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Sentinel 07-09-21

Sentinel July 9 2021

By Mark Gutglueck
The recent departure of Rosemary Hoerning as Upland city manager cost the city’s taxpayers $235,903, the amount of money that was conferred upon her as a severance package. Nevertheless, for some, there is hope that the city’s residents could, as a consequence of her departure, receive a collective windfall of several million dollars in upcoming years, based upon the savings they stand to reap in terms of reductions in their future trash hauling rates.
Prior to her departure, sources at City Hall tell the Sentinel, Hoerning was on the verge of advising the city council it should simply accept and approve the rate increases the city’s refuse hauler is seeking to impose on the city’s residents and businesses.
The City of Upland has been tied into Burrtec Waste Industries, Inc. since 2000, when it held a competitive bid process with regard to what garbage hauler would get the city franchise to provide trash disposal service. Burrtec prevailed in that bid process, and it displaced the former trash service provider, Waste Management, Inc., the following year, 2001. That franchise contract was a relatively straightforward one which ran for a specific set of years, in this case three.
In 2004, however, with the assistance of then-Mayor John Pomierski, Burrtec managed to obtain from the city a “seven-year rolling evergreen” enhancement to the franchise contract. That provision committed the city to keeping Burrtec as its garbage pick-up provider at a minimum for seven years from that date, and it also meant that unless the city gave the company notice that it was initiating the seven-year wind-down of the contract by June 30 of any given year, the contract was automatically extended by one more year on July 1. Thus, at any given time, unless Upland city officials initiated that wind-down, Burrtec had a guarantee that it would retain the city trash hauling franchise for seven more years. The justification for conferring this advantage on the company was that it allowed Burrtec a seven-year period to amortize any debt it might have accrued as a consequence of buying equipment needed to provide Upland with assorted trash-handling services.
In the early stages of Pomierski’s tenure as mayor, Hoerning was an Upland employee. Hoerning had first become a municipal employee in 1985, when she was hired into the City of Ontario’s public works division on the basis of an internship she was doing there in her final year at Cal Poly Pomona where she was obtaining her civil engineering degree. She progressed professionally in Ontario and then went to Upland, where she worked as the second-highest ranking public works division staff member, but hit the top of her head against a glass ceiling, as Rob Turner monopolized Upland’s city engineer/public works director post throughout her first tenure there. In 2008 she left Upland for Redlands, where she first served as the municipal utilities and engineering director, eventually acceding to the position of director of public works and city engineer there.
In 2011, Turner retired, at which point Hoerning returned to Upland, moving into the public works director/city engineer assignment.
During Hoerning’s more than three-year absence from Upland, Acquanetta Warren had been moved into Hoerning’s old position of assistant public works director. Warren had been a municipal employee in Upland since 1991, a member of the Fontana City Council since 2002 and Fontana mayor since 2010. She was given the assistant public works director post less as a result of her skill level and more because of her political status and association with John Pomierski, Upland’s mayor from 2000 until 2011. Pomierski was indicted on political corruption charges in 2011, pleaded guilty in 2012, and was thereafter sentenced to two years in federal prison.
Hoerning had extensive training, licensing and experience in engineering, in particular civil engineering, whereas Warren was not an engineer and had virtually no technical expertise in civil engineering or engineering of any kind. As a consequence, Hoerning upon returning to Upland in 2011 as the department director delegated to Warren those matters that fell under the department of public works’ purview that required little or no engineering know-how or understanding, those being, essentially, maintenance of the city’s trees and parks as well as overseeing the provision of the city’s trash service. This freed Hoerning to devote herself in large measure to the more intensive aspects of being public works director, such as engineering, road construction and maintenance, and the city’s water division. This left Warren in a position of authority over municipal functions, subject to little or no professional supervision.
In Fontana, as in Upland, Burrtec is the franchised trash hauler. As such, Burrtec had a two-fold interest in ingratiating itself with Warren. One of Warren’s primary political backers has been Burrtec, which over the course of her political career has supplied her with more than $20,000 in donations to her various electioneering funds, provided variously from the company, its owners and employees.
Under the California Government Code, elected government officials are at liberty to take money from a donor and participate as an elected official in a decision – a vote – relating to that donor. Under the California Government Code, appointed or hired government officials are not permitted to take money from a donor and participate in the decision-making process involving that donor. Thus, in her capacity as a member of the city council or as mayor in Fontana, Warren could vote, as she did, to perpetuate Burrtec’s franchise arrangement or approve its rate increases on Fontana residences and businesses, even though she was a recipient of substantial political contributions from Burrtec. As an appointed/hired official in Upland, however, Warren was not legally allowed to participate in the decision-making process relating to Burrtec in Upland, based upon the donations she had received from Burrtec.
Nevertheless, as Upland assistant public works director, Warren was called upon repeatedly to deal with trash-related issues. She neither declared that she had a conflict of interest, legal or otherwise, in handling matters related to Burrtec in Upland, nor did she recuse herself from doing so. Hoerning and other administrative, managerial and elected officials in Upland were either unaware of the money Warren had taken from Burrtec or did not recognize that it was a violation of the law for her to have taken that money from Burrtec and to involve herself in any matters relating to Burrtec in Upland. They made no effort to prevent her from engaging in that conflict of interest, which is prohibited under Government Code Section 84308.
In 2013, Upland City Hall was staggering under severe economic challenges as its expenses in meeting payroll demands and providing municipal services were outrunning revenue to the city. The city council appointed a blue-ribbon committee to look at the city’s options to rejuvenate itself economically. That committee came up with a host of recommendations, among which were that where possible the city should seek to rebid its various contracts to see where cost savings could be had.
Simultaneously, public discussion in Upland turned to, among other things, the consideration that the city at that point had gone 13 years without conducting an open bid on its trash franchise arrangement. Over the succeeding months, discontent within a segment of the community grew, arising out of the perception that the lack of a competitive bidding process was allowing Burrtec to impose higher rates on Upland’s customers than would be the case if the city had the option of providing the franchise to any of a host of other companies that would be willing to underbid Burrtec. That resident discomfiture was exacerbated by the revelation that came about, because of the public discussion, of the 7-year evergreen clause in the contract. By the spring of 2014, a sizable contingent of residents led by then-Councilman Glenn Bozar, were demanding that the city initiate the 7-year wind-down of the franchise with Burrtec and undertake at the earliest opportunity an open bidding process.
Warren inserted herself into the matter. Together with Burrtec Vice President Mike Arreguin, she structured an arrangement whereby the city avoided the possible termination of its relationship with Burrtec. That arrangement called for foregoing the open franchise bidding process, and suspending for five years the city’s right to initiate the wind-down, such that it would need to wait at least until 2019 to give Burrtec notice of wishing to start the seven-year process of ending the franchise contract. In exchange, Burrtec offered the city free street sweeping service, free disposal of medical sharps, i.e., syringes, and an annual $200,000 contribution toward refurbishing the city’s alleyways. The medical sharps disposal, street sweeping service and alley repair programs would remain in place, Burrtec said, until such time as Upland officials declared they were going to trigger the seven-year wind-down.
Noting that acceptance of the deal would mean Burrtec was to retain the city’s trash hauling franchise at least until June 2026 and there would be no bidding on the trash franchise in Upland for a quarter of a century, Bozar and the other competitive bid advocates refused to relent, calling for the city to signal it wanted the wind-down to begin so a competitive bid process could be initiated.
At that point, Arreguin, guided in some measure by Warren, assured the city council that in exchange for not initiating the wind-down of the franchise contract the city had with Burrtec and not moving toward a rebidding of the franchise contract, his company would give the City of Upland an absolute “guarantee” that the trash hauling rates adjusted for Upland that year, 2014, would be “locked-in” for seven years, until July 1, 2021. This guarantee, Arreguin said, was irrevocable, and it constituted, he maintained, a gamble on the part of his company that in the following seven years there would be no developments that would cause his company’s operating costs to escalate, such as rising landfill use rates, state or federal mandates or law changes pertaining to refuse hauling that would increase his company’s expenses, or changes in the recycling industry that would either increase the cost of dealing with recyclables or lower the price his company could get for selling the recyclable material it was collecting. If his company lost that bet, Arreguin said, the City of Upland and its residents and businesses would prove the winners because their trash rates would remain the same.
