By Mark Gutglueck
Push has at last come to shove as the eminent domain lawsuit the Town of Apple Valley is pursuing against the owner of the community’s water system, Liberty Utilities, has now gone to trial.
Apple Valley officials consider the effort to acquire the town’s water utility to be a wholly justifiable one that will take the town a step closer to being a full service municipality and ensure the elixir of life remains affordable for all of the town’s residents, even though their predecessors spurned at least three earlier opportunities to transform the water company into a municipal branch.
In years past, town officials thought the cost of maintaining the wells, reservoirs, pipes and hookups of the entity known as the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company to be beyond its means. After the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company’s previous owner, Park Water, then under the control of the Carlyle Group, in 2012 instituted 19 percent rate increases on Apple Valley Ranchos customers to carry out what was said to be necessary upgrades to the aging equipment and facilities that deliver water to the 75-square mile town’s 70,000-plus residents, town officials radically changed their collective position.
In 2011, the Carlyle Group, an American multinational private equity and asset management corporation, acquired from the Wheeler Family at a cost of $102.2 million the Park Water Company, which in addition to its water system assets in Apple Valley included the water system serving Compton, Downey and Bellflower in Los Angeles County, as well as the Mountain Water Company, which serves Missoula, Montana. Upon the Carlyle Group assuming ownership of Park Water, the town of Apple Valley impaneled a so-called blue ribbon committee to consider acquiring Apple Valley Ranchos. That committee advised against the acquisition.
In 2014, the Carlyle Group undertook and completed $8.1 million in capital improvements to the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company and then instituted another 30 percent rate hike on Apple Valley Ranchos customers to be implemented from 2015 until 2017.
Some 1,128 miles away, in Missoula, Montana, city officials there, who were likewise chaffing under the higher rates that Park had imposed on the Mountain Water Company’s customers, had initiated what in time would prove to be a successful effort to wrest control of the water utility from its private owner by means of an eminent domain proceeding. At that point, Apple Valley town officials began trading notes with Missoula city officials. The town was a bit tardy in moving toward the eminent domain solution, as the Carlyle Group in the summer of 2015 purchased for $300,000 the water system which serves some 900 residents in the desert community of Yermo, which lies roughly 36 miles from Apple Valley. The Carlyle Group then packaged a sale of the entirety of the water utilities it owned in California and Montana, which it labeled Western Water Holdings, to a Canadian company, Algonquin Power/Liberty Utilities, for $327 million.
Before Algonquin/Liberty effectuated that purchase, Apple Valley officials moved to foreclose the sale of the Apple Valley Ranchos portion of transfer by means of a complaint to the California Public Utilities Commission. An element of that complaint was that the town was interested in acquiring the water company, if necessary by condemnation.
Simultaneously, the town obtained from what it referred to as “an independent appraisal firm” the rather wishful “fair purchase price” of $45.54 million for Apple Valley Rancho and thereafter indicated it would be wiling to pay Park Water the somewhat unrealistic figure of $50.3 million for the Apple Valley Ranchos water system lock, stock and barrel.
A more pragmatic assessment of the Apple Valley Rancho Water Company’s value was somewhere in the neighborhood of $119 million in 2016 dollars.
For those carrying out such an analysis, the relevant metrics were Apple Valley Ranchos represented roughly one third of the entirety of Western Water’s assets at the time of Algonquin/Liberty’s $327 million purchase, deriving a rough figure of $109 million. Another simple analysis derived the higher number of $119, based upon subtracting the $88.6 million fair market value for Mountain Water Company component upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court in June 2015 in the city of Missoula’s takeover of the Montana Park Water holdings. Subtraction of the $88.6 million from the $327 million purchase price for Western Water would indicate that the Bellflower-Compton-Downey and the Apple Valley components of Western Water were worth $238.4 million in 2016 dollars. Assuming Apple Valley Ranchos represented roughly one half of the remaining Western Water assets now in the possession of Algonquin/Liberty, its fair market value would be approximately $119 million.
Another price measure started its calculation with the presumption that the Mountain Water Company in Montana which owned and operated 37 mostly shallow and medium-depth wells serving a population of 69,821 residents was comparable in terms of its customer base to Apple Valley Ranchos in 2015, which served roughly 71,000 residents. Apple Valley’s population has grown to 73,000 residents or thereabout at present. In Los Angeles County, Algonquin/Liberty supplies between five and six percent of 96,455-population Compton’s water by means of the four wells it operates there, while purchasing somewhere between 92 and 94 percent of the water delivered to Compton from the Central Basin Municipal Water District which wholesales potable water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. In 76,616-population Bellflower and 113,242-population Downey, Algonquin/Liberty supplies about 15 percent of the supply to those two cities with water drawn from the groundwater basin through its eight wells there, while purchasing roughly 81 percent of the water it sells through the Central Basin Municipal Water District. Algonquin/Liberty is not the only purveyor of water in the communities of Compton, Downey and Bellflower, as the Golden State Water Company also serves those cities.
The Apple Valley Ranchos Water company operates 24 deep wells throughout Apple Valley and three wells in Yermo. Though there are other methods of calculating the value of a water purveying operation than the sheer number of its wells, in using that yardstick it appears that Apple Valley Ranchos’ 24-well operation in Apple Valley entailed one third of Algonquin’s original Western Water Holdings’ 72-well inventory of water-producing assets. Apple Valley Ranchos now accounts for 24 of Algonquin/Liberty’s current 35 wells, translating into 68.57 percent of its California wells, which are collectively valued at $238.4 million. With Algonquin having paid $327 million for Western Water Holdings, it stands to reason that the judge hearing the eminent domain case, Judge Don Alvarez, will be constrained to hear and accept, unless the Town of Apple Valley can present compelling evidence to support a conclusion otherwise, that Apple Valley Ranchos is valued at somewhere between $109 million on the low end and $163.47 million on the high end.
