Dominic Vaca

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Sentinel 06-04-21

06-04-21 Legal Notice Supplement

By Mark Gutglueck
Dismayed with the more than one-year delay it is encountering in its effort to construct a 201,096-square foot warehouse for online retail sales behemoth Amazon in Upland, Bridge Development Partners is now looking at constructing a warehouse ten times that size in Rancho Cucamonga.
More questions have been raised than have been answered by Bridge Development Partners’ sudden shift of focus from the City of Gracious Living to its neighboring municipality to the east. Among those questions is whether the company will draw upon its experience in Upland, where what was officially previewed to the community in June 2019 as a three-building complex with 977,000 square feet under roof to serve as an Amazon warehouse/distribution facility/fulfillment center was reduced in size and eventually given approval in 2020 by the city council, only to run into intensive resident opposition that has so far untracked the project.
Though Bridge Development Partners coyly did not mention or acknowledge at the time that it introduced the Upland project that Amazon was intended as the eventual tenant, such was intimated and ultimately confirmed when Amazon in its internal documents announced its intention to operate a distribution center in Upland.
The proposal was dubbed the Upland Bridge Point Project.
Now, Bridge Development Partners appears to have jettisoned its intention to establish the Amazon facility in western Upland in favor of a 2.175-million square foot structure in southeastern Rancho Cucamonga.
The road in Upland proved a rocky one for Bridge Development Partners, though at one time the company appeared to have four members of the Upland City Council in its pocket.
As objections to the scope of the original 977,000-square-foot three-building complex proposal in Upland manifested in 2019, the tentative site plan was modified several times until in October 2019 a revamped conception of the project was presented, one that was reduced to a single structure of 276,250 square feet. Ultimately, the project proposal was reduced to a single building of 201,096 square feet on the 50-acre property located north of Foothill Boulevard and south of Cable Airport, just east of what would be the logical northward extension of Central Avenue.
Bridge Development Partners through some methodology which engendered questions about whether the process had been tainted by graft, convinced Upland officials to allow the project to be considered and its environmental certification done using what was referred to as an “initial study” of the various environmental impacts of the project in lieu of a comprehensive environmental impact report. Ultimately, to give the project its environmental certification, the city council made a cursory examination of the initial study’s documentation and findings, thereafter making a declaration that there would be no unmitigateable impacts from the project that were not offset by the conditions of approval of the project. This form of dealing with the environmental issues is referred to as a “mitigated negative declaration.”
This skimping on the environmental impact report raised serious questions in the Upland community, as Amazon’s operations were to entail a substantial number of 18-wheel trucks as well as airplanes landing at nearby Cable Airport delivering merchandise to the warehouse, along with hundreds, indeed thousands, of vans per day delivering that merchandise to end-use customers, wreaking considerable havoc on the city’s roads and main thoroughfares. Such concerns initially led the Upland Planning Commission, on February 12, 2020, to vote 3-to-2 against recommending that the project be given go-ahead, with commissioners Gary Schwary, Linden Brouse and Yvette Walker prevailing over commissioners Robin Aspinall and Carolyn Anderson.
In a reversal unprecedented in Upland history, two weeks later, on February 26, 2020, the planning commission, this time with the previously absent Commissioner Alexander Novikov present, reconsidered its February 12 vote relating to the project. Despite the fact that Novikov cast a vote against the project on February 26, Schwary and Brouse bolted from the side that had opposed the project to support it, such that the project was given a 4-to-2 endorsement, this time with Aspinall, Anderson, Schwary and Brouse prevailing over Walker and Novikov.
At a specially-convened meeting called for the specific purpose of considering approval of the project, the Upland City Council conducted what was supposed to be the final hearing on the project on April 1, 2020.
The April 1 meeting consisted of a forum held in a non-public venue at which the city council was to consider the project, using a format that conformed with California Governor Gavin Newsom’s mandated precautions against the spread of the coronavirus, involving video/audio link-ups for the council and city officials to interact, together with brief telephonic input from members of the public.
In the meantime, operatives working on behalf of Bridge Development Partners provided Upland-based Victory Community Church with infusions of cash and hosted a free dinner earlier in the evening of April 1 for no fewer than 13 members of that congregation. During the course of the April 1 meeting, those 13 congregants called upon the city council to approve the project. During the hearing, twenty city residents, citing concerns relating to the environmental impact of the project including traffic, diesel and other emissions, site contamination, as well as the consideration that Amazon’s business model does not include the collection of sales tax on the online sales it engages in, expressed opposition to the project. They protested the city’s embracing of the project, which included giving the project environmental certification by means of a mitigated negative declaration rather than a full-blown environmental impact report.
A mitigated negative declaration is an environmental review determination made by an elected or appointed board of a governmental agency in which administrative and land use authority has been entrusted certifying that the environmental impacts from a project will be mitigated by the conditions of approval for that project. This contrasts with an environmental impact report, which delineates not only the impacts in detail but spells out explicitly what the mitigation measures for those impacts will entail.
