With the heightened scrutiny the Upland City Council has been subjected to in the course and aftermath of the effort to place Upland residents’ utility bills on the county tax roll, calls are being heard to arrest what is now widely perceived to be the pay-to-play ethos at the basis of that failed initiative.
While city officials in less affluent Fontana and Rialto, with their less educated and unsophisticated and largely politically apathetic populations were able to get their residents to hold still for placing their sewer and trash bills on the county tax roll, when Upland officials sought to do the same, a firestorm of controversy and resistance eventually erupted, the intensity of which last week dissuaded the council from continuing with the plan. Before the opposition in Upland had fully developed and elected officials were yet under the impression that those inveighing against the change were few and isolated, they ruthlessly tore into those questioning the wisdom of loading landowners’ property tax bills with added charges that would need to be settled on a twice-yearly basis. Those against the idea were obstructionists getting in the way of good governance and efficiency, the council members said, and they belittled any of their constituents unwilling to accept the new billing methodology petty troublemakers.
As more and more of the city’s homeowners became aware of what was happening, however, the numbers of those questioning what the city was ramrodding through grew into legions. In formulating the proposal, it assigned the city’s special projects consultant, Chris Alanis, to put together the report/recommendation for making the change. That report enumerated all of what Alanis touted as the benefits of placing city residents’ sewer service charges, trash service charges and a storm drain assessment/fee the city had begun levying on homeowners at some indeterminate point onto each individual homeowner’s twice-yearly tax bill.
When Alanis’s report was released on May 8, some 72 work-week hours prior to the May 12 meeting at which the Upland council was to officially take up the matter and vote on implementing the changeover of Uplanders’ utility billing to their tax bills, city residents en masse had their first opportunity to examine in depth what the city was striving to hurriedly pull off in time for the billing to be made on the July tax bill. What immediately leapt out at them was that in writing his report and recommendation that Upland place its residents’ utility billing on the property tax roll, Alanis cited all of the advantages of doing so but made no mention whatsoever of the substantial disadvantages this would entail nor of how it would greatly benefit Burrtec.
By perpetuating public rather than corporate responsibility for trash billing, the city would save Burrtec well in excess of $100,000 per year and perhaps more than $200,000 per year.
Scrutiny then turned to Alanis. In 2015, Alanis was a key member of the City of San Bernardino’s public works staff when that city shut down its sanitation division and contracted with Burrtec to be its franchised trash hauler. San Bernardino’s decision to go with Burrtec was based in some good measure on Alanis’s recommendation. Subsequently, Alanis left the employ of San Bernardino and went to work for Burrtec. This prompted the perception that the effort to switch residents’ utility billing to the county tax roll was not being done to benefit the city’s residence or landowners but rather Burrtec.
That prompted further examination of both the city’s and city officials’ relationship with Burrtec.
Upland residents learned:
• The City of Upland has not held an open bid competition for its trash franchise since 2001. John Pomierski was mayor at that time.
• A major recipient of Burrtec donations to his political war chest, Mayor Pomierski arranged an evergreen contract with Burrtec by which the city cannot end the franchise with Burrtec immediately, but must wait seven years to do so after issuing the company notice. The deadline for making that notice each year is June 30.
• Going back to 2006 and continuing until the present, Burrtec is the major contributor to the political campaigns of the members of the Upland City Council, collectively.
• For 24 years, successive Upland City Councils under Mayor Pomierski, his successor Mayor Ray Musser, his successor, Mayor Debbie Stone and her successor, Mayor Bill Velto, have declined to make that notice, perpetuating the Burrtec lock on the franchise, at this point until July 1. 2031, which will be three decades without any competitive bidding.
• In 2014, when the city last contemplated this situation to determine whether it should ensure that an open bidding process relating to the trash franchise take place in 2021 to ensure that the original contract with Burrtec would not last over two decades without a bid taking place, Burrtec Vice President Mike Arreguin dissuaded the council from giving notice at that time by promising his company would, at tremendous risk to itself, lock-in Burrtec’s 2014 rates for Upland customers through 2021.
• Arrequin assured Mayor Musser and council members Brendan Brandt, Gino Filippi, Debbie Stone and Glenn Bozar that if the city would make a show of its faith in Burrtec as a partner in municipal operations by keeping it in place as the city’s franchised trash hauler, Burrtec was prepared to demonstrate reciprocal loyalty to Upland, its businesses and residents by maintaining the pricing structure in place then for seven years. Arreguin emphasized that Burrtec was making a gamble in cutting such a deal, given the volatile nature of the refuse handling business in which operational costs can radically fluctuate. Nevertheless, Arreguin stated, if the City of Upland was willing to stay the course with his company, Burrtec was willing to refrain from raising the cost of trash service to Upland customers for seven years, “no matter what.”
