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Sentinel 05-06-16

By Mark Gutglueck
Just a little more than four months into his tenure as San Bernardino County Superior Court’s presiding judge, Raymond W. Haight III is facing a major challenge that for more than two months has defied solution and has reportedly resulted in an exodus of court personnel that will potentially exacerbate an already deteriorating situation.
The problem is a pervasive technical glitch with the court’s computerized information system that has rendered the digital records pertaining to criminal matters virtually inaccessible in much of their aspect.
The decision to revamp San Bernardino County Superior Court’s online case information system was not made by Haight, but by former presiding judge Marsha Slough in accordance with a bidding process authorized by the California Judicial Council some two years ago. Haight replaced Slough as presiding judge in December, when she was elevated to the appellate court. At that point the die was already cast, as a commitment to make the transition to what has been touted as an upgraded data collection and management system provided by Tyler Technologies was in place. The Tyler Technologies system, known as Odyssey, carried a price tag of more than $4 million,
Users of the previous system – members of the district attorney’s office, defense attorneys, defendants, victims and journalists, in other words, those most interested in knowing what is going on at the courthouse specifically or in general – almost universally considered the system the court had in place to be a good, if not absolutely perfect, one. Indeed, San Bernardino
County’s online court information system enjoyed a reputation of being as or more comprehensive and accessible as the systems used in neighboring Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties. Nevertheless, the decision to transition to the Tyler Technologies version 3.02.20.3 Odyssey system was made.
Haight had been in place for just about a month and a half when on February 11, the criminal side of the Superior Court of San Bernardino’s open access website went offline to make way for the initiation of the 3.02.20.3 Odyssey version.
Precisely what happened thereafter is not entirely clear. Some have described it as a massive computer crash. Others have said what resulted was actually a series of recurrent and persistent mini-crashes. What is known is that access to the digitized minute orders on criminal cases ended. One unconfirmed report was that half of a million files which were transferred out of the old system’s data banks into version 3.02.20.3 were erased. A further report was that those files are permanently lost, that is, unrecoverable. Officials have not commented on that report.
Officials responded to inquiries by indicating that what was occurring was a normal byproduct of making such a digitized transition and that in short order technicians would “get the bugs out of” the new software and all of the information previously available in an even more easily accessible format would soon be available.
A month passed and the minute orders were yet unavailable. By that point, further deficiencies in the new system were apparent. Court records for hearings of criminal cases were no longer available. Follow-up information pertaining to fines paid or restitution made by defendants was no longer being entered into the system or otherwise could not be retrieved. In response to an inquiry in March, Superior Court officials acknowledged that not all elements of the information that had gone into the case management system was at that point available but that Tyler Technologies was working with court personnel “to make the criminal cases component fully operational as soon as possible.” In time, court officials said, “There will be full access, which will include all case management information that may be disclosed under the law and in accordance with judicial policy.”
On April 14, Christine Volkers, the executive officer for San Bernardino County Superior Court, was been placed on administrative leave. There were suggestions that her abrupt exodus was related to the failure of the Odyssey system but there has been no official statement in that regard.
At the beginning of May, approaching three months after the Odyssey program transition was initiated, information that was routinely available on the predecessor version cannot be accessed and minute orders in criminal cases cannot be viewed.
Court officials would not confirm reports that a full-blown panic had descended over court staff upon learning that the approximate 500,000 documents that had been lost or deleted could be reentered into the system only through the painstaking process of rescanning them individually. Another report was that when an effort to begin scanning just a fraction of those missing documents into the system was begun, they were “eaten,” that is, rendered into a scrambled digital form that could not be translated or unjumbled back into any semblance of their original form. Several court clerks saddled with handling the tasks of reentering the lost information, overwhelmed with the enormity of the work, were reported to have simply quit, making the pending workload even more nightmarish. Court officials did not respond directly to inquiries about the accuracy of those reports.