Bridge Development Partners representatives presented to the council an endorsement of the project that bore the signatures of 1,100 city residents, and they offered the city council an assurance that in return for the city’s approval of the project, their company would enter into a development agreement that would pay the city $17 million, which was to include payments in lieu of sales tax to make up for the consideration that merchandise sold by Amazon online is not subject to sales tax.
The Upland City Council as it was then composed voted 4-to-1, with Councilwoman Janice Elliott dissenting and Mayor Debbie Stone and councilmen Ricky Felix, Bill Velto and Rudy Zuniga prevailing, to make a mitigated negative declaration and approve the project.
A number of issues pertaining to the Amazon project approval coalesced at that point to give the general impression that something was amiss. Councilman Felix abruptly resigned from the city council and moved to Utah the following month, fueling speculation that he left because of his misgivings over the heavy-handed way in which city officials, including himself, had been pushed into approving the project. Mayor Debbie Stone, whose strong suit had never been intellectual intensity, came across as militating too hard on behalf of Bridge Development Partners, as if she were seeking to make good in exchange for some inducement she had been given to support the project. Tongues began wagging when shortly after the council approval of the project Mayor Stone removed both Walker and Novikov from the planning commission, punishment doled out for their opposition to the project. Stone then appointed Dr. Brinda Sarathy to one of the vacant positions on the planning commission but rescinded that appointment when it was pointed out to her that she had forgotten that Sarathy had spoken out in opposition to the Upland Bridge Point/Amazon project.
A bothersome consideration for many was that the city’s director of development services, Robert Dalquest, whose function at City Hall is to protect the city’s residents from the consequences of any development projects that take place in the city, glossed over multiple issues when he orchestrated the approval of the project subject to using the initial study/negative declaration despite his recognition that that the members of the city council did not have the sophistication or knowledge to hash out the environmental issues at play, which gave the general impression that he was abiding by the dictates of the council to ensure that they were met with no documentation that would justify their rejection of the project. Moreover, during a planning commission meeting at which the Upland Bridge Point Project was considered, both Dalquest and then-City Attorney Steven Flower were overhead during a break the commission took, seeking to attribute to one another the rationale for abiding by an interpretation that the general plan land use designation and zoning on the property where the project was proposed was in conformance with use as a warehouse, an exchange which came after residents asserted that the zoning on the property was inconsistent with such a use.
A group of residents, unwilling to accept the approval of the project without exacting upon the developer conditions of approval that would offset what they considered to be the untoward environmental impacts of the project, formed a group, Upland Community First. On July 15, 2020, Upland Community First, represented by attorney Cory Briggs, filed a petition for a writ of mandate, naming the City of Upland. The filing contended that the members of Upland Community First as well as other residents of Upland opposed to the project had their fair hearing and due process rights violated on April 1, 2020 when the hearing relating to the project occurred via teleconference, such that “full public participation” in the approval process did not take place, which practically prevented those opposed to the project from presenting a convincing case against the project and what they propounded was its inadequate environmental certification. More pointedly, the writ of mandate presented in granular detail the contention that the documentation of the project’s impacts submitted in support for the mitigated negative declaration was lacking in multiple respects and that conditions of approval imposed on the project and its proponent did not provide adequate safeguards against those impacts. The upshot of the lawsuit was that the project approval should be rescinded and the city should be required to carry out a comprehensive environmental impact report if the project were to be reconsidered.
“Whenever a project proposed to be carried out or approved by a lead agency has the potential to cause an adverse environmental impact, the California Environmental Quality Act prohibits the agency from relying on a negative declaration,” the petition for a writ of mandate stated. “Instead, the California Environmental Quality Act requires the preparation of an environmental impact report to identify and analyze the significant adverse environmental impacts of a proposed project, giving due consideration to both short-term and long-term impacts, providing decision-makers with enough information to enable them to make an informed decision with full knowledge of the likely consequences of their actions, and providing members of the public with enough information to participate meaningfully in the project’s approval and environmental-review process. The California Environmental Quality Act also requires every environmental impact report to identify and analyze a reasonable range of alternatives to a proposed project. The California Environmental Quality Act further requires every environmental impact report to identify and analyze all reasonable mitigation measures for a proposed project’s significant adverse environmental impacts. An environmental impact report must be prepared for a proposed project if there is a fair argument, supported by substantial evidence in the administrative record, that the project may have an adverse environmental impact; stated another way, a negative declaration may not be used unless the lead agency determines with certainty that there is no potential for the project to have an adverse environmental impact.”
The city sought to have the lawsuit thrown out, asserting, essentially, that as the lead agency with ultimate land use authority in its own jurisdiction, the city, in the form of the city council, which is Upland’s ultimate decision-making body, had complete discretion in allowing the project to proceed. San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge David Cohn, however, allowed the legal challenge to proceed, which kept the project on hold.