• The council did as Mr. Areguin asked, thereby perpetuating the Burrtec Upland franchise contract until July 2028.
• In 2019, the entire trash hauling industry in California faced financial challenges when the State of California increased recycling requirements and the People’s Republic of China discontinued accepting a wide variety of recyclables. Pleading hardship, Burrtec asked the Upland City Council to be excused from its commitment to abide by charging Upland residents and businesses 2014 rates. The city council complied, and Burrtec broke its commitment to Upland’s citizens and raised their rates two years early.
• The Upland City Council every year since 2002 has declined the opportunity to give Burrtec seven-years notice in order to clear the way for an open bid competition. At this point the Burrtec franchise will remain in place at least until July 1, 2031.
In the days leading up to May 12, when the meeting at which city officials were set to consider and approve transferring billing responsibility for the deliver of utility services in Upland to the county, there were stirrings on social media about the proposal and some back and forth in the community. While the lion’s share of the comments ran against the idea, mixed into the discussion was some acceptance and even encouragement for making the change, much of it coming from the mayor’s and council members’ mainstay of supporters. All in all, Mayor Velto and his four council colleagues were confident transitioning their constituents’ utility bills onto the county tax roll could come off without a hitch and that there would be no appreciable political liability in doing so. As making the changeover well before July 1 of this year was necessary to initiate the program in time for the year’s first property tax posting, all five were looking forward to what was to occur on the evening of May 12 as a formality.
Soon after their arrival at City Hall, however, first a handful, then dozens, then scores and eventually approaching or exceeding 250 city residents were streaming into the 160-capacity council chambers. While there were other items on the agenda that might have accounted, perhaps, for as many as 20 or 30 of those who were present, it was instantaneously clear that the city fathers had an insurrection on their hands
When it rains, it pours. At 5:02 p.m., several of the council members received a text message from former Councilman Glenn Bozar. Prior to his having been elected to the council in 2012, Bozar in 1998 had joined with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the Apartment Association of the Greater Inland Empire, the Upland Hills Country Club Homeowners Association, the Upland Hills Estates Homeowners Association in suing the City of Upland over its imposition of a storm water fee on all developed property in the city. Short of the matter going to trial, the city settled the suit by agreeing to rescind the storm water fee, in perpetuity.
In making the overture to have the county take on the utility billing, the city had to shoot straight with the county by laying out precisely what it was proposing. In taking official action to effectuate the policy, the city had to dispense with the euphemistic language it had used in disguising that it was collecting the storm drain fee. In this way, it came to Bozar’s attention, who until that point was in the dark, just like everyone else. In his text message on May 12, Bozar asked what the city was doing.
Virtually instantaneously, the mayor’s and council’s confidence that their authority to override the sentiment contrary to the intensification of Upland residents’ twice-yearly property tax bills, which they had woefully underestimated, was absolutely misplaced. On the spot, Mayor Velto made a command decision to pull the three times pertaining to the matter – putting the sewer service charges on the county tax bill, putting trash service on the tax bill and placing the storm drain fee on the tax bill – from the agenda. Unannounced at that time was the conclusion reached by the mayor and the council that it would be best to drop the proposal, entirely and permanently.
Though the mayor had removed the items relating to placing upland residents’ utility service charges on the tax roll, scores of those present at the council meeting were yet intent on speaking their piece. The sheer number of people in the building were well beyond capacity, however, and the council, using a declaration by the fire chief that the overflow crowd represented a fire hazard, had close to a hundred of those present escorted out of the council chamber by a contingent of police officers summoned to the scene. Still, after the meeting began and that portion of it devoted to public comments was reached, a number of residents who remained in the room offered the reasons why they thought the city was using poor judgment in trying to transfer the collection of utility charges to the county.
Monthly or bimonthly bills are manageable for many residents but a bill with an accumulation of six months worth of utility costs would be overwhelming for some homeowners, several speakers said. Another objection registered was putting information about household operations onto the publicly observable tax roll. Others said the burden of collecting late payments or nonpayments of trash bills should fall on Burrtec. One suggestion was that the three bills – for sewer service, trash service and the storm drain fee – be combined into a single bill. Others objected to the county’s imposition of a $250 late fee on tax bills. Others objected to the stampede toward making the change, with only a single hearing within days of Alanis’s report becoming public. There was concern expressed about Burrtec upping its cost of service and that this would impact an average resident’s tax burden. It was noted that Burrtec had already implemented changes on its end to accommodate the transfer of the billing to the tax roll, betraying that the council was already primed to approve the transfer of the billing to the tax roll, meaning it was a done deal and the hearing that was previously scheduled for that night a sham formality. What was perhaps the most poignant objection was that echoed by those with rental properties who noted that under the system the city was proposing, renters, i.e., their tenants, would not be billed for the utility services they received and that, instead, the burden would be placed on the tax bills of the property owners. This would not only complicate the billing property owners would have to engage in with their tenants but potentially result in the property owners having to take up the slack of their tenants if they were delinquent with, or otherwise skipped out on, their utility bills.
