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Sentinel 08-27-21

Seven years after it was rushed to completion, the High Desert Detention Center project remains as a source of unanticipated cost escalation for the county’s taxpayers. What were interminable cost overruns on the 1,576,000-square foot complex continue.
This week, the board of supervisors agreed to up the amount of money the Barkley Andross Corporation will receive for the replacement of the primary generator at the sheriff’s department’s largest and main jail in the desert portion of 20,105-square mile San Bernardino County.
Originally, on December 8, 2020, the county board of supervisors agreed that the county would pay the Barkley Andross Corporation $1,272,308 to replace the generator at the High Desert Detention Center.
This week, the board consented to two upward cost adjustments on the generator replacement project totaling $186,196, one in the form of an amendment to the contract and the other a change order.
The amendment involves $155,300.70 worth of rewiring on the equipment and its connections to the jail’s various electrical systems. The $30,895.30 change order calls for an adjustment in the work previously contracted for to ensure the generator is covered to prevent it from serving as, essentially, a latter which would allow inmates to escape the jail’s confines.
According to a report to the board of supervisors from Terry Thompson, the director of the county’s real estate division, dated August 24 but completed prior to that, “Amendment No. 1 to the contract will compensate Barkley Andross Corporation for the additional scope of work required to provide new conduit pathways at the automatic transfer switch. During the course of construction, the contractor encountered… unforeseen conditions, including the need to provide new conduit pathways at the automatic transfer switch, as… intercepts reflected in the record drawings were incorrect [and] the conduit intercepts reflected in the plans could not be located. A new conduit pathway is required due to differing site conditions. Amendment No. 1 will extend the contract time for an additional 80 calendar days, from 270 calendar days to 350 calendar days, with a corresponding increase of $155,301 to the contract amount, to allow for completion of the additional scope of work. Change Order No. 1 will compensate Barkley Andross due to differing site conditions and [a] resulting additional scope of work required to (1) incorporate modifications related to procuring and installing three new metal shrouds to encase exposed conduits in order to address a potential safety concern (the possibility that an inmate resident could utilize the exposed conduits to scale the roof and sides of the building); (2) provide for needed temporary power to include door work, x-ray and concrete masonry unit coring (the proposed above-ceiling route to the electrical room was discovered to have existing utility obstructions, requiring a new route); and (3) install additional generator circuits as the 70 AMP sub-feed was found to be insufficient.”
The cost on the change order is $30,895.30.
The High Desert Detention Center, originally referred to as the Adelanto Detention Center, encountered $29 million in construction cost overruns from the time work on the project began in late 2010 until its final phase in 2014. The facility, located at 9438 Commerce Way in Adelanto, was formerly privately owned and run as a 706-inmate capacity institution known as Maranatha Prison. It was sold by its owner, the Moreland Family Trust, to the county in April 2005 for $31.2 million. The transition of the private prison facility into a publicly-run one, which was originally slated to cost $90,951,937 beyond the $31.2 million acquisition cost, added 1,392 new beds to the existing capacity of the jail. After making a finding that the construction bids received from S.J. Amorosa Construction Co., Inc. of Costa Mesa and Flintco of Folsom were non-responsive, the county in December 2010 awarded a $90,951,937 contract to Bellevue, Washington-based Lydig Construction as the low bidder.
During the more than three years of construction on the project, the board of supervisors approved a total of 29 change orders and amendments to the contract, and the price zoomed to $120,419,790. Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, Incorporated, based in Culver City, was the architect on the project. Los Angeles-based Jacobs Engineering was the project engineer, a subcontractor to Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum. The total price tag on the project, including site acquisition, engineering, architectural, licensing and inspection costs, reached $176,651,910, which was $25.45 million more than the $151.1 million projected to be the project’s overall price including a ten percent cost overrun contingency when it was approved in 2010. The county rushed things, as it needed to complete the expansion by January 31, 2014 or face losing $100 million in state funding.
In many cases, that haste created circumstances that led to the cost overruns.
There long were suspicions that persist about kickbacks that may or may not have been provided to county officials by the firms that did the architectural and engineering work on project, as many of the change orders and amendments appeared to be redundant, and outside scrutiny of the project was virtually impossible.
-Mark Gutglueck

County officials have begun to crack down on the owners/operators of short term rental units that have been proliferating in the county’s unincorporated mountain and desert communities, and are enforcing regulations on the guests at those concerns.
The opportunity short term rentals represented to homeowners, particularly in areas which attract tourists, has long existed. Few exploited that opportunity until relatively recently. It was less than fifteen years ago when Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Bebbia boldly explored putting an air mattress onto their living room floor and transforming their San Francisco residence into a temporary bed and breakfast inn, giving birth to the the concept of the “Air BNB” [air mattress bed and breakfast]. The trio transformed the formula into a $10.49 billion asset company traded on NASDAQ. Simultaneously, many people around the country who owned second, investment or vacation homes adapted the idea, learning along the way that in many cases vacationers were ready to pay the equivalent of a monthly rent or more to have access to a house and all of its amenities – a kitchen, dining room, living room, separate bedrooms, a yard and garage – for a week or even a weekend if the abode was advantageously located. Those with second homes in the desert or cabins in the mountains were soon tapping into the short-term rental trend. Their guests were given more spacious accommodations than a 300-square foot hotel room, one that put them close to the desert or mountain destination they were visiting. The rise of the internet made coordinating such arrangements easy. Those tourists who were who unable to book a hotel in an area where there were no motel or hotel vacancies made for plenty of willing tenants. This transformed what were previously in many cases dormant properties into revenue producers. With such a ready clientele who remained in place for a limited time, homeowners did not need to hire professional property management services or much in the way of professional assistance other than cleaning services. With the guests paying up front, collections or late payments were not an issue.