Mayor Stone, whose efforts on behalf of Bridge Development Partners were so ham-handed that even her supporters were embarrassed by them, found herself isolated and without the crucial assistance she had counted upon in her past electoral efforts when she was due to seek reelection in the November 2020 election. Challenged by Councilman Velto, former Planning Commissioner Novikov, whom she had deposed because of his vote rejecting the Amazon project, and Lois Sicking Dieter, who was active in the Upland Community First effort against the project, Stone was blown out of office in November 2020. Velto prevailed in the race for mayor, but in short order, it became known that he was acting as a go-between seeking to settle the Upland Community First lawsuit against the city over the Bridge Development project. Velto assuming such a position was highly irregular, since he was, as a member of the city council and a representative of the city, a defendant in the lawsuit, one who was represented by legal counsel. Thus, it was both procedurally and legally improper for him to be dialoguing with Upland Community First. By using Velto in the capacity of a backchannel negotiator, Bridge Development Partners was seeking to steal a march on Upland Community First. Having Velto proffer the potential settlement terms put Upland Community First in the position of itself doing something improper if it were to engage in a direct dialog with an individual it had sued rather than through attorneys representing both sides. If Upland Community First had engaged with Velto, this would have created a weapon – indeed blackmail – Bridge Development Partners could use to force a settlement of the suit on terms favorable to it. Using Velto also allowed Bridge Development Partners to avoid putting anything in writing and preserved a degree of deniability which would allow the company to ascertain what the rough parameters of a settlement between Upland Community First and the city would look like, positioning it in a stronger position to engage in final stage negotiations with Upland Community First prior to any settlement short of the matter being hashed out in court.
Ultimately, according to information available to the Sentinel including emails and text messages, after Velto was sworn in as mayor, a settlement was placed on the table that called for Bridge Development Partners upping the $17 million in development impact fees, infrastructure impact fees and fees-in-lieu-of-property tax that Bridge Development Partners had committed to providing at the April 1, 2020 council meeting as part of the development agreement when the project was given approval to $38 million and then, subsequently, to $40 million to cover infrastructure and service demands, refurbish the city’s roads damaged by Amazon vehicles and provide payments in lieu of sales tax from Amazon’s operations over the 50-year lease life of the 201,096-square foot building. In exchange, the expectation was that the demand for the insisted-upon environmental impact report would be set aside in return for a far less rigid “environmental analysis” and an understanding that the warehouse operation would be allowed to expand, at the discretion of the occupant, presumably Amazon, to the original three-structure, 977,000 square-foot complex previewed to the city in June 2019.
Upland Community First, however, did not take the bait. Instead, it insisted on seeing the litigation through to its ultimate conclusion, and having the court ascertain whether the residents of Upland were owed a full-scale environmental impact report with regard to the project. The matter continued to drag on.
Shortly after Velto’s backchannel efforts came to light and their propriety questioned, he discontinued his role as a go-between. In the months since that time, the Upland community has made serious examination of the consideration that Bridge Development Partners was willing to more than double the $17 million it had offered the city in the development agreement approved by the council on April 1, 2020, which was taken by many as an indication that Stone, Velto, Zuniga and Felix had sold the city short in approving the project. This fueled yet another round of speculation that the project approval process had been tainted by graft, and that bribes or kickbacks had been offered, promised or provided to Stone, Velto, Zuniga, Felix and other city officials such as then-City Manager Rosemary Hoerning or Upland Director of Development Services Robert Dalquest, who had orchestrated the consideration of the project approval using the mitigated negative declaration rather than a comprehensive environmental impact report.
This prompted Bridge Development Partners Executive Vice President Brendan Kotler to publicly state, “Any suggestion that we did anything wrong is baseless.”
Thereafter, Bridge Development’s first vice president for development, Heather Crossner, stated that “assertions imbedded in …questions” relating to why, in the aftermath of the legal action by Upland Community First, Bridge Development Partners was willing to more than double the development fees, infrastructure damage/impact offset fees and fees in lieu of sales tax that were offered to the city at the time the project was approved in April 2020 “are entirely false. They have no merit or basis in fact. Bridge and the City of Upland followed the public process in accordance with all laws. At no time has Bridge, or any representative of Bridge or anyone affiliated in any way with Bridge, engaged in any of the activities referenced,” those alleged activities being Bridge Development Partners or any entity working on its behalf having made any promises to Upland’s municipal staff members, its elected officials or its appointed officials to obtain the approval given to the Upland Bridge Point Project or the company or anyone acting on its behalf having arranged payments to former Mayor Debbie Stone, former Councilman Ricky Felix, former Councilman/current Mayor Bill Velto, Councilman Rudy Zuniga, Planning Commissioner Robin Aspinall, Planning Commissioner Carolyn Anderson, Planning Commissioner Gary Schwary, former Planning Commissioner Lindon Brouse, former Upland City Manager Rosemary Hoerning, Upland Community Development Director Robert Dalquest, Upland Contract Planner Mike Poland or Upland Associate Planner Joshua Winter.
