San Bernardino Sixth Ward Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin’s advocacy on behalf of her constituents went too far, according to a sanitized executive summary of an investigation ordered by Mayor Helen Tran and five members of the San Bernardino City Council, when she sought from city staff details with regard to the action of former City Manager Robert Field.

It has taken the city council more than a year to catch up with the events that precipitated the exodus of both Field and former Mayor John Valdivia, events in which Calvin had a major hand. Despite a citywide and city council consensus that San Bernardino is better off without either of those two men near the municipal helm, Calvin is now paying the price for serving as one of the sparkplugs in the engine that drove them both out of City Hall. The executive summary of an investigation ordered up by Tran and Calvin’s council colleagues suggests that Calvin’s militation against the now discredited Valdivia both publicly and behind the scenes placed city employees in what they considered to be an uncomfortable position: between two strong-willed warring political factions.

Field tendered his resignation less than a month after the November 2022 municipal election in which Tran was elected to replace Valdivia. Field, who was in place during the final two year and three months of Valdivia’s term as mayor, had grown increasingly at odds with the majority of the city council, which was itself out of step with Valdivia. Tran’s supplanting of Valdivia left Field, whose two-years and three months in the top administrator’s position was marked by his efforts to support elements of the pay-to-play ethos that was the major hallmark of Valdivia’s tenure in office, in an untenable position in the county seat, with virtually no support from the city’s political leadership. He resigned and the city council, including Valdivia, accepted his resignation on December 7, 2022, before Tran was sworn into office.

Multiple factors had undermined Field’s tour as city manager from the outset. One had been the tenuous political circumstance under which he had been hired. At the time of his election as mayor in November 2018 and his installment as mayor the following month, Valdivia was the city’s most dominant political personage, one who controlled four of the six votes on the council. In May of 2019, when his ally, Juan Figueroa, was elected in a special election to replace Valdivia as Third Ward councilman – a position Valdivia had been obliged to resign from to move into the mayor’s post – he controlled five of the council’s seven votes, with only Fourth Ward Councilman Fred Shorett and then-Seventh Ward Councilman Jim Mulvihill consistently opposing him and his policies. But in very short order over the course of the summer and then into the autumn of 2019, First Ward Councilman Ted Sanchez, Second Ward Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra and then-Fifth Ward Councilman Henry Nickel all became estranged from Valdivia, largely as a consequence of his efforts to please his political donors and other entities with business before the city, many of whom, it appeared, were providing Valdivia with money or other accommodations in return from favorable treatment at City Hall. At that point, Valdivia could rely only on the support of Figueroa and then-Sixth Ward Councilman Bessine Richard.

It was in this atmosphere that the city engaged in an effort to find a replacement for retiring City Manager Teri Ledoux in 2020, a protracted process that was resolved when the Valdivia-led recruitment and interview process settled upon Field, the former economic development agency director for Riverside County. In one of his last effective efforts as mayor, Valdivia was able to convince a solid majority of the city council that Field’s understanding of finance and economic revitalization would benefit San Bernardino, which had suffered the ignominy of declaring bankruptcy in 2012, remaining in that state of suspended fiscal animation until 2017 and then suffered through the city’s hemorrhaging of red ink while Ledoux was in the role of city manager, spending some $18.67 million more on city operations than it brought in during the 16 months she was overseeing municipal operations. In September 2020, the council agreed to hire Field.

One of the things that would trip up Field was that he had never before served in the role of a city manager. In his Riverside County assignments, there had always been a higher-ranking staff member – essentially chief executive officers Bill Luna and Jay Orr – who had served as a buffer between him and the elected officials there, the members of the board of supervisors.

What was more, just seven months before Field was hired as city manager in San Bernardino, he had been abruptly fired by Riverside County Chief Executive Officer George Johnson.

It did not help Field that three of the council members who had been in place to vote on his hiring in September 2020 were no longer in office just three months later. Figueroa, Nickel, Richard and Mulvihill all stood for reelection in 2020. In the March primary election, Figueroa alone was victorious. Richard was outright defeated in a head-to-head contest against Kimberly Calvin. Both Nickel, who faced five challengers, and Mulvihill, who was up against four, found themselves in run-offs in the November 2020 election, against Ben Reynoso and Damon Alexander, respectively. Ultimately, Reynoso and Alexander prevailed.

Another crucial factor that came to dog Field was the misimpression that he was given from the outset, as a consequence of Valdivia taking a lead role in the city manager recruitment and applicant winnowing process, that Valdivia was in a more powerful political position than he actually was. In what was an astoundingly politically tone-deaf reading of the actual circumstance for someone occupying a position such as city manager – one which requires insight and sensitivity to political nuance – Field assumed that Valdivia was in control of not only the city council but city staff and the entire city. In actuality, Valdivia’s control of all three entities had been significantly attenuated even prior to Field’s arrival.

Once in place as city manager, Field took command of San Bernardino’s municipal machinery and, in compliance with Valdivia’s requests and direction, attempted, and in some cases succeeded, to facilitate creating money-making opportunities for Valdivia’s associates, affiliates, political backers or patrons. It is unclear whether Field recognized or fully understood the degree to which his action furthered the pay-to-play ethos that had come to embody Valdivia’s administration.

Relatively early on there were manifestations of the clash between the direction Valdivia was seeking to take the city in and the collective and individual vision the rest of the council had for the community. While Valdivia had hoped that with Reynoso’s replacement of Nickel and, in particular, Alexander’s replacement of his implacable foe Mulvihill, he might reform a ruling council coalition and take control of the city’s destiny, it did not play out that way. Reynoso proved to be even more hostile toward Valdivia than Nickel had been during his final two years in office. Though Alexander sought to demonstrate himself to be judiciously committed to evaluating matters that came before the city on an issue-by-issue basis without falling into any predictable alliances with anyone on the council, it became clear that Valdivia could not rely on him for automatic support. Moreover,

Calvin’s presence on the council not only deprived Valdivia of one the two reliable allies he had previously possessed on the council – Richard – she relatively early in the going emerged as the primary opposition to Valdivia, outgunning and even replacing Shorett and Mulvihill in that role.

An early manifestation of this was Calvin’s objection to Valdivia attempting – with Field’s assistance – to commandeer the apportioning process for federal Community Development Block Grant program funds, money entrusted to the city through the Department of Housing and Urban Development for community improvements. Despite the city charter and a policy that banned him from participating in the decision-making relating to how the money was to be spent, Valdivia had preempted the effort by assuming chairmanship of the meeting as part of a ploy to direct at least some of those grants to programs that would employ his political donors or businesses which had hired him, working through his company, Aadvantage Comm LLC, as a consultant. Calvin’s stand against Valdivia included refusing, as a member of the ad hoc committee impaneled to determine how the federal grants were to be spent, to participate in the meeting and loudly decrying the confabulation’s illegality.

Field and city staff had been tasked by the mayor and the city council to set into motion the makeover of the long-shuttered Carousel Mall in downtown San Bernardino. Word surfaced that Valdivia was pushing, from behind the scenes, for the city to entrust the mall redevelopment project to a Chinese-based company, SCG America, which was conveying money to Valdivia. Both Calvin and Reynoso expressed concern that Valdivia was acting improperly in promoting SCG America against other companies that had expressed an interest in the mall property, and that Field was assisting him by granting SCG America an inside track on a proposal to demolish the mall structures in preparation toward the transition of property into a mixed-use retail/residential project. Calvin and Reynoso interpreted that, as did many of the city’s residents, as a clear indication that Valdivia was on the take, that Field knew Valdivia was on the take and that Field was knowingly and directly participating in the quid pro quo arrangements the mayor was involved in. Penultimately, after the city council looked past SCG America and instead entered into an exclusive negotiating agreement with Renaissance Downtowns USA and ICO Real Estate Group – known jointly as the San Bernardino Development Company for renovation project, the city had to back out of that agreement after the California Department of Housing and Community Development lodge a complaint that the city had not made the Carousel Mall property available for bids by entities looking to convert the property to affordable housing.

Beginning in early 2020, Valdivia and the city were hit with a number of lawsuits by current and former employees of the mayor’s office, including Mirna Cisneros, Karen Cervantes, Jackie Aboud, Don Smith and Valdivia’s chief of staff, Matt Brown. In those suits, Cisneros went public with how Valdivia had made sexual advances to her and misused city funds to engage in travel and activity that had no relation to city governance and he was taking money from entities with business before the city; Cervantes related how the mayor had made sexual advances toward her; Aboud likewise said Valdivia had pressured her to accommodate his sexual needs; Smith related how he had been present while Valdivia made a late night rendezvous with a city tow service franchise holder who handed Valdivia an envelope stuffed with cash; and Brown alleged Valdivia attempted to have him make fraudulent unfavorable work reviews of Cisneros, Cervantes, Aboud and Smith to justify their firings and discredit them with regard to the allegations they had made.

Valdivia’s already-moribund political career was dealt a further death blow by efforts Calvin, Reynoso and other community activists engaged in to bring to light a host of illegal activities he had engaged in. Those revelations included an exposure of how Valdivia in June 2021 utilized a host of city facilities and assets to stage what he billed as the “State of the City Address,” a barely disguised effort to promote himself but which in actuality was a fundraising event to fatten his political war chest by creating an invitation list that consisted of his past donors, whom he referred to as San Bernardino’s “movers and shakers,” along with a handful of his political associates, including Figueroa. He excluded the remaining six council members from the guest list.
The council called upon Field and the city’s top administration to look into what had occurred and seek to determine if Valdivia had violated both the law and city policy by utilizing public funds for political purposes.
Ultimately, city staff went through the various expenditures the city made in support of the address, providing that documentation to an attorney, Norma García Guillén. García Guillén thereafter had staff compile further documentation relating to Valdivia’s expenditures of public funds that were used for a hotel stay and meal in San Diego on September 20-22, 2019; a hotel stay in Irvine on September 10-11, 2020; a hotel stay and meal in Irvine on March 8-9, 2021; a hotel stay in Irvine on March 18-19, 2021; meals in Nevada on March 22-23, 2021; a meal in Newport Beach on March 23, 2021; and a meal and hotel stay in Irvine on April 13-14, 2021, all of which García Guillén said had nothing to do with city-related business and provided the basis for censuring Valdivia. García Guillén presented the case for Valdivia’s censure to the city council during a special meeting held on December 1, 2021. In the meantime, Valdivia, who over the first three-and-a-half years that he was mayor collected $854,626.21 into his mayoral electioneering fund, hired former California Assemblyman and Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco as his legal representative in an effort to ward off any criminal charges and blunt any accompanying political attacks and damage he was accumulating along the way. Ultimately, Valdivia would pay Pacheco $487,487.21 for those services, defrayed entirely by his political donors. Despite those expenditures, Pacheco’s response on behalf of Valdivia to García Guillén’s presentation had little impact, as the city council ultimately voted to censure Valdivia at the December 1, 2021 meeting.