While renting their properties out for a short span was advantageous for those homeowners or investors, the influx of temporary residents into the mountain and desert districts created nuisances for those living near such leased properties. In many cases, homes or cabins were simply converted into temporary accommodations without regard to local ordinances or regulations, and there was not government oversight or regulation of the operations.
Residents were put at the disadvantage of having, for a short time, neighbors they did not know and who in some cases had no regard for others they would not be likely to ever see again.
On occasion, those guests would prove to be poor neighbors, creating disturbances, inviting dozens, scores or even hundreds of others to parties on the leased or rented premises, creating parking and traffic problems. On occasions, such parties proved out to be raves, with highly intoxicated participants. Excessive noise was an issue in some cases. Bonfires were a staple of such gatherings. In some isolated cases, those lodging at the rental properties or their guests grew aggressive or confrontational with nearby residents.
Owners of the short term rental properties skipped out on paying lodging taxes, referred to as transitory occupancy or bed taxes.
Over the years, at first irregularly and infrequently, complaints began to drift in. In time, that discontent grew. Because the mountain communities hosted numerous hotels and traditional inns and the like, the county formulated a set of regulations tailored specifically for and applicable only in the mountains, specifically Mt. Baldy, Wrightwood, Crestline, Cedarpines Park, Lake Gregory, Lake Arrowhead, Blue Jay, Valley of Enchantment, Cedar Glen, Sky Forest, Twin Peaks, Arrow Bear, Big Bear, Angeles Oaks, Running Springs, Green Valley Lake, Cienega Creek, Sugarloaf, Seven Oaks and Barton Flats.
By 2019, the county moved to take up the issue directly and generally, not just in the mountains, but in the desert communities, in particular those near, in and around Joshua Tree National Park, which included Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, and Twentynine Palms, as well as along the Colorado River. By November of that year, the county had approved a set of rules that were to apply to residential units rented for 30 or fewer days. Those included a permitting process for homes to be used as short-term rentals, ones that had to be renewed every two years. Owners were further required to provide onsite parking to accommodate all visitors to the rentals, maintain the rental unit’s exterior and interior, document who the renters were and post evacuation maps on all doors within the unit.
The regulations imposed a fine of $100 on the rental unit’s owner for a first offense, a $200 fine for a second offense and a $500 fine for a third.
Recurrent complaints by residents living near short term rental units persisted even in the aftermath of the county ordinance, and earlier this year the county considered making punishment for not keeping within the regulations more draconian.
At the board of supervisors’ June 22 meeting County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez and the county’s director of land use services, Terri Rahhal, delivered a report and recommendation that the supervisors pass an urgency ordinance and companion regular ordinance that increased the penalties for short-term rental code violations.
According to Hernandez and Rahhal, earlier this year the board had “acknowledged community concerns and calls for a moratorium on approval of additional short-term residential rental unit permits. The recent increase in permitting and occupancy of short-term residential rental units in mountain and desert communities during the COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to increasing complaints from full-time residents of these communities. The complaints are not limited to occasional nuisance noise or inconvenience to residents. The proliferation of short-term residential rental units has impacted the ability of local residents and workers to find housing. The increased number of short-term residential rental units, combined with the increased popularity of private home rentals, has fundamentally impacted multiple neighborhoods to the point that residents feel overwhelmed.”
On June 8, 2021, the board approved the 2021-22 budget, which allocated $10.4 million to address community code enforcement concerns. Many of the issues under scrutiny were unrelated to problems growing out of the increase in the number of short-term rental units. A major area of concern in that regard is the rise in the number of unlicensed marijuana farms, primarily in the desert and to a lesser degree in the mountains. To hash out how the county’s financial and physical resources should be allocated and its manpower utilized with regard to the county’s code enforcement efforts, the county administrative echelon, headed by Hernandez, has established a multi-disciplinary task force consisting of the sheriff’s department, the district attorney’s office, the office of county counsel, the division of agriculture/weights & measures, environmental health services, land use services and the county code enforcement division. Furthermore, the county temporarily placed its code enforcement function under the direction of the county’s newly-formed implementation division.
This latter move, Hernandez and Rahhal told the board in their June 22 report, would “leverage available resources and… redesign the way [the] code enforcement [division] engages with the communities to address concerns. This approach will include additional staffing, increased direct community engagement, staff working evenings and weekends, and higher level coordination with local law enforcement agencies to continue a proactive and responsive approach. The objective of this effort is to identify as many avenues as possible to deterring illegal and nuisance activity. The added code enforcement presence in the communities will allow staff to observe neighborhood conditions first-hand and consider the changing environment in our review of short-term residential rental unit permit applications; both new applications and renewals. The current adverse conditions reported in mountain and desert neighborhoods warrant a full review of the short-term residential rental unit regulations in the County Code, including occupancy limits, short-term residential rental unit permit standards and the criteria for issuing short-term residential rental unit permits. These conditions also justify immediate action on an urgency basis. The adverse conditions in mountain and desert neighborhoods necessitate an immediate change in the enforcement tools available to remedy violations of short-term residential rental unit regulations.”