As the Town of Apple Valley has sought to force Liberty Utilities to disgorge the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company at a price of the town’s choosing, Liberty Utilities has resisted mightily, and the eminent domain lawsuit, which was originally filed on January 7, 2016 has now proceeded to Judge Alvarez’s Courtroom, S-23, at the 11-story Courthouse in downtown San Bernardino.
Judge Alvarez is frequently assigned cases involving environmental law, in particular the California Environmental Quality Act. Moreover, prior to his elevation to the bench, Don Alvarez was a partner in the law firm of Brunick Alvarez & Battersby. His partner Bill Brunick, was the lead counsel for the Mojave Water Agency, which was a principal in the effort to adjudicate water rights in the Victor Valley and Barstow regions of the West Mojave Desert, including Apple Valley.
Liberty Utilities is represented by attorneys George Soneff, Edward Burg, David Moran and Lauren Fried.
Soneff said the overture to force Liberty to sell the water company to the town should be rejected because no pressing necessity to do so exists and the water system assets passing into the hands of the city will not benefit the town’s residents.
According to Soneff, who began and concluded the defense’s opening statements on Wednesday October 23, the town’s assertion that Apple Valley customers are paying inflated rates for water is spurious. In fact, Soneff said, gauged against inflation over the last ten years, Apple Valley Ranchos customers are paying 9.3 percent less than they were paying a decade ago, as individual water bills have risen just $5 since 2009. Documentation the town has submitted to the court in which unfavorable comparisons are made between what Apple Valley Ranchos customers are charged vis-à-vis customers in several other cities is highly misleading, according to Soneff. In neighboring Hesperia, where the city annexed the Hesperia Water District in 1993, the city is subsidizing water department operations, Soneff pointed out. In Victorville, Soneff said, the water department is neglecting its facilities and deferring maintenance, which is artificially reducing costs to customers, he said.
Soneff said the town’s argument that Liberty has neglected the upkeep of the water system is belied by the consideration that the 2015 environmental impact report relating to the town takeover stated no improvements or upgradings to the utility’s infrastructure were needed.
The town’s contention that its ownership of the water operations will lower residents’ rates is a canard, Soneff asserted, since the town will need to issue some $150 million in bonds to make the acquisition, which will entail debt service of more than $300 million over the next quarter century, and will further need to cover the costs of operations and maintenance. As a consequence, Apple Valley Ranchos customers will need to pay higher rates than they are now paying to Liberty, Soneff insisted.
Soneff said the town’s legal representatives are going to argue that the town’s ownership of the water utility will entail the application of a requirement under Proposition 218 that rates be considered taxes and therefore be subject to a vote. The town has a pattern and history of disregarding Proposition 218, he said, and two lawsuits against the town on that basis establish that the town will likely disregard that taxpayer/ratepayer protection in the future, he suggested.
Attorneys Kendall MacVey, Guillermo Frias and Christopher Pisano,  all of whom are with the law firm of Best Best & Krieger, represent the town.
MacVey told Judge Alvarez and all of the others present that the town’s seizure of the water assets through the eminent domain condemnation procedure is one that is justified because of the public interest, in particular protecting the residents of Apple Valley from predatory and rapacious gouging by Liberty, which has subjected its customers to exorbitant and unjustifiable rate increases. The Canadian company does not abide by the principles of transparency and open public participation in the administration of inherently public and crucial resources such as water, MacVey asserted, and placing the town’s water resources in the hands of its duly elected and functioning government will ensure that the public is not ripped off. MacVey asserted that Liberty has not proven a responsible steward of the desert town’s precious water resources, and that the foreign company has not earthquake-hardened the water system’s reservoirs and cisterns to ensure that the town’s residents will have adequate water, or any water at all, in the aftermath of a major seismic disturbance.
The condition of nine of the water company’s ten reservoirs have been compromised, with several tanks on insecure foundations that will fail under a seismic disturbance, MacVey said
What the trial will boil down to, MacVey said, is whether “we are going to have a system that is accountable to the people it serves at cost or one that’s accountable to executives and investors in Canada” who were seeking to maximize their profit at the expense and on the backs of Apple Valley’s residents.
Executives with the Canadian-based Algonquin Power & Utilities Corporation, the parent company to the U.S. subsidiary Liberty Utilities, are out to line their pockets and they don’t give a damn about their American customers, MacVey said.
An analysis of the books, MacVey said, shows that greedy managers with Liberty skimmed $4.28 million off the top of the Apple Valley Ranchos operation without any justification, explanation, or clarification of what the money was being diverted for. Those profits were boosted by a tangle of surcharges levied on customers, without any explanation for those charges added to customers’ bills. MacVey said.
Liberty’s rates qualified as, MacVey suggested, the highest charges for water service in the inland Southern California region, though one of the thirty providers of utilities in a survey of the area had a slightly higher rate. Liberty’s charges to its customers came in at a whopping 44 percent above the average cost of water among those 30 entities, with customers in Apple Valley paying $71.64 monthly for water alone as compared to the average of $49.68 paid for on average by the customers served by other water utilities, he said.
MacVey said it was appropriate for a local governmental jurisdiction to have control over a community’s water system in California, including in Apple Valley, since rate increases can be limited because they are subject to Proposition 218, as the rates are then interpreted as a tax, and Proposition 218 requires that tax increases be subject to a vote of those upon whom they are imposed. Moreover, MacVey said, having the town government in control of the water service in the town will stabilize the rates because the water will be delivered to the town’s residents at cost, without a need to pay stockholders a profit.