That vote of censure, which passed unanimously – including the vote of his erstwhile ally Figueroa – presaged Valdivia’s political demise, which was made official with his third-place finish in the seven-person mayoral contest held in conjunction with the June 2022 California Primary. Valdivia’s campaign treasurer reported that he had expended $649,505.89 overall on his effort to remain in office in the 2022 election. Despite that, and the consideration that he outspent all six of his opponents in the contest, Valdivia finished out of the running, with 2,970 votes or 16.92 percent, behind second-place finisher Jim Penman, who polled 3,510 votes or 20 percent, and the top vote-getter, Helen Tran, with 7,310 votes or 41.65 percent. Tran went on to win the November 2022 run-off.

Effectuating Valdivia’s transition from a phenomenon who in December 2018 bestrode San Bernardino like a political colossus to a washed-up officeholder who in 2022 could not stay in place even by spending well over half of a million dollars and more than twice what was expended by all six of his opponents was a collective effort that involved a groundswell involving scores, indeed hundreds, of San Bernardino residents who had their fill of his exploitation of the governmental process. Nevertheless, two individuals stood out from that crowd. One was Calvin. The other was Treasure Ortiz, who had been one of the original candidates to replace Valdivia as Third Ward councilman in 2019 after he resigned that post to become mayor the previous year and a candidate against Valdivia for mayor in 2022. Ortiz had lost to Figueroa, whom Valdivia had endorsed in 2019 and she placed fourth in the 2022 mayoral race, just behind Valdivia. Both had been relentless in assailing Valdivia, particularly during his final two years in office, Calvin from her perch as an insider on the city council dais and Ortiz as an outsider in her function as a candidate and community activist.

Each of them came under scrutiny as a consequence.

While he yet hand his grip on the mayor’s gavel, Valdivia could be very demanding. Calvin had come to consider virtually every priority that the mayor was pursuing to be illegitimate. Without the explicit endorsement of the council, Calvin believed, Valdivia had no authority to issue orders to city staff. Field carrying out, or attempting to carry out, Valdivia’s agenda, infuriated Calvin. Thus, Field for some time found himself vacillating between Valdivia’s demands and the expectations of the remainder of the council. When Calvin learned that Field was hiding from her and the council action he was taking on behalf of Valdivia, Calvin became angrier still. Indeed, Valdivia emerged as a major unifying factor for the council, as opposing him more than any other single issue put Sanchez, Ibarra, Shorett, Reynoso, Calvin and and Alexander on the same page. Over the last year or so, Field had come to realize that it was virtually impossible to please both camps – one consisting of Valdivia and Figueroa and the other composed of of Sanchez, Ibarra, Shorett, Reynoso, Calvin and Alexander – simultaneously, and he came to understand that having kowtowed to Valdivia for the first year he was city manager had been a major mistake. Field’s life at that point was, in the words of a well-placed source at City Hall, “a literal living hell.” The formula that Field at last had adopted to maintain his sanity was to meet the expectations of Sanchez, Ibarra, Shorett, Reynoso, Calvin and Alexander as best he could and simply live with Valdivia’s contempt.
Despite that, Calvin never got over her discomfiture with Field’s indulgence of Valdivia during the first 15 or 16 months of the time he had been city manager.

A byproduct of Valdivia’s political demise was the end of Field’s career as a city manager. Because of the secrecy – what is referred to as confidentiality – of public personnel matters, it is not known too far beyond the confines of City Hall how many employees Field brought in with him or hired during the time he was in place. Because of that confidentiality, it is not known if any of the personnel that came in with Field or were hired at his instigation left when he did, nor how many. It is not known either if anyone he hired remained in place after his departure or how many.

What is known is that when Calvin had Valdivia in her cross hairs, there was some collateral damage.

Valdivia’s barely-disguised effort to promote himself, the 2021 “State of the City Address,” served as the epiphany that ultimately brought Field to full consciousness of how Valdivia was perceived by a substantial cross section of the community. Until that debacle, Field was working to further Valdivia’s goals, believing he was rightly carrying out what the council majority wanted him to do. Even after it became apparent that Valdivia was persona non grata among his own city council, it took Field several months to adjust. Again, because of the secrecy of government and the confidentiality of discussions that take place in closed “executive” sessions of city councils in California, it is not known how fully on display the hostility between most of the members of the city council and the mayor was and how Field could have gone on as long as he did without coming to the conclusion that Valdivia was a paper political tiger. It is no secret, however, that Calvin had enough of the pay-to-play ethos the city was drenched and was gunning for Valdivia. Anyone who got in the way was blasted.

What is alleged now is that in her single-minded pursuit of blowing Valdivia out of office, Calvin engaged in some of the same things Valdivia was famous for, pursuing action unilaterally using her own authority without the consent of her council colleagues, buttonholing city employees to find out from them what the mayor and city manager were cooking up, and that her demands created a toxic work environment.

In response to the complaint of at least once city employee, the city council arranged to have the city contract with Laguna Niguel-based JL Group, LLC to conduct an administrative investigation to determine whether Calvin engaged in behavior that rose to the level of misconduct and may have violated city rules and/or policies based upon the allegations raised by the claimant.

The city has not released the investigative report. Instead, on December 7, it put out a press release that revealed the existence of the investigation and stated, “On Wednesday, December 6, the San Bernardino City Council voted 5-0 in closed session, with council members Ben Reynoso and Kimberly Calvin absent, to release the executive summary” of the report.

According to the executive summary, “This investigation detailed…factfinders to determine the circumstances surrounding the concerns brought forward by a claimant. Claimant indicated he had been subjected to an unfavorable work atmosphere and, as a result, he began to document incidents that he felt rose to the level of misconduct. Claimant also alleged that Ms. Calvin has contacted him and other city staff directly, and made requests that exceeded the authority of a city councilperson which in essence circumvented the city manager.”
The summary continues, “Ms. Calvin is clearly a highly engaged councilmember and was able to articulate a vision for her ward that she felt would address the needs of her community. While her passion for her electorate is evident, it appeared that her desire to enact positive change would at times create an

atmosphere that was not conducive to an efficient and collaborative workplace and may have violated city rules. On December 15, 2020, Ms. Calvin signed an acknowledgment of mandatory compliance with the city’s harassment policies.”

According to the summary, “The City’s policy on non-discrimination, retaliation, workplace harassment, and sexual harassment outlines the city’s expectations for maintaining a healthy work environment. The facts in this matter demonstrated that Ms. Calvin has repeatedly contacted city staff directly for information and has made requests to provide documents or further research on a specific subject. She has also given city staff direction regarding their specific work assignments

that went beyond a simple request for information. Interpretation of the municipal code provided by a witness is that any requests which require staff to prepare documents or spend time beyond a simple answer to a question are not

appropriate and circumvent the chain of command. Witnesses indicated that several attempts were made to address chain of command issues with the city council.”

According to the summary, “Claimant provided e-mails that verified his allegations that Ms. Calvin contacted staff directly. There were multiple e-mails which Ms. Calvin sent to staff members directly. A witness explained that these emails could cause confusion with staff because they were uncertain about what their response should be and to whom they should be responding. City staff corroborated these assertions and described the anxiety these situations caused at times.”

According to the summary, “The facts in this matter also indicated that many of Ms. Calvin’s interactions with city staff were not on behalf of the city council as a body; rather, she was at times acting unilaterally to make personal requests of her own.”

The summary states, “During the course of this investigation there were several witnesses who reported interactions that they had with Ms. Calvin that also appeared to rise to the level of misconduct.” The summary, however, offers no specific examples of the referenced misconduct.

According to the summary, “There is clearly a very highly charged political atmosphere within the City as a result of Ms. Calvin’s interactions with city staff. Several witnesses expressed that they have experienced negative physical reactions to the stress that they attribute to Ms. Calvin’s behavior. Claimant also alleged that City e-mails may have been improperly forwarded to a local activist, Treasure Ortiz, circumventing the Public Records Act process. While it was clear that another person was in possession of the city e-mails in question, it was not possible to ascertain if they had forwarded this information directly to Ms. Ortiz. The greater weight of credible evidence indicated that they had given this information to other employees who may have subsequently provided it to Ms.Ortiz.”

According to the summary, there were four findings from the investigation.

In the first instance, the summary states investigators sustained the accusation that “City Councilmember Kimberly Calvin created an uncomfortable work environment for claimant that may have violated City of San Bernardino rules.

In the second, the summary states investigators sustained the allegation “City Councilmember Kimberly Calvin created an uncomfortable work environment for additional (other than claimant) City of San Bernardino staff and/or city council colleagues other than [the] claimant” in a way “that may have violated City of San Bernardino rules.”

Thirdly, according to the summary, the investigators were unable to sustain the conclusion that “another person forward[ed] city-generated e-mails to Treasure Ortiz.

Fourth, the investigators, according to the summary, sustained that “City Councilmember Kimberly Calvin violated City of San Bernardino rules regarding her communications and/or direction to city staff?”

In an exchange with the Sentinel early today, Friday, December 8, Calvin said, “My questioning staff was my trying to get answers on what I believe were inappropriate actions of the former City Manager, Rob Field.”

The Sentinel’s inquiries with JL Group personnel, including investigators Mike Hamel, Tom Fischbacher, Jeff Berkenkamp, Patrick O’Dowd, Chad Ellis, Dan Jenks, Bill Whalen and Erik Herzog, attorneys Agnes Szkopek and Michael Peters and attorneys/investigators/principals Jeff Love and Jeff Johnson, as to how Calvin could look into Field’s comportment at City Hall without bypassing him and contacting city employees were unanswered at press time.