Gary Wenkle Smith, a criminal defense attorney who is currently handling a murder case, told the Sentinel, “They’ve lost 99 percent of the minute orders. You can’t view them. They put in a flawed and untested program. There is some kind of virus that keeps crashing the system. The documentation on fines that were paid has been lost. People are going to prison or back into jail because they cannot prove what action they took. The court hasn’t gotten around to giving the benefit of the doubt to the defendant when he says he paid a fine or did weekend time and the court has no record of it. In the courtrooms, the clerks and the judges are relying on the system that is malfunctioning. I can’t believe someone allowed this to take place.”
Dennis B. Smith, the risk and safety administrator and media relations director for San Bernardino Superior Court, told the Sentinel, “I cannot speak first hand as to what is happening with the Odyssey System. I’m not using it and that is not part of my job.” He acknowledged some information relating to criminal cases is not available at present but said that on balance the system is on the way to working well. “Apparently, the system is functioning like it is supposed to minus the minute orders,” he said. “That is correctable.”
Smith explained, “In 2014, the San Bernardino Superior Court recognized that to provide efficient, transparent, accessible service to the public, a new case management system was required. After an intensive selection process, the industry leading Tyler Technologies ‘Odyssey’ case management system was chosen as the best fit to serve the needs of San Bernardino County residents.”
Dennis Smith continued, “On February 16, 2016, the San Bernardino Superior Court launched the use of the Tyler Technologies ‘Odyssey’ case management system to manage criminal and traffic cases across the entire County of San Bernardino. As part of the migration to the new case management system, information from more than four million existing cases was converted. Case data became available through the website on February 20, 2016. The initial availability of case information did not include detailed minutes of individual hearings. The court worked diligently within the parameters of the California Rules of Court to provide remote access to minutes in criminal and traffic cases. These detailed minutes for hearings prior to February 16, 2016 became available on March 4, 2016. The court is currently working to provide access to detailed minutes for hearings held after February 16, 2016 and anticipates having these records available through its website shortly. The court has maintained an ongoing commitment to provide the public with no-charge, online access to case information as permitted under the California Rules of Court.”
An inquiry as to whether Judge Haight is concerned that some individuals are perhaps being sent to jail or prison improperly because of the ongoing failure of the court information system did not elicit a response by press time. Nor did the court’s executive office say if there was any prospect that Judge Haight will reconsider the decision to transition to Tyler Technologies’ Odyssey system and jettison it in favor of a return to the previous system if the shortcomings in the Odyssey program cannot be redressed.

The county and the City of Grand Terrace have reached an agreement that will allow the city to pursue its previous intent of having property once owned by the city’s redevelopment agency near the confluence of De Berry Street and Van Buren Street developed commercially in accordance with its location within the city’s mixed use specific plan area.
In 2011, the state of California closed out all of the municipal and county redevelopment agencies in California, mandating that the property those agencies had acquired be liquidated and that the proceeds from those sales along with any specially held tax money related to those properties be shared with other local tax-receiving entities.
Redevelopment agencies were special adjuncts to local governments which were intended to assist those governments in the elimination of blight and the promotion of economic development.
Those redevelopment agencies were empowered to utilize money passed along to them by the state, provided to them by the city chartering them or money obtained through the issuance of bonds to provide infrastructure or other encouragements to the development of property. The redevelopment agencies would issue bonds, which would be sold to investors. The proceeds from those sales would then be used to construct roads, sewers, storm drains, sidewalks or install utilities that would facilitate development. The provision of this infrastructure and the eventual development of the property would lead to an increase in property value, thus creating a larger property tax revenue stream. That increase in property tax, referred to as tax increment, would be dedicated to debt servicing the bonds, i.e., making annual payment installments on those bonds for the twenty to thirty-five year life of the bonds.
The 2011 legislation did away with redevelopment agencies and mandated the creation of successor agencies to oversee the dissolution of the redevelopment agencies, called for previous obligations with regard to bonding arrangements be met and that any property owned by the redevelopment agencies be sold and the proceeds distributed to the appropriate entities.
