Daisy Chain

By Mike Rivera

I had to leave work early. If I had stayed, I might have driven my fist through the computer monitor—or worse, through my boss’s nose. As I headed home, I noticed what a beautiful spring morning it was. I had forgotten what it was like to be out at this time of day. The air smelled just as I remembered from childhood. What was that smell? Sagebrush? Eucalyptus? I took a deep breath.
My old elementary school was just a couple of miles off the freeway, so on impulse, I took the exit.
Driving past the abandoned drive-in theater, I felt a twinge of nostalgia. Mom used to take my brother Mark and me there to see Disney movies. She always dressed us in pajamas because she knew we’d fall asleep on the way home. Now, the big outdoor screen was falling apart, its once-proud structure reduced to a crumbling relic. The enormous lot where cars once gathered was cracked and potholed, repurposed now as an outdoor flea market. My wife likes to go there and pick up “bargains”. I think it’s just a bunch of old junk.
I pulled into the school parking lot. The squat beige buildings were still there, now used as an adult education center. The asphalt play yard bore the faded white outlines of forgotten games. Then I saw them—the tiny white daisies dotting the grass playfield.
I remembered recess, sitting in the grass, weaving daisy chains with my friends. We would pick a daisy, push a thumbnail through the stem to make a small hole, then thread another daisy through it. Over and over, linking them together into delicate chains.
Without thinking, I sat down in the grass and started picking daisies, linking them just as I had all those years ago. A gentle breeze brushed my face, carrying that familiar scent again. Whatever it was, it smelled like home. I took another deep breath, lay back, and closed my eyes. The grass was cool and slightly damp from the rain a few days ago, but the sun warmed me just enough to make it perfect.
How had my life gotten so complicated? How had I filled it with so many things I didn’t enjoy? From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed, it seemed like everything I did was for someone else—my boss, my wife, my kids, the house. I never did anything for myself anymore.
A loud bell jolted me awake.
I sat up in shock. That bell—it couldn’t be. But then I heard the rush of feet, laughter spilling across the playground. I blinked. Had they turned this place back into an elementary school?
I was still trying to process it when a kid came running straight toward me.
“Hey, Mike! How’d you get out here so fast?”
I froze. The voice. The face. It was Danny—my best friend from childhood. But that was impossible. Danny was dead. He had joined a gang in high school and was stabbed in a fight.
A surge of adrenaline shot through me. My heart pounded. I looked down at myself and nearly fainted. My hands were small. My body—pre-adolescent. The mole on my left forearm, the one I had removed years ago, was back, but it was small—just like when I was a kid.
“What the fuck?” I gasped. The voice that came out of me wasn’t my adult voice. It was the voice of a boy.
Danny stopped in his tracks. His face twisted in confusion. “What’s wrong, Mike?”
I felt dizzy and sat back down in the grass before I collapsed.
Danny crouched beside me. “Are you sick?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. My mind refused to make sense of what was happening.
Danny grabbed my arm and pulled me up. “I better take you to the nurse’s office. You don’t look so good.”
I let him pull me, my legs moving on autopilot. Kids ran and played all around us, their voices a chorus of youthful energy. They looked familiar, their clothes distinctly from the 1960s.
As we walked, another boy ran up to us.
“Hey, where are you guys going?”
Ray. My other best friend. We used to do everything together.
“I think Mike is sick,” Danny told him.
“Yeah, Mike, you don’t look so good.” Ray peered at me with concern.
I opened my mouth again—still nothing.
As we neared the nurse’s office, a memory hit me. I had always hated that nurse. She was a bitch who never seemed to like kids. Ha! Maybe she liked her job as much as I did!
“Hey, Danny,” I finally managed. “I don’t want to go to the nurse.”
Danny hesitated. “You sure? ‘Cause you really don’t look so good.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Just give me a minute.”
I sat down on a green wooden bench in the breezeway. Danny just stared at me.
After a long silence, he sighed. “Well, I can’t stand here all day. I’m missing out on recess.”
“Okay,” I said.
Danny ran off toward the playground. I stared down at my hands. Small. Stubby fingers. I looked at my shoes—black tennis shoes with big white rubber toes.
The recess bell rang, signaling the end of playtime. As kids filed back into their classrooms, a teacher noticed me. Her expression was one of concern. She started walking toward me.
Panic gripped me. I didn’t want to try explaining anything—I wasn’t even sure I could—so I bolted.
I ran out of the school yard and across the street to the orange grove. I found a loose section of chain-link fence, pushed it open, and slipped inside. The scent of orange blossoms filled my nostrils. That was another smell that reminded me of home.
I sat beneath a tree, my back pressed against the rough bark, and I cried. The sobs that came from me were small, high-pitched—childlike. It was so strange, yet so familiar.
I stayed there for what felt like forever, trying to figure out what to do next. Should I go “home”? What would I even say? Hey, Mom, I’m actually a 42-year-old man trapped in my childhood body! Yeah, that would go over well.
The final school bell rang, and I peeked out from the grove. Kids were streaming out of the school. How was that possible? It was still only mid-morning. Maybe it was a short school day.
I spotted Danny and Ray and left the orange grove to meet them.
“Hey, Mike!” Danny called. “You weren’t in class. Did you go to the nurse’s office?”
“No.”
“Then where were you?”
“I, uh… I just hung out in the orange grove.”
“You played hooky?” Danny’s eyes widened.
“Yeah, I just didn’t feel like going back to class.”
A school bus rumbled past.
“There goes your bus home,” Ray pointed out. “How are you gonna get back?”
I remembered that Mom worked afternoons at this time when I was a kid. She wouldn’t be home anyway. Even if she was, I had no idea what I’d say to her.
“Danny, can I walk with you to your house?” I asked.
“Sure!”
We started walking. The silence stretched awkwardly.
After a while, Ray asked, “So what did you do in the orange grove all by yourself?”
I hesitated, then noticed Kyle’s house as we passed. Kyle was the “bad kid.” His parents did drugs. He once told me he’d stolen some Playboy magazines from his dad and hidden them in the grove.
“I, uh, looked at Playboys,” I blurted.
Both boys stopped dead in their tracks.
“You what?!”