Since that time the project has continued to languish in legal limbo as the case brought by Upland Community First and the City of Upland has not been resolved.
On May 5, 2021, in what many now see as a signal that Bridge Development Partners is ready to pull the plug on the Upland project, it initiated an application for and filed what it is at this point calling a draft environmental impact report for the Bridge Point Rancho Cucamonga Project.
That project is to include the redevelopment of what was formerly the Big Lots warehouse site near the extreme southeast corner of Rancho Cucamonga.
According to Bridge Development Partners’ filing, the site is to be redeveloped with “with two new contemporary warehouse buildings (Buildings 1 and 2) with a combined building area, including the mezzanine space, of approximately 2,175,000 square feet consisting of 2,134,000 square feet of warehouse uses and 41,000 square feet of ancillary office space. There would be approximately 2,136,200 square feet of ground level floor space and approximately 38,800 square feet of mezzanine.”
It appears that Bridge Development Partners may have drawn a lesson from its experience in Upland, such that instead of pressuring Rancho Cucamonga officials to allow it to undertake up front an initial study to form the basis of the environmental certification of the project, the company is instead doing a draft environmental impact report, a far more comprehensive environmental analysis than was done in Upland. It is not fully clear whether Bridge Development Partners has acceded to undertaking the draft environmental impact report because of its unfortunate experience in Upland, because the construction on the structure to take place in Rancho Cucamonga is on a scale ten times that of what was proposed in Upland or because Rancho Cucamonga officials proved far more hard-nosed with regard to the environmental certification of the project than did those in Upland.
The Sentinel’s effort to reach Sean McPherson, the senior planner with the City of Rancho Cucamonga who is overseeing the city’s processing of the Bridge Point Rancho Cucamonga development proposal, by press time was unsuccessful.
For the purposes of the analysis conducted in the draft environmental impact report, it is assumed that up to 90 percent of the building square footage is to consist of a so-called high-cube warehouse, and 10 percent will consist of a high-cube cold storage warehouse.
Building 1 is described as consisting of approximately 1,422,500 square feet of floor area, which is to involve roughly 25,000 square feet of ancillary office space and 1,397,500 square feet of warehouse space. Building 1 is tentatively designed as a cross-dock building, meaning that loading docks are located on opposite sides of the building, both east and west.
Building 2, according to documents obtained by the Sentinel, is to feature approximately 752,500 sf of floor area, of which some 16,000 square feet is to be ancillary office space with 736,500 square feet of warehouse space. The building would also include 16,000 square feet of offices within either the ground level or mezzanine. Building 2’s cross-dock configuration will provide for loading docks on the north and south sides of the building.
In terms of offsite infrastructure, the project will involve the construction of a new public roadway, at present referred to as “Street A,” which would extend north-south along the eastern boundary of the project site between 4th Street and 6th Street.
The project site extends over 91.4 acres located at 12434 4th Street in the City of Rancho Cucamonga, bounded by 4th Street to the south, which is also the jurisdictional boundary between the City of Rancho Cucamonga and the City of Ontario, and 6th Street to the north, and generally located between Etiwanda Avenue to the east and Santa Anita Avenue to the west.
Some but not all of the on-site improvements associated with the project will involve surface parking areas for automobiles and truck trailers ancillary to the operation of the two buildings, vehicle drive aisles, landscaping, storm water quality/storage, utility infrastructure, and exterior lighting. The project site is within a transit priority area and would include improvements to 4th Street and 6th Street along the project site’s frontage to facilitate the use of transit and non-vehicular circulation.
Thus, Bridge Development Partners will remove and replace the existing sidewalk and install Class II bikeways adjacent to the project site. The City of Rancho Cucamonga intends to construct an at-grade crossing of the railroad spur to complete 6th Street between Santa Anita Avenue and Etiwanda Avenue. As a preliminary condition of approval, the city has indicated that the crossing is required to be implemented as part of the project; therefore, it is also addressed as a project component in the draft environmental impact report.
It is expected that construction of the project would be initiated in 2021 and be complete by 2022. The general plan land use designations and zoning for the project site are heavy industrial on the northern portion of the site and general industrial on the southern portion of the site.
For the project to be approved, the city council, acting as Rancho Cucamonga’s highest land use authority, will need to adopt general plan and zoning map amendments to change the land use designation and zoning designation for the northern portion of the project site from heavy industrial to general industrial; approve a tentative parcel map to subdivide the project site, which is currently a single legal parcel, into two parcels to accommodate the two proposed buildings; approve a site plan and architectural review for the site, architectural plans, and landscape plans; grant Bridge Development Partners a tree removal permit for the removal of heritage trees on-site; and certify the final environmental impact report for the site, which is to be based upon the draft environmental impact report and public comment on that draft document.
