Upland city officials, for the most part, have headed for the tall grass when approached about indications that for some 18 months they deliberately neglected to undertake repairs of the most seriously deteriorating span of Foothill Boulevard running from Euclid Avenue to the city and county limits at its west end as a ploy to convince the city’s residents to support an increase in sales tax to be paid by shoppers within the 15.66-square mile city.
According to City Hall sources in a position to know, the strategy was thought up by Mayor Bill Velto. Nevertheless, according to City Councilman Rudy Zuniga, the plan to convince the city’s voters that they should get behind the tax increase, which will generate for the city, it is estimated, somewhere in the neighborhood of $21 million, did not originate with Velto.
Whether the concept of engaging in the benign neglect of West Foothill Boulevard was a product of Velto’s mentation or that of someone else, he and what was at first three members of the council and ultimately all four council members have come to believe that the greater good of the community is being served by allowing what is the city’s most heavily traveled thoroughfare to fall further and further into disrepair.
In 2022, Mayor Velto and the city council, consisting of Rudy Zuniga, Shannan Maust, Carlos Garcia and James Breitling, supported by City Manager Michael Bray and Assistant City Manager Stephen Parker as well as the city’s elected treasurer, Greg Bradley and assisted by City Clerk Keri Johnson, worked through the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office to place Measure L on that year’s November ballot.
Measure L called for the collection of an additional 1 percent sales tax on retail sales within the city, the proceeds from which, estimated at that time as exceeding $16 million per year, were to fall entirely to City Hall for spending on municipal programs at the discretion of the city council.
Despite the appeals of the council to the electorate, which included claims that the city’s governmental structure was in financial difficulty, voters on November 8, 2022 cast 10,222 votes, equal to 44.6 percent, in favor of Measure L, while 12,697 votes, translating to 55.4 percent, were tallied against it, consigning Measure L to defeat.
The voters’ decision was for the city council and other city officials a bitter pill to swallow. At the same election, voters in adjacent Ontario, which has more than twice Upland’s population and more robust commercial districts, passed Measure Q, which city officials there anticipated was to provide that city with more than $90 million in added revenue per year.
Reports have reached the Sentinel that Velto was livid in the aftermath of the 2022 election results, and that he denounced the intelligence of those of his constituents who had rejected Measure L in explicit terms when the definitive results of the election were revealed.
Subsequently, the appropriate response by the city to the voters’ collective decision was discussed among the mayor and council, with mention that the voters needed to be “taught a lesson… punished” or otherwise “put in their place,” according to one city employee. There was further discussion of how the defeat of Measure L was relatively narrow and that much could be learned by analyzing what had gone wrong with the promotional effort for the measure, which had not been sharply coordinated.
In relatively short order, a decision was arrived at to approach the voters with a redo of Measure L in 2024, a presidential election year rather than a gubernatorial election year when voter turnout would be greater. Upland city officials soon formed a consensus opinion or hope that in such an electoral forum, with a more concerted and intensive effort to reeducate Upland’s voters as to what was at stake in the taxing proposal and the use of the funds to be generated, victory for a sales tax measure could be had.
It was at that point, according to internal sources at City Hall, that city officials hit upon the strategy of utilizing Foothill Boulevard, the most prominent and commonly/frequently used feature of the city, as an exemplification by perpetuating its already poor state of repair particularly on the west side of the city to lay the foundation for an appeal to the city’s voters that they support a replication of Measure L when the opportunity would next present itself.
One weakness in the city’s 2022 campaign on behalf of Measure L, city officials were aware, was an overriding perception on the part of the city’s voters that the city was decently-fixed financially and did not have a real need for more money than it already received from the traditional sources of revenue available to cities in California, consisting of a portion of the property tax collected by the county levied on land within the city that is passed back to municipalities, sales tax already collected by the State of California, a portion of which is passed back to cities, a percentage of taxes on gasoline collected by both the state and federal governments returned to the cities from which those taxes are derived, and a host of subventions involving cities, counties, the state government and federal government.