The city council as it was then composed, voted 4-to-1, with Mayor Ray Musser, Councilmen Brendan Brandt and Gino Filippi and Councilwoman Debbie Stone prevailing and Councilman Bozar dissenting, to forego the competitive bid process, grant the continuation of Burrtec’s franchise at least through June 2026, and accept the street sweeping, medical sharps disposal and alley maintenance offers, along with Burrtec’s assurance of having the 2014 rates locked in until 2021.
In 2016, Acquanetta Warren left Upland somewhat abruptly, in a move that was not fully explained beyond a statement that she was voluntarily retiring. When she did so, she wiped the memory banks of her city-issued computer at her workstation within the City of Upland’s public works division clean, such that all of the files relating to her function while she was a city employee in Upland were rendered unrecoverable.
Later in 2016, the California Legislature passed and then-Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 1383, which pertains to the handling of food waste, also referred to as organic waste. Provisions of Senate Bill 1383 complicated the function of trash haulers. Senate Bill 1383 used the amount of organics disposed of in 2014 as a baseline to set the goal of a 75 percent annual reduction statewide by 2025.
In 2018, the Upland City Council terminated then-City Manager Jeannette Vagnozzi, elevating Hoerning from the position of public works director to the even more demanding position of interim city manager.
Also beginning in 2018, the People’s Republic Of China, which was by far the largest purchaser/recipient of recyclable materials originating in the United States, banned many scrap materials and reduced its acceptance of virtually all others unless they met a strict contamination rate of no more than 0.5 percent. Contamination rates of U.S. recyclables before sorting vary from place to place, and can range higher than 25 percent.
In 2019, Burrtec found itself financially squeezed on one side with the rising costs of preparing to meet California’s Senate Bill 1383 mandates, which meant it would have to bear increasing organic substance-handling charges including purchasing food waste tubs, and on the other side with seeing the revenue it could achieve by selling recyclable materials diminished or eliminated entirely. The company appealed to those municipal jurisdictions, including Upland, where it had trash hauling franchises to allow it to increase the rates on its domestic and business customers. In making its approach to Upland on that score, the company made no mention of its 2014 commitment to lock in its trash-hauling rates in the City of Gracious Living in exchange for the city not rebidding the trash hauling franchise contract. At that point, four of the five members of the city council in 2014 were no longer in office. Only then-Mayor Debbie Stone, who had been heavily supported by Burrtec in terms of donations to her political war chest, remained on the council. When the request by Burrtec for the increase in customer rates was made in 2019, Stone made no effort to inform her colleagues on the council at that point, none of whom had been party to the 2014 vote to extend the Burrtec franchise contract until 2021, that the company had committed to keeping the 2014 rates in place until 2021.
As public works director, Hoerning headed a division that had overarching authority pertaining to refuse handling in the city. Nevertheless, from the time she had returned to Upland in 2011, she had given the trash issue little scrutiny, having delegated that matter to Warren and others in the department while she was engrossed with other public works, capital improvement and infrastructure matters. Upon becoming city manager, she had even less time to devote to how the city was to ensure garbage generated by the city’s residents and commercial enterprises was handled. She did not involve herself in making an evaluation of Burrtec’s request in 2019 to increase its rates, did not examine the record with regard to Burrtec’s 2014 commitment and had a city consultant, R3, which had no knowledge of the 2014 commitment to lock in rates until 2021, evaluate the Burrtec request. R3, making a finding that Burrtec, like virtually every other trash hauler in the state, was being beset with the vicissitudes of the trash hauling industry, said the rate increases Burrtec was requesting were called for and justified, and recommended that the city grant them. With only Councilman Rudy Zuniga dissenting, the city council in January 2019 gave Burrtec the rate increases as requested.
Earlier this year, Burrtec gave indication it was going to once again seek to up its service rates. Hoerning signaled she was amenable to the increases.
On March 31, 2021, however, Hoerning came to what was essentially the end of the line with Upland, when at a specially called meeting the city council voted unanimously to place her on paid administrative leave. Ultimately, four weeks later, she and the city came to terms on a separation agreement, by which she was provided with a $235,903 severance stipend, plus a cash equivalency of her sick leave and vacation time accumulated to that point.
On April 26, 2021 the city council considered setting a hearing date for a further adjustment to be made to service rates charged by Burrtec to Upland’s residential and commercial customers. Without Hoerning to usher Burrtec’s proposal to have rates upped by the amount the company deems appropriate, discussion turned to an analysis of tipping rates, that is the amount charged for dumping trash at landfills, the consumer price index in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, a comparison of the service fees charged by trash hauling franchisees in surrounding cities and a need for an analysis of the proposed rates before they are approved. On a motion by Councilwoman Shannan Maust, seconded by Councilman Zuniga, the item was tabled, that is deferred, until what was then an indefinite future date.
That delay was not one welcomed by Burrtec. Rather than watching helplessly as the city council is stampeded into accepting the rate increases as proposed, city residents now have the opportunity to explore all of the disposal options open to the city and its residents rather than that one which is in Burrtec’s interest. Furthermore, certain residents intend to make the city council aware of a number of peculiarities with respect to the way Burrtec is operating. Those, when taken together with other considerations, demonstrate that Burrtec, by utilizing landfills outside of San Bernardino County which are on the order of two times the distance of the landfill most logically and immediately available to Upland, is not only artificially increasing the cost the city ultimately pays to bury its trash but is making it so that Upland’s ratepayers are missing out on a subsidization San Bernardino County offers for using local landfills.
The city’s current solid waste rate structure is based on a four-component system, consisting of a service fee, disposal fee also know as a tipping fee, a processing fee for recyclables and organics and the city’s service program fee, by which the city gets a piece of the action of the trash collection revenue. Of note is that in the initial stages of the City of Upland’s relationship with Burrtec, particularly in the first three years after the city entered into its franchise deal with the company in 2000 and the company began operating in the city in 2001, as part of the effort to secure and maintain the trash hauling franchise, Burrtec assented to the inclusion of language in the contract that gave the city and its residents an assurance that steps would be taken to secure trash disposal rates – that is the tipping fees that Burrtec would pay to dispose of trash at landfills which ultimately would be passed back to the city’s residents and businesses – that were the lowest available.
At that time, Burrtec held the contract with San Bernardino County to operate and manage all of the county’s landfills. Thus, Burrtec then had an incentive to steer trash originating in any of the cities where it also had trash hauling contracts, such as Upland, to a San Bernardino County landfill.
In April 2013, however, Burrtec lost out in a competitive bid process to Athens Services, doing business as Arakelian Enterprises, Inc., to manage the county’s landfill system. Thereafter, it was no longer in Burrtec’s financial interest to continue to dispose of trash in San Bernardino County landfills. Instead, Burrtec saw a revenue enhancement by increasing the amount of rubbish disposed at the Salton City Landfill it operates in Imperial County.
Unknown to Upland officials, in 2014, the year after Burrtec lost the contract to operate San Bernardino County’s landfills, the company, with the connivance of Warren, outmaneuvered Upland officials, including Hoerning, by altering its contract with the city.
Even as some Uplanders and then-City Councilman Bozar were considering ending the franchise contract with Burrtec or otherwise rebidding the franchise contract to see if lower service costs could be had for Upland’s residents and businesses, Burrtec convinced then-Mayor Ray Musser and Bozar’s three other council colleagues that the city would benefit by continuing the ongoing franchise arrangement and locking in the 2014 rates for seven years thereafter.
At that point, Warren slipped into the franchise contract revamped language that favored Burrtec and put Upland at a disadvantage. Hoerning, who had deferred the decision-making process on trash issues to Warren, was not paying attention, and did not seem particularly concerned about giving Warren autonomy in dealing with Burrtec, despite the copious amounts of money Burrtec was donating to Warren’s campaign account.
The original contract that Burrtec had with Upland was worded in this way: “Collector shall pay for solid waste disposal by collector at a city-reviewed facility unless otherwise mutually agreed by collector and [the] city. Collector shall transport and deliver to a processing facility or facilities all recyclables including recyclables from single-family households, and recyclable bulky waste. Collector shall select facilities which result in the least expensive processing option for the city, taking into account any applicable tipping fees, revenue sharing and transportation costs thereto, consistent with public health and safety, diversion provisions of Assembly Bill 939, and collector’s obligations hereunder.”