The can of worms the city council opened with this proposal has not gone away.
On one front, city officials, Mayor Velto and the council now has Bozar, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the Apartment Association of the Greater Inland Empire, the Upland Hills Country Club Homeowners Association, the Upland Hills Estates Homeowners Association breathing down their necks over the issue of the city having surreptitiously collecting the storm drain assessment it was bound, under the settlement agreement of the lawsuit brought in 1998, to not collect. It now faces the necessity of discontinuing the collection of the fee and preparing to make refunds of the money it has collected, as it is anticipated it will soon be subjected to a demand that the city return all of the money it has collected since it began secretly levying the fee.
On another front, the city and city council are now having to come to terms with the consequences of the pay-to-play ethos that engulfs the city. This chapter has made a good number of city residents acutely aware that in exchange for campaign donations over the years, members of the city council have on a yearly basis let Burrtec slide by not invoking the sunset notice on the trash hauling franchise with Burrtec so an open bid on the franchise can take place seven years hence.
Thus, the council now finds itself under pressure to, at its May 27 meeting or its June 9 or June 23 meeting, to give Burrtec that official notice.
Whether the council members have the strength of character or are psychologically equipped to comply with the public calls for an open bid on the trash franchise by 2021 is a subject of substantial speculation in Upland.
Burrtec, its owners and corporate officers are, historically, the single largest campaign donors to Councilman Rudy Zuniga and Councilman Carlos Garcia. In the last 16 months alone, Burrtec has provided Garcia with $6,702.75. In addition, within that time frame, at least $3,000 originating with Burrtec has been filtered into Garcia’s electioneering fund through other donors, including Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren.
There is no indication that Burrtec has ever provided electioneering money to Councilwoman Shannon Maust. No such donations from Burrtec or any of its owners or employees are listed on her California Form 460s, the campaign finance disclosure documents elected officials are required to fill out and file twice yearly and which candidates for office must file on a more frequent basis in elections years. Nevertheless, Maust came across as the most strident supporter of transitioning utility bills to the county tax rolls of all four council members and the mayor in the months and weeks prior to May 12. She was particularly harsh in her characterizations of those who opposed the move, either stating or implying that they were being perversely obstinate or small-minded in their opposition. While she made an 180 degree flip with regard to the issue in the aftermath of the massive resident turnout at the May 12 meeting, stating on social media she is not going to support the bill transfer to the tax roll going forward, her willingness to cross up Burrtec, which at this point is considered to be a solid member of the Upland establishment, is considered doubtful. While she is not scheduled to stand for reelection in Upland’s District 1 until 2028, it is widely recognized that Burrtec is in a position, by having its ownership, management and employees donate heavily to candidates in a local political race, sway the outcome.
The degree to which Burrtec has control over the city council is perhaps best illuminated by the manner in which Councilman James Breitling has conducted himself during his now nearly-two-and-a-half-years on the council. Breitling is a former employee of Athens Services, Burrtec’s major rival for primacy within the trash hauling industry in San Bernardino County. Until 2013, Burrtec stood head and shoulders over every other refuse handling operation in San Bernardino County, as it was not only the operator of the county’s landfills but the franchised trash hauler serving 15 of the county’s 24 municipalities – Adelanto, Apple Valley, Barstow, Fontana, Grand Terrace, Highland, Montclair, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Rialto, Twentynine Palms, Upland, Victorville, Yucca Valley and Yucaipa – as well as dozens of its unincorporated communities, including Amboy, Angeles Oaks, Baker, Barton Flats, Bloomington, Cima, Crestline, Daggett, Del Rosa, Devore, Dumont Dunes, East Highlands, El Rancho Verde, Forest Falls, Fort Irwin, Halloran, Helendale, Hinkley, Kelso, Lake Arrowhead, Landers, Lenwood, Lucerne Valley, Ludlow, Mentone, Mountain Pass, Mt. Baldy, Newberry Springs, Nipton, Oak Glen, Running Springs, San Antonio Heights, Silver Lakes and Yermo. At that point, however, Athens Services swooped in and wrested the then-$16,686,700 annual contract to run the county’s five active landfills and nine transfer stations. That contract, which is now worth far more, runs through 2031, with an option to be extended to 2039. In the years since, Athens has continued to push toward becoming a progressively larger participant in the San Bernardino County trash industry by obtaining more trash hauling contracts around the 20,105-square mile county. It fell short, in fact losing ground to Burrtec in 2015 when Burrtec obtained the San Bernardino Franchise. Both competed in 2021 to obtain the Chino Hills trash hauling contract, which until that point had been held by Republic Industries, but both lost out to Waste Management, Inc.in early 2022.