Letting Foothill Boulevard fall into a further state of disrepair would attract the attention of the city’s population in a way that would convince the city’s voters that City Hall is indeed so strapped that it has insufficient funding to engage in routine and basic maintenance of municipal infrastructure, according to the electoral game plan hatched at Upland City Hall. This idea, the Sentinel was told, revolved most prominently and perhaps predictably around Velto, who had taken the voters’ rejection of Measure L quite seriously and personally. Some believed that strategy had been devised by Velto.
Other elements of the strategy were evolving in late 2022 and early 2023, including city officials playing very close to the vest their future intention with regard to placing another sales tax measure on the 2024 ballot. Such secrecy was warranted because in 2022, there had been an entirely unanticipated uprising of individual city residents, a collective of city residents and preexisting forces from outside the city which extended to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and Reform California, who made an effort to oppose Measure L. While it was unknown precisely how effective the No on L campaign had been, it was thought that it might be wise to not give those who had participated in it a forewarning of what was to come.
What is reported to the Sentinel is that a directive from Velto and the city council delivered through the city manager and the assistant city manager went to Upland Director of Development Services Robert Dalquest and Upland Director of Public Works/City Engineer Braden Yu that they should stand down in terms of carrying out any repair or paving work on Foothill Boulevard.
Last month, on September 11, the Sentinel made an attempt to contact Dalquest and sent him an email seeking from him whether it was accurate that the city had put out a directive to him and his department to engage in the benign neglect of Foothill Boulevard. On September 11, the Sentinel made an attempt to contact Velto and on September 12 sent him an email inquiring of him whether it was accurate that he and the city council, through the city’s administration or directly, had instructed Dalquest and Yu and their departments to hold off on any repairs, refurbishings or paving of Foothill Boulevard in the aftermath of Measure L’s failure to obtain majority passage in the 2022 election. Neither Dalquest nor Velto responded to the Sentinel’s inquiries.
The Sentinel is given to understand that Yu was disturbed by what he saw as an attempt at micromanaging his department from the level above him, though he was straitjacketed into a position wherein he had no choice but to comply with those instructions, as his spending authority as a department head was somewhat limited and any disbursements toward projects otherwise under his control were directed from financial authority at City Hall, which was under the direct purview of Assistant City Manager Parker. Yu was, however, aware that city officials in both the city manager’s office and assistant city manager’s office/finance department were actively seeking from the federal, state and county government financial assistance specifically for infrastructure and road maintenance and improvement projects, including ones for Foothill Boulevard. Most specifically, Yu knew that City Manager Blay was in a dialog with individuals from the offices of Second District County Supervisor Jesse Armendarez and Fourth District San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman about obtaining money from the county intended specifically for the repaving of the most seriously eroded portion of Foothill Boulevard, the span running from Euclid Avenue to some 300 feet west of Monte Vista Avenue at the county line between San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties, which is the boundary between Upland and Claremont. Yu knew this because Blay needed from the public works division specific information with regard to Foothill Boulevard and its current conditions in order to pursue the city’s requests of the county. The City of Upland, along what is a north/south divide, lies within both the Second and Fourth county supervisorial districts.
Yu was concerned about perpetuating the neglect of Foothill Boulevard for multiple reasons. Erosion or crumbling of the surface pavement is an ongoing reality that occurs, and which is, ideally and typically, redressed by municipal public works divisions on a regularly scheduled basis based upon the available revenue to that particular city. Such erosion can result in an unevenness in the road surface and gouges in the asphalt that range from minor pockets to holes to the beginning of what are termed, in the popular parlance, potholes. While the proliferation of such faults in the roadway are undesirable, there existence is inevitable. In most cases, such conditions do not, however, become critical until the overlying pavement, referred to as the surface course, is breached, exposing the base course, the layer immediately beneath the surface course, which provides additional load distribution of the traffic running over the roadway. Minor holes generally will not reach the base course. Potholes essentially represent a spot where the surface course is completely gone, and the base course is exposed, such that erosion into the base course has begun or is imminent. This represents a greater problem than the normal or basic maintenance issue of engaging in repaving on a regular basis, since damage to the base course must be repaired before paving over the top of it to recreate or reestablish the surface course can be undertaken. Simply paving over a portion of the road where the base course has been compromised will result very quickly, once the weight of vehicles is again being applied to the road, in the newly lain pavement crumbling.