This was changed to: “Collector shall pay for solid waste disposal by collector unless otherwise mutually agreed by collector and [the] city. Collector shall transport and deliver to a processing facility or facilities all recyclables including recyclables from single-family households, and recyclable bulky waste. Collector shall make reasonable business efforts to select facilities which create the most economic value for the city, taking into account any applicable tipping fees, revenue sharing and transportation costs thereto, consistent with public health and safety, diversion provisions of Assembly Bill 939, and collector’s obligations hereunder.”
Warren managed to put that language change into the contract without anyone noticing.
Specifically, the language was amended to eliminate the requirement that the place where the refuse is to be processed must be approved by the city and the requirement that the facility or facilities selected had to provide the least expensive processing option for the city. Instead Burrtec’s financial interest was given a higher priority over minimizing costs for Upland residential and commercial customers such that Burrtec was given direction that it need only make a “reasonable effort… to select facilities which create the most economic value for the city.”
Until that time, Burrtec had been disposing of Upland’s trash at the Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill in Rialto, which entailed a 16.6 mile drive from Upland and a $29 per ton tipping fee. Beginning in 2014, as soon as the new language was in place, Burrtec began disposing of Upland’s trash at the El Sobrante Landfill in Corona, involving a 28.7-mile trip and a tipping fee of $43 to $45 per ton or to the Badlands Landfill in Moreno Valley, which required a 31.3 mile trip and a tipping fee of $43 to $45 per ton.
It is worth noting that neither Burrtec nor city staff disclosed in the documents provided to the public or the council the significant language changes to the contract which greatly limited the city’s authority to select the disposal facilities, which impacted the rates. The transportation cost increases and the rate increases from the 2014 switch from the nearer San Bernardino County landfill to the two landfills in Riverside County were folded into the 2014 rates that were “locked in,” supposedly until 2021.
In 2015, the City of San Bernardino resolved to privatize its municipal sanitation division, and ultimately selected Burrtec to serve as its franchised trash hauler. Burrtec assumed that role in 2016.
In addition to holding the San Bernardino and Upland franchises, Burrtec serves 14 other of the county’s 24 incorporated municipalities – Adelanto, Apple Valley, Barstow, Fontana, Grand Terrace, Highland, Montclair, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Rialto, Twentynine Palms, Victorville, Yucca Valley and Yucaipa – as well as dozens of its unincorporated communities, including Amboy, Angeles Oaks, Baker, Barton Flats, Bloomington, Cima, Crestline, Daggett, Del Rosa, Devore, Dumont Dunes, East Highlands, El Rancho Verde, Forest Falls, Fort Irwin, Halloran, Helendale, Hinkley, Kelso, Lake Arrowhead, Landers, Lenwood, Lucerne Valley, Ludlow, Mentone, Mountain Pass, Mt. Baldy, Newberry Springs, Nipton, Oak Glen, Running Springs, San Antonio Heights, Silver Lakes and Yermo. This makes Burrtec San Bernardino County’s largest trash hauler.
In the aftermath of Burrtec’s loss of the county contract to run San Bernardino County’s landfills, Burrtec’s corporate officers, out of resentment toward county officials and pique at the victor in the competitive bid process, Athens Services, diverted as much of the trash it collected in San Bernardino County out of San Bernardino County’s landfills as possible, taking the revenue that would have fallen to the county in tipping fees with it.
In 2016, Burrtec found itself obliged, because of a concerted effort by a group of San Bernardino County cities and communities, which did not include Upland, and the San Bernardino County government structure itself, to utilize San Bernardino County landfills. Late that year, Burrtec entered into a contractual agreement to dispose of 370,000 tons of the trash it collected in San Bernardino County to landfills in San Bernardino County. Another contractual agreement required that 180,000 of those 370,000 tons originate in the City of San Bernardino. Burrtec was thus under a mandate to dispose another 190,000 tons of trash it collected in San Bernardino County into San Bernardino County landfills.
In 2019 Burrtec was requesting that Upland – along with the other cities and communities it serviced in San Bernardino County and elsewhere – allow it to up its rates to offset its increasing costs in meeting the State of California’s mandates imposed on it by Senate Bill 1383 and to offset its declining revenue from the People’s Republic of China’s discontinuing purchase of the company’s recyclable materials. At the time that the Upland City Council went along with that request despite Burrtec’s 2014 commitment to maintain its service rates in Upland at 2014 levels until July 2021, Burrtec could have offered to dispose of the 46,851.32 tons of trash originating in Upland annually in San Bernardino County’s Mid-Valley Landfill, where the tipping fee for doing so was $31 per ton rather than the $49-to-$51 per ton it was paying to dispose of Upland’s refuse in Riverside County, thereby abiding by its commitment to keep Upland’s 2014 rates locked in. Banking on the Upland City Council’s lack of institutional memory about the 2014 commitment and/or the council’s lack of will to hold Burrtec to that commitment, Burrtec did not do so.
This year, while Hoerning was yet in the city manager’s saddle, Burrtec requested that the city grant it a 3.07 percent consumer price index increase to be applied to the service component fee and the disposal component (tipping) fee for Fiscal Year 2020-21 and a consumer price index increase of 1.62 percent to be applied to the service component fee and disposal component fee for 2021-22. Hoerning was amenable to that request and was on track to direct her successor as Upland’s public works director, Braden Yu, to recommend that the city council approve those requests. Hoerning’s departure, however, has created a situation, based on multiple considerations, which will likely entail Yu backing away from making such a recommendation.
A handful of residents have vowed to call Yu to account, including demanding his firing, if he does not make a comprehensive evaluation of the 2014 commitment by Burrtec to maintain its rates without increase until July 2021, the circumstances that led to the 2019 overriding of that commitment, the sleight of hand that was used in 2014 to remove the city’s ability to approve into which landfills the city’s trash is to be disposed and the city’s unilateral surrendering of the ability thereby to ensure that the city has passed through to it the lowest possible tipping fees. Those higher rates include the City of Upland not being provided with the trash disposal subsidization San Bernardino County provides, in the form of a per ton discount, to cities within its jurisdiction which utilize its landfills.
Those residents also want Yu to look into shortcomings in Burrtec’s recycling program which are also resulting in higher rates being paid by Upland trash service customers.
If Yu defaults to the position previously assumed by Hoerning, which was to accept without question or contesting the requests by Burrtec to increase its rates, those residents are prepared to wage a bruising battle in which they intend to put on display Yu’s greater loyalty to Burrtec than to the taxpayers paying his salary.
The Sentinel is informed that Burrtec has in recent years skimped on its recycling efforts to reduce the volume of recycling material taken out of the waste streams it processes and disposes of. Some time ago, Burrtec had acceded to a billing arrangement in Upland and elsewhere intended to encourage recycling. Under this arrangement, residential customers are provided with at least one barrel intended to contain trash bound for a landfill, which is black in color; at least one barrel intended to contain recyclable material, which is blue in color; and at least one green- or olive-colored barrel intended to contain so-called green waste, primarily grass clippings, plant prunings, leaves and the like that originate as part of the vegetative landscaping at a residence. To encourage homeowners to recycle as much as possible and divert green waste from landfills, no charge other than a basic recycling fee is made for the blue or green barrels and no charge applies for extra blue or green barrels requested by a customer. Additional black barrels trigger an added charge. With the refusal of the People’s Republic of China to accept recyclable materials, Burrtec, while now casting about for alternative places to sell the recyclables it has accumulating at its yards and facilities, is no longer able to sell the recyclables it has piling up, and both the collection of recyclables and separation of recyclables from the trash stream has now become for Burrtec a liability. As a consequence, the company consistently spurns customers who seek to obtain additional recycling bins or replacement recycling bins if they are stolen or damaged.
As a consequence, Burrtec’s customers, including many in Upland, find themselves in the position of having to jettison their recyclables into their trash containers. Though this compromises and undercuts the recycling effort that California cities are mandated to engage in, it is financially beneficial to Burrtec in two ways. First, it decreases the recyclable material that is accumulating at Burrtec’s company yards and facilities, for which it has no ready buyer, and which represents an eventual storage crisis and storage cost. It also increases the amount of refuse being disposed of in Riverside County landfills, in particular the El Sobrante Landfill and the Badlands Landfill. By ensuring that Riverside County’s landfills are receiving ever greater tonnages of trash from San Bernardino County, this frees Riverside County up to dispose of a corresponding amount of trash originating in the southeastern portion of Riverside County, where Burrtec has trash hauling franchises or contracts, into the Salton City Landfill, which Burrtec operates in Imperial County. The intensified use of the Salton City Landfill by cities and communities in Riverside County generates for Burrtec, as that facility’s operator, revenue.