“Playboys?!” Ray’s voice cracked.
“Yeah,” I said quickly. “Kyle hid them in the grove. I found them and started looking at them.”
Ray’s eyes lit up. “Let’s go back and find them again!”
Danny hesitated. “I can’t. My mom or stepdad will kill me if I’m late again.”
Ray groaned. “Your stepdad’s an asshole.”
“I know,” Danny said quietly.
We walked the rest of the way to Danny’s house in silence.
Danny’s house was a small, weathered wooden structure, set apart from the newer stucco homes where Ray and I lived. It had once been part of a farm, but now the land was just overgrown with tall grass.
As we stepped inside, Danny called out, “Mom, I’m home.”
No response.
The only person in the kitchen was his stepdad, slumped at the table in a dirty white tank top, a beer in his hand. He barely acknowledged us.
Danny hesitated.
“Good thing you got home, kid,” his stepdad muttered. “I was thinkin’ about getting out the strap.”
The air in the room felt heavy. I swallowed hard, feeling the tension between them, the same tension I had seen all those years ago but had been too young to fully understand.
Ray broke the silence. “Hey Danny, let’s go out back and see the rabbits.”
His stepdad waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, go on. Your mother walked to the liquor store. I’m takin’ a nap.”
Danny’s backyard was different from ours. There were no toys, no patio furniture—just dirt, patches of tall grass. There were a few broken down hutches, some with of rabbits in them. I never really knew why they kept rabbits.
Ray opened a hutch and picked up a rabbit, stroking its fur absentmindedly. “We should figure out a way to make money, you know? So we can go to the movies, or the arcade and ride go-karts. Maybe we could fix up these hutches, get more rabbits, and sell ‘em.”
Danny and I just listened. Ray was always planning some scheme to make money.
After a while, Danny walked up to the house and peeked through the window. He came back quickly. “My stepdad’s asleep. You guys wanna walk to Old Man Page’s Market and get a soda?” He looked down. “I got some money.”
I don’t know why, but that hit me. I had never thought much about it as a kid, but now, seeing Danny offer up his own money when he had so little, it meant something.
“Sure,” I said. We started walking and, on impulse, I draped an arm over his shoulders. Something I never would have done at twelve. He really needed a hug, but twelve-year-old boys don’t hug each other.
As we walked, Ray started talking. “I heard Old Man Page shot a guy who tried to rob his store.”
Danny’s head snapped up. “Old Man Page? No way.”
“Yeah,” Ray said. “I guess some guy thought it’d be easy to knock over the old man’s store, but the old man pulled out a gun and shot him!”
Page’s Market was a relic from another time—just like the old man himself. His house sat behind the store, both buildings old and peeling, the paint worn away by years of neglect.
As we walked in, the old man shuffled up to the counter. He didn’t say anything—just stood there, waiting for us to pick something out.
I grabbed a pack of Smarties, the cheapest thing I could find. Danny got a soda from the fridge in the back and walked toward the counter.
“Aren’t you getting anything, Ray?” Danny asked.
“Nah, I’m good,” Ray said. He didn’t want to take Danny’s money either.
We left the store and started heading back.
Suddenly, Ray ran ahead of us, bent down, and grabbed something off the ground.
“Hey! It’s a twenty-dollar bill!”
Danny ran up to Ray and grabbed his hand, eyes wide. “Twenty bucks? You lucky dog!”
They stared at it for a moment, then Ray grinned. “Let’s go to the arcade and ride the go-karts!”
Without hesitation, we turned and ran toward town, laughing as the excitement built.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. Here I was, a kid again, racing toward an arcade to spend the afternoon with my best friends.
This had to be a dream.
But it felt real.
And dreams always feel real when you’re in them.
I decided I wouldn’t question it anymore. However long this lasted, I was going to enjoy it and I wasn’t going to waste it worrying.
At the arcade, we spent the next hour racing go-karts. The roar of the go-kart engines, the vibrating metal steering wheel under my hands, the rush of the blacktop under me—it was all so vivid. Danny’s kart was ahead of me, and I could smell half-burned gasoline fumes. The teenagers that worked on the track didn’t know how to keep them tuned. Danny kept looking back, swerving back and forth to block me from passing.
I could have passed him. I always beat him as a kid. But this time, I let him win.
Funny how, when you’re twelve, beating your friends at everything feels like the most important thing in the world. But now, I realized—this was what really mattered. These moments. The friends you have when you’re twelve years old.
Danny crossed the finish line and turned back to me, grinning like a maniac. “Loser!” he yelled, laughing in his best evil villain voice.
I just watched him, taking in his face. I missed him.
After the go-karts, we played pinball and skeeball, teasing each other mercilessly. We laughed so much I almost forgot I wasn’t supposed to be there.
I forgot that I was 42 years old.
That I had a job I hated.
That I had a mortgage I could barely afford.
That I had two kids—not much younger than Ray and Danny—whom I didn’t spend enough time with.
When the money was gone, we walked back to Danny’s house. The sun had started to dip in the sky.
Ray glanced at the streetlights. “I gotta get home before they come on,” he said.
I watched him walk away, knowing that in a few years, he’d move across the country and I’d never see him again. I heard he did well for himself—started a business renting heavy equipment. I hoped he was happy.
Danny and I walked up to his porch. As we neared the door, I heard shouting inside. His mother and stepdad were fighting again.
Danny sighed. “I gotta go in.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
But as he turned to go inside, I reached out and grabbed his arm.
“Danny,” I said, my throat tightening. “I’m sorry.”
He looked confused. “Sorry for what?”
I didn’t know how to answer.
I was sorry I hadn’t done more to save him. Sorry I hadn’t seen the warning signs. Sorry that, in just a few years, he would be dead.
I swallowed hard. “Listen… just don’t join any gangs, okay?”
Danny gave me a look like I had lost my mind. “Gangs? What are you talking about?”
I hesitated, then shook my head. “Nothing. Forget it.”
His brow furrowed. “You’re acting weird, man.”
“Just… don’t let your stepdad get to you. You’re better than he treats you, so fuck him, okay?”
Danny’s face softened. “Yeah, sure.” He shrugged. “I gotta go.”
He stepped inside and closed the door.