An even more serious circumstance can come about if, in addition to the pavement, i.e., the surface course, being removed and the underlying base course being damaged, the substrate beneath the base course, referred to as the subbase course, becomes damaged. The subbase is the third, and last, layer of man-made material of which a road or street is composed, lying over the subgrade, the foundation for the road which consists of compacted natural soil.
In a case where the pavement at the top of the road has been pierced, leading to severe damage to the base course which goes beyond the second layer to involve damage to the third layer or subbase, the destruction of the roadway compounds to a level that is difficult to calculate precisely in any given circumstance. In the worst-case scenario, the subsidence in the subgrade can take place if the three layers above it have been compromised. Reestablishing that foundation, with a roadway stretching in two directions around it, presents a substantial problem that requires extensive applications of engineering and practical resources, which can prove to be prohibitively expensive. Even in a case where subsidence has not occurred, repairing the subbase, which is again surrounded by roadway in two directions, requires a skillful and expensive application of engineering and practical wherewithal. After the second and third layers of the road have been repaired, the repair of the base course, i.e., repaving, takes place.
What Yu found himself faced with was a circumstance in which the city was running the risk of having patches all along Foothill Boulevard which had already deteriorated to the point where the pavement was gone and the base course had sustained in many of those cases substantial damage to the point that the subbase was in peril. If the subbase went, the only saving grace for the city would be luck, as the possibility of the subsidence of the earth beneath the roadway would be the next waystation on the city’s itinerary toward a disaster that would cost even more money to redress. As a licensed engineer who was serving in the capacity of Upland’s public works director, Yu’s professional reputation, indeed his future, was on the line. He did not like the situation he had been put in, not one little bit.
After much back and forth between Bray and both the offices of Supervisor Armendarez and Supervisor Hagman in 2023, in early 2024, Supervisor Armendarez came through with $2 million in money from the county to be used by the City of Upland to go toward the repaving of West Foothill Boulevard. Shortly thereafter, that $2 million was matched with another $2 million from the county, this time arranged by Supervisor Hagman.
As is typically the case, however, that available money could not be applied immediately. Preliminary plans and specification for the work had to be articulated, at which point those rough plans were to be laid out into what is, in governmental parlance, called a request for proposals. The request for proposals is an invitation for bids from contractors to do the work described. Under both state and federal law, governmental entities are to conduct an open bid process on such projects and are required, with only the rarest of exceptions in certain extenuating circumstances, to award the contract to what is considered to be the lowest “responsible and responsive” bidder. The language responsible and responsive signifies that the bidder must have the requisite equipment, manpower, experience and record of accomplishment with regard to previous work for the entity offering the contract to have full confidence the work will be done to a satisfactory standard at the cost offered by the bidder.
Such requests for proposals are not effectuated overnight, and for a time, Foothill Boulevard remained in its tattered and worsening-by-the-day condition. The strategy of keeping Foothill in a benign state of disrepair in order to influence Upland voters with regard to a sales tax proposal they didn’t yet know was coming their way was at risk, however, as a result of the funds being in place to effectuate the long-needed refurbishing.
In April, Yu broke the extended streak during which the roadway along Foothill Boulevard was being forsaken, when he proceeded with a project to repair some of the substrate damage at the intersection of Mountain Avenue and Foothill Boulevard, which was capped with repaving.
A similar repair to a small patch of the eastbound Foothill Boulevard Roadway near the intersection with Mulberry Avenue, which lies east of Mountain but is still on West Foothill Boulevard, also took place in the same timeframe.
What is unknown is the degree to which what Yu had done was in defiance of the benign neglect strategy he had been ordered to carry out or whether the repair was done with the blessing of his higher-ups at City Hall or his political masters, the mayor and city council. No one at his point is willing to say one way or the other. Based upon circumstance, the conclusion of many is that it was the former rather than the latter.
On April 23, 2024, Yu was summarily fired. He was informed in a letter written that day by Blay.
In the interim since, the city has not put a project to repave West Foothill Boulevard out to bid with an issuance of a request for proposals.
The council’s intent of placing on the upcoming November 5 another sale tax measure remained under wraps.