In January 2020, when the Upland City Council was straitjacketed by Hoerning into going along with Burrtec’s request to up its rates, only Councilman Rudy Zuniga resisted. Then-Mayor Debbie Stone, then-councilman Ricky Felix, then-Councilman Bill Velto and Councilwoman Janice Elliott voted to give Burrtec the requested rate increases.
Since that time, Stone was voted out of office and replaced by Velto, Felix left the city council and two new members have been elected, First District Councilwoman Shannan Maust and Third District Councilman Carlos Garcia. Shortly after making the 2020 vote, Velto publicly acknowledged having given Burrtec the rate increase out of “ignorance,” and admitted he was not aware of the 2014 commitment by Burrtec to lock-in the 2014 rates until 2021.
Those close to City Hall report that earlier this year, while Upland was yet under Hoerning’s guidance, she was pushing city officials to rubberstamp Burrtec’s pending request for the 3.07 percent increase in rates for Fiscal Year 2020-21 and an increase of 1.62 percent for 2021-22. That was to follow Hoerning’s accommodation of the rate increase Burrtec was granted in January 2020.
Garcia and Maust both appear far less ready to accept Burrtec’s claims of financial hardship at face value, and both were key votes in the decision to sack Hoerning, one of whose transgressions was acceding to the best interests of Burrtec while neglecting the competing financial interests of the city’s residents. Zuniga remains, based upon certain public statements he made in April, unconvinced that Burrtec is providing first class service, and he gave indication he is willing to initiate the wind-down of the company’s seven-year duration franchise rollover at the earliest opportunity.
What is more, Burrtec’s hiding of the change in the contract language in 2014 that allowed it to up the rates it charges has now been exposed.
Similarly, that Burrtec is burying Upland’s trash at two landfills in Riverside County at a tipping fee that is $18-to-$20 per ton higher than what it could dispose of that trash in a San Bernardino County landfill, representing a $843,323.76-to-$937,026.40 greater cost annually that is passed through to members of the Upland community is no longer a secret.
Against that backdrop, a growing number of Upland residents are hopeful that the current Upland City Council, with its traditional practice of rubberstamping anything placed in front of it by city staff, may not, when it gets around once more to considering the matter, be inclined to impose on its constituents the rate increases Burrtec is requesting.
The city council is scheduled to take up Burrtec’s request to up the rates Upland residents and businesses pay for trash service on August 9.

In what may be more than a footnote to the indescribably sad case of the death of Erika Lloyd, who perished in the Mojave Desert in the summer of 2020, it was publicly learned this week that her car had been stolen after she drove it into a roadside berm near the intersection of Shelton Road and Two Mile Road in the remote desert area of Wonder Valley on June 16 of last year.
Lloyd expired while she was on a 1,687-mile sojourn to “recharge” in the aftermath of losing her business due to the COVID-19 shutdown during which she wandered into a remote section of the unforgiving Mojave Desert.
Unclear at this time and perhaps never to be known, but well within the realm of possibility, is that the action of two people – David Krough and Teala Campbell – may have indirectly contributed to Lloyd’s death. The displacement of the car by some two miles from where Lloyd apparently abandoned it and set out on foot before becoming disoriented and lost had the effect of drawing the search parties away from the spot where, seven months later, her skeletal remains were found.
Lloyd, who would now be 38, was 37 at the time of her disappearance. She worked as a beautician in the Northern California Walnut Creek community where she resided with her 12-year-old son.
Statements made by her friends and family suggest that the COVID-19 crisis, which had forced a closure of beauty salons and negatively impacted Lloyd’s cash flow, had left her in a state of depression. Early in the second week of June, Lloyd deleted the contents of her Facebook page. On Thursday, June 11, 2020, she embarked on what appears to have been a frenetic 1,689-mile misadventure which ultimately left her dead. That day, she left her son in the care of a friend in Walnut Creek and departed, driving her black 2006 Honda Accord, covering the roughly 533 miles between Walnut Creek and Joshua Tree National Park in something under 12 hours, and camped at the Jumbo Rocks campground on the night of June 11 and again on the night of Friday, June 12.
According to her sister-in-law, Lloyd was “under a lot of stress and wanted to get away and unplug.” At the time of her disappearance, there was a report one of Erika’s friends moved to Twentynine Palms in April 2020. There has been speculation that Lloyd had perhaps made the trip to see that person.
At the Jumbo Rocks campground, Lloyd made the acquaintance of two people, she told friends, one named “James” and the other “Christian.” Early on the morning of Saturday, June 13, leaving her camping gear at her Jumbo Rocks campsite in the care of James and Christian, Lloyd then drove the roughly 533 miles back to Walnut Creek, arriving later that day, and spent the night there with her son and her roommate. The following day, Sunday, June 14, she departed Walnut Creek, again without her son, to return to the Jumbo Rocks campground. Credible evidence suggests Lloyd re-arrived at Jumbo Rocks Campground in the late afternoon of June 14. In her journal that was recovered, Lloyd noted that James and Christian were not at the campground when she got there.
According to Lloyd’s mother, she spoke with her daughter for the last time on June 14 or June 15. She said Erika was “talking really fast” and it sounded like she was driving. There was no known telephonic contact between Lloyd and anyone after that.
Park rangers on Monday, June 15 came across Lloyd’s vandalized black 2006 Honda Accord in the parking area for the Indian Cove campground, some 21.9 miles from Jumbo Rocks but still within the confines of 1,234 square-mile Joshua Tree National Park. There was no camping equipment in the car or in its immediate vicinity when the rangers observed the vehicle. The windshield on the passenger’s side in the front had been broken, and the dashboard damaged. The rangers noted the vehicle’s presence in a report, and left a note on the car. That evening, the car had been removed.
The next day, Tuesday June 16, a video captured the car leaving the north entrance into/exit from Joshua Tree National Park at 1:20 p.m, and the car was later videoed passing a school in Twentynine Palms at 2:50 p.m.
On June 16, after being summoned by a report from a Wonder Valley resident, a California Highway Patrolman spotted Lloyd’s Accord parked on Shelton Road, east of Twentynine Palms, north of the intersection with Highway 62, facing south toward the highway, some 23 miles from Jumbo Rocks campground. The car was blocking the roadway such that it inhibited passage on Shelton Road, which is unpaved. The CHP summoned Twentynine Palms-based Bailey’s Auto Repair & Towing to tow the car. According to David Bailey, the proprietor of the tow company, the Accord’s rear window was broken, the front windshield was smashed on the passenger side, the airbag had deployed and the radio was damaged.
Bailey reported there was damage to the outside front of the vehicle in that the bottom of the radiator and the air conditioning condenser were pushed backwards as if the car had hit a very large object head-on. Bailey speculated that the car had run into a berm.
Beginning on June 16, Lloyd’s friends calling her cell phone encountered no answer. They continued to try to reach her.
On Wednesday, June 17, her family reported her missing, giving indication she might be in the area of Joshua Tree National Park. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department dispatched a helicopter to scour the area. That effort was not fruitful.
Lloyd’s camping gear was located at a camping site in Jumbo Rocks Campground. An expensive Yeti cooler she was not known to have owned was found among her possessions at the campsite.
The Morongo Basin Sheriff’s Station was put on a special alert to be on the lookout for any sightings of her throughout the entirety of the more than 3,000 square mile desert area that includes Joshua Tree, Joshua Tree National Park, Twentynine Palms, Yucca Valley and outlying areas. Park Rangers began searching areas within the park. Sheriff’s deputies, including ones with canines, searched areas at the entrance of the park and its periphery, as well as along Highway 62.
The Joshua Tree Search and Rescue Team, guided by Doug Billings, engaged in an effort to find her or spot any signs that she was in the area.
On June 19, Lloyd’s parents caught a flight from Maryland to California in an effort to help with and intensify the search for their daughter. They posted photos of her and posters alerting the public to her disappearance in the area within the national park as well as in and around Twentynine Palms and Wonder Valley.
Friends and family persisted in trying to reach her by calling her cell phone. On June 20, it was answered by a man who said he had found the phone on June 18 “on Cottonwood,” that is on Cottonwood Drive in Twentynine Palms.
Lloyd’s parents remained intent on finding Erika, and intensified their efforts, leasing space on billboards in the Morongo Valley to feature oversized and highly visible photos of their daughter and make notice of her being missing.