I stood there for a moment, the screen door resting on my back, listening to the muffled sounds of arguing. It must have been awful for Danny.
Then I turned and walked back toward the schoolyard. Somehow, I knew I couldn’t go home. I didn’t belong here, at least not forever.
I walked back into the empty schoolyard and sat down on the grass where this whole thing had begun. Somehow, I knew I had to get back to the same spot. It was as if I was following some kind of internal command. I sat there for a while staring at the buildings painted with the orange glow of a setting sun. Everything looked so new and fresh, unlike earlier. It was exactly how I remembered it as a kid. But this wasn’t going to last.
I sat there for a while thinking about the day: Ray’s face when he found the money, Danny’s laughter after winning the go-kart race, the way we all teased each other on the walk back to Danny’s house. I picked up the daisy chain I had left on the ground and squeezed my eyes shut, at the same time I squeezed the daisies in my hand. I didn’t want to let this time go.
The quiet breeze and the sweet smell of orange blossoms gave way to the sound of traffic and the smell of car exhaust. I opened my eyes and there was the school, looking older and more dilapidated. I looked around. The orange grove was gone. Now it was a tract of homes.
I looked down at my hands. They were older. I could see my left hand with its wedding ring, still clutching the daisies. I opened my hand and the daisies were still there. I dropped my face into my hands and started to cry again, this time the sobs of a grown man. I sat there crying, and each time I opened by eyes I half expected to see Danny and Ray coming toward me again, but they never did. They would never be here again.
I pulled myself together and walked back to the car. I turned the key, and the engine roared to life. On the drive home I thought about the time I had just spent with Ray and Danny. Maybe the best moments in life aren’t so much about what we achieve, but who we spend them with.
When I walked through the front door, my wife was washing dishes, “Another long day at work again?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I got you something,” she said with a smile. “It’s in the bedroom. I know you’ve been stressed at work so I thought you could use a little cheering up.” I walked up to her and pulled her into a hug and gave her a long kiss on the forehead. She pulled back a little surprised. “Are you ok?” I nodded; my throat was too tight to speak. She melted back into my arms. “Well,” she said, “maybe after the kids are in bed, I can do even more to cheer you up.”
I stepped inside the bedroom and saw it on the wall—an old collage frame filled with pictures.
At the top left, a picture of us on our wedding day. Then a picture of our honeymoon. Then pictures of the birth of Breanna, our first, then Blake. The images flowed from left to right, top to bottom, a timeline of our life together.
And wrapped around the images on the frame was a chain of daisies.
At the bottom, the words:
“Links of Love Build a Life.”
A lump welled in my throat. I ran my fingers along the daisies. “Where did you get this?”
“I know, it’s old! But the kids picked it out for you this afternoon at the flea market. For some reason they insisted you’d like it. It’s the first day of spring break and they got out of school early so they went with me.” I turned to my wife, really seeing her. I thought about Danny, and I felt so lucky to have had my life, then and now.
“Are you sure you’re, OK?”
“Yeah, I am. I really am. I just needed this reminder.”

Action taken this week by the Los Angeles County-based transportation funding authority most closely identified with the revival of Southern California’s once-thriving rail commuting system virtually assures that the Gold Line light rail system will not be in place by the time of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
The Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority Board on March 26 rejected Kiewit Infrastructure West’s $994 million bid to complete the extension of the Gold Line by 3.2 miles from its current terminus in Pomona to the Montclair Transit Center, which lies just east of the Los Angeles County/San Bernardino County border.
The Gold Line is the premier rail commuter system in Southern California, consisting of a lower or southern reach that runs between Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and east Los Angeles and an upper or norther reach which runs from Union Station through the foothill communities of San Gabriel Valley to Pomona.
The Gold Line represents a generation-and-a-half leap in technology over Southern California’s most pervasive but poorly utilized Metro=Link rail transportation system.
Because of its more frequent arrivals and departures on dual tracks that flow simultaneously in eastward and westward, the gold Line attracts a significant ridership which is useful in alleviating the gridlock on Southern California’s freeway system, in particular the 60, 10 and 210 freeways.

There is an intention to extend the northern reach of the Gold Line, referred to as the Foothill Gold Line, from Pomona through Claremont and across the divide between Los Angeles County and San Bernardino County to Montclair, perhaps by the summer of 2028, in time to allow tourists who will attend the Los Angeles Olympics that are to take place over the course of 14 days at that time, to stay overnight at hotels and motels in and around Claremont, Pomona, Montclair, Ontario, Chino, Upland, Rancho and Cucamonga. Those attending the Olympic games as spectators will be able to utilize the Gold Line, public transportation or the extensive parking lot at the Montclair Transit Center to travel to the Olympic games without contributing to the gridlock on the freeways and get to the competitive events on time, it was hoped. That was contingent, of course, on the Gold Line extension to Montclair being in place by Summer 2028.
A further bonus to the completion of the Gold Line to Montclair by 2028 was that it would have further sped the timetable to extending the Gold Line to Ontario Airport, perhaps so that milestone would be reached by 2033. The connection to Ontario International Airport would further the goal of relieving pressure on the freeway system, as many air travelers into Southern California would consider flying into Ontario International Airport rather than Los Angeles International Airport. The immediate connection to Los Angeles via the Gold Line, would, it was theorized, greatly diffuse traffic congestion.
Moreover, the extension of the Gold Line to Ontario would facilitate the further extension of the Gold Line east, through Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, San Bernardino, Redlands, Yucaipa and eventually, perhaps before the 22^nd Century, Palm Springs.
The 9.1 mile extension of the Gold Line from Azusa to Pomona, which took some six years to complete, from 2019 until January of this year, cost $806 million in 2019 dollars. The planned 3.2-mile extension from Pomona to Montclair will cost, in relative terms, when considering the distance, much more, roughly three times as much per linear mile. In 2024 dollars, that work was to cost $994 million, based on Kiewit Infrastructure West’s bid.
It was that escalation in the construction costs that gave the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority Board pause when, during a closed-door executive session on Wednesday, it took up a discussion of Kiewit’s proposal to complete the next major phase of the system.
That discussion had been prompted by numerous considerations, one of which was the unanticipated expense contained in Kiewit’s bid.