Noting the $100, $200 and $500 maximum fines that were then in place, Hernandez and Rahhal said those were insufficient to deter the proliferation of nuisances and dangerous activity at the short-term rental sites. They said the urgency ordinance and permanent ordinance they were proposing would drastically increase the city’s ability to fine violators.
“Operating short-term residential rental units is a lucrative business that can absorb the current fines with no impetus to change,” according to the report. “The proposed urgency ordinance would increase these penalties.” They laid out criminal and administrative penalties of $1,000 for the first offense, $2,000 for the second offense and $5,000 for the third offense falling within a 12-month period. The report added, “Subsequent offenses would be subject to suspension or revocation of the short-term residential rental unit permit.”
Operating a short-term rental unit without a permit, Hernandez and Rahhall proposed, would be prosecuted as a misdemeanor and would be subject to the same $1,000, $2,000 and $5,000 fines per violation per day.
Two months on, county officials have not said if the ten-fold increase in fines has resolved the short term rental nuisance issue.
Officials said that the permit process involves providing the short-term rental unit operators with information on how they can operate such businesses with minimal impact on surrounding properties, along with a way that provides a safe environment for those living in the units as well as the surrounding neighborhood.
Meanwhile, this week, on Tuesday, August 24, the Twentynine Palms City Council voted not to impose a moratorium on new vacation home rentals within that 59.14-square mile, 25,500 population desert city.

With COVID-19 resurgent in its Delta variant form, hospitals in San Bernardino County along with the rest of California may be in for a challenge as the state government’s September 30 deadline for all healthcare workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus looms.
A majority of health workers have evinced faith in the medical field that employs them, and a majority have consented to receiving the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson, Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.
As of last month, however, nearly one quarter of the state’s healthcare employees, ranging from janitors to clerical staff to orderlies to candy-stripers to licensed vocational nurses, to registered nurses to nurse practitioners to physician practitioners to doctors of osteopathic medicine to medical doctors have balked at getting vaccinated.
From the outset of the coronavirus crisis in the United States, California and San Bernardino County, there was resistance by some to what were at first suggested precautions and then mandates intended to slow or preclude the spread of the disease, consisting of social distancing, masking, isolation and quarantining and ultimately vaccination.
In the late fall and early winter of 2020, the original form of the malady peaked locally, shortly after which a not-fully-tested vaccine became available.
By and large, a significant portion of the population went along with being vaccinated, and, as the immunity this gave against COVID-19 took hold, it seemed as if one of the most challenging health threats of the Third Millennium was behind humankind. On June 1, 2021, California averaged just two new COVID-19 cases for every 100,000 people.
According to health experts, that was a chimera. The Delta variant of COVID-19 – a fast mutating from of the disease first detected in India in December 2020 – had made its way to California by early March. With some 50 percent of the state’s population at that time unvaccinated, the Delta variant spread at first slowly and then more quickly throughout the population and progressed on a parallel but still different pathway, overpowering much in its way. Those who were unvaccinated and those who had not previously contracted COVID-19 were particularly vulnerable. With the mutation came increased infectability, such that even those who were presumed to be relatively immune – those vaccinated and those who had survived a go-round with the original COVID-19 virus – were contracting the Delta variant, in some cases at an alarming rate.
By July 24, the previous month’s average of just two new cases for every 100,000 people in the Golden State had escalated to 15.2 new cases per 100,000 people.
On July 26, Governor Gavin Newsom issued a mandate that all state workers and workers in the healthcare profession and any situation where there are concentrations of people either show proof of full vaccination or be tested once per week for infection with the virus.
Having a full complement of hospital workers at the state’s and San Bernardino County’s various medical centers and hospitals is now as critical as ever.
Last fall, virtually every available bed in San Bernardino’s hospitals was occupied by patients with normal or routine conditions as well as with the symptoms of COVID-19. It is anticipated that after summer shifts to fall this year, hospitalizations will again increase. Indeed that number may be increasing exponentially already. On June 15, 2021, there were 1,156 COVID-19 patients hospitalized throughout California. The last week of July, that number had climbed to 3,947. The number this week is believed to have exceeded 5,200.
With somewhere between one fifth and one-fourth of the state’s healthcare workers unvaccinated, a crisis is likely to descend upon most hospitals throughout the state. With so many trained and ready workers unable to report to work, those hospitals will be called upon to run short-staffed or fill the gap with vaccinated but most probably unskilled or poorly-trained replacements.
In some of the most prestigious hospitals in Southern California and San Bernardino County, a surprisingly large number of the health professionals employed there are unvaccinated. As of July 24 at Redlands Community Hospital, 41 percent of workers were not vaccinated. At the Mountains Community Hospital in Lake Arrowhead, precise vaccination rates among staff there are not available. One employee there who has so far refused to be vaccinated maintained that approaching 30 percent of the workers at that facility are not fully vaccinated.
Among a substantial cross section of health professionals, there is acceptance of the safety, or relative safety, of the various COVID-19 vaccines. Still the same, some health professionals – even some who have submitted to being vaccinated – say they believe the vaccine carries with it some risk.
Recently, there have been reports of myocarditis after vaccination with mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines in people in their late teens, twenties and thirties. Out of 300 million doses of the vaccine being administered, 1,226 total cases of myocarditis – that is, inflammation and damage to the heart muscle – have been tracked. This, advocates of vaccinating point out, is an infinitesimal .00000408666 risk.