Billings, a mining and cave expert who is familiar with the area and possesses global positioning, mapping and data-cataloging equipment that allows him and the team he is working with to carry out a methodical survey of the vast desert landscape, had joined as a volunteer in the search effort. Much of that effort was carried out along Highway 62 and in the general area around Highway 62 and Shelton Road, as the searchers fanned out in ever-widening swaths. Those searches came up empty.
Seven months later, on Sunday January 31, 2021, Lloyd’s body was discovered by hikers in a field a quarter mile east of the 5200 block of Danby Road in Wonder Valley at a point roughly 2.2 miles northwest of where her car was found, some three-fourths of a mile west northwest from where she had left it near the intersection of Shelton Road and Two Mile Road.
While it can be dismissed as speculation and conjecture, had the search for Lloyd been centered at the location where she had actually abandoned her car, given that helicopters were used in combing the area, she might have been spotted in relatively short order, perhaps as early as June 17 or 18, at which point she might yet have been alive.
For months, it was the assumption of the search crews and authorities that Lloyd had been at the intersection of Shelton Road and Twentynine Palms Highway when she walked away from her car. The Sentinel has learned that in December, the sheriff’s department had come to the conclusion that someone other than Lloyd had driven the Accord to where it was found on June 16.
It was established that the damage to the front undercarriage of the car, the radiator and the air conditioning condenser resulted from the car hitting a sand berm near Shelton Road and Two Mile Road, most likely after 3 p.m. on June 16.
After Lloyd’s body was found, an eyewitness came forward to relate that on June 16, 2020 at approximately 4:50 pm, a woman fitting Lloyd’s description was wandering around in a disoriented state on the desert field in the area of Two Mile Road/Danby Road, near where her remains were found more than seven months later.
According to the sheriff’s department, around 6:30 p.m. on June 16, 2020, David Krough, then 27, and Teala Campbell, then 33, came across the Accord, which was lodged in the berm. Indications are that they did not see Lloyd in the vicinity of the vehicle, and assumed the car had been abandoned. They used a pickup truck with either a winch or a chain and hook to separate the Accord from the berm. It is believed that Campbell then sought to drive it south on Shelton Road. By the time the car had reached Twentynine Palms Highway, roughly 1.98 miles from where Lloyd had abandoned it, the car was severely overheating, and the couple abandoned the car in the middle of Shelton Road.
The sheriff’s department said that on June 6 of this year, it had identified Campbell and Krough as the individuals who had moved Lloyd’s car from where she had left it. An investigation ensued, and yesterday, July 8, both Krough and Campbell were arrested, and are now in custody at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. Krough, who has prior convictions, is being held on $50,000 bail for being a felon with a firearm and an additional $25,000 bail for vehicle theft. Campbell has prior convictions for burglary, a firearms violation, forgery, receiving stolen property and utility theft. She is being held in lieu of $1 million bail.
There are some contradictions in the evolving narrative relating to the case. It is indicated on the Bring Erika Home Facebook page that Campbell in some fashion cooperated with the authorities, and came forward to tell the sheriff’s department that she and Krough had moved the Accord on June 16, 2020. Nevertheless, she is subject to a $1 million bail hold. Another inconsistency is that the timeline given with regard to Lloyd’s disappearance indicated that the Highway Patrol was informed about the Accord blocking access onto Shelton Road from Highway 62 sometime around or shortly after 4 p.m. on June 16, 2020. According to the sheriff’s department, however, Krough and Campbell did not take the car until sometime after 6 p.m.
Doug Billings, whose intimate familiarity with the Mojave Desert has resulted in his being prevailed upon to lead searches there when individuals or parties go missing, led the June 2020 effort to locate Erika Lloyd.
Billings responded to whether he believed Erika Lloyd might have been found alive if Krough’s and Campbell’s attempted theft of Lloyd’s car had not occurred and the initial focus of the search had been at the point where she actually abandoned her car – at Shelton Road and Two Mile Road – such that those engaged in the search had not presumed that she had left her car on foot near Highway 62 and Shelton Road.
“I’m not sure that would have saved her life, as we were unaware of her true condition at the time of the accident,” Billings said. “She surely could have been lying in distress for 24 hours alive, and it is not impossible that Erika could have been saved. For sure, I think she would have been found by searchers much sooner. There would have been tracks to follow, and she was only three-fourths of a mile from her car, well inside an initial grid.”
Billings emphasized that the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department search effort was first rate.
“The San Bernardino County search teams are very good at what they do,” he said. “The focus of the actual search was hampered terribly in retrospect by this crime. The months of anguish on the family alone is unforgivable. The criminals easily could have made an anonymous tip as soon as they saw the news. Additionally, unknown amounts of limited resources could have gone somewhere else instead. It breaks my heart to see all the mishaps and wrongdoing that contributed to it all. The family suffers immensely.”
-Mark Gutglueck

The board of supervisors voted unanimously on Wednesday July 7 to have Undersheriff Shannon Dicus succeed John McMahon to serve as San Bernardino County’s 36th sheriff.
Accordingly, on July 16, the day McMahon’s resignation becomes official, Dicus will be sworn in to succeed McMahon and the 34 men who previously held the position of sheriff since the founding of the county in 1853.
There was some controversy with regard to the circumstance of Dicus’s appointment.
He is about to become the third straight sheriff to be appointed to the position as a consequence of a calculated resignation of his predecessor, a practice which has consistently conferred upon those appointees a political advantage which each has absolutely exploited. McMahon was himself appointed to the post in 2012, which followed the resignation of his predecessor, Rod Hoops. Hoops was appointed sheriff in 2009 when his predecessor, Gary Penrod, resigned. Hoops, running as an unelected incumbent in 2010, and McMahon, running as an unelected incumbent in 2014 and again in 2018, were both elected in large measure on the strength of their incumbencies as well as their de facto inheritance of a political machine that has existed since 1954 when Frank Bland was elected sheriff. Bland served as sheriff for 28 years, having been reelected six times. In 1982 Bland endorsed Floyd Tidwell, handing off to him the political machinery he controlled. In 1980, Tidwell endorsed his undersheriff, Dick Williams, who used the Bland political machine to gain election. Williams four years later endorsed Penrod, who was victorious, again with the assistance of the political machine inherited from Bland through Tidwell and Williams. So intimidating was that political machine and Penrod’s possession of it that no one challenged him in 1998, 2002 and 2006.
The board of supervisors in 2009 complied with Penrod’s recommendation that Hoops replace him, and that gave Hoops the power of incumbency as well as the support of the Bland political machine, which put Hoops easily over the top in the 2010 election. When Hoops resigned more than two years after that election and handpicked McMahon as his successor, the board of supervisors once again went along with the retiree’s designation, and McMahon proved unbeatable in the 2014 election with the assistance of the Bland political machine, so much so that no one deigned to run against him in 2018.
An issue brought up this time around was that the board of supervisors was again conferring a political advantage on another direct descendant of the Bland Dynasty, and that they are letting machine politics control the county. An appeal was made to them that they appoint an individual who would commit to not seeking reelection in 2022, the year the sheriff’s race is next scheduled to be held. In this way, it was suggested, an election among non-incumbents might be held in 2022 that would be untainted by incumbency or connection to a 68-year-duration political machine.
Congressman Pete Aguilar (Democrat-Redlands) was among those who expressed concern that conferring the sheriff’s position on an individual who would run for sheriff in the next election would provide that person with an unfair electoral edge. He called upon the board to appoint a placeholder who would not seek election in 2022.
In a letter to the board of supervisors, Aguilar asserted that “By virtue of title and experience, the appointed sheriff will have a strong advantage over any other candidate in the 2022 election, no matter the qualifications.”
That had no impact on the supervisors, who are themselves politicians, four of whom are Republicans in contrast to the Democrat Aguilar. The board collectively was unwilling to advocate a position counter to that of the interests of the Bland political machine, which has in the past and could be in the future harnessed to support individuals seeking political office other than that of sheriff, such as county supervisor. Phill Dupper and Cliff Harris, two individuals who applied to succeed McMahon and whom the board of supervisors made a public display on Wednesday of considering for appointment to the sheriff’s position, gave indication they were undecided in whether they would seek election in 2022. The board of supervisors interpreted Dicus’s confident assurance that he would seek election next year and had already begun forming his reelection team in a positive light, taking that as an indication he would provide the department with continuity of leadership. That was used by the board members as a part of the justification for appointing Dicus.