Construction Authority CEO Habib Balian recognized and had stated publicly that the Pomona-to-Montclair was going to prove more expensive than the just-concluded Azusa-to-Pomona leg of the line, at what was anticipated to be 180 percent to 190 percent of the cost of the previous phase. In this way, the construction on the 3.2-mile stretch was projected to run to somewhere between Construction Authority CEO Habib Balian recognized and had stated publicly that the Pomona-to-Montclair was going to prove more expensive than the just-concluded Azusa-to Pomona leg of the line, at what was anticipated to be 180 percent to 190 percent of the cost of the previous phase. In this way, the construction on the 3.2-mile stretch was projected to run to somewhere between $510,171,000 to $538,515,000. After advertising for proposals,, the Gold Line Construction Authority received only one bid, from Kiewit, which had partnered with the Gold Line Construction Authority on the previous phase. The $994 million was startling, at roughly 189.7 percent of what it anticipated, even considering inflation.
In the weeks running up to last week’s action, the board had taken stock of a number of factors that might result in an escalation of the cost.
Ken Simonson, the chief economist of the Associated General Contractors of America, had briefed the board on factors that would push the cost of construction going forward into the stratosphere. Beginning in 2025, a host of pressures will act on the American economy and the building sector, according to Simonson, not the least of which is President Trump’s effort to reposition the United States in the world and to reassert itself as an economic power. Without weighing in one way or the other about whether Trump will be successful, Simonson said short term increases in prices will inevitably result from the president’s actions.
“Construction is more dependent than most industries on imported materials and foreign-born workers. Imposition of tariffs and limits on immigration or expanded deportation measures will drive up costs, snarl supply chains, slow projects, and potentially lead to project cancellations,” Simonson told the board. “Construction spending and employment will continue to increase at a moderate rate. But there is much more uncertainty about which market segments and geographic areas will thrive or dive in ’25.”

It is not likely that the Trump Administration, given its stated goals and commitments, will reduce the costs of carrying out construction, Simonson said.

“The Trump administration can enable faster and more efficient construction of infrastructure and private structures through selective repeal of regulations and better streamlining and coordination of project reviews and approvals.” Such cost reductions could only come about, Simonson said, if “the administration allow waivers from tariffs or immigration restrictions for construction projects that otherwise would be unduly delayed or cost-burdened.” He was not confident that would come about, Simonson said.
During the March 26 closed session, the board, considering the higher costs and risk of financial overcommitment in conjunction with the light-rail project, it voted, “unanimously and with regret” to reject Kiewit’s $994 million bid, which was something approaching 54 percent higher or approximately $350 million more than the $645.45 million the authority had estimated design and construction of the project should run and for which the authority had set the project’s budget.
A practical outcome of the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority Board’s March 26 vote is that the eventual extension of the light rail travel system into San Bernardino County will not come before the end of the current decade.
The Gold Line is considered by those most knowledgeable about transportation issues in Southern California to be the best option there is to overcome the legacy of Alfred P. Sloan, the president of General Motors from 1923 and then the chairman of the board of General Motors from 1937 until his retirement in 1956.
Sloan systematically pursued policies aimed at buying up and ultimately closing down the commuter rail and street car systems in the United States’ largest cities and metropolitan areas. This included forcing the ultimate demise of the Los Angeles/Southern California Red Car Line, which featured trains serving what was then nearly the entirety of Los Angeles County, northern Orange County and eastern San Bernardino County, from Santa Monica all the way east to Mentone and Redlands.
Efforts to replicate what existed with the Red Car Line in Southern California with MetroLink have failed, as ridership on the system, with trains on a single track that run for the most part at a frequency of no more than one per hour at a fare of $9, is sparse at best and often nil. The Gold Line, on the other hand, which runs on two separate tracks dedicated to passenger transport alone from Downtown Los Angeles to Pomona, uses lighter cars and more fuel-efficient engines, with staggered departures and arrivals of as little as every eight minutes for a fare of $2. The Gold Line is thus heavily used, and its cars are near their carrying capacity on most runs.
The Gold Line Construction Authority is contemplating rebidding the project, perhaps as early as June of this year. Tacitly, the authority has conceded that the completion of the line to Ontario International Airport is not going to occur for a decade or more.

By Mark Gutglueck
There is a rampant rumor of Ray Casey’s imminent return as Yucaipa city manager, following a more than two year hiatus in what would have been by now his two-decade tenure with the county’s 12th largest city.
Speculation about Casey’s re-assumption of the top administrative position with the city he guided as city manager for more than 14 years and which he in large measure shaped as Yucaipa’s city engineer and public works director for five years previous to that comes as Chris Mann has been relieved of the managerial post after an experimental trial with a more aggressive pro-development policy at City Hall that the previous ruling coalition on the city council sought to implement but which never quite gelled.
Now, it appears, a significant change in the city’s political leadership has created an atmosphere in which the newly installed powers that be are seeking to placate the sleeping political giant that was awakened by the abrupt forced departure of Casey nearly 27 months ago.
Unanswered at this point is whether Casey will be willing to return after being ignominiously forced to tender his resignation in January 2023, less than three months after the Yucaipa City Council,  on October 23, 2022, as it was then composed, voted to extend his city managerial contract until the end of June 2024, raising his annual salary to $299,420 and his annual benefits and pay add-ons/perquisites to $123,481.50, making him, at $422,901.50 in total annual compensation, among California’s 25 highest paid city managers, despite Yucaipa’s ranking as the state’s 173^rd largest among the state’s 482 incorporated municipalities in terms of population.
The city council, which then included Mayor/District 1 Councilman David Avila, District 2 Councilman Greg Bogh, District 3 Councilman Bobby Duncan, District 4 Councilman Jason Beaver, and District 5 Councilman Jon Thorp, had voted unanimously to make that show of confidence in Casey just weeks before the November 2022 election in which Avila and Bogh had chosen not to compete. With the support of Duncan and Beaver, Matt Garner narrowly captured first place with 35.59 percent of the vote against three competitors in District 1, replacing Avila, and Chris Venable emerged victorious in a convincing show with 62.11 percent of the vote in a contest that featured a single competitor.