If Judge Alvarez rules in favor of Apple Valley, Liberty will be forced to sell Apple Valley Ranchos to the town. Alvarez will thereafter be tasked with determining the fair market value of the water company based upon information provided to him by both Apple Valley and Liberty, as well as their experts, consultants and appraisers. Apple Valley is not likely to stand by its contention that the water company is valued at $45.54 million, and might try to spring a number closer to the $88.6 million Missoula paid for Mountain Water. Meanwhile, Liberty is prepared to argue the water assets in Apple Valley are valued more accurately at $150 million.
This harks to Theodore Roosevelts statement that three-fifths of wisdom consists of being wise in time.
In 1945, the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company was created by Newt Bass and B.J. Westlund as an adjunct to their effort to develop the town on the 6,500 acres they had acquired from the Southern Pacific Railroad. Shortly after the town incorporated in 1988 the water system’s then-owner, the Wheeler Family, offered to sell it – 18 medium and deep wells, pipes, reservoirs, pumping units and appurtenances – to Town Hall for $2.5 million. The maiden town council – consisting of Nick DePrisco, Heidi Larkin, Dick Pearson, Carl Coleman and Jack Collingsworth – spurned that offer.

San Bernadino County Republican Central Committee Chairwoman Jan Leja  has been unable to stem the deepening and increasingly hostile Republican-on-Republican violence that has broken out in the odd-year election cycle in the contest for three positions on the West Valley Water Board.
That struggle between former Republican brethren is threatening to create a wider rift in the party that could overset the regional control and advantages the GOP has heretofore enjoyed.
The West Valley Water District, which is headquartered in Rialto and serves roughly 66,000 residents living in portions of Rialto, Fontana, the unincorporated San Bernadino County community of Bloomington and a small sliver of northern Riverside County, while comprising just a little over one half of one percent of San Benardino County’s overall population, stands as an important symbol of the Republican primacy in San Bernardino County, one of the last bastions of Republicanism in the Golden State. The West Valley Water District is considered to be an intensified microcosm of San Bernardino County as a whole. Though the 28.8 percent, or 288,353 of San Bernardino County’s 1,002,804 voters registered as Republicans are significantly outnumbered by the 39.6 percent or 397,346 of the county’s voters who are registered as members of the Democratic Party, the GOP dominates politics in the county, with four of the five current members of the board of supervisors being Republicans, and Republicans outnumbering Democrats on sixteen of the county’s 24 city or town councils. Within the confines of the West Valley Water District’s geographic jurisdiction, Democrats outnumber Republicans by an even greater ratio than they do at the county level, with 19,307 or 48.5 percent of the district’s 39,829 voters affiliated with the Democratic Party and 7,704 total registered Republicans for 19.3 percent. Nevertheless, four of the district’s governing board members  – Dr. Michael Taylor, Dr. Cliff Young, Kyle Crowther and Greg Young, who is no blood relation to Cliff Young – are Republicans. Don Olinger is the board’s only Democrat.
By working cohesively, cultivating donors, stockpiling cash in their individual and collective political war chests, apportioning their resources wisely and investing that money into races where they can be competitive, phone-banking, preparing months or even years in advance so they can engage in vigorous electioneering with signs, mailers, television, radio and TV ads in the crucial weeks just ahead of every election, and by working to ensure that Republicans make it to the polls or cast mail ballots, the Republicans have outhustled and outperformed the more numerous but less coordinated, less efficient and far more fragmented Democrats virtually every election cycle.
Two years ago, in the 2017 election when Cliff Young was reelected, Taylor was elected and Crowther was elected to a two-year term to replace a recently resigned board member, all four of the board’s Republicans had worked together. A key element of that effort had been Greg Young, himself a longtime member of the Republican Central Committee, ensuring that the party came through to assist its candidates in the West Valley District.
Differences now divide the West Valley Board, with Taylor and Crowther aligned on one side and Young in league with Young on the other. Greg Young and Crowther are up for reelection, as is Olinger. Both sides of the Republican split appear to be locked in mortal political combat with one another.
Whereas in years past, elections in the West Valley Water District were held at-large, this year for the first time board members are being elected within the geographical division of the district in which they reside by those also living in that section of the district.
As of last week, Taylor had provided the Democrat Olinger with $14,110.28 toward his campaign for reelection. As of this week, he had increased that amount to $16,500.48.  While it was mildly disturbing for many Republican purists to see Taylor involving himself in the promotion of a Democrat, that was mitigated by the consideration that Olinger’s only opponent in the race, Channing Hawkins, is another Democrat.
Of far more import to those concerned about the Republicans’ political fortunes going forward is Taylor’s efforts on behalf of Angel Ramirez, who relocated to Bloomington from Fontana to run against Greg Young in this year’s election. Previously, Taylor had supported Ramirez with money from his campaign fund used to defray the cost of mailers supporting Ramirez and attacking Greg Young. In the last week, Taylor came across with another $1,038 to support Ramirez against Greg Young. Crowther has likewise come out in favor of Ramirez, endorsing him over Greg Young.
In addition, three other Republicans upon whom Greg Young was counting for endorsements have gone the other way in supporting Ramirez. These include Robert Rego, who was formerly the chairman of the Republican Central Committee and who is now serving as both Olinger’s and Ramirez’s campaign treasurer; Fontana City Councilman Jesse Armendarez; and former Republican Central Committee Executive Director Jeremiah Brosowske.
Traditionally, the Republican Party in San Bernardino County has endorsed incumbent Republicans when they seek reelection. Thus, it was widely presumed that the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, of which Greg Young is a member, would endorse Greg Young in his reelection effort this year. Forces within and without the central committee, however, militated against Greg Young, and managed to give Ramirez the endorsement. Those taking part in the effort included Armendarez, Rego, Taylor, Brosowske, Crowther and Phil Cothran, Sr., the father of Phil Cothran, Jr., a member of the Fontana City Council.