After 5 p.m. on July 17, 2024 Upland City Clerk Keri Johnson posted the agenda for the July 22 Upland City Council meeting. On that agenda was an item relating to a city council resolution to ask the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters to put an initiative on the November 5 ballot that would have revamped the city’s current business licensing fees, permits and taxing schedule, which have been in place for more than three decades.
The changes to the business licensing fees and taxes were to have, if passed, city officials predicted, provided the city with somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 million more in revenue than it currently collects.
There is a question now, in the light of subsequent events, whether the city council was sincere in voting to place the business licensing fees and tax initiative on the ballot on July 22 or whether it was engaging in a calculated piece of misdirection – what some have called a “bait and switch” move – to further lull the perceived opposition to a sales tax increase into a state of complacence.
Four days later, Assemblyman Chris Holden, whose district includes Upland, had a meeting with a group of Jewish Women. During the course of that meeting, Holden made a Powerpoint slide presentation relating to how much money the City of Upland would derive in the event its residents voted to pass a sales measure in the November 2024 election. Holden’s presentation was thorough and complete. As, at that point, the City of Upland had done nothing officially or publicly to hint at an effort to place a sales tax proposal before the city’s voters this year, it appeared that Holden was either mistaken or he was privy to something members of the public were not, namely that Upland city officials were going to seek a sales tax increase and that they were purposed to do so this year.
The San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office’s deadline for submitting a proposal to place a measure on the ballot, containing all order of documentation, data and specifics that under normal conditions take weeks if not months to prepare, amass and collate, was 5 p.m. on August 9. At 12 noon on August 8, Keri Johnson, citing an urgent situation, posted notice of a special meeting to take place 24 hours hence. That 24-hour notice is the bare minimum noticing requirement specified in the California Government Code for out-of-the-ordinary meetings that do not rise to the level of a life-and-death emergency. The two items contained on the agenda for the August 9 noon meeting was a resolution rescinding the city council’s previous request of the registrar of voters office that it place the business licensing and tax revamping measure on the November ballot and another resolution calling for the placement of a 1 percent sales tax measure on the ballot.
On August 9, the council met in the council chamber at Upland City Hall, with the mayor and three of the council members present and Councilman Zuniga participating remotely from his workplace in the midst of what was for him an intensive double-shift day on his job. The city council voted to pass the resolutions, completing the meeting before 1 p.m. Johnson put the finishing touches on everything, including certified copies of the memorializing of the city council’s votes that day along with the other required documents to apply for a place on the ballot, which was provided to the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office prior to 3 p.m., with more than two hours to spare before the deadline.
Word spread like wildfire through Upland that city officials, led by Velto, were engaged in something highly deceptive. Indeed, residents examining the language the city proposed putting into the measure which was accepted by the registrar of voters was less of a straightforward description of a sales tax than a biased screed in favor of the measure. A handful of city residents, who had been rocked back on their heels, banded together to retain Upland-based attorney Cory Briggs to challenge the ballot measure language. When the matter was taken up by Superior Court Judge Stephanie E. Thornton-Harris, she entered a finding that city officials were attempting to deceive the city’s voters, and she issued an order that the wording of the Upland sales tax measure which is to appear on the November 5 ballot with the registrar of voters office’s designation of Measure N had to be changed to a straightforward and impartial form if the measure were to be allowed on the ballot.
Very soon after the city council’s pivot away from the measure to revamp the city’s business licensing fees to a sales tax initiative, several people who were acutely aware of the city’s neglect of Foothill Boulevard and were in a position to know what had befallen Yu came forward, speaking to the civically active members of the community, the Sentinel and other organs of public information dissemination.
The Sentinel on September 11 initiated efforts to get Velto and Dalquest, who unlike Yu is yet with the city, to shed light on the order to stand down with regard to repairing Foothill Boulevard. After more than two weeks went by without their response, the Sentinel attempted to take the matter up with the rest of the city council, initiating inquiries by email on October 1 with Zuniga, Maust, Garcia and Breitling. Those emails, which were nearly identical, sought from each whether they had signed onto and participated in what the Sentinel in the email characterized as Velto’s plan to engage in the benign neglect of Foothill Boulevard to convince the city’s voters that City Hall is strapped financially and needs money to take care of basic municipal needs, programs and infrastructure. The Sentinel’s emails did not engender a response, with the exception of a terse return from Zuniga, who offered the information that it was not Velto who devised the strategy of holding off on the repair of Foothill Boulevard.