Others have objected to the presence of thimerosal – a mercury-based preservative – in the vaccines. Defenders of vaccines point out that the amount of mercury in a single shot of COVID-19 vaccine falls well below the average amount of mercury contained in a five-ounce can of tuna fish. Moreover, they point out, the mercury in the COVID-19 vaccine is in the form of ethylmercury, which is rapidly passed through the body and will not accumulate in tissues as does methylmercury.
It has been established that use of the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine increases the risk of an extremely rare and serious blood clotting disorder. Virtually all of those impacted by this condition are women ages 18 to 49, with the occurrence running at a ratio of 7 for every 1 million of those inoculated.
Pfizer has acknowledged that 21 cases of anaphylaxis [a severe allergic reaction] were detected after the administration of 1,893,360 first doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, equal to 11.1 cases per million inoculations.
Those reluctant to be vaccinated point out that an insufficient amount of time has passed since the vaccinations have become available to make conclusions about their safety, and that negative consequences from being vaccinated may take years to manifest.
Health professionals point out that medicine inherently involves the balancing of risks and benefits, and that for the vast majority of the human population, the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination greatly exceed the risks.
Some healthcare professionals have objected to vaccinations on moral or ethical grounds, pointing out that the vaccines were derived from a process dependent upon fetal cell lines incubated and cloned in laboratories over the last four to five decades from aborted fetal cells.
Some healthcare professionals who have resisted being vaccinated say they are refusing the inoculations simply on the grounds that they object to the mandates, which they say are an infringement on their constitutional rights.
Within the scope of the debate over the need for healthcare workers to be vaccinated, the risk to the healthcare professionals is not the only calculation or consideration, as the vaccine is intended to reduce the vaccinated party’s contagiosity as part of an effort to protect the patients those professionals come into contact with.
Legal challenges to the mandates have not fared well, at least in some of the cases that have been tested out so far.
Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas was among the first healthcare provider in the country to require its workers to receive COVID-19 vaccinations. When several workers there refused to comply and sued, they did so using the assertion that the hospital was, essentially, demanding that they submit to an experimental process to see if the vaccine worked and if it was safe. They lodged that lawsuit in federal court. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes threw the suit out in June, ruling that what the hospital was engaged in “is not coercion. Houston Methodist is trying to do their business of saving lives without giving them the COVID-19 virus. It is a choice made to keep staff, patients, and their families safer.”
Already, more than a month before Governor Newsom’s September 30 deadline, some of San Bernardino County’s hospitals have drawn the line, moving to terminate hospital workers who have made clear they will not be vaccinated.
At least two such workers at Mountains Community Hospital have been fired, the Sentinel is reliably informed, with preparations under way to fire more, which action will be staved off only if those employees knuckle under and consent to be vaccinated.
The Sentinel is informed that workers who have yet to be vaccinated at other hospitals around the county are being counseled by hospital administrators to seriously rethink their intransigence.
-Mark Gutglueck

It was learned today that a Rancho Cucamonga native was one of the thirteen members of the U.S. military who were slain in a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 26.

Dylan Merola

Highly reliable sources told the Sentinel that Marine Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga was among the mortally wounded on Thursday when a sneak attack was made by what was believed to be a member of ISIS – the Islamic State In Syria – who had assumed a position in a crowd of refugees who had come to the airport in an effort to gain transit out of the war-torn country. That attack consisted of a massive explosion from a bodyworn bomb carried by a single individual who came out of the crowd toward Marines who were assisting in maintaining the security around Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate. Gunfire immediately after the explosion augmented the attack.
From Abbey Gate, passengers were loading into arriving planes that would shortly thereafter depart to bring American citizens and native Afghans, whose cooperation with the American occupation of Afghanistan over the last two decades put them in danger, to safe locations outside Afghanistan.
Eleven Marines and a Navy corpsman were killed nearly instantly in the blast and 19 other Americans were injured. A twelfth Marine died subsequently, bringing the total number of American serviceman killed in the attack to 13.
Merola was a 2019 graduate of Los Osos High School. Prior to being dispatched to Afghanistan, he was recently stationed at Camp Pendleton, a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and was selected as a part of a crisis response team sent to Kabul to assist and stabilize the evacuation effort.

It is unclear why the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office have not taken action to jail, imprison or otherwise institutionalize a psychotic and sociopathic repeat offender who is simultaneously stalking women he knows to be vulnerable.
Jason Michael Tagle, who was last known to be living on the west side of Cucamonga and is also known to frequent a specific neighborhood in east Upland, has been arrested 30 times in San Bernardino County since March of 2016.
He nevertheless has managed to avoid being locked up for long.
As an adult, the now-41-year-old Tagle has 32 recorded convictions against him in San Bernardino County since 1999. His adult criminal record in San Bernardino County alone since the time he reached the age of majority in 1998 includes at least 39 arrests.
Tagle’s juvenile criminal record is not available.
While the lion’s share of the charges and convictions against Tagle pertain to drug offenses, no fewer than eight of his convictions pertain to acts of violence, stalking or firearms charges. At least eleven of his convictions were recorded as felonies.
In recent years, he has shown a propensity to stalk women he has purposefully sought out on the basis of their being alone or living alone.
This stalking has an undeniable sexual element, including incidents of indecent exposure which have been caught on video.