Breitling, a junior corporate office with Athens until relatively recently, played a part, however small, in Athens obtaining the county contract, which represented a substantial setback for Burrtec.
Once in office, however, Breitling, who was no longer employed by Athens, quickly adapted to the culture of the world he had come top inhabit and began adhering to the value system inherent among and expected by his council colleagues. He did nothing to interfere with the beneficial relationships his colleagues had developed with Burrtec, and did nothing to compromise the company’s franchise with the city or question the wisdom of rolling the sunset clause over one further year every July 1.
“In his heart of hearts, yeah, Jim wants Burrtec out of there,” an individual close to him said, “but he is not going to die on that hill. He understands he needs at least two votes to support him when he wants to do something on the council and it is more important to him to stay on the good side of everybody: Carlos, Rudy, Shannon and especially Velto. Everybody else is happy with Burrtec, so he is happy with Burrtec, The only way he’d come out for making notice and calling for an RFP [request for proposals, i.e., bids for the trash franchise] would be if two others clearly said they wanted bid proposals. There is no way that is going to happen.”
As is the case with Maust and Breitling, there is no indication in the available Form 460 documents available at Upland City Hall to suggest that Burrtec has supported Velto. In fact, the Form 460s available through City Hall show that Burrtec in 2020, when Velto was challenging incumbent Mayor Debbie Stone, threw its substantial support behind Stone.
Burrtec has a consistent pattern of supporting incumbents in those jurisdictions where it has franchise contracts or is seeking to obtain one. In this way, Burrtec’s support of Stone in Upland, where it already held the trash hauling franchise, appeared to be consistent with its corporate interests, which extend to perpetuating its franchises by keeping individuals in office who have demonstrated they are unwilling to disrupt the status quo by beginning the countdown on the company’s evergreen franchise contracts.
These patterns in Burrtec’s financial support of politicians – ones which include limiting their donations only to those politicians who oversee jurisdictions where the Burrtec already has a franchise contract or is competing to get one as well as supporting only incumbents who have previously supported the company by not triggering the countdowns of the evergreen arrangements sustaining the company’s ongoing franchises – has led to the observation that Burrtec and the politicians it supports are engaged in pay-to-play politics.
Velto, who, after being appointed to the council in 2019 supported the lifting of Burrtec’s commitment to keep the 2014 rates in place, maintains he was not a recipient of Burrtec’s political support. The Form 460 documentation to verify that is not immediately available, as the Upland City Clerk has not posted Velto’s 2019 and 2020 Form 460s to the Upland municipal website and will not disgorge those documents without the requester making a filing to obtain them under the California Public Records Act, by which the agency involved is at liberty to hold onto them for at least 10 working days, which in the City of Upland’s case can been a total delay of up to 26 days.
Mayor Velto did not comment upon the possibility or even likelihood that the city will be called upon by Bozar, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the Apartment Association of the Greater Inland Empire, the Upland Hills Country Club Homeowners Association, the Upland Hills Estates Homeowners Association to refund to Upland’s residents the storm drain fees collected in defiance of the city’s settlement of the litigation filed in 1998 over that issue.
He addressed the accusations relating to the pay-to-play accusations lodged against the city with regard to Burrtec’s role as the major contributor to Upland’s elected leaders over the last two decades and their corresponding unwillingness to move toward rebidding the franchise contract that company now holds only obliquely, stating he was not among those being paid political money by the trash hauler.
“I have never received a contribution to my campaigns from Burrtec,” Mayor Velto said. “I have not received any campaign contributions since my 2020 campaign with the exception of $500 in 2024 from the California Association of Realtors, which I did not solicit”
Velto said the city was open and transparent with regard to the effort to place Upland residents’ utility bills on the county tax roll.
“I did not try to prevent anyone from speaking at the council meeting when I decided to pull the 3 items from the agenda,” he said.
Rather, he suggested, the press was unfairly beating up on him and his colleagues over what was an earnest effort to innovate the way the city conducts business, including providing essential services to the city’s residents and recovering the legitimate costs for doing so.
“When you write false information about me is why I choose not to speak or comment any further,” he said, explaining his reluctance to go into depth with regard to the controversy.