In an historic shift, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted to confer the county’s ambulance service franchise on a consortium of 15 public fire agencies and departments, ending the 40-year arrangement it had with American Medical Response, a private corporation.
The implication of the change is multi-fold.
While perhaps not a death knell for the for-profit ambulance service providers that once dominated the county, the change likely means the presence of corporate ambulances will diminish. Prior to the 1970s, few fire departments in San Bernardino County hired personnel who were firefighters first and foremost and, in most cases, exclusively. Only rarely were firemen in the Inland Empire at that time certified or licensed as emergency medical technicians or paramedics, though an effort was made to give them basic first medical response skills, such as artificial respiration and resuscitation.
Medical-related transport companies, ones that engaged in both emergency and non-emergency service, worked in tandem with both law enforcement agencies and fire departments in responding to circumstances of grave injury, heart attacks and the like. In the distant past, there was only limited standardization in the ambulance industry. As the 20th Century progressed, so too did the sophistication and equipment aboard ambulances and used by drivers and attendants, whose training and skill levels likewise advanced.
While non-emergency medical transport – consisting generally of driving elderly patents from their residences to doctor’s offices for scheduled examinations or medical treatments – did not require much more than a conscientious driver and a car or van, emergency medical transport – involving a driver/emergency medical technician and an accompanying paramedic using an ambulance outfitted with sophisticated live-saving and life-sustaining equipment – represented a substantial investment and ongoing expense. Only those willing to make such investments and commitments got into the business. Once they did, the competition was cutthroat, as each ambulance operator had to compete against other ambulance operators for business. That competition, in which the first ambulance to arrive on the scene got the job and therefore the ambulance fee, had a salutary effect, ensuring faster response times, which can be crucial in an emergency medical situation.
By the mid-1970s, Terry Russ, Homer Aerts, Steve Dickmeyer and Don Reed had clawed their separate ways to the top of the emergency medical transport heap on the west and central portion of San Bernardino’s Inland Valley after competing against one another for years and choking out others with less staying power. At that point, they smoked a peace pipe and resolved to merge their operations into one, consolidating and streamlining their dispatch service, and better coordinating it with the local fire and police departments. Through efficiencies and the sharing of resources, they were able to overwhelm the other ambulance operators they were in competition with, lower their prices, and induce most of those competitors to either go out of business, merge with them or sell out to their company, which was dubbed Mercy Ambulance. After pooling their money and initiating a program of making substantial political contributions to local politicians at both the city and county level, Russ, Aerts, Dickmeyer and Reed then used this newfound political clout and influence to have both the county board of supervisors and various city councils “regulate” the ambulance industry, which included essentially adopting the vehicle, equipment and employee training standards Mercy had in place as the minimum requisites for an ambulance operation within their jurisdictions. The politicians were able to do so by asserting that this enhanced public safety.
As Mercy solidified and expanded its domination of the local ambulance industry and it grew to become preeminent among the county’s campaign donors, the county and many of its cities moved to create franchises in which a single ambulance company was allowed to operate and from which any other companies were prohibited from operating. Not surprisingly, in San Bernardino County Mercy was granted the lion’s share of these exclusive franchises, not to mention the most lucrative ones.
As Mercy grew, so did the scope of its operations and its power. The company added helicopters to its line of service and extended its reach all over 20,105 square mile San Bernardino County – a land area the size of four New England states.
A new kid on the block who persisted in the ambulance business in San Bernardino County despite the domination of Mercy Ambulance was American Medical Response, a company which came into the region from elsewhere while Mercy was still thriving in the heart of San Bernardino County. At first, American Medical Response limited itself to servicing the wide open expanse of the Mojave Desert, a place Mercy was willing to let the company operate, given that the calls were sporadic, drives were long and the profits marginal. In 1981, American Medical Response, or AMR for short, was given the county franchise pertaining to unincorporated areas of the county, that is, those places other than where there were established cities. The lion’s share of that unincorporated area was the desert, where AMR had by that point set up an overwhelming presence.
As Russ, Aerts, Dickmeyer and Reed aged and grew wealthier, they began, slowly at first, to disengage from and then inevitably pulled out of the stressful emergency response business entirely. A first step in that direction was selling off – at considerable profit – the Mercy Air wing. Thereafter, they sold or let their heirs take on the ground ambulance fiefdom that Mercy represented, and they withdrew into a retirement of luxury and comfort. With each stage of Russ’s, Aerts’, Dickmeyer’s and Reed’s detachment from the ambulance business, American Medical Response moved in to fill the vacuum created by Mercy’s exodus. Simultaneously, AMR took a leaf out of Mercy Ambulance’s playbook, and it too made hefty political contributions.
Over time, ICEMA – the Inland Counties Emergency Medical Agency – which oversees emergency service provision issues in San Bernardino, Mono and Inyo counties, would confer upon American Medical Response favored status in San Bernardino County that would rival that of Mercy Ambulance a generation before. Because it was ICEMA rather than the board of supervisors that drove the move to grant AMR its position at the top of the ambulance service heap, it at first glance appeared that AMR had achieved that favored status straightforwardly and without the interference of political influence or favoritism. The reality, however, is that ICEMA’s governing board consists of the five members of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, each of whom is entrusted with looking after issues pertaining to emergency medical response not just within the expanse of San Bernardino County but in 10,227-square mile Inyo County and 3,132-square mile Mono County. So, by making contributions to the supervisors, AMR, over the years, was able to keep its nest feathered.
That feathering consists of what are referred to as exclusive operating zones. Thus, there are extensive areas in San Bernardino County, Inyo County and Mono County where one ambulance company has not only primacy but a virtual monopoly in that it, and only it, is authorized and licensed to function there under normal circumstances. The ostensible rationale for granting these monopolies is that operating ambulances is an expensive proposition, not to mention one that is crucial to public health and safety. Competition between ambulance companies has the potential, so the reasoning goes, of driving down the prices those companies charge to the point that their operations will not be profitable enough for them to remain in business. Upon these ambulance companies going out of business, the public would be put into a position where there would be insufficient emergency medical transportation service available to ensure public safety. Thus those arrangements – the exclusive operating zones – have been established.
Some have long disputed that the exclusive operating zones are necessary, and they assert they are rather a ploy by which county politicians have further inculcated a pay-to-play ethos into the county’s governmental function. Among those critics of exclusive operating zones are some who maintain the monopolistic system has long endangered public safety. One of those was the county’s firefighters’ union, known as Local 935, which a decade ago suggested the exclusive operating approach has on occasion created critical shortages in the High Desert’s ambulance transport system.
For years, the county’s decision-makers ignored those warnings.
The overall situation with regard to emergency medical care in the field and emergency medical transport, however, has been gradually evolving. Beginning gradually in the 1970s with the more financially enabled jurisdictions in San Bernardino County and in parallel with evolving standards in the firefighting industry generally, fire departments have striven toward training their existing personnel with regard to lifesaving skills and rudimentary medical care, such that over the years fire departments, one by one could become more selective in their hiring practices. In this way, those competing for the limited number of plum firefighting positions had to find a way to distinguish themselves. This commonly involved those aspiring to becoming firemen or firewoman enrolling in a junior college or community college immediately out of high school and obtaining either a two-year fire science degree or two-year degree in the field or nursing or otherwise obtaining licensing as an emergency medical technician or paramedic.
In this way, the near monopoly that the private sector, for-profit ambulance companies had on certified/licensed paramedics in San Bernardino County in the 1980s has come to an end. This has been paralleled by fire departments acquiring as standard equipment field medical service vehicles outfitted with advanced state-of-the-science medical equipment rivaling or indeed surpassing that available to private sector ambulance companies.
A final crucial factor is that at the local level in San Bernardino County prior to the 1990s, mega-donating to politicians had been the exclusive province of the private sector, primarily the development industry and companies such as Mercy and AMR who had a dog in the hunt when it came to governmental contracts or franchises. Beginning first with the Safety Employees Benefit Association under its then-President Chris Smith thirty years ago, governmental employees unions increased their dues to create a pool of money then used either directly by those unions or political action committees they formed to make monetary donations to politicians, primarily incumbent office holders at the county and city levels, to convince them to increase employee wages and benefits. Over the course of three decades, this practice has matured into the various governmental employees’ unions, including the firefighters’ union, applying money to influence policy decisions that might impact how governmental agencies’ money is spent, including whether certain tasks are to be privatized and performed by entities outside government, such as companies under contract or with franchises, or kept in-house.
Whereas in previous years, the AMR contract was merely “rolled over” in what the county referred to as “a grandfathered process,” last year county officials began to look forward toward what action it would take with regard to the expiration or continuation of the contract. On December 20, 2022, the county released a request for proposals – a solicitation of bids – inviting prospective providers to provide ground ambulance service in 11 of the county’s 26 exclusive operating areas.
Responding to the request were AMR and Consolidated Fire Agencies, known by its acronym CONFIRE, a joint powers authority which provides communications, dispatch, computer information systems support, and geographic location information to its nine member agencies – the Apple Valley Fire Protection District, Chino Valley Independent Fire District, the Colton Fire Department, the Loma Linda Fire Department, the Rancho Cucamonga Fire Department, the Redlands Fire Department, the Rialto Fire Department, the San Bernardino County Fire District and the Victorville Fire Department – and four contract agencies – the Big Bear Fire Department, the Montclair Fire Department, the Running Springs Fire District and the San Manuel Fire Department.
AMR featured in its response that it could commit 12,889 weekly unit hours to respond to calls, had 111 ambulances available during peak system demand and stationed throughout the service area backed with 39 additional available ambulances available to meet surges. It emphasized that it was the current provider of the services with vehicle infrastructure in place and 10 managers and 18 field supervisors and a medical director familiar with the comprehensive needs of the service area. The company offered rates of $3,958 for both basic life support and advanced life support, $2,834 to carry out an interfacility transport, and $4,392 for critical care transport.
In its response, CONFIRE said it could devote 10,371 weekly unit hours to respond to calls, had 93 ambulances available at peak demand, with 45 additional ambulances available to meet surges throughout the service area, would subcontract with Priority Ambulance, which also serves Maricopa County in Arizona, that it will establish ambulance staging locations, on-board personnel, and acquire vehicles upon receiving the contract and that it has leadership and management to meet the demands of providing the service, including nine managers and 18 operations supervisors as well as a medical director and that it controls the regional emergency services communication system. Its proposed rates for its advance life support service were $3,547 for non-emergency and interfacility transfer, $4,053 for emergency transport, $2,533 for non-emergency basic life transport and $3,167 for emergency basic life transport and CCT $5,067 for critical care transport.
What the county referred to as an “independent review panel” made up of four evaluators individually scored each proposal on 14 key areas – system requirements, response time standards, clinical performance, deployment plans, vehicles, medical supplies and equipment, personnel, hospital and community requirements, disaster preparedness/response, quality management, electronic patient care reports, centralized emergency medical dispatch center, financial and administrative requirements qualifications, and future system enhancements – for the purpose of making a recommendation to the county for final negotiation of contract terms. The total cumulative scores, against a standard with 1,720 points maximum, favored AMR, which registered 1,519 total points against 1,515 points for CONFIRE. The county emphasized that the score differential was a mere quarter of 1 percent, with one of the evaluators favoring AMR by 35 points, 419 to 384, while the other three evaluators found in favor of CONFIRE by scores of 383 to 373, 363 to 346 and 385 to 381.
Based on the negligible difference between the scores, the county provided AMR and CONFIRE, with notice to enter into contract negotiations with the county and that the final contract approval rested with the board of supervisors.
After those negotiations concluded, the county purchasing division on October 27, 2023, emailed AMR a notice of intent to recommend that it be awarded a contract extension from the time its current contract expires on March 31 from April 1, 2024 through September 30, 2024 to allow CONFIRE to get prepared to take on the contract for an initial term from October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2029.
AMR lodged a protest, alleging the county had failed to follow the selection procedures and adhere to requirements specified in the request for proposal, awarding the contract to the entity which had prevailed in the competition and that it had otherwise violated state and/or federal law. The county’s purchasing agent, Ariel Gill, who reviewed and considered the protest and notified AMR of its decision to deny the protest.
Thereafter, a motion by Supervisor Jesse Armendarez seconded by Supervisor Curt Hagman to deny the protest from American Medical Response and schedule a vote to consider awarding the contract to Consolidated Fire Agencies and its private subcontractor Priority Ambulance passed by a unanimous vote of the board of supervisors.
At the December 5 meeting, AMR was represented by a spokesman who neglected to identify himself and Mike Rice, the company’s vice president of operations, who made no comments. The unidentified spokesperson said AMR offered “stability, performance and clinical excellence. AMR is in the best position to take this into the future. We’re fully integrated with the fire departments, public health, behavioral health, the communities we serve.” He said AMR had a “depth of resources, history of performance, experience and expertise, disaster response capability and represented a lower risk of liability to the cities and county than have public agencies providing ambulance service. He said that “AMR meets or exceeds all response [time] standards” and featured as part of its vehicle fleet “all-wheel-drive units in key areas that need that… and a disaster command vehicle.” He said the company had helicopter ambulances and was “financially strong” with an established sustainable model.”
CONFIRE was represented by Rancho Cucamonga City Councilfwoman Lynn Kennedy, the chairwoman of the CONFIRE Board of Directors, Rancho Cucamonga Fire Chief Mike McCliman and CONFIRE Chief Nathan Cook. Lynne Kennedy said what CONFIRE was offering something that “will result in increased resources, decreased response times and a delivery model that includes private/public partnership, a private partnership with Priority Ambulance that has the capacity to serve our county and the public partnership that crosses the continuum of care, making sure that every single resident receives the right care at the right time on time every time without exception. It is going to be transformational in three areas. It is going to improve our service delivery, establish an efficient system and invest both financial and human resources back into the system.”
McCliman said that in refining its proposal, CONFIRE “reached out to our elected officials throughout the county. We reached out to our labor unions. We met with every hospital in the county, whether their CEO, vice presidents, their head of nursing or their emergency room doctors.” McCliman said it entered into a public/private arrangement with Priority Ambulance.
Cook said that AMR, as “the incumbent provider cannot perform due to local control and state statutes,” which he enumerated as “four distinctive issues we feel are plaguing the ambulance system in this county, that being a rising and unsustainable call volume, geographical challenges, the frupid [sic] issues in our local hospitals and a bifurcated system between our public and private emergency medical service providers. CONFIRE has hundreds of resources strategically located throughout the entire county. Once we finally bring all the ambulance resources together on the same platform, we’ll be able to leverage all of our emergency medical services resources collectively through a tiered response model, significantly reducing the redundant and parallel responses. This will allow us to hold back ambulances they are truly needed on. As the operational area coordinator for the county, CONFIRE has never known the total number of private ambulances in our system at any given time. We have always been told that information in proprietary. As you know, as a governmental agency we are mandated to be transparent to the communities we serve and nothing is proprietary, especially the health and wellbeing of the public we serve.”
A major portion of audience in attendance was divided between those supporting CONFIRE and those supporting AMR. During the public input portion of the meeting, either side gravitated to one of the two public speaking podiums in the board chamber, with CONFIRE advocates, mostly firefighters, forming a backdrop at one and those backing AMR, predominantly AMR employees or their family members, at the other. With little or no exception, those backing CONFIRE were public employees or elected officials and those supporting AMR were AMR employees or individuals from the private sector.
Rancho Cucamonga Mayor Lloyd Dennis Michael, who was formerly that city’s fire chief, commended the board of supervisors “as you recognize the status quo of how services are being provided needs to be improved and provided in a manner that is transparent, collaborative, efficient and, just as importantly, accountable to our communities and our public. A public/private partnership with Priority Ambulance, CONFIRE’s approach to provide emergency medical care and services is innovative, economically sustainable and will reinvest, most importantly, back into our communities. It is for these reasons that I strongly urge you to select CONFIRE as our new model for the delivery of emergency medical care emergency transport services.
Others supporting CONFIRE were Loma Linda Mayor Phill Dupper, Chino Mayor Eunice Ulloa, Victorville Mayor Debra Jones, San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran, Victorville City Councilwoman Elizabeth Becerra, Chino Valley Professional Firefighters Association President Pete Roebuck, Victorville City Manager Keith Metzler, Ontario Police Chief Mike Lorenz, San Antonio Regional Hospital President and CEO John Chapman, Rancho Cucamonga Assistant City Manager Elisa Cox speaking on behalf of Rancho Cucamonga City Manager John Gillison, Ontario City Manager Scott Ochoa and Fontana City Manager Matt Ballantyne.
There were a few public employees who fell outside the pattern of governmental workers who supported CONFIRE.
Juana Sotelo, a classified worker with the Fontana School District and member of the United Steelworkers Local 1853, which also represents AMR’s drivers and attendants. “It is is irresponsible to use your seat to vote against renewing the contract with AMR, who has been dedicated to our community for years and provided good, family-sustaining jobs in San Bernardino County. If you go through with this change in violation of our own rules and process, it opens us to liability in the future. You are exposing our community to liability with the first accident that occurs.”
Alex Provenshaw was another exception among public employees, a currently employed firefighter who formerly worked for AMR, who supported maintaining the contract with AMR. He said that many of the firefighter/paramedics working for public agencies formerly worked for AMR and recognized that it had a successful formula for serving San Bernardino County.
A third exception to governmental employees who generally supported CONFIRE was Jorge Gomez, who works for the California Correctional Healthcare System. He said that AMR had performed admirably in transporting inmates to hospitals and to other facilities during the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and appeared capable of maintaining a continuum of adequate care during mass emergencies.
Kim Corona, an AMR paramedic, told the board that “AMR has been a longstanding provider here for several years and has done an excellent job in creating job security for those of us who are currently employed. Beyond the interest of AMR employees, Corona said, bringing in Priority Ambulance to serve the community represented a risk to the county’s residents. “We live here. Many of us reside within this county and we are constituents.” She referenced Priority Ambulance as an “out of state third party service which does not know this county, does not know these streets and does not know these communities” that provide “nearly 2,000 less man hours.”
Moreover, Corona said, the county was giving CONFIRE a second bite at the apple after it had lost the competition for the contract carried out with the evaluation process.
“My question to you, board members is this: When did it become acceptable to place proposals side by side in the winner’s ring when one was selected over the other?” she asked. “I urge you to make the right decision.”
Five other AMR employees and five others enunciated support of AMR.
Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Dawn Rowe sought to offer a procedural justification and lay the grounds for a legal defense of conferring the franchise upon CONFIRE despite AMR’s marginal outperformance of its rival in the proposal evaluation.
“The provision in the request for proposals that gives us the board of supervisors, the most discretion in awarding a contract to either entity is stated under the heading in the request for proposals entitled “the contractor scope of work” is summarized as follows: ‘The county realizes that the criteria, other than price, is important, and will award a contract based on the highest scoring proposal that demonstrates the best value and meets needs of the county,” Rowe said. “The language contain in other provisions of the request for proposal discusses the criteria for awarding the contract, which discusses the criteria for awarding the contract, which cannot be ignored by the board. And we can consider which proposal is the best value that meets the needs of the county. Furthermore, we have 2 county policies that I would point to for to consider county policy 1106 and county policy 1104. And I will summarize 1104 as stating that we have an obligation to perform the best value evaluation in the procurement of goods and services. Access to funding creates value. In accordance with Assembly Bill 1705, the Department of Health Care Services developed the public provider ground emergency medical transportation [program] known as PPG EMT. The intergovernmental transfer program, IGT program, [is intended] to provide increased reimbursements to emergency medical transports provided byeligible non contracted public, general emergency medical transportation providers. Of the two proposers that we heard today, Confire JPA [powers authority] may be eligible for this funding, but only Confire JPA. Based on these things, as well as the fact that three of the Four 4 evaluators ranked Confire, JPA, higher than AMR, I would support awarding the contract to Confire JPA.”
The board voted unanimously to support Supervisor Armendarez’s motion, seconded by Supervisor Curt Hagman to deny AMR’s protest and award the five-year contract to CONFIRE.
“We appreciate the service AMR has provided to county residents for many years,” San Bernardino County Chief Operating Officer, who had, together with interim San Bernardino County Emergency Medical Services Administrator Daniel Muñoz overseen for the board of supervisors the evaluation of the two proposals, said in a press release put out after the meeting. “This was a very difficult decision for the board. We are looking forward to a smooth transition and providing the best level of service to those who rely on us in the community.”
AMR expressed consternation with the supervisors’ action in its own press release, which came out only minutes after the county release.
“AMR submitted a superior proposal that was awarded more points than any other proposal, while providing significantly more system ambulances per day to the residents of San Bernardino [County],” according to the company said in its release.
Mike Rice, AMR’s vice president of operations who had remained silent during the company’s presentation during Tuesday’s meeting while allowing its anonymous spokesman to do all the talking, had lost his timidity.
“Given the circumstances, AMR is left with no choice but to explore all available options, including legal recourse, in response to the board’s actions,” Rice said. “The decision made by the county Board of Supervisors does not align with the best interests of the community and the patients of this community. The proposal selected by the board puts 29 fewer ambulances a day on the road than what AMR proposed. The community and our hard-working employees will be negatively impacted by the decision today.”

