More than ten months after former Upland Public Works Director/City Engineer Bradon Yu was forced to leave his post with the City of Gracious Living over his bridling at being forced to postpone critical street repairs for what he and others considered “political reasons,” city officials have issued a response to the grand jury’s critique of the controversy in which they have exonerated themselves of any [misbehavior/wrongdoing].
Upland’s residents have consistently over the years turned back the efforts by city officials to get them to approve imposing on themselves higher taxes to augment the sales tax, property tax and state and federal grants and other subventions the city receives to make up the revenue side of its budgetary ledger. Under California’s Constitution, any new taxes must be approved by those voters in the jurisdiction in which the tax is to be applied. While residents in many nearby cities in both San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties, such as Chino, Ontario, Claremont and Pomona have voted to increase the sales tax they pay within their various city limits, that has not been the case in Upland. In 2022, the Upland City Council used its authority to place Measure L, which called for a one-cent per dollar sales tax increase, pushing the 7.75 percent sales tax rate to 8.75 percent. Upland voters participating in the November 8, 2022 election rejected Measure L, with 10,222 voters or 44.6 percent in favor of it and 12,697 voters or 55.4 percent opposed to it.
Disappointed in and disapproving of what they considered to be the city’s voter’s stinginess and angry with a small but committed contingent of Upland residents who campaigned against higher taxes, Upland city officials, led by Mayor Bill Velto, who had taken the voters’ rejection of Measure L quite seriously and personally, resolved to persist in the effort to get the city electorate to acquiesce in a tax regime that would provide City Hall with revenue beyond the $61.3 million it had in its annual general fund operating budget. A strategy that was arrived at was to limit or discontinue altogether funding for street repairs and for Foothill Boulevard – Historic Route 66 – the city’s major east/west thoroughfare.
It was theorized that by letting Foothill Boulevard, in particular most seriously deteriorating span of Foothill Boulevard running from Euclid Avenue to the city and county limits at its west end, 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 was indeed so strapped that it had insufficient funding to engage in routine and basic maintenance of municipal infrastructure, In this way, city officials hoped that they might convince a majority of the city’s residents to support an increase in sales tax to be paid by shoppers within the 15.66-square mile city if a measure replicating Measure L were to be offered to them once more in November 2024.
That strategy was evolving in late 2022 and early 2023, and it included city officials consciously 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 and quite justifiable, they were convinced, because in 2022, they had been caught flatfooted when an 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 made an effort to oppose Measure L. While it was unknown among city officials 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.
Those who did know consisted of a relatively limited number of city officials extending to the mayor, city council and a handful of high-ranking city employees, the mayor’s and city council’s primary political backers and supporters and some of their family members, along with a few consultants.
Through the city manager’s office, assistant city manager’s office and finance department financial aid and grants from the federal, state and county government to be used specifically for infrastructure and road maintenance and improvement projects, including ones for Foothill Boulevard. Those dialogue involved the offices of Second District County Supervisor Jesse Armendarez and Fourth District San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman relating to money from the county to be used 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.
The City of Upland, along what is a north/south divide, lies within both the Second and Fourth county supervisorial districts.
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.
Instead of immediately applying that windfall into making the repairs, however, the City of Upland held off on undertaking the work, still intent on convincing the city’s voters that they had to do their part if the erosion in the average Uplander’s quality of life was to be ended.
Yu, however, was unwilling to temporize. He recognized that his own reputation as a public works professional was on he line. To him, perpetuating the neglect of Foothill Boulevard was absolutely inadvisable. Yu recognized the crumbling of surface pavement, minor pockets and eventual potholes resulting in what is not only an eyesore and an accompanying bumpy driving surface that was rough on the suspensions and chasses of cars that passed over it was inevitable and could not, at least in every case, be immediately redressed. But letting such erosion to persist over a longer period of time in which the unevenness in the road surface and gouges in the asphalt worsen, he knew, would become critical when the overlying pavement, referred to as the surface course, was fully breached, exposing the base course, the layer immediately beneath the surface course, which provides additional load distribution of the traffic running over the roadway. Once destruction of the base course has begun or is imminent, Yu knew, the city would be faced with 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 would need to be undertaken. Simply paving over a portion of the road where the base course has been compromised would result very quickly, once the weight of vehicles is again being applied to the road, in the newly lain pavement crumbling.
And Yu fully realized that 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.
At last aware that the $4 million provided to the city by supervisors Armendarez and Hagman was in the pipeline or available, Yu did not wait any longer or delay by going through a process of putting out a specific request for proposals to do work he knew should be done at certain places along Foothill Boulevard, but tapped into a list of contractors who had already been vetted by the city as responsive and responsible bidders on previous public works projects, ones he knew had the requisite equipment, manpower, experience and record of accomplishment with regard to previous work. Confident that there were entities available capable of doing the work needed to a satisfactory standard at an acceptable cost, Yu dispensed with allowing Foothill Boulevard to remain in its tattered and worsening-by-the-day condition. In April 2024, 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 Yu had done was in apparently defiance of the benign neglect strategy he had been ordered to carry out to keep Foothill Boulevard in a 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.
On April 23, 2024, Yu was summarily fired. He was informed in a letter written that day by Upland City Manager Michael Blay.
In July, after keeping things hid from the city’s residents, the city council, on the last day it could do so, requested that the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters place another one-cent per dollar sales tax increase within the City of Upland on the November 5, 2024 ballot. The registrar of voters office did so, designating the initiative as Measure N.