Grand Terrace, which vies with the City of Needles for the title of the most sales tax poor of all of the San Bernardino County’s 24 cities, remains committed to seeing a 54.1 acre property converted to commercial operations that will increase the city’s sales tax receipts.
Under the terms of the legislation that dissolved redevelopment agencies statewide, the proceeds of the sale of the Grand Terrace Redevelopment Agency were to be shared with the City of Grand Terrace, the County of San Bernardino; the San Bernardino County Flood Control District; and the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District.
This week, the San Bernardino County Board of Superivisors, which acts as the governing body for
the county, the fire district and the flood control district, signed off on an arrangement that will not require that the City of Grand Terrace hold an immediate fire sale of the property but rather take time to find a buyer willing to develop the land in accordance with the intent the city has long had for the property, specifically transforming it into a substantial commercial sector. Of some consideration is that the property – 54.1 acres – is already “assembled,” that is, available as a whole rather than as one involving multiple owners. The city has zoned the property in accordance with the intention of having it developed commercially with a mix of high density residential uses. Being able to present the property as one package to an entity willing to see it developed represents a crucial step in the development process.
Accordingly, the board of supervisors consented to the creation and implementation of a compensation agreement which will allow the city to seek out a buyer/developer of the property. The compensation agreement calls for the county placing a lien against the property which, upon the sale of the property, will be paid. According to the compensation agreement, proceeds from the sale of the property, described as as 21992 and 21974 De Berry Street and the 21900 Block of Van Buren Street, Assessor Parcel Numbers (APN) 1167-141-08, 1167-151-68, 1157-151-71, 1167-151-74, 1167-161-03, 1167-161-04, 1167-151-22, will be disbursed in portions to the following entities equal to the proportional share of the base property tax due them under the state’s guidelines as indicated: The county general fund will receive 12.72 percent; to the county free library will go 1.23 percent; to San Bernardino County Flood Control District Zone Two will be provided 2.26 percent; to the county’s flood control district administration designations one & two will go 0.16 percent; and to the county’s fire protection district will receive 10.34 percent. The city will receive the rest and have continuing land use authority over the development and disposition of the property.

Municipal officials up and down the state and their attorneys are paying particularly close attention to an otherwise obscure case out of Hesperia, as the fight over the principles involved could conceivably unwind the authority and protocols cities have come to rely upon to enforce their codes and regulations.
There are multiple levels of irony in the matter. This case comes nearly four years after the City of Hesperia paid out $200,000 to foreclose a federal lawsuit over what a federal magistrate indicated was the unconstitutional application of its municipal authority through the use of its code enforcement division, resulting in the case being dropped before that constitutional test, with its implication for all other California cities, was actually made. Once again, however, the city has applied that authority in a way that raises questions as to whether the Hesperia has assumed greater reach than is afforded it under both the California and U.S. Constitution, triggering a legal challenge. After again finding itself in federal court in an effort to defend that assumption of authority, the city has thrice spurned an offer from the plaintiff’s attorney to settle the matter in return for the city calling a halt to the ongoing administrative adjudication process against his client, which is setting up a showdown on the principle of whether a city has the authority to not only cite those it perceives as having run afoul of city ordinances, codes and zoning restrictions but adjudicating those matters without using an unbiased hearing officer and then imposing punishment.
With the city intent on pushing the issue to apply its administrative power and the attorney for the plaintiff unwilling to vacate the suit, a legal showdown that could erode the ability of local governments to constrain or otherwise modulate the behavior of their residents appears inevitable.
It is the constitutionality of a city serving as not only the enforcement officer but the prosecutor, jury and judge – a set-up known as the administrative adjudication process – that is at the root of the lawsuit filed in the United States District Court in Los Angeles by Upland-based attorney Marc Grossman on behalf of Alexander Cooper Jr. against the City of Hesperia as well as three of its residents – JoAnn Chavis, Lewis Chavis and Christopher Chavis.