By Garin Vartanian and Ted Heyck
The United States Environmental Protection Agency study released in October 2023 EPA study has found that perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances are in the Lake Arrowhead drinking water and Lake Arrowhead itself.
Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, known as PFOA, compose a family of more than 5,000 man-made and mostly unregulated chemicals that have been produced since the 1950s. They are commonly referred to as “forever chemicals” because they are resistant to degradation in the environment and when degradation occurs, it results in the formation of additional PFAS compounds or constituents. They are toxic, mobile, persistent, and bioaccumulative. A 1979 private report for DuPont by Haskell Labs found that dogs who were exposed to a single dose of PFOA “died two days after ingestion.”
Based on current available peer-reviewed studies on laboratory animals and epidemiological evidence in human populations, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the following statement: “These studies indicate that exposure to PFOA and PFAS over certain levels may result in adverse health effects, including developmental effects to fetuses during pregnancy or to breastfed infants (e.g., low birth weight, accelerated puberty, skeletal variations), cancer (e.g., testicular, kidney), liver effects (e.g., tissue damage), immune effects (e.g., antibody production and immunity), thyroid effects and other effects (e.g., cholesterol changes).”
The Lake Arrowhead Community Services District test results now show total PFAS levels of 26 parts per trillion where the soon to be adopted EPA safe levels are 4 parts per trillion.
In October of this year, the California Environmental Protection Agency published a comparison of Lake Arrowhead total PFAS concentration levels, defined in quantities of parts per trillion or nanograms per liter, to other areas, revealing in order of severity, contamination at the levels over the safe level of 4: Inglewood – 4.3; Redlands – 4.7; Torrance – 5.1; Calimesa – 9.8; San Bernardino City – 14; Lake Arrowhead – 26.