In 1999 he pleaded guilty to a charge of battery upon a spouse or domestic partner filed against him in 1998, when he was 18 years old.
In 1999 Tagle was charged with and pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary while armed,
In 1999 Tagle was charged with being a convict in possession of a firearm, but that case was dismissed.
In 2004 he was convicted of being drunk in public on a case originally filed against him in 2001.
In 2004 he was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm filed against him earlier that year.
In 2005 he was charged with battery and fighting. The battery charge was dismissed later that year, and he was convicted of fighting.
In 2010 he was charged with making criminal threats, being a felon in possession of a firearm, carrying a concealed firearm and exhibiting a firearm in making a criminal threat of violence. In 2011 he was convicted of the carrying a concealed weapon and making criminal threat counts.
In 2011 Tagle pleaded no contest to driving under the influence in 2010.
In 2016 he was charged with and convicted of threatening a victim with death or great bodily injury.
In 2016 he was arrested for and convicted of being under the influence of narcotics.
During 2017, in May, August, September and twice in October, Tagle was charged with using or being under the influence of a controlled substance. He pleaded guilty or no contest to four of those charges.
In 2017 he was twice charged with and admitted to being in violation of his parole.
In 2017 he was charged with obstructing an officer and trespassing. He was adjudged guilty of both in 2018.
Twice in 2018 he was charged with and convicted of felony parole violations.
In 2018 he was was twice charged and convicted of being in possession of dangerous drugs, and twice charged and convicted of being in possession of paraphernalia.
In 2019 Tagle was charged with criminal contempt and willful disobedience of process an a court order.
In 2019 he was charged with and convicted of being under the influence of drugs and being in possession of paraphernalia.
In 2019 he was charged twice with and admitted being in felony violation of his parole.
In 2020 he was charged with and convicted of being in violation of his parole.
In 2020 Tagle was twice arrested for, charged with and convicted of being under the influence of a controlled substance.
In 2020 he was charged with and in 2021 convicted of being under the influence of a controlled substances
In 2020 he was charged with and admitted to being in violation of his parole.
In 2020 he was charged with and in 2021 admitted to being in violation of his parole.
In 2020 he was charged with making repeated harassing and annoying phone calls.
In 2021 he was charged with and convicted of being in possession of a dangerous drug/controlled substance
On July 20, 2021, Tagle was charged with a count of being in possession of a controlled substance and one count of being under the influence of a controlled substance, stemming from a January 11, 2021 incident.
On June 4 and August 18, 2021, Tagle was arrested for being under the influence of a controlled substance.
On July 22, 2021, he was arrested for trespassing on private property.
On August 6, 2021, Tagle was arrested for stalking.
A week ago, on August 20, two days after he was previously arrested on a similar charge, Tagle was arrested for being under the influence of a controlled substance while near St. Joseph’s Catholic Elementary School on Campus Avenue north of 11th Street in Upland.
According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s on-line inmate locator, Tagle is not currently in custody.
A recently recorded Ring video provided to the Sentinel shows Tagle having relations with himself on the front doorstep of the residence of a single woman who lives alone in Rancho Cucamonga.
The woman, armed with the video evidence, approached the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which provides law enforcement services under contract to the City of Rancho Cucamonga, serving, essentially as the Rancho Cucamonga Police Department. Detectives with the department told the woman she should seek a restraining order against Tagle.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department was unable to explain how a civil restraining order or even a criminal protective order against someone such as Tagle, with his propensity for disobeying the law, would serve to protect the victim from Tagle.
According to the woman, two other Rancho Cucamonga women have obtained restraining orders against Tagle. The Sentinel could not find any record of the issuance of those orders.
Tagle has an abiding affinity for methamphetamine, which leaves him in a lethargic and nearly catatonic state when he is not juiced up, and highly volatile when he is amped up or spun out.
At five foot six inches tall and 220 pounds, he is known by the nicknames Li’l Speedy and Speedy.
Tagle’s most recently known address is 7740 Vineyard Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga. He was previously domiciled at 581 East 13th Street in Upland.
Neither the sheriff’s department nor the district attorney’s office chose to engage with the Sentinel on why enforcement and prosecutorial efforts against Tagle have not been initiated in an effort to effectuate his removal from polite society.
-Mark Gutglueck

By Mark Gutglueck
Three days after conducting backroom interviews of an undisclosed number of applicants for Upland’s city manager post, the city council had not by today, Friday, August 27, reached a hiring decision.
Tuesday’s specially-held and remotely-staged interactions between the city’s top decision-makers and those who are interested in filling the city manager post were necessitated by the council’s decision in March that was fully actuated in April to part company with then-City Manager Rosemary Hoerning, and the apparent unwillingness of Assistant City Manager Steven Parker, who is now serving in the role of acting city manager, to accept the actual city manager assignment.
Upland for the last three decades has experienced, in comparison to the other 23 municipalities in San Bernardino County, unparalleled instability with its city manager position.
This was not always so. In March of 1942, Richard Manley, who would later become the Second District San Bernardino County supervisor, took on the role of Upland’s de facto city manager after having served nearly 12 years as Upland city engineer. In 1947, after Manley, at the age of 57 completed the requirements for his master’s degree in public administration by attending night classes at the University of Southern California, became Upland’s first official city manager when that position was formally established. In 1954, Manley was succeeded by Elwin “Pinky” Alder, a licensed pilot and civil draftsman. In 1974, Lee Travers, who was formerly a naval officer, succeeded Alder. Travers remained as city manager for fifteen years. Thus, over the course of 47 years, Upland employed three city managers.