Unbeknownst to virtually everyone in the city, neither Duncan nor Beaver were pleased with Casey’s performance as city manager, despite his having overseen relatively stable operations at City Hall as Yucaipa’s top administrator for 14 years at that point and having kept the city abreast of or a step or two ahead of its infrastructure needs during the same period as well as when he was public works director prior to that.  Throughout his tenure in Yucaipa up until his last month there, Casey was highly thought of by the majority of his political masters on the city council, and for the most part, he managed to steer the city around any major areas of controversy. He rode herd on a roster of city employees who were neither overstaffed nor top-heavy with an excessive number of supervisors, department heads or assistant division directors. Educated as an undergraduate at Princeton with a degree in civil engineering, he was generally perceived as being competent, and his training and experience heightened his value to the city.
He had served on the League of California Cities’ Inland Empire Executive Committee for three years, the League of California Cities’ Housing, Community and Economic Development Committee for three years and he was the chairman of the City/County Manager Technical Advisory Committee for two years.
Casey appeared adept at toeing, or at least straddling, the fine lines between some contradictory elements of the culture in Yucaipa that had existed prior to and well beyond the city’s 1989 incorporation as the 22nd of San Bernardino County’s current 24 municipalities in which its Old West, semi-rural, agricultural and traditional features had continued to exist, side-by-side in some cases with the more modern, worldly, mercantile urban influences that had crept into place within the 28.27-square mile confines within the city limits.
On January 9, 2023, at what was the first city council meeting after the single council meeting in December 2022 when the newly composed council was installed and Garner and Venable were sworn into office, the council held a closed-door discussion in which the performance of Casey and of then-City Attorney David Snow were scheduled for discussion. During that executive session of the council, held outside the view and earshot of the public, Casey’s resignation was requested. He was informed that if he did not acquiesce to being excused from his post as city manager, Garner, Duncan and Beaver would, on February 6 at 8 p.m. or shortly thereafter, vote to remove him. Polls close at 8 p.m. and February 6 was the 90^th day after the November 8, 2022 election. A Yucaipa ordinance prevented the city council from firing a city manager for 90 days following a municipal election. It was Beaver and Duncan who did all of the talking. Garner did not speak, but Casey, reading his body language, understood that he was backing both Beaver and Duncan in their threat. Securing from the troika an assurance that if he went quietly the city would fulfill its commitment made with the October 23, 2022 vote and that he would be paid, through June 30, 2024 the salary laid out in the contract – $299,420 per year – he agreed to resign.
It remains unknown, precisely, what shortcomings Beaver and Duncan were convinced marred Casey’s management of the city. In the United States and particularly in California and even more particularly in San Bernardino County, local government officials, at least in some measure owing to the power of public employee unions, enjoy the protection of confidentiality with regard to the evaluations of their performance by the administrators and political leaders who oversee them and their employment records are similarly subject to strict confidentiality, making it extremely difficult if not absolutely impossible to ascertain anything about the quality or even substance of a city worker’s function or the quality thereof while he or she is on the job. At no time over the last two years and nearly three months have Garner, Duncan or Beaver expressed what it is about how Casey was running the city that bothered them.
What is known is that Duncan was a real estate agent. Garner was the partner in a building materials company which did over $4 billion in business per year. There was a widespread perception at the time, one which has continued to fester, that both Duncan and Garner had a stake in the city being more accommodating toward development and that Casey, who was insistent that development companies doing business in Yucaipa defray the cost of the infrastructure that accompanied their development projects, which reduced the profitability of such projects – residential, commercial and industrial – thus inhibiting the growth that Duncan and Garner wanted to facilitate and in which they had a financial stake.
Before the January 9, 2023 closed session was concluded, the council voted 5-to-0 to fire City Attorney David Snow and to appoint Steven Graham to substitute in as city attorney. Graham, who had been waiting elsewhere on the civic center grounds, materialized in the meeting room and began functioning at once, without missing a stroke, as city attorney. The council voted 3-to-2, with Beaver, Duncan and Garner prevailing and councilmen Thorp and Venable dissenting, to accept Casey’s resignation. Thereafter, the council voted 4-to-1, with Thorp dissenting, to extend a contract to Chris Mann, who was likewise present at the civic center, to serve as city manager, effective going forth in March 2023. At that time, both Mann and Graham were the city manager and city attorney, respectively, with the City of Canyon Lake in Riverside County.
Neither Beaver nor Duncan nor Garner would provide a substantive explanation of their rationale, collective or individual, for dispensing with Casey and Snow and replacing them with Mann and Graham. The closest the residents of Yucaipa were given to an explanation were vague expressions of a desire to take the city in “a new direction.” In particular, Beaver’s refusal to provide an explanation was of some frustration to the community in that he had been selected by his council colleagues, in December 2022, to serve as mayor.
It was noted by the public at large than Mann was the principal in Mann Communications, which he touted as specializing in representing developers and development interests seeking to move building proposals past the planning process and get them approved, in so doing, according to the firm’s website, making sure that “elected officials are… provided the political cover they need in order to support good projects” to “provide our clients with a wealth of knowledge and experience and a winning approach to land use entitlement.”
As the owner of Mann Communications, Mann typically took an ownership stake in the projects being pursued, which technically made him a developer himself. He publicly stated that he was “an active partner in numerous development projects in California, Nevada and Arizona.” Through his company, he had a professional relationship with residential developers Lennar, Pardee, Meritage Homes and Richmond American and builders Holland Development, Jacobsen Family Holdings, Turner Dale, Rotkin Real Estate Group, Carlton Properties and AES Corporation. Moreover, Mann had done previous work on development project involving Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, Inc., Clear Channel Outdoor, BrightSource, Preferred Business Properties Real Estate Services, Beaumont Garden Center, Passantino Andersen, Robertson’s Cement, Oakmont Industrial Group, The Golshan Group and Desmond & Louis Incorporated. Many of those companies had intentions of pursuing projects in Yucaipa.