Accompanying that move was another successful effort to swing the central committee’s endorsement in the 2020 Fifth District Supervisorial race to Armendarez.
At present, the only Democrat on the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors is Josie Gonzales, who has held that position since 2004 and who is obliged by term limits to leave that office next year. She has endorsed her chief of staff, Dan Flores, another Democrat, in next year’s election. Despite the consideration that the Democrats hold an overwhelming registration advantage in the Fifth District – with 89,954 or 49.5 percent of the district’s 181,809 voters identifying as Democrats and 33,241 or 18.3 percent affiliated with the Republican Party – the Republicans yet had designs on the seat now held by Gonzalez. Using their far greater electioneering resources and firepower, many members of the Party of Lincoln believed Flores’ vulnerabilities could be exploited to overcome his dual advantages of greater Democratic registration numbers in the Fifth District and the $262,000 he has already salted away into his campaign war chest.
The Republican standard bearer previously selected for the task of standing in against Flores was Dr. Cliff Young. In 2004, Young had served a short appointed stint as Fifth District county supervisor following the forced resignation of Jerry Eaves, a Democrat, after Eaves had been convicted on political corruption charges. Cliff Young and Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren stand out as the two leading Republican African-American officeholders in San Bernardino County. In Fontana, just as in the West Valley Water District, the Democrats hold an overwhelming voter registration advantage over the Republicans, with 43,528 or 48.1 percent of its 90,431 voters registered as Democrats and 16,388 or 18.1 percent affiliated with the Republican Party. Nevertheless, four of Fontana’s five councilmembers – Mayor Warren, Councilman John Roberts, Councilman Phil Cothran, Jr. and Councilman Jesse Armendarez – are Republicans. And up until very recently, all four were in lock-sync with one another politically, comprising Mayor Warren’s ruling council coalition.
That coalition – and the wider Republican unity within the county – are now threatened by the contretemps between the four Republicans in the West Valley Water District and the divergence in alignment it has triggered in neighboring Fontana. Warren, in addition to being in league with Roberts, Armendarez and Cothran, was also networking with Crowther, Cliff Young, Greg Young and a coterie of other Republicans throughout the region. Cliff Young and Greg Young supported her in her mayoral elections and she endorsed and supported them in their respective elective efforts at West Valley. She had signed on in the movement to promote Cliff Young in the upcoming race for Fifth District county supervisor. The move by Armendarez to outmaneuver Cliff Young for the party endorsement and the accompanying ploy in awarding the party endorsement to Ramirez over Greg Young, together with the militating of Taylor and Crowther against Greg Young, has sown dissension within the coalition Warren formerly headed in Fontana.
Were the breakup of Warren’s Republican coalition to fully manifest, it would leave Fontana, which already has registration numbers heavily in favor of the Democrats, ripe for a shift into the blue that might touch off further erosion of the Republican control of San Bernardino County.
Simultaneously, Rego and Brosowske – the San Bernardino County Central Committee’s former chairman and former executive director, respectively – cutting Greg Young off at the pass in favor of the 23-year-old upstart and political neophyte Ramirez is spooking several of the deep-pocketed donors the party has come to rely upon, who are questioning why Greg Young’s loyalty to the party has been rewarded with the party endorsement of his rival.
Exacerbating the situation are reports that Brosowske, who managed to wangle an appointment to a vacancy on the Hesperia City Council last year and then gain election to the council in his own right last November only to be removed by his council colleagues last month over accusations pertaining to whether he had ever actually established and maintained residency in Hesperia, is on the verge of provoking a full-blown scandal over the current electioneering in the West Valley Water District. Last May, Brosowske was hired as the West Valley Water District’s assistant general manager, a position providing him with over a quarter of a million dollars annually in combined salary and benefits. There was criticism leveled toward the district at the time based upon the consideration that the 28-year-old Brosowske had no training, experience, certification or expertise with regard to municipal water district functions, and accompanying charges that his was a political appointment. A video taken at the water district’s headquarters at 855 West Baseline Avenue in Rialto sometime within the last couple of weeks purportedly shows him engaged in partisan electioneering activity on behalf of either or both Olinger and Ramirez.
It is illegal for public employees to use governmental facilities or assets to engage in political activity.
The report with regard to Brosowske represents double jeopardy for Leja in her capacity as the chairman of the Republican Central Committee. Similar reports are dogging the party with regard to Third District San Bernardino County Supervisor Dawn Rowe, who was appointed last year to the position she holds and for which she must seek reelection next year in order to retain it beyond December 2020. She has hired onto her staff three Republican political operatives – Dillon Lesovsky, Matt Knox and Suzette Swallow – who are reportedly working on Rowe’s 2020 election campaign as well as those for Congressman Paul Cook, who is leaving the House of Representatives to seek election to the board of supervisors in the First District, and Jay Obernolte, the 33rd District assemblyman who is running to replace Cook as the 8th District congressman. All are Republicans.
For Leja, her success as county party chairwoman hinges upon the party’s ability to maintain its political primacy in San Bernardino County. Nevertheless, if those involved in the party effort to stay ahead of their Democratic rivals engage in illegal electioneering from public offices, that issue could redound to the Republicans’ detriment if the Democrats seize upon that as a campaign issue.
-Mark Gutglueck

At least part of the mystery over the nature and size of the development intended to take place east of Central Avenue and just north of Foothill Boulevard in Upland below Cable Airport has been cleared up. Nevertheless, the plans as revealed have begotten more questions.