Thereafter, over the next 31 years, Upland has had a succession of 13 city managers: Ray Silver, Mike Matlock, Kevin Northcraft, Martin Thouvenell, G. Michael Milhiser, Robin Quincey, Stephen Dunn, Martin Lomeli, Rod Butler, Martin Thouvenell once more, Bill Manis, Martin Thouvenell a third intermittent time, Jeannette Vagnozzi, Rosemary Hoerning and now Steven Parker.
Manley, Alder and Travers were highly invested in Upland, having established their homes in the city, and thereby identifying the well-being of the city with their own personal interest. With a few rare exceptions, the city managers who served after them were journeymen city managers who had come to Upland to essentially mark time as participants in the California Public Employees Retirement System, gain further experience in the role of city manager and move on to a higher-paying position with another city. Few were leaning forward and taking risks, and they were generally seeking to accomplish no more than keeping at least three of the council members to whom they were answerable satisfied with their presence, while rocking no boats. Uniformly, they gravitated toward mediocrity with regard to the public execution of their duties, and considered it both impolite and impolitic to talk about the performance or incompetence of the department heads or staff they oversaw. When confronted with corruption on the part of their political masters, they ignored it or sought to exploit it to their own advantage. Few had the initiative to lead the city with regard to anything other than meandering toward the status quo during what typically became an average two-to-four-year tenure in the city manager position, and they functioned without any meaningful goals other than fattening their pensions. All proved to be relatively competent tactical leaders capable of keeping the city running on a day-to-day basis, but exhibited no strategic vision as far as shaping the city going forward. All shared a talent for focusing on their own welfare rather than that of the city’s residents, and few had the stomach for pushing city staff toward anything beyond rote and minimal productivity. From one city manager to the next, each understanding that the vast majority of Upland’s citizens were paying no attention, they had no incentive or desire to achieve any out-of-the-box success. They stumbled on without making any significant institutional changes, with the exception of Thouvenell’s shuttering of the Upland Municipal Fire Department in 2017.
The turnover in city managers was a function, for the most part, of an opportunity arising for the holder of the position to get a similar job elsewhere or a personality conflict developing between the city manager and a member or members of the city council and/or the mayor. From time to time, the city council would be gripped with a sense of stagnation or a lack of progress, or faced with a faux-pas on the part of the city manager that became public. These incidents sometimes resulted in the city manager being let go. On more than one occasion, as is currently the case, the council acted to terminate or force a city manager out without having a successor on tap. In some cases, the haste in choosing a replacement came back to haunt the council.
From one perspective, what can be said is that the Upland City Council over the years displayed a pattern of hiring a series of yes men as city managers. The council members and mayor would be pleased, at first, with this show of respect, but later, upon recognizing that they themselves lacked the understanding and skill to move the city in a positive direction, they grew impatient and angry with the city manager they had hired for not being strong enough to stand up and guide the city using his own expertise and initiative, instead substituting subservience and deference to them for actual leadership.
Three decades ago, two-fifths of the city council wanted to hire as city manager Mike Matlock, who had been assistant city manager in Upland for some time and who served in the capacity of acting city manager after Ray Silver left the city in the lurch to take another more lucrative job elsewhere. While Matlock was then young enough and willing to commit to Upland in the tradition of Manley, Alder and Travers, three-fifths of the council did not have confidence in him, and he was returned to the position of assistant city manager when the city instead hired Kevin Northcraft. Northcraft had already demonstrated himself as willing, as well, to relocate his family to Upland and make a long-term commitment to remain as city manager, but personality conflicts with two members of the city council precluded that. As the city was about to axe him, Northcraft in public pleaded, to no avail, for the city to reconsider and allow him to prove his worth to the city.
The most egregious example of the city council banking on a city manager whose loyalty to himself and his own wallet outran his value to the city was Rob Quincey. Quincey, who deferred much of the actual management of the city to Assistant City Manager Rod Foster, served as city manager for five years and ten months. During that time, he wangled eight salary and benefit increases from the mayor and city council, zooming his total annual compensation package from $260,000 to $429,000, and used some of that money to purchase five years of additional credit in the California Public Employees Retirement System.
The city council has been secretive and stealthy about its consideration of city manager candidates and the process of elimination it is using in its march toward a selection. Instead of holding Tuesday morning’s hearing in public, it did so in a remote forum. Initially, a live video of the early public portion of the proceedings was displayed on the visual monitors in the council meeting chamber at City Hall. With members of the public gathered there to witness the council’s deliberations and action, just as some were formulating a request that the volume be turned up, a city employee came into the chamber and, without communicating the reason for doing so, shut off the video.
Unknown is what qualities, precisely, the current mayor and city council is seeking in the next city manager. Whether they are willing to hire someone with municipal management expertise who is yet young enough to remain in the position for a decade or more is one question. Another unknown is if they will be enthusiastic about someone who is determined, ambitious and cooperative, who understands team playing but has enough initiative and confidence to develop a game plan appropriate for Upland on his own, and who understands what assets are and are not available to the city, as well as what can be made of those assets. Whether the members of the council individually and collectively can set aside their egos and hire someone with sufficient backbone to stand up to them when he or she senses that the council is either without direction or attitudinally mistracked, and is capable of council/managerial discourse even if that requires frank review of unpalatable options has yet to be determined.