Bridge Development Partners’ pursuit of the Bridge Point Development Rancho Cucamonga project implies but does not conclusively establish that the Amazon warehouse project in Upland is being abandoned. A phone message left with Brian Wilson, the West Coast partner with Bridge Development Partners at his Los Angeles office inquiring if success in bringing the Bridge Point Development Rancho Cucamonga project to fruition will preempt the Upland Bridge Point Project did not garner a response by press time. bng

In what otherwise might have been a relatively routine traffic incident, 17-year law enforcement veteran Dominic Vaca, a sergeant with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, was gunned down on Memorial Day.
On Monday, May 31, 2021, at 12:33 p.m., sheriff’s personnel assigned to the Morongo Basin Station were conducting extra patrol enforcement for off-highway vehicles. Deputies observed a male subject, subsequently identified as Bilal Winston Shabazz, of Lancaster in Los Angeles County, near Paxton Road and Imperial Drive in Yucca Valley riding on a street-legal motorcycle with no license plates. When the deputies sought to stop Shabazz, the motorcyclist failed to yield, and a pursuit ensued. During the pursuit, Shabazz abandoned the motorcycle and fled on foot through several nearby residential properties. Deputies pursued Shabazz on foot. When Sergeant Vaca attempted to detain Shabazz, Shabazz shot at Vaca, who was struck by the gunfire.
After he shot Sergeant Vaca, Shabazz continued to flee and engaged in a running shootout with other responding deputies. Shabazz was struck when those deputies returned fire.
Sheriff’s personnel at the scene in Yucca Valley conducted life-saving efforts until the arrival of a helicopter, upon which Vaca was airlifted to Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs. Despite the ministrations of medical personnel there, Vaca succumbed to his injuries.
Shabazz was pronounced dead at the Yucca Valley location where he was felled by responding gunfire. A loaded handgun was located next to Shabazz. Two additional magazines containing ammunition were found on his person, according to the sheriff’s department.
Detectives from the sheriff’s department’s Specialized Investigations Division, which includes the department’s homicide detail, responded to conduct the investigation into the incident. They ascertained that Shabazz had a no-bail warrant out of Los Angeles County.
Vaca leaves behind a wife, an eleven-year-old daughter and a four-month-old daughter.
“Our prayers are with him and his family as we all mourn in this difficult time,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon.
Governor Gavin Newsom said he was “deeply saddened to learn of the tragic loss of Sergeant Vaca in the line of duty. Our thoughts are with his family and friends, and with his colleagues at the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department who risk their lives daily to serve the community.”
Vaca, 43, who was most recently working out of the Morongo Basin Sheriff’s Station, was remembered by his colleagues as “dedicated” and “a very real person,” one who “cared deeply for the community and the citizens he served.” “Dom went the extra mile,” one said. “I’m too torn up about this to talk about it.”
In honor of Sergeant Vaca, Capitol flags were being be flown at half-staff this week. In San Bernardino County, flags will remain at half-staff until sunset on the day of Vaca’s interment, the date for which had not been set at press time.
A memorial fund has been established to assist Vaca’s wife and children: porac.org/fundraiser/sgt-dominic-vaca-memorial-fund/

As was anticipated, the San Bernardino City Council Wednesday night, June 2, fell one vote short of imposing an initial 45-day moratorium on the permitting of new warehouse construction in the county seat.
Since 2015, 26 warehouse projects have been processed and approved by the City of San Bernardino, entailing acreage under roof of 9,598,255 square feet, or more than one-third of a square mile, translating into 220.34 acres.
For more than a decade, there has been considerable warehouse development throughout San Bernardino County, particularly in San Bernardino and Fontana. Southern California, which involves large port facilities in San Pedro and Long Beach, lands massive amounts of merchandise from manufacturers in Asia brought across the Pacific Ocean by ship. That cargo is offloaded onto trains and trucks and distributed throughout much of the country. In this way the Inland Empire has become a major logistics center.
Nevertheless, with more and more land locally being consumed by warehouses and distribution centers, some have begun to second guess the wisdom of allotting so much property, which could be used for other purposes, for the building of warehouses.
San Bernardino Fifth Ward Councilman Benjamin Reynoso has long questioned whether warehouses constitute the highest and best use of the property available for development in the city. He cites the relatively poor pay and benefits provided to those who work in them, the large diesel-powered semi-trucks that frequent them with their unhealthy exhaust emissions, together with the bane of traffic gridlock they create in refuting the assertions of their sponsors and proponents that warehouses constitute positive economic development.
Last month, Reynoso floated the concept of putting a 45-day moratorium on warehouse approval in place, which could be extended for as long as two years, while San Bernardino revamps its general plan, determining how much more warehousing, if any, the city wants to accommodate.