In June, during a so-called workshop involving city officials and Bridge Development Partners, a proposal for a three-building warehouse complex involving 977,000 square feet under roof was previewed. In all, Bridge said, the warehouses would have 150 truck bays/loading docks. Once the entire facility was completed, it was projected that there would be at least 263 truck trips in and out of the complex. Multiple questions attended the plan, which was not fully fleshed out and was represented as tentative.
Because of the presence of Cable Airport to the north of the property in question, entrance and exit to the property appeared to be limited to three directions. Subsequently, however, improvements to an area along 13th Street near the south entrance to Cable Airport were undertaken, with no indication from tight-lipped city officials as to what the purpose for that work was. Concern was voiced about truck traffic the warehouse facility was anticipated to generate.
This week, on Monday, October 21, a special joint workshop of the Upland City Council, the Upland Planning Commission and the Upland Airport Land Use Committee was held. Brendan Kotler, vice president of development for Bridge Development Partners, without mentioning Amazon by name, indicated that the electronic commerce and product distribution giant will be the ultimate tenant of a warehousing facility that has been scaled back to less than one-third of that talked about in June.
Kotler said Bridge Development has firmed up its project description to a single building of 276,250 square feet, described as a retail and logistics center. The number of truck bays was radically reduced from what was earlier proposed, to just 20 loading docks. It was announced that rather than the more than 200 trucks coming into the center and then heading out each day, there would be only about 25.
That the tenant is to be Amazon can be surmised by the description provided by Kotler during the workshop and by Bridge Development Partners in its documentation. Kotler said Bridge Development Partners will be building the facility for a “Fortune 10 company.” According to Bridge Development Partners’ public announcement, the goal is to have the project completed in full absolutely no later than next September, in time for the tenant “to be able to deliver gifts for the next Christmas Season.”
Upland Development Services Director Robert Dahlquest, who is fully informed as to who the prospective tenant is, has committed to Bridge Development Partners to delay an official identification until further on in the project approval process. Nevertheless, Dahlquest identified the tenant as one involved in “e-commerce delivery.” Amazon is the only internet-based product purchasing and delivering company in the Fortune 10.
A few people have suggested that the planned tenant might not be Amazon, but rather Walmart, which in recent years has been experimenting with what it calls e-commerce fulfilment centers, from which merchandize is dispatched to on-line purchasers. Walmart is number 1 on the Fortune 10 list. Amazon is number 5.
From Bridge Development Partner’s perspective, the project presents a win-win-win-win-win for everyone. Bridge will complete a successful project. No truck traffic will snarl up 13th Street and impact nearby residential neighborhoods. Amazon will have a distribution node centrally located in the Inland Empire. A problem property that just a few years ago was the hosting ground of a homeless encampment and what some people consider visual blight that includes large piles of rubble, gravel, construction debris, slag and dirt will be converted into a modern development. Hundreds involved in the building industry will be employed during the construction phase and some 200 people will find jobs in the logistics center once it is completed and up and running. And, according to Kotler, Bridge Development Partners will provide the City of Upland $2.2 million in fees for permits and development impact mitigation.
For at least some Upland residents, however, there are some downsides. They point to Bridge Development Partners and Amazon having cozened city officials into allowing the project to proceed without an environmental impact report for the 50-acre undertaking being carried out. Amazon, despite qualifying as the largest retailer in the world, will be able to function in, out of and from the City of Gracious Living without having to pay any kind of tribute, since it does not charge its customers sales tax, and therefore Upland will not get any of that revenue. Moreover, the downscaling of the truck traffic component of the project that was originally proposed in June will be more than offset by a colossal increase in car traffic.
The roughly 25 trucks coming onto the premises daily will be ones delivering merchandise being sold by Amazon to customers. The merchandise will then be packaged and delivered to individual customers not by truck but by car. This will entail a tremendous volume of vehicular traffic. One indication of how much traffic is the massive size of the parking lot Bridge Development Partners proposes to augment the building with. Indeed, the square footage of the parking lot will be close to double the size of the building. Under the City of Upland’s guidelines, a 276,250 square foot building is required to provide 350 parking spaces. In the case of the logistics center it is building for Amazon, however, Bridge Development Partners is going to put into place 1,486 parking spaces for delivery vans and cars, which does not include the space earmarked for semi-trucks.
The Amazon business model involves its employment of delivery vehicles operated by independent operators/semi-independent contractors who purchase from Amazon delivery vehicles and use them to pick up merchandise from Amazon delivery stations, such as the one contemplated in Upland, and deliver the product to consumers for a set fee.
Questions attend the arrangement Amazon has with these drivers/deliverers. Undetermined at this point is whether the driver/deliverers qualify as independent contractors and whether they fall within the rubric of “gig workers,” who are provided with certain protections under Assembly Bill 5 signed into law by California Governor Gavin Newsom in September and which will go into effect on January 1, 2020. Assembly Bill 5 requires that companies employing independent contractors hire them as employees.
Thus, questions and mystery still to some degree attends the Bridge Development Partners’ warehouse project, including whether adequate mitigation for its impacts will be provided, including its burden upon traffic. A deeper set of questions pertain as to whether Bridge Development Partners will be able to deliver what it is hinting it will deliver: Amazon. If Assembly Bill 5 encumbers the way Amazon operates, that could convince the company that distribution centers of the type contemplated in Upland may no longer fit its purposes in California. Moreover, any move in the law that requires sales tax to be imposed on its internet sales might force the company’s hand, as well.
That Kotler and Bridge Development Partners have refused to confirm that Amazon is the eventual tenant at the project takes on a different meaning in this light. Someone once said, “Build it and they will come.” What will occur if Bridge Development builds a huge warehouse but in the end Amazon decides not to come?