“It was not Mayor Velto’s decision,” Zuniga wrote. “That’s what I know.”
Who formulated that approach remains an open question. In recent days, as attention has been drawn to the manner in which the council, at least in the view of some, cynically sought to manipulate the deteriorating conditions on the city’s major thoroughfare into support for the sales tax proposal, there has been an effort, emanating from City Hall, to persuade the public that the policy of benign neglect did not exist.
Thanks to a disclosure from City Treasurer Bradley as well Naseem Farooqi’s presence at the court hearing where Judge Thornton-Thomas made her finding and rulings with regard to the biased form of Measure N and its rewording into an impartial form, it is known that the mayor’s and city council’s political supporters, including those who have provided them with campaign donations, have formed a committee to ensure that Measure N does not to go down to defeat, as was the case with Measure L, and that Farooqi has been hired as the consultant to direct the Yes on N campaign.
Farooqi contested the suggestion that Upland has deliberately held off on doing street repairs on Foothill Boulevard or elsewhere, either for reasons related to or unrelated to Measure N.
“The idea that the city council or staff deliberately neglected the maintenance of West Foothill Boulevard to build a case for Measure N is simply not true,” Farooqi said. “In reality, Upland has been proactive in seeking and securing funding to improve this critical corridor. During the 2024 Upland State of the City Address, Mayor Velto announced the allocation of $2 million from San Bernardino County Supervisor Jesse Armendarez specifically for the paving of Foothill Boulevard. Additionally, Supervisor Curt Hagman allocated another $2 million for the same project. These funds are a testament to the city’s commitment, alongside efforts by City Manager Mike Blay, the city council, and staff, to improve the Foothill Corridor and other infrastructure projects in Upland. The notion of any strategic neglect is contradicted by the active steps taken to address the city’s infrastructure needs.”
Farooqi pointed out that “Upland began discussions with San Bernardino County in 2023 specifically to pave the west portion of Foothill Boulevard,” resulting, he said, in the $2 million allocated by Supervisor Armendarez and the $2 million from Supervisor Hagman. “Following that, in April 2024, the city completed a full intersection rehabilitation at Foothill Boulevard and Mountain Avenue.”
The good faith effort by the city council and other city officials at addressing the city’s infrastructure needs is manifest, Farooqi said.
“This year alone, Upland has paved Alpine, Vernon, and Palm residential streets, along with Arrow Highway. Last year, the city worked with the county to pave 24th Street and completed work on 17th Street. These projects reflect the city’s commitment to paving and rehabilitating streets at the maximum level it can afford, making the best use of available resources.”
Measure N represents a good and necessary betterment of the City of Gracious Living rather than the bane its opponents are wrongheadedly describing it as, Farooqi insisted.
“It’s important to highlight that Measure N will provide critical funding for future improvements,” he said. “Measure N will allow Upland to pave even more streets and add officers to combat gangs and criminals entering the city. By law, Measure N funds are protected and cannot be taken by the state or county, ensuring that all funds will stay within Upland to directly benefit its residents.”
Upland’s voters should not be fooled by the mischaracterizations Measure N’s detractors are making of the conscientious public servants who man Upland City Hall four days a week.
“Moreover, the City of Upland was recently recognized as the Best Managed City by Business View Publishing, a testament to its new direction in governance and efficiency,” Farooqi pointed out. “The city has also launched a transparency website portal that allows residents to review spending and project details, ensuring that the public remains informed about how their tax dollars are used.”
Upland should not be defined by scandals from previous years and decades, Farooqi said, now that it has new leadership in place.
“While Upland has faced challenges in the past, the leadership of Mayor Velto, City Manager Mike Blay and the city council has steered the city toward a more transparent and responsible future,” Farooqi averred. “We cannot change history, but we can certainly learn from it, and Upland is doing just that by securing necessary funding, paving roads, and prioritizing public safety.”