To impose a moratorium on any specific type of building, however, California law requires that such a ban be passed by a four-fifths vote of a governmental entity’s legislative body. In San Bernardino, where the mayor is not empowered to vote, that means that six of the seven members of the council had to sign off on the moratorium. Third Ward Councilman Juan Figueroa, a firm and fast political ally of Mayor John Valdivia, was unwilling to support a moratorium because Valdivia is heavily supported by warehouse developers, who have made major donations to Valdivia’s political war chest. Likewise, Fourth Ward Councilman Fred Shorett, who has built his political career by professing to be pro-development and has been the recipient of money from the development community, was unwilling to support a moratorium.
Thus, though Reynoso had solid majority support of First Ward Councilman Ted Sanchez, Second Ward Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, Sixth Ward Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin and Seventh Ward Councilman Damon Alexander, he did not have the requisite political muscle to achieve the six council votes to impose the warehouse moratorium.

The late pornographer Larry Flynt once said, “If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, it will protect all of you.”
A Los Angeles-based graphics printing and textile company, Brown & Associates, which markets flags, banners T-shirts and the like is testing that philosophy. In doing so, the company is standing some of the archetypal political axioms and precepts that have applied generally in America over the last century on their heads, reversing long-held notions of conservatism, liberalism and decorum when it comes to free speech.
Brown & Associates sells its wares not out of traditional brick and mortar clothing stores, operating rather as a street vendor, using tables and pop-up canopies at various spots, including sidewalks, parkways, parking lots of existing shopping centers and malls. It is of note that a major line of its wares are clothes emblazoned with political messages, and those messages are not bipartisan. Indeed, they are highly partisan, featuring specifically partisanship of a rather narrow focus, modern Republicanism, or more accurately Trumpism, the ideology that celebrates the approach and philosophy of the immediate past president, the scion of a wealthy real estate developer who became a developer himself and then, thanks to NBC, a reality television star who parlayed his status and high profile into becoming U.S. president, despite being somewhat intellectually challenged as well as insensitive to a considerable degree of cultural, historical and social nuance. Donald Trump’s was a comparatively brief and entirely remarkable political career, given that he had never before held elected office. Nevertheless, during the less than two years he campaigned in earnest to become president and the four years he spent in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, President Trump set himself up, in certain measure improbably, as the standard bearer of the Republican Party, despite having some strong personal differences with many establishment members of the GOP. He remains as the polar opposite of the Democrats, having lost a bitter contest last November 3 against Democrat Joseph Biden, the current president.
Donald Trump still retains a following, and it is this constituency which Brown & Associates is appealing to in trying to make its fortune. The shirts and other items such as hats designed by Brown & Associates principal David Brown are devoted in large measure to demonizing President Biden and lionizing Donald Trump. In some cases, the polemic Brown & Associates engages in is clever or witty. In some cases it is provocative or maybe even offensive. Indeed, though it falls short of the depths plumbed by Larry Flynt in his heyday, it can be downright vulgar and profane.
That Brown & Associates has chosen Chino Hills as one of the locations where it is seeking customers is no accident. California as a whole has grown overwhelmingly Democratic. The Golden State’s governor, attorney general, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, insurance commissioner, superintendent of public schools, both of its U.S. Senators and 42 of its 57 members of Congress are Democrats. Both of the state’s legislative houses, the Assembly and the California Senate, are populated by Democratic supermajorities. Chino Hills is among the last of the Republican bastions in California. While among the city’s 46,910 total voters the 15,888 registered as Republicans, at 33.9 percent, are outnumbered by the city’s 16,821 registered Democrats, at 35.9 percent, statistics show that the city’s Republicans turn out to vote at a rate nearly twice that of the city’s Democrats. This translates to Chino Hills having city council members, as well as county, state and federal representatives who are Republicans rather than Democrats. The Republicans in Chino Hills take their politics far more seriously than do the Democrats, or most of the Democrats, in Chino Hills.
Thus, Brown & Associates has hit pay dirt in San Bernardino County’s southwesternmost city. The company’s employees include a megaphone-bearing man who shouts anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-Biden, and anti-Vice President Kamala Harris slogans, ones often tinged with vulgarisms, which in some measure match the messages on the apparel and banners David Brown’s makeshift sidewalk markets sell. Occasionally, the hawker’s electrically-enhanced pronouncements are tempered with pro-Donald Trump rallying cries, none of which use foul language.
There is some irony to all of this. In years past, it was the so-called liberals who were on the cutting edge of testing the free speech envelope. The Free Speech Movement in the 1960s was headed by Mario Savio, a one-time Democrat who left the Democratic Party because he did not think it progressive enough. When the Republicans cracked down on Savio and those advocating expanding the boundaries of free speech in the 1960s, it was the Democrats who were in favor of suspending and then ultimately dismantling the laws against obscenity, a move intended to allow open public discussion of unpopular ideas and concepts. California’s Democratic politicians rallied to Savio’s defense, arguing that he should be free to speak his mind in whatever way he wanted, be that offensive or vulgar or profane or not. The Democrats were the ones who explored and exploited the possibilities of portraying their Republican rivals as staid and unimaginative defenders of the old order, oftentimes doing so by using verbiage to shock the common consciousness into accepting a more open and liberated embrasure of the sensuousness of humane life. With relatively rare exceptions, such as Tipper Gore, the ex-wife of former Vice President Al Gore, it was the Republicans who bemoaned the erosion of civility and decried the incendiary use of language and the lobbing of verbal Molotov cocktails.