It is anticipated the Upland Planning Commission will take up a consideration of the project so groundbreaking on the project can take place by January or February to meet the timetable for completion by September.
-Mark Gutglueck

The county will continue to bury the dispossessed who die within its 20,105-square mile confines at Samaritan Cemetery, and personnel employed by Mt. View Mortuary and Cemetery will provide full interment services for those dead over the next five years at the bargain basement rate of $78,172.92.
Samaritan Park, also known as Samaritan Cemetery, is county-owned property located adjacent to Mt. View Cemetery in San Bernardino, across Highland Avenue from St. Bernardino Medical Center. On December 1, 1986 the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors approved a contractual arrangement between the county and Mt. View Cemetery of San Bernardino for full interment and grounds maintenance services at Samaritan Park. That entailed a one-year contract for the period July 1, 1986 through June 30, 1987, to be renewed annually by mutual consent of the parties.
Samaritan Cemetery is used exclusively for the burial of the unclaimed and indigent deceased. The total annual compensation under the contract at that time was $7,733.92. Services under the contract have continued annually without an increase in the contract amount. On May 1, 2019, Mt. View Cemetery notified the county it would cease providing services under the contract effective June 30, 2019, but would be willing to negotiate a new contract.
The county coroner has the responsibility to bury unclaimed and indigent deceased. Welfare and Institutions Code section 17009 states the board of supervisors may provide for the burial or cremation of the indigent dead and the maintenance of their graves
In San Bernardino County, the sheriff’s office is merged with that of the coroner.
While Mt. View Cemetery continued to provide interment services to date without interruption, the parties engaged in contract negotiations beginning in May 2019. The last payment made to Mt. View Cemetery compensated for services provided for the period of July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019.
During the negotiations, Mt. View Cemetery made it clear that it would not agree to a number of elements that normally are contained in the county’s contract template and are routinely inserted into the county’s contracts such as language in section C.9 pertaining to restriction in a standard services contract; C.17 relating to employment discrimination; C.18 pertaining to environmental requirements; C.22 pertaining to legality; C.36 pertaining to subcontracting; C.42 pertaining to employing former county administrative officials; and C.43 relating to the disclosure of criminal and civil procedures.
As a contractor under the terms of the just-settled upon contract, Mt. View Cemetery is not legally bound to follow county policies, though it is still subject to all applicable local, state and federal laws, and it is legally obligated to follow all local, state and federal laws regarding employment discrimination, regardless of whether that requirement is stated in the contract. Mt. View Cemetery is not legally bound to follow the county’s policy touching on the reporting of environmentally preferable purchases. Mt. View Cemetery may subcontract its obligations without obtaining the prior written consent of the county. Regardless of whether a subcontract occurs, Mt. View Cemetery is bound by the terms of its contract with the county, and subject to liability for any failure to comply with the terms of the contract, such as they are. The county has retained the right to terminate the contract for purposes it deems appropriate. Mt. View Cemetery will not be obligated to report former county administrative officials in its employ. Mt. View Cemetery is nonetheless bound by sections C.19 and C.20 of the contract which contain prohibitions against improper influence and improper consideration. Mt. View Cemetery will not be obligated to provide information regarding criminal charges against employees, or Mt. View Cemetery’s involvement in civil legal proceedings. The county, if necessary, must obtain this information from other sources. The county nevertheless retains the right to terminate the contract for convenience or cause.
In a report to the board of supervisors dated October 22, Terry Thompson, the county’s director of real estate services, and Sheriff/Coroner John McMahon acknowledged that Mt. View Cemetery essentially has the county over a barrel as it is the only entity willing to run Samaritan Cemetery at an economical rate, and they said for that reason the county should enter into the contract.
“A new contract is recommended as the full interment services provided by Mt. View Cemetery are essential to the county,” Thompson and McMahon stated. “Since 1986, Mt. View Cemetery has created records of the plot location of each burial. It is licensed to provide interment services, and is in a unique position to provide the full interment services, including disinterment, necessary to fulfill the county’s legal obligation.”
The total contract cost with SCI California Funeral Services, Inc., doing business as Mt. View Mortuary & Cemetery, for full interment services at the county-owned Samaritan Park is $78,172.92, for the five-year period of July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2024. An amount not to exceed $10,000 is included in the contract for enhancement services related to the interment and record keeping processes. The annual costs are $13,100 for 2019-2020, $13,362 for 2020-2021, $13,629.24 for 2021-2022, $13,901.82 for 2022-2023, and $14,179.86 for 2023-24.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
According to an article that ran in the Washington Post earlier this month, Jason Furman, an economics professor at Harvard who chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, said, “The rich definitely pay less in taxes than they did in the past and less than they should.” I’m afraid I disagree with half of that. I think government in general has just gotten too expensive. I think rich and poor and middle class and working class and everyone alike are nowadays paying too much in taxes…
In “The Triumph of Injustice,” economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley found in their analysis of Americans’ tax rates since the 1960s that in 2018 the average effective tax rate paid by the richest 400 families in the country was 23 percent, a full percentage point lower than the 24.2 percent rate paid by the bottom half of American households. I agree that there is a disparity here and that the rich, such as myself, should be paying more in taxes than the poor among us or even those who are not poor and are just getting by or those who are doing well who are not fabulously wealthy…
I should note that things have gotten better. In 1980, the 400 richest people in America (I was one of them) had an effective tax rate of 47 percent. In 1960, their tax rate was as high as 56 percent. The effective tax rate paid by the bottom 50 percent, by contrast, has changed little over time…