Ultimately, Upland’s voters rejected Measure N, doing so by a margin of 11,908 votes or 34.8 percent in favor and 22,307 votes or 65.2 percent against it, a more resounding defeat than Measure L sustained in 2022.
The San Bernardino County Grand Jury took up the issue of Upland’s neglect of its streets. On December 13, 2024, the grand issued its end-of-year report, in which was contained a section titled “When is a Pothole a Pothole? Looking at Potholes in the City of Upland.”
Although the Grand Jury did not take the city to task over its effort to manipulate public perception with regard to its financial wherewithal by deliberately neglecting Foothill Boulevard for an extended period of time, terminating Yu when he obstructed city officials’ strategy and sprung on its voters at what was essentially the twelfth hour a vote to up the city’s sales tax that ultimately failed, what the grand jury had to say about the City of Gracious Living and its leadership was not particularly flattering.
In its “Finding 1” the grand jury stated that the City of Upland’s training of its staff for street repair and fixing potholes has no clear timelines or documentation for training.”
In a response put together by Assistant City Attorney Thomas Rice, city officials took the position that addressing street defects or potholes is not the responsibility of staff and was previously and will in the future be handled by its paving contractor, Hardy & Harper, Inc. “The respondent agrees with the finding. As noted above, due to the expanded scope of work performed by Hardy & Harper, Inc. H&H, the city intends to rely on this qualified third-party contractor to comply with law and best practices, including in training its staff.”
In its second finding, the grand jury stated the City of Upland street repair crew is not trained in hot mix repair.
“The respondent agrees with the finding,” Rice wrote. “The city intends to utilize highly qualified third-party vendors to address potholes suited for hot mix repair. City staff may occasionally perform cold patch repair, when necessary.”
In its third finding, the grand jury observed that the City of Upland does not document follow-up contact when a pothole is not located.
“The respondent agrees with the finding,” Rice noted, but faulted the computerized system the city uses for not providing a continuity of contact to the reporting parties, which apparently consist of citizens/residents who contact the city to alert them to the existence of such problems.
The City of Upland uses what is called the NOBEL system, a geographic information system provided by a company of that name based in Redlands, which employs software allowing project coordinators to manage field crews and accurately report where work is being done or needs to be done.
“The city’s NOBEL system allows members of the public to make public works requests.
The system automatically notifies reporters when the issue is addressed. Unfortunately, the system may not be sophisticated enough to always explain to the reporting party why the request was closed out, for example, if no pothole was located. The system relies upon the reporting party accurately entering details regarding the location of the needed repair and the contact details for the reporting party.”
In its fourth finding, the grand jury determined that the City of Upland does not notify the citizen who reported the pothole when a reported pothole repair is completed.
According to Rice, “The respondent disagrees wholly or partially with the finding. The NOBEL system is geared to inform the reporting party of the completion and closing out of the work order. However, the system does require information to be imputed accurately.”
The grand jury in its fifth finding was critical of the city for over how its lack of quality control impacts the training and the accuracy of repairs.”
Rice responded, “The respondent agrees with the finding. As noted above, due to the expanded scope of work performed by Hardy & Harper, Inc., the city intends to rely on this qualified third-party contractor to comply with law and best practices, including quality control.”
With regard to the grand jury’s recommendation that Upland establish a documented training program, which includes reference material on street deterioration, instructor-led training, and online training for pothole repair and that the city therefore maintain a checklist of the steps completed in training, proficiency made in training and maintain the checklist in its employees’ individual personnel files, he said “The recommendation will not be implemented because it is not warranted or is not reasonable. [T]he city has now expanded the scope of services performed by highly qualified third-party contractors, such as Hardy & Harper, Inc. These contractors will be responsible for their own training programs for pothole repair.” Similarly, Rice said the city will not implement the grand jury’s recommendation that it provide training in the hot mix process and provide incentives that employees obtain a commercial driver license. He said, however, that the city already encourages public works department maintenance workers to get a commercial driver license.
Curiously, after acknowledging that the city was not making adequate follow-up with regard to residents’ reporting of potholes because of shortcomings in the NOBEL system, Rice stated that the grand jury’s recommendation that Upland enhance its current system with a procedure to document the date, time, photo and form of contact made to verify the location “will not be implemented because it is not warranted or is not reasonable. The NOBEL system provides the tools for uploading date, time, and photos of work requests. It also allows for a GPS location to be added. Nevertheless, the city will investigate whether the system is appropriately notifying users of the completion of requests and whether the system might be improved to provide better notification options.”
Rice said that the grand jury’s recommendation that the city provide notification to the party who submitted the repair request automatically in either a hard copy or electronic format for efficiency has already “been implemented, with a summary regarding the implemented action. The NOBEL systems provides notifications, assuming there is no user error in input. [T]he City will investigate whether the system is appropriately notifying users of the completion of requests and whether the system might be improved to provide better notification options.”
Rice said the city will not implement the grand jury’s recommendation that it establish a quality control protocol for pothole repairs, including a checklist with an assigned team member responsible for quality control, photos before and after the repair and the method of repair, and that the checklist become a part of the repair documentation in the reporting system. He said this was because “the city is utilizing highly qualified third-party contractors for this work, who are responsible for their own training, quality control, and checklists. The city will work with any contractors to ensure the NOBEL system is used appropriately to notify reporting parties.”