Yucaipa residents were thrown by the ruling council majority’s embrace of Mann and his placement into a position at City Hall where he oversaw the regulation of development that was to take place in the city. Instantaneously, their suspicions were piqued. It appeared that Duncan and Garner, with their personal financial interests in the real estate development industry, were potentially in violation of California Government Code Section 1090, which prohibits a government official from participating in any discussion, decision or vote as a public official in which he or she has a financial interest. While Beaver, as a law enforcement officer who had formerly worked for the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department as a deputy before, apparently, departing that profession for three years before hiring on as an officer at the Azusa Police Department in 2017, where he promoted to police corporal in 2021, having remained at that rank ever since. Beaver’s unwillingness, indeed his outright refusal in the face of repeated requests to explain his rationale for jettisoning Casey in favor of Mann begat widespread accusations of graft involving Duncan, Garner and Beaver in which the former two were enriching themselves by participating in professionally in the shift toward an accommodation of development in the city and money or benefits in some fashion were being filtered to Beaver.
Concerned that the troika of Beaver, Duncan and Garner were utilizing Mann to transform Yucaipa into a community indistinguishable from scores or even hundreds of other cities in Southern California that are now composed, practically, of wall-to-wall houses, Yucaipa residents formed a political action committee, Save Yucaipa, which undertook a petition gathering effort to qualify placing recall questions against Beaver, Duncan and Garner on the ballot.
Penultimately, Mann acted to block the recall effort against council members who had been responsible for Casey’s departure and his hiring. He brought in a replacement, Ana Sauseda, for the city clerk who had been in place under Casey, Kimberly Metzler. Sauseda, city residents soon learned, had been city clerk in Canyon Lake when Mann was city manager there. Mann then choreographed a plan by which Beaver, Duncan and Garner voted to appropriate money to allow Sauseda to hire the Los Angeles-based Sutton Law Firm to file a petition for a writ of mandate challenging the language cited in their recall petitions which suggested that beaver, Duncan and Garner had engaged in a violation of the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law, when they engaged in the action they did on January 9, 2023 in confronting Casey and forcing his resignation and in firing Snow without adequately specifying that action on the agenda for the January 9, 2023 city council meeting. On Sauseda’s behalf, two of the Sutton Law Firm’s attorneys, Bradley W. Hertz and Eli B. Love, alleged that no actual violation of the Brown Act had taken place and therefore the recall petition notice was impermissibly misleading the voters who were being asked to sign the recall petition.  This necessitated that Save Yucaipa and its members and supporters advocating for the recall engage themselves in the legal process and hire attorney, which distracted them from the signature gathering process. Consequently, Save Yucaipa’s 2023 effort to qualify recall elections against the three councilmen failed when they did not obtain sufficient signatures on the petitions.
Thereafter, Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs ruled, in response to legal answers prepared by some of the recall advocates to Sauseda’s lawsuit that the supposition that the Brown Act had been violated with the sackings of Casey and Snow were reasonably drawn inferences from the totality of what had occurred. Judge Sachs ruled in favor of Colleen Wang in her legal challenge of the lawsuit brought against her and the other members of Save Yucaipa based on their effort to recall the troika from office. Sachs made a finding that Wang – and by logical extension the others – were merely exercising their constitutional rights to seek redress against the government when they advocated that Beaver, Duncan and Garner be removed from office.
Meanwhile, a complaint made to the San Bernardino County Civil Grand Jury resulted in that panel concluding that “the Yucaipa City Council has developed a reputation among many residents of ignoring the concerns of the public and of fostering an atmosphere of mistrust, disdain, anger, resentment, lack of transparency and appearances of conflicts of interest.”
Save Yucaipa redoubled its efforts to qualify a recall question against Garner for the November 2024 election, at which point both Beaver and Duncan were scheduled to stand for reelection. Duncan, aware that a significant contingent of voters was gunning to remove him from office, opted against seeking reelection. Beaver sought reelection. Ultimately, Beaver was returned to office by the voters in the Fourth District. Voters in the First District voted overwhelmingly to remove garner from office. In the Third District, Judy Woolsey was chosen to replace Duncan. Thorp ran for reelection in November 2024 unopposed.
In December 2024, after Beaver, Woolsey and Thorp were sworn into office, the city council voted to appoint Bob Miller, a member of the Yucaipa Calimesa School District Board of Trustees to the city council to replace Garner.
While Beaver and Woolsey remained favorably disposed toward Mann, the three other members of the city council – Thorp, Venable and Miller – remain poignantly conscious of the anger and distrust in city officials that was sown with the abrupt and unexplained removal of Casey as city manager and the widespread impression that Beaver, Duncan and Garner were entangled in conflicts of interest, graft, payoffs, kickbacks and corruption of the governmental process, and that Mann was their henchman. Additionally, it was not lost on them that Graham had accompanied Mann to Yucaipa when he made his exit from Canyon Lake. On February 10, the city council met in closed session to evaluate the performance of both Mann and Graham. After adjourning out of that closed-door executive session and into its public meeting that evening, Thorp, who is now mayor, stated that the council was directing staff to put out a request for proposals with a 30-day timeframe for city council attorney candidates, indicating that Graham, who recently has begun using the last name Pacifico, is on the way out of Yucaipa.
The agenda for the council’s February 24 meeting indicated that Mann’s performance was yet undergoing review. Some assumed the council was in the process of negotiating with Mann over the terms of an extension of his contract to serve as city manager. In fact, what was taking place was a discussion between the council and Mann about what the terms of his departure from the city were to be. At issue was whether Mann was to be terminated with the council citing cause, in which case it would need confer nothing – neither a full year’s salary as stipulated under Mann’s contract if he were to be dismissed without cause or a severance package – or whether it would let him go without citing cause, in which case it would need to provide him with a full year’s salary, which at this point amounts $233,535.92. A decision was reached to not cite cause in terminating him, after which the council and Mann hashed out a separation agreement in which he is to forego his right to being paid the $233,535.92 he would otherwise be due and both he and the city are to mutually hold each other harmless with regard to his serving as city manager, his departure or the situation or circumstances with regard to both in exchange for a one-time $279,045 payout as well as the provision of one year of health benefits for Mann and his family.
His official date of departure is on March 31 The termination agreement was finalized on March 10.