Four individuals had applied to be considered for the appointment to sheriff – Dicus, Dupper, Harris and William Loenhorst. There are a relatively narrow set of requirements to qualify to serve as sheriff, those being that one has to be a county resident, a registered voter and a holder of professional certification as a law enforcement officer. There was no question that Dicus, Dupper and Harris met that criteria, as Dicus has been a member of the sheriff’s department for nearly 30 years, Dupper is a lieutenant with the department currently and has been with the department a quarter of a century, Harris was employed by the department as a detective from 1984 to 1991 and subsequently worked with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, and all had certification by the California Police Officers Standards and Training Commission. Loenhorst claimed such certification, but by the time of the board’s specially-called meeting on Wednesday July 7 to interview the candidates and determine whether they would make a selection, confirmation of Loenhorst’s certification had not been obtained. He therefore did not take part in the forum that was set up, which allowed Dicus, Dupper and Harris, in that order, to provide a three-minute general statement followed by a round of questions from the individual supervisors.
Dicus, like both Dupper, from Loma Linda, and Harris, from San Bernardino, is homegrown in San Bernardino County, having graduated from high school in Twentynine Palms. He served in the U.S. Army for three years as a military policemen in the 101st Airborne Division, in which capacity he was deployed to the Middle East and South America. After his discharge from the Army, Dicus returned to San Bernardino County where he worked for the Office of Veterans Affairs as a police officer at the Jerry L Pettis Veterans Hospital in Loma Linda. He has been with the sheriff’s department for just under three decades. His father worked for the department.
He received his bachelor’s degree from California State University San Bernardino in criminal justice studies. He has a master’s degree in communication from California Baptist University.
Though the county pulled from its website a document which purported to provide a full range of the assignments Dicus had while working with the sheriff’s department, the Sentinel was able to reproduce some of that information. He was assigned at one time or another to the department’s corrections division at the Glen Helen Rehabilitation and West Valley Detention centers. He worked patrol out of the Apple Valley, Victorville, Barstow and Victor Valley sheriff’s stations. He worked in the department’s specialized investigations unit as a narcotics detective. He was assigned to the special weapons and tactics team, known as SWAT. He for a time worked in the department’s intelligence division, which was attached to the department’s command echelon, a position from which he and that unit’s investigators gathered compromising information relating to the county’s politicians, elected officials and community leaders, in particular the council members in the cities and towns which contract with the sheriff’s department to provide law enforcement services. He also had a supervisory assignment in the department’s technical services, communications and records divisions, as well as its bureau of administration.
With the 2017 retirement of Assistant Sheriff David Williams, who previously appeared to be on a trajectory to succeed McMahon as sheriff, an effort to groom Dicus as the next sheriff began. In the undersheriff post, he has immediate authority over the internal affairs division which is referred to in San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department parlance as the professional standards division, its civil liabilities division which goes hand-in-hand with professional standards, and the bureau of administration. Increasingly over the last year-and-a-half, Dicus has been taking on more and more of the hands-on management of the department that McMahon had formerly exercised as sheriff, such that he oversees the day-to-day operations of the sheriff’s department.
The 2021-22 county budget approved by the board of supervisors last month included $5.2 million to outfit the county’s sheriff’s deputies with body cameras.
Dicus told Supervisor Joe Baca, Jr., “I’m personally for body-worn cameras. We have to commit to the county process, which is a request-for-information and then a request-for-proposal. So, those timeframes are set forth based on the number of vendors that submit proposals to the county. In working with the [county] CEO on the current budget, we’ve allocated approximately $5 million to take on that effort. We’ve also done pilot programs as it relates to that. Body-worn cameras is a complicated process, not necessarily the body-worn cameras themselves, but the infrastructure which it takes to transfer that data across a county as large as San Bernardino. There are things in the ground that cause that information to be transferred at different speed rates in some places where we don’t have any infrastructure at all. In terms of the policies and procedures, it would require that all deputies use those. Our deputies are looking forward to using body-worn cameras. They do act professionally, and they do want body-worn cameras to provide that evidence when they are accused of doing things they may or may not have done. Retention polices are something we would certainly take a look at based on storage and whatever we’re able to afford as the county. I would certainly promote body-worn cameras for transparency to any of our community members and plan on sharing that information as these critical incidents occur.”
Alluding to changing societal perceptions in which larger segments of the society have come to hold law enforcement officers in low esteem, Supervisor Paul Cook asked Dicus, “How are you going to demonstrate your leadership so that they [the sheriff’s deputies working for him] have the confidence in you to do their job and to do it in accordance with the law and everything else, and quite frankly, put their lives on the line?”
Dicus responded, “I have gray hair for a reason. I have gray hair because I worry about the problems that they don’t need to worry about. I will back their play and make sure when they have to make those critical split-second decisions in these highly volatile times that they’re backed and taken care of to the best of my ability. Experience matters. Across this country you’re seeing a number of law enforcement executives leave law enforcement. They’re not leaving because they want to leave. They are leaving because of high-intensity politics. Red and blue matters more.”
Dicus, a Republican, as are a substantial majority of the department’s members, then said, “It’s not about red [Republicans] and blue [Democrats]. It’s about doing the right thing. Being the sheriff is about everyone else and not yourself. Those troops – we’re getting kids that are willing to do this job because they want to contribute to their communities, and it absolutely amazes me everyday based on what we are seeing in the news and all the negativity that’s out there – they come to and from everyday, and do the job. Number one, I plan to be highly accessible and make sure that they know that they’re appreciated.”
The board devoted roughly 29-and-one-half minutes to Dicus’s presentation and the questions he was asked; slightly more than 27 minutes to Dupper’s statement and the questions he fielded; and just about 28 minutes in hearing Harris’s presentation and hearing his answers to the supervisors’ questions.
Multiple individuals of influence weighed in on behalf of Dicus.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco recommended Dicus to the board. “I urge you to appoint Undersheriff Dicus to the office of sheriff by trusting the ability and integrity of Sheriff McMahon who has led his department in a positive direction and set the stage for continued success after his retirement,” Bianco said. “Undersheriff Dicus is a fair, honest, ethical proven law enforcement leader who has earned the respect and support of his department, San Bernardino County police chiefs and the Association of Riverside County Chiefs of Police and Sheriff.”
Grant Ward, the president of the Safety Employees Benefit Association, which represents San Bernardino County’s sheriff’s deputies, without making a direct recommendation indicated his union wanted a continuation of the department’s current administration and management, a tacit endorsement of Dicus.
San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson said, “I want to indicate that I support the appointment of Undersheriff Shannon Dicus. I’ve had the privilege and the pleasure of working the last two-and-a-half, almost three years with him. I’ve known him as a person. I certainly admire his resolve, his integrity and his ability to continue to lead the largest law enforcement agency in our county.”
Chris Catron, the president of the San Bernardino County Police Chiefs and Sheriffs Association, said, “I am here to… emphatically support and express our unwavering support for Shannon Dicus for appointment to the position for sheriff. Shannon has demonstrated over the years the skill, leadership and, more importantly, the character for this appointment to sheriff.”
Former Undersheriff Richard Beemer said he supported Dicus.
Though Sheriff McMahon pointedly did not participate in Wednesday’s forum and he made no public endorsement of any of the applicants, his support of Dicus was evident by many measures. One of those is that last week, he elevated Shelley Krusbe, Dicus’s wife, who was formerly the captain heading the department’s specialized investigations division, to the department’s seventh deputy chief position.
In his remarks to the board, Dicus essentially claimed McMahon’s endorsement, saying “I’ve been extremely fortunate to be mentored by Sheriff John McMahon.”
Dicus also sought to and did score points with the board of supervisors by alluding to the county’s strategic development and management plan, which is labeled “County Vision.”
“The County Vision has been at the forefront and a guiding principle for county government,” Dicus said. “We act in a manner that local government supports all of our citizens from cradle to career. I’ve been actively involved in the public safety element group since the County Vision concept has been adopted.”
Unspoken during the hearing was the damning information the department’s intelligence unit attached to the sheriff’s command echelon has picked up within the last six weeks pertaining to bribe money that has been filtered to Board of Supervisors Chairman and Fourth County Supervisor Curt Hagman, Third County Supervisor Dawn Rowe and Fifth District County Supervisor Paul Cook by former Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Postmus, who was convicted in 2012 of 14 political corruption charges, including conspiracy, bribery, soliciting a bribe, receiving a bribe, public office conflict of interest, misappropriation of public funds, fraud and perjury. Postmus’s conviction on the public office conflict of interest charge prohibits him from holding elected public office in California for life. Nevertheless, he has remained active politically through the formation of a company, Mountain States Consulting Group, LLC, which is based in Wyoming and which he uses as a vehicle for laundering political contributions, bribes and kickbacks to public officials.