The High PFAS Levels Are Not A Surprise To LACSD

On July 9, 2020, the State Water Board ordered LACSD to begin monitoring and submit PFAS concentration levels from its Grass Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant which processes the sewer effluent from Lake Arrowhead and recycles water to irrigate the golf course at the Lake Arrowhead Country Club. The rationale was that publicly owned treatment works are potentially significant receivers of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances and have the potential to discharge these wastes into the environment. Despite the treatment of wastewater effluent, including reverse osmosis, there exists a real possibility that the contaminants were present in such concentration that they would be conveyed to surface water and/or into groundwater through the area’s percolation basins. The test results showed that the recycled effluent water exiting the plant after treatment was (15 times the safe levels – 59.4 PPT) on December 16, 2020 and (21 times the safe level – 83.9 PPT) on September 1, 2021.
An analysis of the district’s testing indicates that the recycled water used for irrigation at the Lake Arrowhead Country Club is probably percolating down into the lake as well as overflowing during rainstorms from the recycled water holding pond which lies 200 feet from Grass Valley Lake; thereafter Grass Valley Lake has an underground overflow pipe which feeds into Meadow Bay within Lake Arrowhead. This overflow is utilized when the water level at Grass Valley Lake endangers local homes. That anomaly, combined with our leaking sewage pipe system and the percolation of Lake Arrowhead Country Club recycled water, pollutes local streams and eventually sections of Lake Arrowhead.

How Did All Of This Happen?

There appear to be inadequacies in the recycled water filtration system. In the fall of 2002 Lake Arrowhead was down 19 feet. The Lake Arrowhead Community Services District Board sought to minimize the seriousness of the situation, asserting that the lake had a boundless ability to supply local water demands. At that time, the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District (LACSD) was drawing approximately 3,000-acre feet a year (978,000,000 gallons) including the 230-acre feet (205,000 gallons) used to irrigate the Lake Arrowhead Country Club annually from the lake. The late Ralph Wagner, a consulting engineer and former Arrowhead Lake Association board member, basing his calculation on 20 years of meticulous record keeping, estimated that 1,600-acre feet of water was needed annually to replenish the lake. In fact, in 2006, the State Water Resources Control Board used his research to set the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District’s annual water draw to 1,566-acre feet. However, earlier in 2004, the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District elicited the aid of the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, Tom Dodson and Associates and Tetra Tech Engineering to devise a conservation program: first educating Lake Arrowhead Country Club on the value and safety of recycled water; second, educating the homeowners to use low flow toilets, which it supplied free of charge; and third, upgrading its sewage plant to produce recycled water through a “secondary and tertiary” filtration system, all to be paid for by a temporary supplemental water fee which after many reincarnations finally expired in 2018. The board was assured by the best experts available that all toxic impurities would be removed by a secondary and tertiary filtration system.
The Lake Arrowhead Community Services District Board of Directors, including one of the authors of this article, (Ted Heyck 2003-2007), believed that additional filtration would remove all harmful impurities, including perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, from the recycled water. Ralph Wagner, not on the board at that time, agreed that the proposed system would produce safe irrigation water. However, he wanted a more expensive process, reverse osmosis, which renders from effluent wastewater a purified product safe enough and palatable enough to drink. Unbeknownst to all or virtually all of those involved, from 2002 to 2020, the secondary/tertiary filtration system proposed and approved by the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board and hired consultants would not remove perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances from the water being processed.
In 2020, the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District learned that the current secondary/tertiary system not only does not remove PFAS, but it also actually increases them in the processed wastewater leaving the plant. The Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency consisting of 14 employees, 25,000 sewer connections and a service area 4 times that of Lake Arrowhead, has also discovered that PFAS concentrations increase through sewage processing; and an explanation is that perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substance contaminants are produced by the use of heating, back flushing, consolidation and Teflon elements used in the sewage processing cycle. Big Bear Lake is contemplating the installation of a reverse osmosis system.
The Lake Arrowhead Community Services District/Lake Arrowhead Country Club recycled water system is now known to be dangerous. Nevertheless, local officials, including respected and responsible elected members of the Lake Arrowhead Community Services Board of Directors are having tremendous difficulty coming to terms with that reality. Experts in the field of hydrology and chemistry agree that the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District’s method of processing sewage does not eliminate PFAS. The effluent resulting from the preliminary processing of raw sewage while still containing perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (concentrations increase after processing) is sent either by pipeline to Hesperia, near the headwaters of the Mojave River for disposal, where it is spread over the ground or after additional special secondary and tertiary processing is sent with PFAS to the Arrowhead Country Club grounds where it is kept in a special holding pond approximately 200 feet away from Grass Valley Lake to be used for irrigation. From time to time, during storm events, some of this perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances-contaminated water overflows into Grass Valley Lake and ultimately through a pipeline into Lake Arrowhead.
The pipe from Grass Valley Lake to Lake Arrowhead is usually kept closed; but on various occasions it appears that personnel at the Grass Valley Park open the valves and the contaminated water from Grass Valley Lake pours into Lake Arrowhead. The rest of the contaminated effluent remains in the holding pond where pumps located at LACC distribute effluent containing PFAS through oscillating sprinklers at an average rate of 205,000 gallons a day on Lake Arrowhead Country Club’s Championship Golf Course of 18 greens. From there the PFAS-laden recycled water remains on surfaces where it comes into contact with Lake Arrowhead Country Club members, their family and children during golf and/or celebrations or it percolates down into the subsoil and potentially into the lake.
It was one thing when Lake Arrowhead Country Club’s enormous demand for lake water was contributing to the drainage of the lake, but it is an entirely different thing if it poisons people when the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District supplies Lake Arrowhead Country Club with contaminated water that travels down to Lake Arrowhead through percolation and/or spillage thereby posing a health hazard to all.

The Faulty Lake Arrowhead Sewer System

LACSD’S 100-year-old sewage system is full of cracks and leaking joints. In 2013 the Lahontan Water Board Issued a cease-and-desist order (CDO) Against LACSD for excessive infiltration and inflow (I/I) of the Lake Arrowhead sewer system. The lack of maintenance and upgrades of the existing sewer infrastructure has led to continued violations. On July 14, 2021 there was a 2,875 overflow of raw sewage from a manhole and down a hillside into Lake Arrowhead. On November 9, 2022 a 2-inch steel pipe located within a manhole broke and caused a spill of approximately 21,000 gallons of mixed secondary and tertiary treated effluent. The manhole is located approximately ¼-mile north of the Arrowhead Fish and Game Conservation Club. On March 15, 2023 and thereafter, March 15-27 and 29-30, the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District staff conducted a controlled discharge of a total of 10,096,275 gallons of tertiary treated and secondary treated wastewater containing perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances to an unnamed creek behind the plant that leads to Grass Valley Creek a quarter of a mile to the north. The controlled discharge came as a result of combined snow melt and significant rainfall. The capacity at the two storage ponds in the Grass Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant was exceeded. The storage holding pond and unused clarifiers at the Grass Valley Plant were also exceeded. Under normal operations, treated effluent is either discharged to the holding pond at the Grass Valley Plant for use at the Lake Arrowhead golf course or discharged to the percolation ponds at the Hesperia Effluent Management Site (Hesperia EMS).
In 2013 repeated instances of sewage spills and excessive inflow and infiltration of Lake Arrowhead sewer infrastructure caught the attention of the State Water Board and a cease-and-desist order (CDO) was enacted. The Lake Arrowhead Community Services District was placed under an ongoing state order to clean up its act with progress reporting up to 2025 when the issue would be reevaluated. Until that time, the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District believed that although there were cracks in the infrastructure, some order of magical Arrowhead reality existed in which no sewage flows out of the cracks when ground and rainwater is not flowing in. While the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District admits that from time-to-time thousands of gallons of excess rainwater runs into its sewer system through cracks making it necessary for the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District to dump sewage to relieve the system, the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District denies that any significant amount of raw sewage leaks out through the same cracks when rainwater is not rushing in. Rarely is this kind of magical thinking honored elsewhere.
Dangerous and significant leakage from old, cracked sewage lines is well known as inflow and infiltration (I/I). It is reasonable to assume that exfiltration would also be occurring where sewage material can escape through the same cracks that allow in thousands of gallons of ground and/or rain water. The district’s questionable logic with regard to the nature of one-way water leaks in the district’s sewer infrastructure (in, not out) has prevailed for years. That logic, however, has not sufficed with the Environmental Protection Agency or the State Water Board.

A Cover Up?

On November 14, 2023, information came to light which revealed the secret some public officials were hoping to keep under wraps during the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District’s regularly scheduled board meeting. Board members were asked a simple question – What is the source of the PFAS contamination? Framed with the question was the notation that the suspected source was a combination of recycled sewage water used for irrigation at the Country Club and infiltration/inflow from the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District’s leaking 100 year-old sewer infrastructure. Catherine Cerri, the district’s general manager, countered that the presence of toxic perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substance chemicals is only a recent discovery. She said the source of the PFAS is currently unknown. She sought to emphasize that the contamination presence is minimal and is being thoroughly investigated. Furthermore, she said, rainwater might be the source.

Unconscious And/Or Uncaring?