Beaver, Duncan and Garner clearly misgauged the depth of respect the most civically active element of the community had for Casey and degree to which those residents identified him as the embodiment of the governance they would not simply tolerate but live with. Over most of the last two years, Thorp and Venable found themselves coexisting, and to an extent being associated, with Beaver, Duncan and Garner. While a good number of Yucaipa residents were conscious or even hyperconscious that Thorp and Venable had not participated in blasting Casey out of town, their ineffectiveness in opposing or preventing what occurred had not endured them to a good cross section of the city’s residents. Miller was unassociated with that chapter of the city’s history entirely, but his presence on the council now leaves him in a position of opportunity that he shares with Thorp and Venable. The three could virtually ensure their electability across the next one to two to three election cycles by simply undoing what Beaver, Duncan and Garner did in January 2023 with respect to Casey.
While some consider such a scenario far-fetched or outright undoable, the possibility is actually remarkably plausible. Indeed, there are considerations that make engineering Casey’s return to Yucaipa the most logical and workable solution to the dilemma of replacing Mann. Nevertheless, there are a few hitches that would need to be smoothed over or cast off before Casey will take up his old place in the administrative suite at Yucaipa City Hall.
Perhaps the most obvious problem is Beaver’s continuing incumbency. Just reelected in November 2024, he will not be turned out of office, at the earliest, until December 2028. Whether Casey is willing to live with Beaver as someone he must answer to, even if Beaver is only one of five members of the council and does not have the wherewithal to tell him what to do without first getting two more votes to join with his own, is an open question. One possible mitigating factor is that Casey’s institutional knowledge and understanding of the political and developmental lay of the land quite likely makes him aware of all of the angles and possible shots, gives him an understanding of where the graft impacting the community originates, just who it was, or what combination of entities were, influencing Duncan, Garner and Beaver when they combined forces to force him out. In this way, Casey may very well have Beaver’s number, and without two votes to fire Casey, Beaver simply cannot make Casey dance to his tune. Rather, with what Casey very likely knows now or will in time learn, he is the one who would be in a position to blow the whistle on Beaver.
Sauseda’s continuation in the position of city clerk in Yucaipa could prove untenable if Casey returns as city manager. She blindly went along with Mann’s game plan to not only prevent Yucaipa’s most politically active residents from acting upon their outrage over what had happened to Casey, she did so in a way that dragged them into court and made them expend money so they could exercise those rights. Casey may refuse to serve as city administrator if the council wants him to work with someone who foreclosed citizens’ rights when it was her assignment to ensure that citizens have access to the machinery of local governance.
Similarly, Casey may not be ready to come back to Yucaipa City Hall if another of those who Mann hired, Joe Pradetto, remains in place as the city’s director of governmental affairs and public information officer. Pradetto was acting in that capacity in 2023 when he issued statements backed by the full authority of City Hall and with the apparent backing of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which serves as the police department in Yucaipa, and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office that the recall proponents had, individually, committed misdemeanors by making a factual misrepresentation by stating that Beaver, Duncan and Garner had violated the Brown Act by terminating Snow and forcing Casey’s resignation on January 9, 2023 without adequately agendizing that action and, by extension, had engaged in felony conspiracy in doing so.
In recent years, indeed in recent months, a number of San Bernardino County cities – San Bernardino, Barstow, Rialto and Upland – have demonstrated the difficulty of finding a suitable city manager candidate to match the specific needs of those respective communities. In the case of Yucaipa, the city and city council experienced an uncommon degree of sustained stability during the 14 years Casey was city manager. Even if the city were to find a skilled and seasoned municipal manager, the learning curve in out-of-the-way Yucaipa would likely run to years rather than months. Casey’s in-depth knowledge of the city acquired over the course of nearly two decades gives him a leg up on any potential rival for the spot.
It is not as if the now 64-year-old Casey has now gotten himself engaged in another municipal management assignment from which he would be unwilling to extract himself. Only relatively recently did he begin working with the civil engineering consulting firm Transtech.
City officials and Casey were unwilling to discuss how far along the discussion of his returning to Yucaipa has progressed.

Assemblyman Bilal Essayli is under serious consideration for appointment as the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, the Sentinel has learned.
Essayli (R-Riverside) in 2019 served as former San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia’s chief of staff.
Essayli, who no longer goes by the first name Bilal but rather Bill, is philosophically and politically aligned with the Trump Administration.
Foremost, as a Republican in the Golden State, he is severely out of step with the Democratic majority in Sacramento which for the better part of a generation has dominated California politically. Most pointedly, as member of California’s lower legislative house, Essayli has not only been thwarted with regard to legislation he has proposed while in the Assembly and positions he has taken, but been treated with disrespect and contempt by his Democratic counterparts, who hold supermajorities in the Assembly and the California Senate along with every other constitutional position in California state government, such s governor, lieutenant governor, California attorney general, California secretary of state, California treasurer, California controller, California superintendent of schools and California insurance commissioner.
In March 2023, barely three months after he joined the Assembly, he coauthored with Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), Assembly Bill 1314, which would have required school districts throughout the state to notify parents in writing within three days if a student began “identifying at school as a gender that does not align with the child’s sex on their birth certificate” in 2023. Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, the Democratic chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, used parliamentary prerogative that was his based on the Democrats’ control of the full Assembly to deny a hearing date for AB 1314, guaranteeing it would not get beyond his committee and thereby effectively killing it without granting it consideration by the state’s legislative bodies.
Prior to his election, Essayli, an attorney, had represented former Fontana Assistant Police Chief Alan Hostetter after he was indicted by the federal government and arrested by the FBI in June 2021 for having participated in what federal prosecutors said was the January 6, 2021 insurrection on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol that day and a fiery speech he made in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building the previous day in league with Donald Trump’s friend and supporter Roger Stone. In that speech and his organizational activity relating to the January 6 protests, Hostetter maintained that the Democrats in a massive and well-orchestrated conspiracy had “stolen” the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump. Ultimately, Hostetter, who had served as the police chief of La Habra after he left the Fontana Police Department, upon foregoing representation by an attorney or legal team, was convicted at trial and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison. Hostetter was issued a pardon by President Trump earlier this year.