Parker this afternoon told the Sentinel, “The city council is still in the process of selecting a new city manager. The city council expects to make an announcement of a new city manager once that person’s employment agreement is fully executed.”

In the wake of an uptick in the COVID-19 infection rate nationally and regionally, the Needles Unified School District is not requiring students to wear masks or get vaccinated as the 2021-22 school year gets under way.
The decision has been both hailed and decried by parents of the district’s students.
By late March 2020, most school districts in San Bernardino County had discontinued in-class learning. By April 2020, all public schools in San Bernardino County were no longer holding classes on campus, as the faculties and students switched to distant instruction mode, including classes held through remote electronic hook-ups via the internet and other methodologies including Zoom, a web conferencing platform used for audio and/or video exchanges.
According to medical professionals, initial studies done in mid-2020 indicated that children and adolescents had substantially better COVID-19 outcomes than the elderly, adults and young adults. This was backed by further testing by researchers from Yale and Albert Einstein College of Medicine indicating children produced higher levels of two specific immune system molecules than did those who are older, which led to a tentative conclusion that human children above the age of 4 were more resilient in the face of the original COVID-19 outbreak. This was borne out by the U.S. mortality statistics compiled over the period from February 2020 until February 2021.
The Delta variant of COVID-19 was first identified in India in December 2020, as major outbreaks of the mutated form of the virus took place in that country. The Delta variant then spread, and is now reported in 104 countries. It was first detected in the United States in March 2021.
The Delta variant is highly contagious, and has a demonstrated infectability extending to school age and preschool age children.
According to the National Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, there are four COVID-19 variants of concern, and the country in general, with specific pockets of greater intensity, is currently experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks from infection with SARS-CoV-2 Delta variants as of August 2021.
For that reason, at least some parents of children attending Needles Unified School District schools have challenged district officials’ decision to hold classes in which students are not required to mask up.
Reportedly, both Needles School District Superintendent Mary McNeil and Needles High School Principal Amy Avila have dismissed those parents’ objections, telling them that the state has infused in the district autonomy with regard to the policy relating to efforts to hinder the spread of the disease among the student population, and that the school board has given them authority with regard to decision-making on COVID-19 precautions. One parent quoted Avila as saying, “You can complain all you want. I run this school the way I want.”
The Sentinel’s efforts to reach McNeil and Avila were not successful by press time.
Earlier this summer, the California Department of Public Health issued an order for schools to send home students who refuse to wear masks indoors at schools. The California Public Health Department’s mask requirement differed from the recommendation issued by the Centers for Disease Control, which said only unvaccinated students and staff would be required to wear masks. The Centers for Disease Control had nevertheless stated local officials had discretion to impose additional protections as circumstances dictated.
Thereafter, the State of California issued what was termed a “guidance,” stating that schools “must exclude students from campus” who refused to wear a mask while indoors and who refuse to wear one that the school provides.
Within three days, the California Public Health Department’s mask requirement at schools was rescinded.
The State of California has since delivered another “guidance” recommending masking but indicating it is leaving it up to local school authorities to decide if and how to enforce precautions to take in the face of the coronavirus crisis.
Technically, a requirement that students and adults must wear masks inside school buildings still stands, but the state has advised school districts they have autonomy as to how to deal with noncompliant students.
Both the Association of California School Administrators and the California Teachers Association are in support of the masking requirement.
In Needles, where 863 or 39 percent of the city’s 2,214 voters are Republicans and 677 voters or 30.6 percent are Democrats, a laissez-faire attitude toward COVID-19 precautions prevails.
Many Needles residents, including the parents of children attending public schools there, feel the government has overreacted to the coronavirus crisis and has gone beyond its authority with restrictions and mandates.
Some parents of children in Needles, however, feel that the issue of precautions to be taken with regard to the original COVID-19 outbreak and the Delta mutation of the virus have been politicized, and that the safety of their children is paramount. Some are on the brink of pulling their children out of school if masking requirements are not enforced.

By Mark Gutglueck
Three days after conducting backroom interviews of an undisclosed number of applicants for Upland’s city manager post, the city council had not by today, Friday, August 27, reached a hiring decision.
Tuesday’s specially-held and remotely-staged interactions between the city’s top decision-makers and those who are interested in filling the city manager post were necessitated by the council’s decision in March that was fully actuated in April to part company with then-City Manager Rosemary Hoerning, and the apparent unwillingness of Assistant City Manager Steven Parker, who is now serving in the role of acting city manager, to accept the actual city manager assignment.
Upland for the last three decades has experienced, in comparison to the other 23 municipalities in San Bernardino County, unparalleled instability with its city manager position.
This was not always so. In March of 1942, Richard Manley, who would later be elected Second District San Bernardino County supervisor, took on the role of Upland’s de facto city manager after having served nearly 12 years as Upland city engineer. In 1947, after Manley, at the age of 57 completed the requirements for his master’s degree in public administration by attending night classes at the University of Southern California, became Upland’s first official city manager when that position was formally established. In 1954, Manley was succeeded by Elwin “Pinky” Alder, a licensed pilot and civil draftsman. In 1974, Lee Travers, who was formerly a naval officer, succeeded Alder. Travers remained as city manager for fifteen years. Thus, over the course of 47 years, Upland employed three city managers.