Lake Arrowhead Community Service District General Manager Cerri admitted in her remarks that the PFAS levels were higher in various areas in the lake. Rain does not fall and remain in isolated areas around a small lake. Cerri’s suggestion that the perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances were finding their way into the lake by means of natural precipitation was deemed by many in attendance to be an intentionally misleading explanation, one which produced expected guffaws which escalated into outright laughter from the members of the public in attendance as well as the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District Board members. The Lake Arrowhead Community Services District Board later made a toast with Lake Arrowhead’s fine drinking water. Rudimentary research reveals that rainwater which begins as distilled water thereafter generally absorbs perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances from sea spray, a de minimis possibility at Lake Arrowhead.
Expectations that the board would be informed about the realities of PFAS are less realistic than that Cerri, who in 2022 was provided with a salary of $228,393.49, pay add-ons and perquisites of $13,492.20 along with benefits of $36,451.85 for a total annual compensation of $278,337.54 and whose 5% cost of living increase and an additional 10% retroactive bonus now has her being remunerated at a level exceeding $300,000 per year, would be up to speed with regard to their nature and the danger they represent. As the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District general manager, Cerri’s assignment is to be on top of all issues involving and impacting the district and keeping both the board and the public informed about the district’s activities, while simultaneously shepherding the various Lake Arrowhead Community Service District projects to completion, including the attempted takeover of the Arrowhead Woods Architectural Committee.
The November 14 Lake Arrowhead Community Service District, recorded for posterity on video, featured Cerri stammering through an attempt to maintain that district had no prior knowledge of local perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances contamination by first saying the district only recently learned about the PFAS problem and that if perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substance contaminants do exist, they are present only in very, very, very small amounts and they are higher in some places than others. PFAS don’t pose a problem, she claimed, and the district doesn’t definitively know where the perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances come from, with rainwater being a potential source. Thereafter, the board and Cerri adjourned into a closed meeting with District Counsel Jospeh Bryne of the Best, Best and Krieger La Firm in order to plan how the district might obtain millions of dollars for damages caused by PFAS, by either joining or opting out of existing lawsuits relating to perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances contamination, including the nationwide class action lawsuit against 3M and DuPont for PFAS contamination, a Settlement Agreement Between Public Water Agencies and DuPont and 3M and City of Camden v. 3M.
Two days later LACSD issued a hasty press release disclosing the alleged “recent discovery of PFAS chemicals” in Lake Arrowhead and its tap water. That press release contained a dubious claim that residents can install a water filter to remove perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances from their household water, not mentioning that standard filtration is largely ineffective and that sufficient filtration can be achieved by a Reverse Osmosis System, which costs on the order of hundreds or thousands of dollars to install. Lake Arrowhead’s local newspaper, the Mountain News, followed up a few days later awith an article on the PFAS chemicals found at the lake.

A Simple Solution?

Transparency would be of assistance in the effort to develop sensible solutions. The district’s dilapidated sewer system has been long ignored. There are flaws in the district’s water recycling system. Ratepayer money is being diverted to the construction of new buildings, a protracted lawsuit with the City of Hesperia over LACSD’s development of a solar farm and inflated salaries of the district’s top echelon.
An appeal has gone out for local residents who have the time, willingness and morality to serve on the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District Board and run the district for the benefit of the ratepayers, local residents who are willing to step up and stop their water company from being used as a cash cow. Today, December 8 is the regular deadline for a local citizen to sign up with the San Bernardino Registrar of Voters to seek office in the upcoming March election. The period during which a write-in candidate can appeal for eligibility runs from January 8 to February 20, 2024.
Garin Vartanian is a 20-year resident of Lake Arrowhead. He has a juris doctorate and a contractor’s license and operates both a computer retail/services company and a plumbing company.
Ted Heyck, an attorney, formerly worked as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, New York and deputy city attorney for the City of Los Angeles. He was previously the president of the Lake Arrowhead Community Services District Board of Directors.