McMahon’s discovery of the bribery involving members of the board of supervisors, which came about the first week of June after he assigned investigators with his department to look into reports to that effect, was a factor in convincing him that the time for his retirement as sheriff was upon him. The information implicating Hagman, Rowe and Cook in the graft being vectored to public officials by Postmus remains in the possession of the sheriff’s department, giving Dicus a substantial degree of leverage over a majority of the board of supervisors, which gave him a lock on the appointment as sheriff.
While the board members were polite, deferential and even complimentary toward Dupper and Harris while they were interviewing them, after the hearing with regard to the sheriff succession was concluded, the board members made no pretense of considering either Dupper or Harris, gravitating immediately toward heaping praise upon Dicus and his qualifications for the sheriff’s post.
In short order Dicus was nominated as the next sheriff after which his appointment was unanimously confirmed.
Dicus will now join Robert Clift, Joseph Bridger, Valentine J. Herring, Charles W. Piercy, William Tarleton, Anson Van Leuven, E.M. Smith, J.A. Moore, Henry Wilkes, Benjamin F. Matthews, G.F. Fulgham, Newton Noble, A.J. Curry, William Davies, John C. King, J.B. Burkhart, Nelson Green Gill, John Albert Cole, Edwin Chidsey Seymour, James P. Booth, Francis L. Holcomb, Charles A. Rouse, John C. Ralphs, J.L. McMinn, Walter A. Shay, Ernest T. Shay, Emmett L. Shay, James W. Stocker, Eugene W. Mueller, Frank Bland, Floyd Tidwell, Richard G. Williams, Gary Penrod, Rod Hoops and McMahon on the roster of sheriffs of San Bernardino County who have held that position since 1853.
–Mark Gutglueck

Grand Terrace City Manager G. Harold Duffy is leaving the post he has held for six years on July 20 to take on the position of the City of Oakland’s public works director.
Duffy quietly announced on June 22, 2021 his resignation, effective July 20.
This week the city scheduled a special meeting of the city council for next Monday, July 12, at which it is to adjourn into a closed session and, outside the scrutiny of the public, arrive at a consensus on the appointment of an interim city manager. It is anticipated that the city council will announce its selection after coming out of that closed session.
The next day, July 13, at its regularly scheduled meeting, the city council is scheduled to vote on employing, at a cost of up to $29,000, an executive search firm to recruit a new city manager.
The three executive search firms the city will consider for the assignment are Bob Murray and Associates, Peckham and McKenney, and Ralph Anderson and Associates.
The firms were chosen by Duffy, who noted their “extensive statewide experience recruiting chief executives for local governments” and that “During the past year alone, the firms have successfully recruited over 50 city managers.” All three firms, Duffy said, are “qualified to assist the city in a deliberate and thoughtful process to find the ideal city manager for the City of Grand Terrace.”
Duffy has been Grand Terrace’s city manager since June 2015, at which time he replaced interim City Manager Carol Jacobs, who held that post in the preceding five months following the 13-month tenure of another interim city manager, Kenneth Henderson, who had replaced the city’s previous manager, Betsy Adams, who had resigned in 2013.
That year, the final one in the economic downturn now commonly referred to as the Great Recession, Grand Terrace, the smallest city in San Bernardino County geographically and the third smallest county city in terms of population, was subjected to severe financial hardship, forcing Adams to have the city council as it was then composed declare a fiscal emergency, often seen as a precursor to a public agency seeking bankruptcy protection.
With Duffy at the helm, Grand Terrace avoided bankruptcy, but financial challenges continued to dog the city, which in 2010 and 2011 floated some $11 million in bonds through its redevelopment agency in a rush to beat the clock against then-Governor Jerry Brown’s and the California Legislature’s action to close out redevelopment agencies throughout the state. In the eleven years since, the city found itself in the position of making $1.5 million in interest payments for bonds it could not utilize.
Even before Duffy was in place, the city was slashing employees, and that trend continued after he arrived.
By 2020, the city had already been reduced to 12 employees. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Duffy and Assistant City Manager Cynthia Fortune, projecting that the 3.5 square mile city was facing an estimated $545,210 shortfall for Fiscal Year 2019-20 and a projected $1,116,387 deficit for Fiscal Year 2020-21, called for cutting the city staff in half, with one of the remaining employees being reduced to part-time, at 20 hours. The city council went along with that strategy. The city eliminated a management analyst, dispensed with two maintenance workers, laid off the city’s executive assistant, terminated an office specialist and left a vacant secretary position unfilled.
The city cut the hours of one of its two code enforcement officers by half. In addition, the city reclassified the city’s public works director position, held by Allen French, to that of senior engineer, reducing French’s income for the remainder of 2019-21 by $3,935 and by $23,610 in 2020-21.
Duffy had an essentially positive relationship with a majority of the city council during his five years in Grand Terrace, though at times there was some discontent with his management decisions by certain council members, and some vocalization of opposition to the city’s policies by residents on occasion. Momentum to remove him as city manager never reached a tipping point.
Prior to his hiring in Grand Terrace, Duffy had been city manager in Compton for two-and-a-half years, the city administrator with the City of Oroville, a manager in the planning and public works division in Yolo County for four years, a division manager in the City of Sacramento’s sanitation department for six years and an administrative analyst with the City of Riverside for eight years.
Among the city’s options for replacing Duffy are hiring Fortune to take on the temporary management assignment as well as forging a short-term pact with Fred Wilson, a former city administrator with the City of San Bernardino and former city manager of Huntington Beach. Wilson is an employee of Ralph Anderson and Associates, one of the executive recruitment firms the council is to consider hiring on Tuesday.
-Mark Gutglueck

The engineering firm the U.S. Army is relying upon to carry out the environmental assessment of its plan to expand its training facilities beyond the existing ones that are part of Fort Irwin was involved in a debacle with the City of Victorville over a decade ago which, initially at least, cost the city’s taxpayers $90 million.
The engineering firm of Carter and Burgess, which was later absorbed into the Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., a $10 billion dollar worldwide corporation, was responsible for a major set of faux pas relating to the City of Victorville’s efforts to outfit itself with electrical power plants that would be in place to ensure that industrial operations looking to locate into the industrial parks around the city as well as in and at the periphery of Southern California Logistics Airport would be able to operate.
That airport was built on the grounds of the former George Air Force Base, which the Department of Defense shuttered in 1992, and over which the City of Victorville had assumed control as the result of a bruising and expensive competition with the City of Adelanto in the mid-1990s. The Foxborough Industrial Park was one of the city’s planned industrial parks.
The Foxborough Power Plant project in Victorville’s Bear Valley Redevelopment Area was initially conceived as a method to provide low cost energy and steam to two incoming tenants at the Foxborough Industrial Park on the assumption that those companies, Nutro and ConAgra, required a total of between five and ten megawatts of power for their operations, and that the establishment of Nutro and ConAgra would in time lead to other companies setting up operations at Foxborough and elsewhere in Victorville. The city entered into a no-bid contract with Carter and Burgess, Inc., beginning in June 2004, to serve as a consultant with regard to design, develop, and construct a cogeneration power plant to service the energy needs of tenants at the Foxborough Industrial Park. City officials did not fully think the project through, and it was undertaken without a thorough assessment, by city officials or Carter and Burgess of the risks, and without first securing the full line of expertise to see the project to completion.
“Neither city management nor Carter and Burgess established a risk assessment, business plan, or formal budget,” the 2011-12 San Bernardino County Civil Grand Jury stated in its final report. “Without such planning, the city proceeded without clearly defined goals, milestones, or performance measures. In fact, the project was initiated with the broad objective of providing low cost power directly to tenants at the Foxborough Industrial Park without connecting to the California electrical grid system. However, toward the end of the project city management changed course and looked at options to connect the plant to the grid system.”
The grand jury said the project failed because of “dramatic growth” in its price tag.