For that reason, it is remarkable that the primary advocate of public decency who is railing against Brown & Associates is Chino Hills’ leading Democrat, Jim Gallagher, who represents Chino Hills on the San Bernardino Democratic Central Committee and is at present that organization’s second vice chair. Gallagher wears his Democratic Party affiliation on his sleeve, having run for the Chino Hills City Council, a nonpartisan office, in 2016 and 2020, campaigning proudly both times as a Democrat, in each instance failing in no small measure because the Republican majority of voters in the city shunned him.
During the 2020 election season, politics sunk to a relatively deplorable level on all sides of the political divide. Now, however, the election is over, with the Democrats having prevailed in the presidential race, and as the victors they are now looking to move on so their party’s leaders can govern. Some Trumpists are not prepared to let them do that, and Brown & Associates is now exploiting that sentiment where it exists and lies within its reach, and is making money doing so. That money-making formula involves continuing to apply the low standards of the last presidential campaign.
Democrats, who in years past characterized the Republicans as prissy and close-minded for objecting to the vulgarization of public discourse when Democrats used indecency and profanity in assailing the likes of Republican icons such as Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Trump, are now taken aback when their ox, in this case, Joseph Biden, is getting gored.
According to Gallagher, Brown & Associates’ use of foul language in making a political point or trying to make a buck, when done in public in front of women and children and families is not only in poor taste, it should be illegal. He and others who are equally offended have pushed officials at Chino Hills City Hall, where City Manager Ben Montgomery rules the roost, to prepare a city ordinance that would criminalize outdoor displays and commercial enterprises such as those on sidewalks and parking lots which make display of merchandise or materials that are obscene. This would apply to all such activity that is displayed, including banners, flags, signs, pushcarts, tables, stalls, rollups or popups.
Formerly, in California, it was a misdemeanor to utter obscenities, display obscene images, engage in profane or obscene language or use any phraseology in a public setting that could provoke violence. Those laws have been challenged on constitutional grounds and rendered, essentially, moot, inapplicable and unenforceable. There is concern that the ordinance the City of Chino Hills is currently formulating will clash with court rulings preventing the criminalization of the use of profanity and run afoul of a 2019 law that legalized virtually all forms of public vending. The 2019 law does give local governmental authorities a certain leeway in regulating sidewalk vending, such as requiring such entrepreneurs to first obtain a permit, consistent with certain restrictions.
Brown & Associates has obtained such a permit.

San Bernardino Valley College President Diana Z. Rodriguez has been appointed to the position of San Bernardino Community College District chancellor.
The college district’s board of trustees chose Rodriguez, a former instructor who was vice president of student services and interim vice president of academic services at Las Positas College and vice president of student services at Palo Verde College before becoming president at San Bernardino Valley College (SBVC), as the 15th chancellor at SBVC. She is to replace SBVC Interim Chancellor Jose F. Torres, will return to his position as the executive vice chancellor for the district.
Founded in 1926, the San Bernardino Community College District administers Crafton Hills College, San Bernardino Valley College, a workforce training facility and Empire KVCR 91.9 FM and TV Channel 24, and serves more than 20,000 students from the communities of Big Bear and Big Bear Lake, Bloomington, Calimesa, Colton, Grand Terrace, Highland, Lake Arrowhead, Loma Linda, Redlands, Rialto, San Bernardino, and Yucaipa.
The district has an annual budget of $200 million and just under 1,000 faculty and staff members.

In a use of its municipal authority that has gone unheralded and unknown to the public except for those residents who have been stung by it, the City of Redlands has created what is called a water conservation code enforcement department that is hunting down water use scofflaws at all hours of the day and night.
The intention behind the new authority, city officials maintain, is to prevent the profligate use or squandering of water, an ever more precious commodity in the wake of global warming and recurrent California droughts.
Nevertheless, some residents say the city is overstepping its authority, and that City Hall has been misapplying a three decade-old ordinance or enforcing one that does not exist.
Moreover, questions have emerged as to where the city is getting the funding to pay overtime to code enforcement employees working after hours, particularly given that in order to make ends meet last year, the city engaged in a massive round of layoffs. Indeed, some residents have expressed the suspicion that the city has created the secret division as part of an effort to simply generate revenue.
Even more suspicious are anecdotal accounts holding that the lion’s share of those being rung up by the new division are older residents – meaning those primarily over the age of 70 – many of whom are living on fixed incomes and who do not have the means or the wherewithal to resist the financial penalties being imposed on them, whether the city’s action is legitimate or not.