What this means is that most Americans – and by most Americans I mean ones who must work and earn money to keep body and soul together – are paying very close to 25 percent of what they earn in taxes. This is simply too much…
So, how much did I personally pay in taxes this year? The fact is, I’m not quite sure. And when I say I’m not quite sure, that means my thirteen – count them, thirteen! –accountants and advisors (I refer to them as my tax dodgers) are not themselves sure. Bear in mind that I am not just paying tribute to Uncle Sam. I pay taxes in half of just about everywhere – Great Britain, Ireland, Norway, Italy, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Cypress, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, India, Bahrain, Canada, Portugal, France, Bimini, the Bahamas, Brazil, Venezuela, São Tomé and Príncipe, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mauritania, Liberia, Qatar, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Madagascar. I think I missed a few. The best estimate is somewhere around $487 million last year, give or take $1 million or so. And it would have been a lot more than that if I hadn’t had a few write-offs, the major one of which was the total loss of the Darnya, for $213 million, after its second mate scratched the bottom out of the damn thing on some coral shoals off of Los Morritos. You might have heard about that. On top of the ship write-off was another $17 million I had to pay to have the scavengers haul it off and $1.2 million in maritime fines and an environmental penalty to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which after all is a type of a tax, if you think about it, except you get to write it off. I’m not prepared to say whether any of those other countries provided me with the same write-off…
All of this has me thinking about money, the actual stuff. Did you know that flipping a coin will not actually give you a random response? By random response, I mean fifty percent heads and fifty percent tails. People have actually studied this. One guy flipped coins to see the frequency of heads versus tails. Another took it to a further level, flipping the same coin over and over and then comparing it to what happened when he used a whole bunch of coins, that is, not the same coin but a different one each time. In some experiments, the coins were flipped a mere few hundred times. In others, thousands. In one experiment, heads came up more than tails. In another, tails more than heads. According to one researcher, a controlling factor in the outcomes was whether before the toss the coin was heads up or tails up. His finding was that if the coin started heads up, it was more often than not heads up when it landed. If it was tails up to start with, it ended tails up more often than tails down. There was a difference in outcomes, it seems, between just letting the coin land and then catching it in your palm and then slapping it down on your forearm or the back of your other hand to do the reading. Another factor was the hardness or softness of the surface upon which the coin landed…
Here is one from my own observation: sometimes, a minute number of times I will admit, the coin will land as neither heads nor tails. I was in a market once when the customer in front of me fanned on one of the coins, a penny in fact, that the clerk was handing back to him. It landed on the ground between us, flipped about and then started rolling on its edge. It went on a couple of feet like this, curving a bit, and then came to a stop, still upright on its edge, neither heads nor tails. I know this was not the flip of a coin, per se, but close enough for me…
Enough about coins. How about paper currency? What’s in your wallet? Do you have any hundreds? Currently, Benjamin Franklin is on the U.S. one hundred dollar note. That is just about the largest dollar value U.S. bill you are likely to see. There are, however, $500 bills. The most recent ones printed are from between 1928 and 1934. They depict William McKinley on the front. The thousand dollar bill, most recently printed between 1928 and 1934, features Grover Cleveland…
There are also $5,000 bills, printed between 1928 and 1934, but they no longer circulate. And there are $10,000 bills, also printed between 1928 and 1934, which do not circulate. There is also a $100,000 bill. These were printed in 1934, with Woodrow Wilson on the front. They were never circulated and therefore, to actually possess one is a crime, indeed a felony. It used to be that $5,000 and $10,000 bills were used for transfers between banks. For some reason or other, the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing bought as many of them back as it could get and destroyed them. Now, $5,000 bills are almost exclusively in the hands of collectors…
A few of the $10,000 bills, which depict Salmon P. Chase, the secretary of the treasury to President Abraham Lincoln, are in museums, so you can actually see one if you wish. There are roughly 350 $10,000 bills known to yet exist.
$5,000 bills are something different. There were over 51,000 1934 $5,000 Federal Reserve notes printed. At present there are fewer than 30 known to yet exist. While $10,000 bills, like most large denominations, are worth far more than their face value, the $5,000 bill, which features a portrait of James Madison, are worth even more than the denomination with twice its face value. Indeed, one $5,000 bill in mint condition recently sold for $352,500. The highest amount recently paid for an excellent condition $10,000 bill was $258,500…
At present, I have only one $5,000 bill in my collection and two $10,000 bills. If you or anyone you know has one of those and you or they would like to sell it, get a hold of me. I’ll pay good money for what you have…

William Lindenberg was a German immigrant to America who made his way across the continent, at last settling in Redlands. It was there where, according to a historian John Steven McGroarty, “As a result of his labors land that was covered with greasewood and sagebrush was converted into orange groves, fruit orchards and beautiful drives.”
Born in Hildesheim, Germany on January 21, 1845,  Lindenberg was educated there and attending the gymnasium when at the age of fourteen he was obliged to end formal classroom study by what McGroarty called “a combination of circumstances.” McGroarty reports, nonetheless that Lindenberg yet “through subsequent reading, travel and observation …secured a good practical education.”

   William Lindenberg

In 1864, when he was 19, he left Germany via steamer from Hamburg, crossing the Atlantic. He made his way to Missouri and in St. Louis met up with one of his older brothers, Frederick Lindenberg.
On February 6, 1873, Lindenberg, yet living in Missouri, married Elvira McCullough, and the couple had three children: Christine, Henry and Beatrice.
William spent a dozen years in America before sojourning to California. In 1876 he arrived in Los Angeles, where he lived for about a year.  He moved to San Bernardino, where he farmed. In 1880, he had enough money to purchase twenty acres in the  Lugonia District in Redlands. He grew deciduous fruit on a portion of the land, planting oranges on the remainder.
His operation grew over the following decades.