“According to interviews with city officials, the Foxborough Power Plant project was initially estimated to cost the city approximately $17.5 million,” the grand jury report stated. “However, the costs of the project quickly rose to $22 million. In April 2005, approximately 10 months after the project commenced, the city council approved a $41 million bond issuance for the project. In June 2006, approximately two years after the initiation of the project and four months after the anticipated completion, the city council approved a second bond issuance that provided an additional $21 million in financing to Carter and Burgess. The final cost of the Foxborough Power Plant project topped $91 million with press accounts stating that over $95 million had been spent. Out of this amount, Carter and Burgess was paid approximately $8.2 million.”
The city was ill-served by Carter Burgess, the grand jury said, and was able to prove that in court.
“Due to a series of mishaps, including an overestimation of the power needs for certain tenants, multiple design revisions, and the failure of certain power generation equipment, the Foxborough Power Plant was never completed,” the grand jury report stated. “Following the cancellation of the construction project, the city initiated civil litigation against Carter and Burgess relating to the failure of the project. In December 2010 a Riverside County jury unanimously ruled in favor of the city and awarded Victorville $52,116,367 to be paid by the developer’s parent company. Despite the award of approximately $52 million, the city will still be left with approximately $40 million in losses.”
Carter and Burgess, which was subsumed by Jacobs Engineering Group, appealed the judgment award and lost.
More than a decade-and-a-half later, the U.S. Army and the Department of Defense have hired Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., which is active internationally and based in Dallas, Texas, to carry out an environmental assessment of the large-scale alterations it will be making to the Mojave Desert landscape that lies within 110,000 acres of federally owned land so that future maneuvers beyond the Army’s existing 753,537-acre National Training Center can spill over to it and take place there.
There is an international geopolitical dimension to what is occurring that goes beyond environmental considerations in California’s desert. The energetic development plan signals that after two decades of preparing U.S. warriors to fight terrorism and insurgencies and carry out operations to hold paramilitary-type terrorist cells in check, the United States Army is now preparing in the main to wage conventional warfare, cavalry to cavalry, division to division, military force to military force, traditional normal standing army to traditional normal standing army.
The battles envisioned in the future are not far removed from the large scale hostilities that took place mostly in Europe during World War II, but which were also evident during the Pacific campaign of World War II and in Korea in the early 1950s. There were few such large battles during the Vietnam Conflict, a many year-long engagement that consisted primarily of irregular warfare.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Congress enacted the “Fort Irwin Military Land Withdrawal Act of 2001,” the practical effect of which was to withdraw a significant portion of the public land in the Mojave Desert from  Bureau of Land Management oversight and provisionally – for a quarter of a century – transferred land use authority and other rights over the property to the U.S. military. For the most part and with only a few exceptions involving some large-scale troop landing and deployment maneuvers relating to Operation Enduring Freedom and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the land was not used in the way that had been envisioned. Now, however, the Army has awakened to the use the Mojave can be put to, and has asked Congress to authorize the extension of the 25-year license to use the property outlying Fort Irwin and the National Training Center.
The Army is now looking toward other enemies than terrorists, such as the growing standing army maintained by the People’s Republic of China, and U.S. war planners are intent on creating simulated battlegrounds such as the ones they might encounter in the decades ahead, so they can train U.S. troops in battleground tactics to be used in such a conflict.
Thus, some of the public land in the Mojave Desert in the greater Barstow area is to be converted into facilities to house troops that will be involved in war games. In some cases, those facilities will be obliterated at some point after they have been constructed. Nevertheless, that construction will take place, and such activity has an impact on the ecology and the environment.
Jacobs Engineering is awork ascertaining what changes to the desert environment will take place at Fort Irwin and in the adjoining desert, whether the improvements to be made, many of which will be destroyed using missiles, bombs, heavy duty fusillades and the like, will have no, a light, moderate, long-term, lasting or permanent impact on the desert’s ecosystem, which in some cases is hardy and in other cases delicate. Jacobs Engineering is looking into whether the construction and military activity, which is to be simulated with respect to actually killing troops on the ground but which will involve heavy and concentrated use of ordnance, bombing, the use of defoliants and incendiaries, will kill or do irreparable harm to vegetation and wildlife habitat.
The endangered desert tortoise is indigenous to the area in question.
There is no question among those knowledgeable about what the federal government is to undertake that some environmental damage and ecologic harm will come from the activities the Army is to carry out on that land.
Under federal law, national security considerations and the need for military preparedness trumps federal and state law relating to environmental concerns or those intended to prevent or offset ecological havoc. Nevertheless, the law provides for and the U.S. Government is intent upon cataloging what the anticipated actual damage the military’s use of the land in question will entail.
Within that catalog is an admission that there will be deleterious effects relating to the land itself, its soil, vegetation and wildlife, air quality and paleontological elements such as fossils and rocks as well as archeological resources such as artifacts and the like.
An unfinalized draft of Jacobs Engineering’s work acknowledges there will be moderate impacts on the vegetation growing on the desert floor in some areas and certain wildlife. The report minimized as negligible or nonexistent the threat the federal government programs will have on listed endangered species. Some of those species would see their habitat compromised but not destroyed, according to Jacobs Engineering. To a certain extent, the study says that some native plant species will be challenged by what is happening, both through direct damage and the possibility that the activity will introduce or otherwise boost non-native and invasive plant species into the area.
Most environmental impacts from the maneuver range expansion will be “less than significant,” according to Jacobs.
The U.S. Army’s activity in the area is necessary, Jacobs Engineering noted.
Army personnel already stationed at Fort Irwin will use the expanded National Training Center facility, as will other branches of the Department of Defense, including the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, Coast Guard, National Guard, Reserve, and various arms of the federal government including the Treasury Department, Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI.
Most notable and damaging in what will happen is the considerable uprating of firepower that will be brought to bear in simulating for trainees the actual conditions in a battlefield and combat situation. This will involve what is likely to be a massive collection of mechanized cavalry at the expanded training center, the deploying of tanks in simulated combat scenarios at a scope less than what occurred in North Africa during World War II, but which will nonetheless be as intensive of a gathering of the Army’s capability in this regard as has been demonstrated going back three generations.
Among the facilities to be constructed will be both above-ground and below ground communications and radar systems. While there is no marine life in the desert, extremely low frequency emanations, it has been alleged, do harm to marine mammals such as dolphins, whales and manatees.
Jacobs Engineering only gingerly dealt with the consideration and long-term damage implication of the soldiers at the expanded training center engaging in war games that will involve biological or chemical weapons. While the U.S. is conscious of the potential for an enemy of the present or future to rely on such weaponry as well as atomic, nuclear or radiological devices, it is not likely that the desert will be host to any atomic or nuclear weapon explosions or yield tests. Nevertheless, the possibility exists the Army or other branches will experiment with vectored radiation techniques.
–Mark Gutglueck

CHINO–Two people lost their lives and a third has sustained serious injuries in a freak one-vehicle accident in which a car traveling at excessive speed vaulted a backyard fence and landed in a swimming pool in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
At 2:19 a.m., members of the Chino Police Department were dispatched to the scene of a single car mishap at the intersection of Schaefer Avenue and East End Avenue. Officers arrived to find an orange Corvette in the backyard pool of a home owned by Arthur Guerrero located at 3697 Alicia Way.
Alicia Way parallels Schaefer Avenue, dead-ending as a cul-de-sac just west of East End.
The convertible Corvette, which seats two but was carrying three passenger, was traveling westbound on Schaefer when the roadster hit the curb at the sharp 90 degree transition to northbound East End. Upon striking the curb, the car went airborne, flew over a wall and fence overgrown with ivy, and flipped. It landed upside-down in the pool.
All three occupants, who were most likely not wearing seat belts, were ejected. A 21-year-old woman in the car died instantly. A 27-year-old severely injured man was transported to Chino Valley Hospital, but was pronounced dead there. A 23-year-old woman was hospitalized and is clinging to life at press time.
The victims have not been identified. It is not known with definitude who was driving at the time of the incident. It was initially related that the 21-year-old now-deceased woman was driving, but the Chino Police Department revised that conclusion to a tentative determination that the man was behind the wheel.
The Schaefer/East End curve in Chino is infamous for motorists moving in both directions taking the turn at too-high of a speed, which is attested to by numerous gouges and chips out of the curb at that spot.
The speed limit along the stretch of Schaefer east of the 90 degree bend is 45 miles per but reduces to 15 miles per hour at the curve. Cars often make the turn at speeds above 40 miles per hour. Based upon the physics involved, the Corvette was very likely traveling at a speed greater than 70 miles per hour and approaching 80 miles per hour to achieve the momentum needed to clear the wall around Guerrero’s property.