Thereafter, over the next 31 years, Upland has had a succession of 13 city managers: Ray Silver, Mike Matlock, Kevin Northcraft, Martin Thouvenell, G. Michael Milhiser, Robin Quincey, Stephen Dunn, Martin Lomeli, Rod Butler, Martin Thouvenell once more, Bill Manis, Martin Thouvenell a third intermittent time, Jeannette Vagnozzi, Rosemary Hoerning and now Steven Parker.
Manley, Alder and Travers were highly invested in Upland, having established their homes in the city, and thereby identifying the well-being of the city with their own personal interest. With a few rare exceptions, the city managers who served after them were journeymen city managers who had come to Upland to essentially mark time as participants in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, gain further experience in the role of city manager and move on to a higher-paying position with another city. Few were leaning forward and taking risks, and they were generally seeking to accomplish no more than keeping at least three of the council members to whom they were answerable satisfied with their presence, while rocking no boats. Uniformly, they gravitated toward mediocrity with regard to the public execution of their duties, and considered it both impolite and impolitic to talk about the performance or incompetence of the department heads or staff they oversaw. When confronted with corruption on the part of their political masters, they ignored it or sought to exploit it to their own advantage. Few had the initiative to lead the city with regard to anything other than meandering toward the status quo during what typically became an average two-to-four-year tenure in the city manager position, and they functioned without any meaningful goals other than fattening their pensions. All proved to be relatively competent tactical leaders capable of keeping the city running on a day-to-day basis, but exhibited no strategic vision as far as shaping the city going forward. All shared a talent for focusing on their own welfare rather than that of the city’s residents, and few had the stomach for pushing city staff toward anything beyond rote and minimal productivity. From one city manager to the next, each understanding that the vast majority of Upland’s citizens were paying no attention, they had no incentive or desire to achieve any out-of-the-box success. They stumbled on without making any significant institutional changes, with the exception of Thouvenell’s shuttering of the Upland Municipal Fire Department in 2017.
The turnover in city managers was a function, for the most part, of an opportunity arising for the holder of the position to get a similar job elsewhere or a personality conflict developing between the city manager and a member or members of the city council and/or the mayor. From time to time, the city council would be gripped with a sense of stagnation or a lack of progress, or faced with a faux-pas on the part of the city manager that became public. These incidents sometimes resulted in the city manager being let go. On more than one occasion, as is currently the case, the council acted to terminate or force a city manager out without having a successor on tap. In some cases, the haste in choosing a replacement came back to haunt the council.
From one perspective, what can be said is that the Upland City Council over the years displayed a pattern of hiring a series of yes men as city managers. The council members and mayor would be pleased, at first, with this obeisance, but later, upon recognizing that they themselves lacked the understanding and skill to move the city in a positive direction, grew impatient and angry with the city manager they had hired for not being strong enough to stand up and guide the city using his own expertise and initiative, instead substituting genuflection and deference to them for actual leadership.
Three decades ago, two-fifths of the city council wanted to hire as city manager Mike Matlock, who had been assistant city manager in Upland for some time and who served in the capacity of acting city manager after Ray Silver left the city in the lurch to take another more lucrative job elsewhere. While Matlock was then young enough and willing to commit to Upland in the tradition of Manley, Alder and Travers, three-fifths of the council did not have confidence in him, and he was returned to the position of assistant city manager when the city instead hired Kevin Northcraft. Northcraft had already demonstrated himself as willing, as well, to relocate his family to Upland and make a long-term commitment to remain as city manager, but personality conflicts with two members of the city council precluded that. As the city was about to axe him, Northcraft in public pleaded, to no avail, for the city to reconsider and allow him to prove his worth to the city.
The most egregious example of the city council banking on a city manager whose loyalty to himself and his own wallet outran his value to the city was Rob Quincey. Quincey, who deferred much of the actual management of the city to Assistant City Manager Rod Foster, served as city manager for five years and ten months. During that time, he wangled eight salary and benefit increases from the mayor and city council, zooming his total annual compensation package from $260,000 to $429,000, and used some of that money to purchase five years of additional credit in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.
The city council has been secretive and stealthy about its consideration of city manager candidates and the winnowing process it is using in its march toward a selection. Instead of holding Tuesday morning’s hearing in public, it did so in a remote forum. Initially, a live video of the early public portion of the proceedings was displayed on the visual monitors in the council meeting chamber at City Hall. With members of the public gathered there to witness the council’s deliberations and action, just as some in attendance were formulating a request that the volume be turned up, a city employee came into the chamber and, without communicating the reason for doing so, shut off the video.
Unknown is what qualities, precisely, the current mayor and city council is seeking in the next city manager. Whether they are willing to hire someone with municipal management expertise who is yet young enough to remain in the position for a decade or more is one question. Another unknown is if they will be enthusiastic about someone who is determined, ambitious and cooperative, who understands team playing but has enough initiative and confidence to develop a game plan appropriate for Upland on his own, and who understands what assets are and are not available to the city, as well as what can be made of those assets. Whether the members of the council individually and collectively can set aside their egos and hire someone with sufficient backbone to stand up to them when he or she senses that the council is either without direction or attitudinally mistracked and who is capable of council/managerial discourse even if that requires frank review of unpalatable options has yet to be determined.
Parker this afternoon told the Sentinel, “The city council is still in the process of selecting a new city manager. The city council expects to make an announcement of a new city manager once that person’s employment agreement is fully executed.”