“Many of the orange groves in this productive section were set out by Mr. Lindenberg, who was also a reconstructionist, purchasing groves which had been neglected, and through constant care transformed them into productive properties, which he later sold to advantage,” according to McGroarty, the author of California of the South Vol. II, published in 1933 by Clarke Publishing of Chicago, Los Angeles and Indianapolis.
Lindberg oversaw the planting and cultivation of a 100-acre tract on San Bernardino Avenue. He later left the “flourishing groves on the Lugonia Ranch” to others and relocated his own personal operation to the Williams Tract, where he set out a huge grove and built a residence, where he lived for ten years.
Lindenberg’s daughter Christine, was a graduate of the high school in Redlands and an accomplished musician. His son Henry died at the age of eighteen.  Beatrice also attended local schools.
Lindenberg was a Congregationalist in religious belief and with his family attended the Congregational Church. His wife was also a pioneer member of the Holiness Church  and a member, with her daughters, of the Woman’s Club of Redlands.
Christine Lindenberg was a director of the Redlands Community Music Association and of the board overseeing the outdoor entertainment bowl at Redlands, where concerts by notable musicians from around the country were put on.
Further wanderlust prompted Lindenberg to leave the residence on the Williams Tract after he purchased a lot on the Terrace, the then-exclusive residential district of Redlands, where in 1903 he built an even grander home at 12 Terrace Avenue. “In this dwelling, set in the midst of beautiful grounds, he resided until his death on December 13, 1913,” according to McGroarty.
Lindenberg’s death came after he had been a resident of Southern California for 37 years and a year before the advent of what was then called the Great War and referred to by subsequent generations as World War I, in which Lindenberg’s adopted country, the United States, went to war against his native country, Germany.
“Mr. Lindenberg was a pioneer orange grower in his district and a recognized authority on matters relative to the production of citrus fruits,” according to McGroarty. “He not only developed, but he saved from extinction many groves. His advice was always followed and it was freely given, benefiting the new growers and those of long experience.”
McGroarty noted that it was said of Lindenberg that “When he passed away the community lost one of its best citizens, one who had from the first a vital interest in its material growth and adornment, one who sought to maintain the high character of its citizenship and who left visible monuments of his love for the beautiful in which the esthetic and the practical were so deftly blended…
“It was not alone as a grower that Mr. Lindenberg will be long remembered by the generation which was his in the city of his adoption, for he was one of the most public-spirited citizens Redlands has ever known,” McGroarty, apparently reproducing the words spoken during Lindenberg’s funeral elegy, wrote. “In the early days level headed, broad-minded men were needed, men who had the vision to see what the future held, if they were only wise enough and courageous enough to grasp the opportunity. He was consulted on many of the early problems of the city and his advice was accepted always, the result being success in all such undertakings. His honest, upright principles and charities made him early known as a worthwhile citizen, and in his long life he stood out as one of Redlands’ most dependable, reliable and prominent men. He is today cited as an example of what a man may become if he is blessed with the perseverance, intellect, moral courage and hearty will possessed by Mr. Lindenberg, but unfortunately, such men are rare.  He passed into eternity loved by his family and friends, respected and honored by the city he had served so long, so freely and so well.”

Ashgray Indian paintbrush, scientifically known as Castilleja cinerea, is a rare and endangered species of Indian paintbrush that grows only in San Bernardino County.
As far as can be determined, this plant grows naturally only in the San Bernardino Mountains in roughly 20 spots where it has been observed
A perennial herb reaching a height of up to 15 centimeters and covered in a coat of ash-gray woolly hairs, Castilleja cinerea grows in several different types of habitat, including dry desert and sagebrush scrub, woodland, and at spots within the coniferous forest. It will also grow in the unique quartzite pebble plain habitat in the San Bernardino Mountains, as do a handful of other endemics such as arenaria ursina
The ashgray Indian paintbrush’s leaves are linear or narrowly lance-shaped, from one to two centimeters long. The inflorescence is made up of fuzzy dull to bright reddish or purplish pink internal leaves, between which emerge smaller yellowish to greenish flowers. The color of the inflorescence is influenced by the environment of the plant; those with more northern exposures tend to have yellowish flowers and those facing south have more reddish flowers. The calyx is nearly equally divided into linear lobes and the corolla is yellowish. It flowers from June through August. Castilleja cinerea is distinguished from other species of castilleja within its range by its perennial nature, ashy stems and leaves which are covered with fine short hairs, yellowish flowers, with calyx lobes of equal length
Like other castilleja species, this plant parasitizes other species for water and nutrients; castilleja  cinerea is generally found tapping buckwheats (eriogonum spp.) and sagebrushes (artemisia spp.). When placed in a parasitic environment, the plant experiences increased vigor with more branching, increased height, and earlier flowering
The castilleja cinerea plant is a federally listed threatened species. Threats to its survival include development of its habitat for human use, recreation, off-road vehicles, logging, grazing, mining, and invasive species of plants.
From Calflora, Wikipedia and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2013 5-year Review for Castilleja Cinereal.

Puffy things are really in this season. It all starts with the sleeves. This trick is concentrated mostly on tops, but dresses are doing it too.  The puffing starts at the shoulders. So, if you’re the girly type who likes the princess look of royal  puffy sleeves, this trend is for you.  You can do it up in a cool way. It’s all about putting the outfit together and making it come to life. Some people are really good at putting pieces together and making them look so cool. Everyone wants in on this fashion trend, it suddenly seems. The puff is feminine but you can mix it with cool, such as denim. Another neat aspect is that the puffs are flattering and accentuate the torso allowing for a slim look.  It offers a great balance that comes with modernism and a bit of romance too.

“The hardest thing in fashion is not to be known for a logo, but to be known for a silhouette.” —Giambattista Valli