Former Fontana Assistant Police Chief turned political firebrand Alan Hostetter who railed against Governor Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 precaution mandates in early and mid 2020, passionately campaigned for Donald Trump later that year by framing his reelection as president as crucial to the survival of the United States and then denounced his loss as a fraud while threatening those he believed had stolen the election with public executions, was sentenced Thursday to 11 years and three months in prison for insurrectionary activity he engaged in and led on the U.S. Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021.
Former Fontana Assistant Police Chief turned political firebrand Alan Hostetter who railed against Governor Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 precaution mandates in early and mid 2020, passionately campaigned for Donald Trump’s reelection later that year and then denounced his loss as a fraud while threatening those he believed had stolen the election with public executions, was sentenced Thursday to 11 years and three months in prison for insurrectionary activity he engaged in and led on the U.S. Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021.
After serving in the U.S. Army shortly after graduating from high school, Hostetter went to work as a sheriff’s deputy in Orange County before making a lateral transfer to the Fontana Police Department in 1989. He worked his way up the ranks, obtaining in the meantime a bachelor’s degree and then a master’s degree. He acceded to the rank of captain in 2007 and promoted to the department’s second-in-command shortly thereafter. In 2009, while he serving as assistant chief in Fontana, he was hired by La Habra as police chief. He was only there eight months before he took a medical retirement.
He gravitated to the practice of yoga as a means of maintaining conditioning and flexibility, progressed in the art quickly and became a teacher. He opened his own yoga studio in January 2017 ran his own yoga studio, Alpha Yoga of Orange County in Dana Point dedicated to Reiki, Yoga, sound healing, energy healing and meditation. Simultaneously, Hostetter physically transformed himself from the clean-cut infantryman/police officer he had been in his professional life while he was in his late teens, 20s, 30s and early 40s to a bearded and long-haired guru hippy type, one who spoke about eliminating everything other than “good vibes” from his existence and seeking out spiritual fulfillment, getting in touch with his own soul and pursuing universal cosmic realizations.
With the advent of the COVID-19 crisis, Hostetter of a sudden abandoned yoga as a way of life, and became one of the most vocal opponents of the lockdowns and other coronavirus precaution mandates emanating from Sacramento and Governor Gavin Newsom.
Along the way, he picked up allies in the cause with whom he then closely associated. One of those was Russell Taylor, the owner of Ladera Ranch-based Taylor Industries LLC. Another was Irvine Smith, the wealthy scion of the Irvine family that founded the eponymous Orange County community, together with a support network that consisted of Erik Scott Warner, Felipe Antonio “Tony” Martinez, Derek Kinnison, and Ronald Mele.
As co-founders, Hostetter and Taylor established the American Phoenix Project as a bulwark against what they characterized as Governor Newsom’s fascistic efforts to arrest the spread of COVID-19. They installed Irvine Smith as one of the project’s directors.
Hostetter constantly sought out forums where he could make public speeches, ones where there was an already-in place microphone and sound system. If no such facilities were available, he would make use of his his trademark bullhorn, inveighing against the newest set of government regulations being imposed on the people of California and its economy, sounding a dire warning that the country was on a slippery slope sliding toward totalitarian communism.
As a speechmaker, Hostetter went beyond being merely inspirational to outright incendiary. He likened Governor Gavin Newsom mandating that the state’s residents wear face masks when out in public and the discontinuation of public meetings and holding remote/electronic confabulations in their stead and the government’s encouragement of the development of a coronavirus vaccine to Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars for delivery to the slaughterhouses at Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
The anti-COVID-19 mandate effort seemed to reach it apex when on May 21, 2020, when Hostetter was arrested along with seven others for leading a protest against the closure of the parking lot at the public beach in San Clemente when he chained himself to a barrier fence erected by government officials.
Thereafter, with the 2020 election approaching, Hostetter determined that his true calling was to ensure that Donald Trump, in his words “the greatest president this country ever had,” was reelected. He approached that goal with a single-minded determination, participating in numerous rallies on behalf of the president’s reelection effort, often, given the gravitas and star power he represented as a former police chief and Cold War soldier, as the headliner.
As the 2020 election campaign headed toward the clubhouse turn, even those closest to Hostetter were concerned he was becoming unhinged, as he insisted that Donald Trump was a historic figure on par with or greater than the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and that the 45th President represented the last hope for humanity, such that his reelection as president was imperative for the United States to survive as a nation and humans to survive as a species.
Early on election day, when the initial results seemed to presage a Trump victory, Hostetter was ecstatic, but as the returns from inner cities in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan began trending in favor of Joseph Biden, Hostetter’s mood shifted. When President Trump on November 4, 2020, tweeted, “Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE,” Hostetter, like thousands of others went on what has since been described as “war footing,” insisting that the election was being stolen.
Hostetter took part in the million-man Make America Great Again March in the nation’s capital that took place 11 days after the election and was aimed at convincing government officials that a recount of the presidential election votes needed to be carried out. On November 12, 2020, during his drive from California to the march in Washington, D.C. to support the president, Hostetter videoed himself as he was driving through Arkansas, noting that he was on schedule to arrive in Virginia that evening.
“It was so brazen, what they did to us, the theft of this election,” he said on the video, which was posted to his American Phoenix Project video site. “They did this to us in broad daylight. They stole this election while everybody was watching, and they were flipping us the middle finger as they did it. The Deep State has been assuming power in this country and slowly taking everything over in this country. There’s been no honest vote probably in decades, if not longer. They think they’re firmly in control and they’re about to be proven otherwise. Some people, at the highest levels, need to be made an example of, with an execution or two or three. Tyrants, and traitors, need to be executed as an example, so nobody pulls this shit again in our lifetime, and the lifetime of our children, and our grandchildren, and their children’s children.”
The million-man Make America Great Again March did not result in reversing the presidential election outcome. Thereafter, President Trump tweeted, “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Both Hostetter and Taylor saw that posting as a call to action. According to evidence presented at Hostetter’s trial, in a text exchange shortly thereafter, they resolved to travel to the Capitol in order to “intimidate Congress.”
On December 5, 2020, Hostetter repeated his calls for executions, stating, “As long as people like the Clintons, Brennan, Clapper, the dirty cops of the FBI, the treacherous agents of the CIA remain free, as long as they remain free, we have no justice in this system until all the traitors and coup plotters – and, yes, that includes Barack Hussein Obama himself – until these criminals and traitors are behind bars or swinging from the gallows, there is no justice in this country. And as long as there is no justice in this country, there can be no renaissance. There can be no peace.”
On December 12, 2020 at a Stop the Steal rally in Huntington Beach, Hostetter told a mesmerized crowd, “There must – absolutely must – be a reckoning. There must be justice. President Trump must be inaugurated on January 20th, and he must be allowed to finish this historic job of cleaning out the corruption in the cesspool known as Washington, D.C. The enemies and traitors of America, both foreign and domestic, must be held accountable. And they will. There must be long prison terms, while execution is the just punishment for the ringleaders of this coup.”
On December 16, 2020, Hostetter made an Instagram post from the account of the American Phoenix Project, writing, “The time has come when good people may have to act badly…but not wrongly.”
On December 19, Hostetter spoke at a rally, telling the crowd, “January 6th is going to be one of the most important days in the history of this country. We’re gonna have an opportunity on January 6th for millions of patriots to show up in Washington, D.C., and have an impact on what happens in that joint session of Congress. That’s going to be the last opportunity that we solve this problem constitutionally before we move into the Insurrection Act. One way or another, this problem is going to be solved.” Hostetter said the plan was to “Choke that city off, fill it with patriots, and then those people behind the walls of the Senate and the House are gonna be listening to us chanting outside those walls. . . And they’re gonna realize, we have one choice. We either fix this mess and keep America America, or we become traitors, and those five million people outside the walls are gonna drag us out by our hair and tie us to a fucking lamppost. That’s their option.” He encouraged people of like mind to take off work and find any way to get to Washington, D.C. for the January 6 event, which he compared to “the Boston Tea Party.”
After having arrived in Washington, D.C. in early January, 2021, Hostetter and Taylor participated in the organization of a rally outside the Supreme Court on January 5 in which Roger Stone, a key political adviser to Donald Trump, delivered a speech, the upshot of which was that the election in November had been stolen and the Democrats and traitors were brainwashing the public into believing the election results to be confirmed by Congress the following day were on the up-and-up. In his speech, Hostetter made remarks in the same vein, saying “That’s who beat Donald Trump, Dominion and all the fakes and frauds, led by these vipers behind you in the people’s house. They’re gonna hear our voice tomorrow. They’re gonna hear us loud and clear. We are at war in this country! We are at war. Our voices tomorrow are going to put the fear of God in the cowards and the traitors, the RINOs and the communists of the Democrat Party. They need to know we as a people, 100 million strong, are coming for them if they do the wrong thing!” The wrong thing, Hostetter implied, was certifying the election of Joseph Biden. “We are taking our country back!” he vowed.
On December 5, Hostetter and Taylor were present on the capitol grounds, as were Warner, Martinez, Kinnison and Mele. Both Hostetter and Taylor wore backpacks in which they carried, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office, hatchets. It is also believed they were armed with stun batons and pepper spray. In addition, Taylor carried a knife.
Hostetter and Taylor, who were separated from Warner, Martinez, Kinnison and Mele, together made their way toward the Capitol building, disregardful of police barriers and the use of chemical agents such as tear gas being used to prevent the crowd from advancing, approaching the police line on the west plaza area of the Lower West Terrace. They joined a human wave of protester encountering two lines of police officers, one of which was attempting to hold back rioters from advancing onto the West Plaza and another line seeking to prevent the crowd from overrunning the Inaugural Stage. When the police line in front of the West Plaza failed to hold the protesters back, Hostetter and Taylor joined those moving past the officers, while Hostetter, using his bullhorn, encouraged the crowd to continue in its forward surge. The duo pressed on with the crowd moving toward the Inaugural Stage, in the course of which Taylor was pepper sprayed. Taylor momentarily retreated to meet Hostetter, who was behind him, after which they continued forward onto the stairs immediately adjacent to the construction support for the Inaugural Stage.
Hostetter and Taylor ascended to a set of bleachers overlooking the Inaugural Stage and the sea of rioters on the West Plaza. At that spot, Hostetter recorded a video, turning the camera towards the mob, and saying, “The people have taken back their house. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a beautiful sight in my whole life. Hundreds of thousands of patriots showed up today to take back their government.”
Someone off camera could be heard announcing that protesters were going inside the building. Hostetter shut off his video equipment and Hostetter and Taylor descended from the bleachers overlooking the Inaugural Stage and walked up to the Upper West Terrace Door, where rioters were entering the building. As they reached the steps leading up to the door, police began converging on the door from south and north in an effort to prevent any other members of the crowd from going through the door. Hostetter and Taylor did not go into the building, although at one point, Warner, who was separated from them, did go into the Capitol.
Hostetter and Taylor remained on the Upper West Terrace for hours, during which time Hostetter repeatedly used his bullhorn to exhort the crowd.
Hostetter, Russell, Warner, Martinez, Kinnison and Mele were not arrested on January 6 and left Washington, D.C. shortly thereafter.
Over the next several weeks, however, the FBI by monitoring the postings on the American Phoenix Project website and other social media outlets as well as through other means, determined Hostetter, Russell, Warner, Martinez, Kinnison and Mele were present on the Capitol grounds on January 6. In late January, the FBI served search warrants it had obtained for both Hostetter’s and Russell’s Orange County residences.
On June 9, 2021, Hostetter, Russell, Warner, Martinez, Kinnison and Mele were charged with federal offenses that include conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding, and unlawful entry on restricted building or grounds. Taylor is also charged with obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder and unlawful possession of a dangerous weapon on Capitol grounds. Warner and Kinnison are also charged with tampering with documents or proceedings. They were all arrested the following day. No charges were ever filed against Irvine Smith, who was involved with the six and was in Washington, D.C. as part of the protest relating to the election in early January 2021, though his whereabouts on January 6 were not publicly disclosed.
Initially, Hostetter, Taylor, Warner, Martinez, Kinnison, and Mele appeared to be following the advice or a previous American revolutionary, Ben Franklin, who famously said, “We must all hang together, or, certainly, we will all hang separately.” All six maintained their innocence and seemed to be working through established and logical channels to use attorneys to represent them in their legal defenses, although it was known that Kinnison and Martinez in particular as well as Warner and Mele were not well fixed an financially capable of waging a protracted legal battle.
In October 2021, however, Hostetter fired his attorneys and made a motion before the court to represent himself, one that was granted by the judge on the case, Federal Judge Royce Lamberth, sitting in Washington, D.C., where the case against Hostetter and his co-defendants was to be heard, but only after Judge Lamberth made clear to Hostetter that such a move was ill-advised.
Shortly after Hostetter became his own attorney, he broke with his co-defendants, alleging in motions he authored himself that Taylor, Warner, Martinez, Kinnison, Mele and Smith were actually agents of the government working in conjunction with the FBI, Democrats, communists, liberals, the Illuminati, “secret societies” such as the Freemasons and the Skull and Bones fraternity at Yale University and religious “cults” such as Scientologists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the “swamp” of “Deep State” actors in Washington, D.C. and the Joseph Biden-controlled Justice Department to discredit him. The motive for going after him, Hostetter claimed in the motion to the court, was his having taken a stand in opposition to “COVID-19 lockdowns and stay-at-home orders” instituted during the coronavirus pandemic and his effectiveness in leading that movement. His motion sought the dismissal of all of the charges against him. Judge Lamberth denied the motion. Nevertheless, Hostetter’s tactics forced the court to separate his case from that of his fellow defendants.
Earlier this year, Taylor entered a guilty plea and agreed to turn state’s evidence and testify against the others, including Hostetter. Momentarily, this heartened Hostetter, who thought he might use Taylor’s capitulation to reapply and make more convincing his assertion that the federal government was plotting against him and that his co-defendants were government informants.
Hostetter, conscious that Judge Lamberth was a Ronald Reagan appointee, a Republican and sympathetic to a public and political orientation that held law-and-order in high regard, believed he could use his status as an Army veteran and career law enforcement professional who had acceded to the posts of assistant Fontana police chief and La Habra police chief to forge a rapport with Judge Lamberth. He agreed to forego a jury trial and instead be tried in a bench trial with Lamberth serving as both judge and jury.
Taylor’s defection proved less than helpful to Hostetter during his July trial, as he testified about the preparations the group in which they were a part engaged in prior to the actions in the nation’s capital, extending to arming themselves with weapons, including axes they both carried with them in their backpacks in their sojourn to the Capitol grounds on January 6.
After the trial, Judge Lamberth found Hostetter guilty on all four felony counts lodged against him – conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of an official proceeding, including aiding and abetting others engaged in that obstruction and interference; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; and disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building and grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
“Even if Mr. Hostetter sincerely believed – which it appears he did – that the election was fraudulent, that President Trump was the rightful winner, and that public officials committed treason, as a former police chief he still must have known it was unlawful to vindicate that perceived injustice by engaging in mob violence to obstruct Congress,” Judge Lamberth said in pronouncing his verdicts.
In their sentencing memorandum filed November 29, 2023, United States Attorney Matthew M. Graves and assistant U.S. attorneys Anthony Mariano and Jason Manning asserted that Hostetter’s criminal activity in furtherance of the January 6 insurrection merits him 151 months in federal prison.
Graves, Mariano and Manning noted that Hostetter, as a former law enforcement officer steeped in the ways of the justice system, was disrespectful of the culture and the establishment he had functioned within throughout his professional life when he was himself being processed by the justice system.
“Hostetter’s character was on full display as he belligerently cross-examined a U.S. Capitol police captain,” the prosecutors maintained.
Hostetter committed perjury at trial, according to Graves, Mariano and Manning, when he falsely asserted at trial that he did not have the hatchet in his backpack when he was on the capitol grounds.
“The court also saw that Hostetter, when backed into a corner, was willing to lie,” according to Graves, Mariano and Manning.
“His intent was to make members of Congress afraid they might be murdered because his preferred candidate lost an election,” the prosecutors told the court. Hostetter likes to wrap himself in the American flag and take on the role of freedom fighter, but there is nothing patriotic or American about calling for violence — or threatening violence — to achieve your political aims. That is not patriotism. That is terrorism. Hostetter has shown himself to be a man eager to stoke the fires of revolution, and to assume the role of a leader of the revolution he fantasizes is coming. Hostetter talked repeatedly in advance of January 6 in the language of ‘war’ and ‘revolution.’ He discussed the ‘tyrants and traitors’ and the need for ‘executions’ of his political enemies. His delusions of grandeur – to see himself as the main player in a grand conspiracy centered on January 6, 2021 – further demonstrate the danger Hostetter poses to the community in the future.”
Many of those involved or familiar with Hostetter during his time as a law enforcement officer have been concerned for some time about his mental state. Since he went off on his crusade against Democrats and both liberal and progressive politicians in the aftermath of the society-wide precautions against the coronavirus epidemic that were being put in place, he would become, many of his friends and acquaintances perceived, unreasonably irate and profane with those who simply complied with the regulations or accepted the reasons for them as valid. The forceful nature of his personality made for many uncomfortable encounters with friends and acquaintances who had donned masks and encountered him on street or in other public settings.
Many who knew him both casually and more intimately detected in him a tinge of paranoia, his recurrent perception that others were out to get him or in some way conspiring against him. Earlier this year, he departed San Clemente and moved to Poolville, Texas.
–Mark Gutglueck

