits for a total yearly compensation of $299,396.09, failed to act with alacrity and use her hard-nosed business acumen and the negotiating leverage she had as a department head with California’s fifth-largest county population-wise to purchase adequate reserves of equipment, devices, materials and medicine, particularly the reagent needed to perform virus testing, to meet the crisis head on.
Essentially, throughout the initial stages of the crisis, public health officials and the medical community in San Bernardino County were flying blind, as they were unable to test anything more than a minute percentage of the population.
In the last week of March, the health department offered what it said would be testing for the most vulnerable element of the county population, including those aged 65 or older with the signs of COVID-19, including fever, cough, lethargy, and difficulty breathing. When county residents evincing that symptomology applied for those testing opportunities, an untold number were turned away with no acknowledgment whatsoever that they had even applied. This was repeated over the course of the next couple of weeks when the county claimed it was again hosting testing clinics. Despite the health department at that point having the phone numbers or email addresses of a significant number of individuals who had potentially contracted the coronavirus, the department of public health made no follow-up with them to check on their welfare or COVID-19 status.
The testing debacle prompted San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors Chairman Curt Hagman to put out a guardedly apologetic statement on April 10 that, “We understand the high demand for COVID-19 testing in our county and we are making every effort to organize drive-through events throughout the county. We are working closely with state and federal partners and exploring all avenues to increase testing capacity, despite a nationwide challenge with shortage of supplies.”
One element of Thomas’s memo suggested that Raymundo was pushed out the door.
“Trudy has graciously agreed to participate in the transition of leadership for the remainder of her time with the county,” Thomas’s memo states. “Given her advance notice, the county is able to plan for a smooth transition.” The use of the term gracious  implied that Raymundo was accepting something that was being imposed on her.
Thomas’s memo further indicates that Raymundo is yet intent on pursuing “future endeavors.” Yet nowhere in the memo does Thomas provide an explanation of why it is that Raymundo, if she indeed is anxious to remain active, is stepping away from an assignment that provides the opportunity for her to fill her time with the meaningful endeavor of serving as the head of the county’s health department during a monumental health crisis.
In her memo, however, Thomas pushed past that without mention, instead commending Raymundo for her past work.
“As you are well aware, Trudy and her team have a long list of accomplishments for which she and the entire county organization can be proud, most notably her department’s national accreditation by the Public Health Accreditation Board, the creation of the thriving Community Vital Signs project, and the team’s work in the county’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the memo states. “Trudy has also built a skilled team of public health professionals and we appreciate her many years of dedication that will translate to great service for years to come. She and her leadership have demonstrated the determination, compassion, and resiliency for which our county has come to be known. Please join me in thanking Trudy for her service to the county and the people we serve, and in wishing her the best in her future endeavors.”
Some have suggested that the board of supervisors, which has co-existed with Raymundo as the head of the department of public health for a decade because of her ability and willingness to live within the budget provided to her department, is now scapegoating her because through the board’s tightfisted approach it had failed to appropriate an adequate amount of funding to her department in time for Raymundo to go out onto the open market and purchase, using the economies of scale that large bulk orders of the needed testing products would have created, the needed kits and quantities of reagent to meet the county’s testing needs.
Previously, David Wert, the county’s official spokesman, characterized Raymundo as “a competent, hard-working, and accomplished professional whose department under her leadership has earned national accreditation and won numerous state and national awards for innovation and public service; someone who is putting in long hours seven days a week to protect our community when she could easily walk away and retire comfortably.”
This week, Wert defended the county for having promoted Raymundo, whose educational and experiential background consists of training in accounting and business management, as the director of public health.
“To make things more clear, as is the case in many large counties including Los Angeles and Riverside, the public health department is led by a director, who is not a medical professional but rather an administrator, who supervises a health officer, who is a medical doctor,” Wert said. “The director in LA is Barbara Ferrer, who has no background in medicine, and she supervises the health officer, Dr. Muntu Davis, MD. The director in Riverside County is Kim Saruwatari, also not a medical professional, who supervises the health officer, Dr. Cameron Kaiser, MD. Trudy had been a public health administrator for 14 years before she was appointed director. Directors are appointed by higher-level administrators. Trudy is supervised by and reports to the author of the memo, CaSonya Thomas, and was appointed by her predecessor. The health officer, under state law, is appointed by the board of supervisors, but reports to the public health director.”
-Mark Gutglueck