In his role as Valdivia’s chief of staff, Essayli faced the challenge of formulating a strategy that would allow Valdivia to recreate the administrative authority that formerly existed in the San Bernardino mayor’s position but which had been taken away by the passage of a revamped city charter in 2016, two years before Valdivia assumed the mayoral post. This was complicated by a slow erosion in Valdivia’s support on the city council, which he initially controlled by virtue of a ruling coalition he had assembled, as his relationships with three of that panel’s members soured during the first year of his tenure. Ultimately, recognizing that his association with Valdivia, who at one point was seen as a climber in San Bernardino County’s Republican-dominated political atmosphere but whose welcome diminished as his immersion in the pay-to-play political horsetrading ethos of local governmental operations became overwhelmingly apparent, Essayli moved back into his private law practice and concentrated on kindling his own political career.
The son of immigrants from Lebanon who fled that country during its civil war in the 1980s, Essayli is the first Muslim ever elected to the California State Assembly. He represents California’s 63rd Assembly District, consisting of Canyon Lake, Corona, Eastvale, Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Norco, Riverside, Temescal Valley and Woodcrest. He graduated from Cal Poly Pomona and obtained a law degree from the Chapman University School of Law.
At the age of 22 in 2008, he served as a White House intern during the George W. Bush Administration. He passed the bar in California after leaving Washington, D.C., practicing labor law for a short time before going to work as a deputy prosecutor in the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. He moved into the U.S. Attorney’s Office, becoming the Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California, in which capacity he was involved in the investigations and prosecutions that followed from the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, in which his religion was utilized to ward off or blunt criticism of bias against the two Muslim extremist perpetrators of the attacks.

Mystery, confusion and anger attends Upland’s efforts to outsource billing on a host of traditional municipal services or services provided under city-controlled franchises to the county.
Unknown to residents is whether the change has already been effectuated and whether mix-ups that have already manifested will result in double, triple or quadruple billings, missed payments, penalties, fines and, in some cases, homeowners’ loss or potential loss of their properties.
There is a modicum of outright outrage as some city residents perceive the billing changeover as a ploy by city officials to increase resident costs without any improvement in service or savings to customers, while reducing the workload of what many residents in the City of Gracious Living see as an underworked workforce.
At present, or at least until recently, Upland residents could come to City Hall to pay their bills for municipal services or otherwise make online payment of their bills for water and sewer service, their trash service provided to city residences and businesses by Upland’s franchised trash hauler Burrtec Industires, apply for and/or pay for building permits, renew animal licenses for household pets, or pay for household members’ participation in youth recreation classes and activities, adult recreation classes and activities or senior citizen recreation classes and activities.
More recently, however, Upland city officials have been inching toward abandoning those policies and practices and instead is ready to or has already handed billing for those services to San Bernardino County.
In this regard, Upland is emulating the City of Fontana, which on February 27, 2024 amended its contract with its franchised waste hauler, which also happens to be Burrtec Waste Industries contract that introduces several important enhancements for our community. These improvements are designed to benefit all residents and ensure efficient waste management services.
. The amendment will This means cleaner and safer public spaces for everyone. Burrtec will now be responsible for staffing qualified personnel to operate and maintain our Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) facility located at 16454 Orange Way. This will help us manage hazardous waste responsibly and ensure the safety of our environment. The amendment allows Burrtec to streamline residential solid waste service charges by placing them directly on the property tax roll. In return for this administrative shift, Burrtec will offset the associated cost savings from switching to this method by reducing the monthly street sweeping service charges paid by the City. This adjustment aims to streamline billing processes and deliver cost savings to residents and businesses by avoiding a rate increase next year. These enhancements reflect our commitment to improving waste management services and fostering a cleaner, more sustainable environment for Fontana. That vote entailed moving, as of July 1, 2024, Fontana residents’ and businesses’s fees for trash and recycling services onto annual property tax bills.
While Fontana touted the change as one that would result in “immediate cost savings [and] also promote environmental responsibility for the future,” and expand street sweeping services to cover a wider range of areas within our city limits, including streets, medians, State Highways and medians, commercial zones, and the Metrolink Station Parking lot and bus turnaround,” residents in Fontana were and remain skeptical about whether the change was salutary or disadvantageous. Whereas the city had said making the tax roll adjustment would result in “stable rates for residents,” it turns out that the city’s residential solid waste collection rates will increase on July 1, 2025.
A promise made to Fontana residents was that “By shifting to annual property tax billing, we’re reducing the need for quarterly mailings, which saves paper and energy, contributing positively to our environment.”
A downside not spoken about, however, is that any sort of prolonged arrearage on one’s tax bill can result in the county providing two warnings to the delinquent homeowner, whereupon a process is initiated that ultimately culminates in a tax lien sale of the property effectuated through an auction.
Crossed wires/missed communications resulting in lien sales in Upland are absolutely possible given that many residents are signed up for automatic or recurring payments through their banks and, as has proven to be the case in Fontana, some mistakenly assumed the banks would properly route the payments to the county. On the resident side, some residents never came through with the extra money charged on their tax bill because they did not have the money in November because it had been routed elsewhere and they did not have sufficient funds to satisfy what had been transformed into a double billing after their banks had continued to divert the money earmarked for utility payments.
While not enough time has elapsed in Fontana for the tax liens to have progressed to the auction stage, some homeowners are on a trajectory to eventually lose their homes.
In the case of Upland, the utility payments will not be limited to trash service but water and sewer service, as well.
Some Upland residents, ones who are already upset at City Hall being open four rather than five days per week, see the switchover to county billing as one more way to lessen the workload on city employees. If the city were to make commensurate downward adjustments in the number of city employees, some of these residents have said, they would go along with the change. But the city’s taxpayers and ratepayers will see no benefit, they say, as there is to be no downward adjustments to city staff.
“If this was meant to save money by cutting city staff and streamlining operations, that would be one thing,” a longtime city resident told the Sentinel. “This isn’t going to do that. It will mean less work for city employees with no drop in pay, more money coming into the mayor and city council in political donations from Burrtec and Burrtec continuing on as the lord of the city and lord of the county as it becomes more and more powerful.” The resident said some Uplanders were trying to get their fellow residents “to start thinking about this, to understand what the people down at City Hall are doing.”.