It is relatively well established that the basis of the city’s action stems from the California drought that persisted from December 2011 to March 2017. What is less clear is what legislative or administrative basis there is for the city’s action.
Some, perhaps even many, Redlands residents are aware that those with odd numbered addresses are limited to watering their lawns on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays, while those with even-numbered addresses are free to water their lawns on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Lawn watering is prohibited on Wednesdays. Among those in the know, it was recognized that during normal business hours Monday through Thursday some weeks and Monday through Friday alternating weeks, the city’s code enforcement division is on the lookout for those who violate that policy. Those found to be in violation of the regulation are given a warning on the first offense. Thereafter, a second violation will trigger a 25 percent surcharge on the offender’s entire water bill the next billing cycle. A third violation entails a 50 percent surcharge for unauthorized watering on homeowner’s water bill in the next billing cycle. A fourth violation brings a 75 percent surcharge on the next bill.
City officials are quick to point out that the surcharges are not fines, but simply fees to encourage compliance.
A difficulty is that in pursuing this water conservation program, the presumption of the city official monitoring resident water use is final, and there is no realistic appeals process.
The Sentinel is aware of at least one circumstance where the city, utilizing what it said was photographic evidence showing a resident watering on the wrong day, levied the surcharge. That photograph, however, was taken and cropped in such a way to alter the evidence, such that what could not be ascertained from the photo was that the resident was not watering a lawn but rather soaking the roots of a tree. There is an exception cut out in the city’s regulations for tree root irrigation.
More troubling still is that over the last several months, in both the winter and spring months of 2021, the city has been enforcing the day-of-the-week watering limitation, subjecting households city officials adjudged to have run afoul of the regulation to the subsequent surcharges. There is no authorization in the city’s code or ordinances going back nearly three decades for that action, however. The basis for those surcharges is predicated upon a 1991 Redlands ordinance that was passed in the aftermath of an earlier drought. That ordinance, in fact, makes clear that the weekday watering limitation applies only in the months of June through October. Thus, the city was misapplying its regulations, charging some residents a surcharge in recent months where there was no legal grounds for doing so.
This week, it was brought to the Sentinel’s attention that city employees are now working overtime, beginning at least as early as 7 p.m. and continuing to as late as 5 a.m., carrying out an assignment of driving about the city, looking to catch homeowners watering their laws on the wrong day or on Wednesday.
The Sentinel was unable to find any explicit authorization for those patrols nor any appropriation for the overtime pay this would entail, in any action by the city council going back to October.
In May of 2020, based upon the city finance department’s tallying of an $8 million shortfall in the 2019-20 fiscal year spending cycle ending June 30, 2020 and a prognostication that the city was to see a $15.7 million downturn in revenue in 2020-21, City Manager Charles Duggan was given authorization to lay off 52 city employees, 21 of those full-time and 31 part-time.
Residents are now questioning how the city now has the resources to pay overtime to those monitoring residential water use.
City officials were not available for comment.
-Mark Gutglueck

Weiming Chen, a sculptor who fled Communist China three decades ago to avoid political persecution, early this evening unveiled at Yermo’s Liberty Sculpture Park what may qualify as his two most provocative pieces: Victims of Communism,” and “CCP Virus.”
Closely visible from the northeast-bound lane of Interstate I-15, Liberty Sculpture Park is host to a number of statutes and displays, most by Chen. The overriding theme of the venue is freedom, freedom of the sort that Chen maintains is available in the United States and which is suppressed by the regime in his native country.
In 2017, Chen, who characterizes himself as equal parts sculptor and freedom activist, began erecting his statues in the Mojave Desert to celebrate the human spirit in its longing for freedom in the face of the oppression of tyranny, which in the modern world, according to Chen, is represented by communism.
Among the existing pieces at the park are a bust of Chief Crazy Horse, the inside of the headdress for which bears the phrase, “Give me liberty or give me death”; a statue of Chinese activist Li Wangyang; “Tank Man,” which shows the still-unidentified man with two shopping bags who stood down a tank on June 5, 1989 during protests that took place in Tiniananmen Square that year; the number “64,” which commemorates the Tiniananmen Square protests, which, according to unverified reports contradicted by the Chinese Communist Government, ended in the massacre of somewhere between 200 and 2,000 protesters; and the work “Liberate Hong Kong.”
As an observance of the 32nd year since the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Chen, who was born in Hangzhou, China in 1970 and now resides in both New Zealand and the United States, unveiled CCP Virus [i.e., Chinese Communist Party Virus] which shows a coronavirus cell melded into the head of a man’s head/skeleton. The intended statement is that the virus was created by a military/governmental lab in Wuhan, China. Such suggestions, even in the United States, were formerly dismissed as anti-Chinese propaganda, but the scientific community more recently has credited that account as being accurate.
Chen’s other sculpture unveiled today is titled “Victims of Communism.”
-Mark Gutglueck