The Yucaipa City Council is due, on December 11, to vote with regard to the city’s mayoral rotation.
At that point, the council will select from among its members someone to serve in the capacity of mayor for the next year. Currently, Justin Beaver is mayor. Given the tradition of rotating to a council member deemed by the whole council to have sufficient experience to wield the gavel, there have been suggestions that Councilman Bobby Duncan, who is the longest serving member of the council, having been first elected in 2012, or Jon Thorp, who has been on the council since 2020, will be designated as mayor.
The other two members of the council are Matt Garner and Chris Venable, who were elected in 2022.
There is speculation that the council will hold off on appointing Thorp as mayor this year, given that he has accumulated only three years of experience on the council at this point. Last year, Beaver, who was first elected in 2020, was entrusted with the mayoral post. That proved inauspicious, however, as action taken by the council under his watch, specifically the firing of City Attorney David Snow and the forced retirement of City Manager Ray Casey, triggered the first recall effort in Yucaipa history, one that targeted Beaver, Duncan and Garner. They were able to duck being removed from office largely based on the creativity of the city manager they put into Casey’s place, Chris Mann, who used a substantial amount of city money to hire the Los Angeles-based Sutton Law Firm, which put together a legal challenge of the recall proponents’ stated rationale for the recalls. Mann was then able to convince the city clerk he had hired, Ana Sauseda, to serve as the plaintiff in the suit. The recall proponents found themselves too distracted with defending themselves against the lawsuit and threats from Sauseda and city spokesman Joe Pradetto that if they did not back off they would individually and collectively be prosecuted and face being tarred with misdemeanor convictions to pursue getting sufficient voter signatures to force the recall election. The feeling now is that the council may want to avoid bestowing the mayoral honorific on yet another council member with slim political experience.
The difficulty is that Duncan has been a magnet of controversy, both as a city councilman and mayor. Duncan was one of the three council members who pressured Casey into resigning. When he was mayor in 2019, he was quoted as making a blanket denunciation of Muslims. “I don’t know about y’all, but I am 100% anti-Islam,” Duncan posted on his Facebook page. He subsequently referred to Islam as “mankind’s most violence supremacist culture.”
In June 2020, Duncan again found himself at the center of unwanted attention when he was caught on video with several other men openly carrying guns in the Yucaipa’s business district as a means of discouraging protest there that was manifesting throughout the country in the aftermath of the infamous George Floyd killing at the hands of the police in Minneapolis the previous month.
A host of Yucaipa residents are now preparing to lobby the council to refrain from nominating Duncan as mayor.
Fliers circulating around town state that Duncan “doesn’t have the integrity to represent the City of Yucaipa as mayor and is unsuitable as a council member. We can’t let him become mayor again. Allow Justin Beaver to serve another term with Jon Thorp as mayor pro tem.”
The flier further inveighs against Duncan by enumerating “what’s wrong” with him using a series of bullet points. Those are:
“● He voted to remove City Manager Ray Casey, then hired a political operative
without the city conducting a transparent search for Casey’s replacement.
● He votes to push dense development, thus changing the character of Yucaipa.
● He lacks good judgment in the way he conducts himself as mayor pro tem
during city council meetings.
● He insulted Yucaipa citizens by infamously telling Yucaipa residents that he
won’t listen, ‘…when you all speak now, all I hear is blah blah blah, wah-wah
wah-wah…’”
In recent years, Duncan, owing to what he says is poor treatment by the media, has blocked efforts to converse with him. The Sentinel was unable to get his reaction to the effort to prevent him from again becoming mayor.
–Mark Gutglueck

One of three burglars attempting to defeat the safe at the Doctor’s Choice Pharmacy in Upland in the early morning hours Wednesday died from severe burn injuries sustained when the car he fled in with three accomplices burst into flames upon colliding with a Metrolink Train while they were attempting to make their getaway from the botched break in.
Just before 4:40 a.m., the owner of the pharmacy, located at 639 North 13th Avenue between San Antonio Road and Arrow Highway and within walking distance of San Antonio Regional Hospital was awakened at his home, which is located more than a mile from the site, by an alarm indicating one of the doors to the pharmacy had been breached. Simultaneously, the alarm registered at the Upland Police Department headquarters, located at 1499 West 13th Street. The pharmacy owner’s real time scrutiny of video from security camera in the pharmacy showed three individuals were within the premises. One camera showed that upon locating the pharmacy’s staff, one of the burglars shot at it in an effort to open it.
According to the Upland Police Department, “On 12/6/23 at 4:39 am, we received a call of a burglary at a pharmacy in the 600 block of N. 13th Ave. As we were enroute, the business owner also called and said he was watching the burglary in progress via cameras and said there were three suspects, one of whom was shooting a firearm at the safe.
As officers arrived on scene, the suspects ran to a stolen Dodge Charger Hellcat that immediately fled and led officers on a pursuit. During the pursuit, the suspect vehicle entered the southbound lanes of northbound Euclid Ave and was approaching the train tracks when the railroad warnings activated. The suspect vehicle failed to stop and collided into a moving Metrolink train, causing major damage to the Charger that immediately caught fire.”
According to the police department, “The driver of the Charger tried to flee, but was quickly captured. Two injured suspects exited the vehicle and were immediately detained and carried away from the burning car. A fourth suspect was located in the front passenger’s seat and had to be dragged from the wreckage; he sustained serious burns to his entire body, was taken to a trauma center, but unfortunately succumbed to his injuries. This same vehicle/crew may be associated to a pharmacy burglary in Claremont that occurred just before the Upland burglary.”
Further information is that the four or others fitting their description were also involved in burglary of a pharmacy in Glendora.
The police department by press time had not released the name of driver or two surviving burglars nor the deceased man. The driver was booked on suspicion of murder. All three remain in custody, according to the police.
Law enforcement sources tell the Sentinel that the participants, all of whom are African American, are part of a network of burglars from South Central Los Angeles, Irwindale, Compton, Watts, Westmont and Gramercy Park who target businesses located far afield of Los Angeles, variously in Orange County, eastern Los Angeles County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County. They most often strike by driving to an area between their home/base and immediate intended destination, steal a vehicle with which to drive to the location where the crime is perpetrated, then return the car to near its original location to regain the car owned by one of the participants. An individual skilled in hot-wiring and defeating security mechanisms usually performs the role of driver and remains with the car while the passengers effectuate the theft.
Dodge Charger Hellcats are an extremely popular vehicle for thieves. Within the United States as a whole, they are stolen more than 60 times more frequently on average than typical passenger cars, according to the Highway Loss Data Institute.
-Mark Gutglueck

By Mark Gutglueck
In response to intensifying objections, the Twentynine Palms City Council next week will reconsider its plan to construct a sewer treatment plant at its prior proposed site northwest of the intersection of Twentynine Palms Highway and Utah Trail.
In October, the city was provided with a $50 million grant from the State of California intended to defray a major portion of the project’s cost. One of the strings attached to that money is that the city must formulate and provide back to state officials its plan for the plant by the end of January. Thereafter, it must meet certain other specified milestones with regard to the undertaking, asnd must complete the wastewater treatment plant portion of the system by the end of December 2026.
At present, other than a sewer system at the Marine Corps Base, Twentynine Palms utilizes septic systems.
With increases in population and the migration of higher volumes of untreated biowaste effluent and nitrates from the septic systems into the ground, the natural purification process as the liquid moves downward accompanied by moisture from rainwater and other natural water recharge can prove insufficient before that flow reaches the water table. Such issues, referred to as nitrogen loading, are not as acute in Twentynine Palms as in Yucca Valley. Nevertheless, as the population in Twentynine Palms grows, water usage and septic density and intensification will increase, overwhelming the leach fields and the earth below them and above the water table that serves as a natural filtration mechanism, which is also referred to by the term dentrification. Those “salts,” to use a euphemism, which are not filtered out will in time overwhelm and foul the region’s water supply. The increase in the septic load that will accompany more development in the area will increase this flow, such that the only way to prevent the polluting of the water supply is to create a water treatment system – a sewage treatment plant – to purify the water before it is allowed to migrate into the aquifer.
In September 2021, Congressman Jay Obernolte obtained $45 million in federa money to pay for the construction of a wastewater treatment plant in Twentynine Palms, one that was to service, in the main, the Marine Corp Air Ground Combat Center, but which would also offer some treatment capability for a portion of the City of Twentynine Palms.
In the February/March 2023 timeframe, then-Twentynine Palms City Manager Frank Luckino, who at one time had been the assistant general manager/chief financial officer of the Hi-Desert Water District in Yucca Valley, had the city push ahead with seeking state funding/state grants for completing Twentynine Palms sewer system. In doing so, Luckino and city staff tentatively indentified the sewer plant site in the vicinity of Two Mile Road and Utah Trail, west of Sunmore Estates.
Since then, residents and businesses proximate to that area have objected to that proposed placement, and have sought a change in plan that would place it further east, well away from any currently existing development, either residential or commercial. According to some residents, constructing the plant in its currently-planned for location would potentially render nearby businesses unviable and subject the city’s downtown district to the west, the Oasis of Mara and 29 Palms Inn to the south, Campbell House to the east and Twentynine Palms Elementary School to the north to devaluation.
Last month, the state came through with a $50 million grant to complete that work. Conceptually, the city is exploring the potential to tie the Marine base sewer system together with that portion of the city’s system that will be most proximate to the base. The city is under the gun to firm up its plans and present them to Sacramento to ensure the delivery of the $50 million. Caught between the state and local residents and businesses who do not want the plant at Two Mile Road and Utah Trail, city officials are scrambling to find a new site.
Dispensing with the plan to relocate it from the site near Two Mile Road and Utah Trail introduces a degree of complication.
City officials had initially planned on locating the sewage treatment plant on Amboy Road east of Adobe Road, but the water district had concerns about having the treatment plant that close to the fluoride treatment plant.
Before Luckino left Twentynine Palms to become city manager in Desert Hot Springs, he cataloged through alternate sites. Virtually every viable alternative, he told the city council and public in October, in particular moving the plant further east, would represent a problem relating to system efficiency and added cost. The farther east the plant goes, the greater distance the sewer lines must extend, adding costs to the project. Going much farther than Utah Trail, to as far east as the existent off-road motorcycle track would burden the project with at least $8 million more in cost and as much as $10 million more. The proposed location north of Highway 62 and west of Utah Trail, according to Luckino, offers the best spot in terms of topography, such that gravity will do much of the work. Locating it elsewhere, he said, would make the undertaking more expensive, as lift stations would be needed to pump the effluent uphill and raising the line to prevent it from being subject to damage from flooding would be required.
In constructing the project, the city plans to build the collection system in five phases, with the first phase involving laying down 10 miles of pipeline and no lift stations at a cost of $31 million in current dollars; a second phase in which 20 miles of pipeline would be laid into the ground with no lift stations at a cost of $58 million current dollars; the third phase of 26 miles of pipeline and no lift stations at a cost of $83 million in current dollars;, the fourth phase entailing 17 miles of pipeline with no lift stations at a cost of $51 million current dollars and the fifth and final phase of 40 miles of pipeline with seven lift stations at a cost of $133 million in current dollars. The construction of the collection system would consist of laying in 113 miles of pipeline and seven lift stations at a total cost of $356 million in current dollars.
The sewer plant is to be built to easily accommodate the processing of 900,0000 gallons of effluent per day.
Because of the sentiment against establishing the sewer plant at the Two Mile Road and Utah Trail location, many residents and some city officials have seriously suggested looking the State of California’s gift horse in the mouth and refusing to accept the money, putting off for another generation constructing the sewer system.
If the city uses the state grant, existing residences will be able to hook up to the sewer system at no cost. If the city forgoes reception of the grant, homeowners will be saddled with a cost of about $12,000 each in 2023 dollars to tie into the system.
On December 12, the city council will consider alternate sites for the proposed wastewater treatment plant and the attendant costs, or estimated attendent costs, for each. There are three known alternative sites, those being proximate to Desert Knoll Avenue, another some 1,200 feet east of Desert Knoll Avenue and another a whopping 1.5 miles east of Desert Knoll Avenue.
According to a city staff report, city officials had hoped and actually expected the state to come through with more than the $50 million grant. Exactly how the project in its entirety will be funded remains up in the air.
On December 12, the city will also consider what the ongoing costs of operating the system will be.