It is Grossman’s contention that Cooper has been subjected to a kangaroo court, before which his rights of due process were entirely ignored. In the suit, Grossman maintains that the Chavis family exploited familial connections to individuals within the City of Hesperia and its code and law enforcement divisions to vector unjustifiable enforcement action against Cooper because of personal differences that developed between them. According to Grossman, city officials either negligently or maliciously permitted the city’s code enforcement division to be applied against his client and then utilized the city’s administrative adjudication process in which the principles of law and justice were disregarded or perverted to reach a foregone conclusion with regard to Cooper’s alleged offense. The lack of Constitutional protections and accompanying violations of due process inherent in the city’s citation and administrative process resulted in Cooper being railroaded, that is, found guilty without a trial, Grossman maintains. Moreover, the city then assessed fines that are both unjust and excessive.
In September 2012, according to the suit, Cooper moved into a home in the 10700 block of Choiceana Avenue in Hesperia and shortly thereafter an air conditioning unit on his property was stolen. Cooper reported the theft to the sheriff’s department, which serves as the police department in Hesperia. In January 2014, according to the suit, Cooper learned from a neighbor that Christopher Chavis had stolen the air conditioner. Cooper then approached Christopher Chavis, JoAnn Chavis and Lewis Chavis about the air conditioner, according to the suit, only to be met with a tirade of profanity from the trio.
“Joann Chavis then began a pattern of using her connections within the Hesperia Code Enforcement Department to harass Cooper,” according to the suit. “Joan Chavis has since, on several occasions, directed Hesperia code enforcement officers to harass Cooper at his home solely for the purpose of seriously alarming or annoying him, and for no legitimate purpose. Hesperia has conspired and acted in concert with Joann Chavis by continuing to harass Cooper at his home, relying solely on Joann Chavis’s frivolous complaints against Cooper, such as complaints of dust in the air after Cooper moves his car on his property or allegations that Cooper had packages sent to Joann Chavis’s home to in some way commit identity theft. Hesperia has followed such illegitimate code enforcement responses with bills for up to $2,500 per response alleging that Cooper must compensate Hesperia for following up on Joann Chavis’s frivolous complaints. Hesperia has sent demands for a total of $3,912 for such illegitimate code enforcement responses,” the suit states.
Furthermore, according to the lawsuit, on February 4, 2014 Cooper and two of his girlfriend’s children were at his Choiceana Avenue home when he was confronted by eight city employees, including members of the Hesperia code enforcement division in response to what the suit says was “yet another frivolous complaint from Joann Chavis. Cooper was arrested and imprisoned on a citizen’s arrest by Lewis Chavis on charges of actions that did not factually occur. At no time on February 4, 2014 was Cooper creating or causing there to exist loud or unreasonable noise. At no time on February 4, 2014 did Cooper commit a misdemeanor in the presence of any defendant.”
Though he was given a notice to appear in court on April 9, 2014 to answer a criminal complaint relating to allowing excessive noise to emanate from his property the city said was pending against him, according to the suit, “On or about April 9, 2014 Cooper called the court to see if the district attorney had filed charges and was told charges had not yet been filed. Cooper continued to check with the court frequently over the next year to determine if charges had or had not yet been filed. Cooper is informed and believes that the district attorney never filed charges for any matters from February 4, 2014. Unfounded and frivolous disruption at Cooper’s home by Hesperia’s code enforcement in conspiracy with Joann Chavis continued on, but is not limited to, February 7, 2014, July 25, 2014, July 27, 2014, March 31, 2015, May 6, 2015 and May 8, 2015. On June 2, 2014, Joann Chavis’s harassment continued with the malicious filing of an unfounded request for a civil harassment restraining order against Cooper with the California Superior Court. The court denied the petition for lack of evidence following a motion for dismissal.”
According to Grossman, the city has, in violation of Cooper’s Constitutional rights to due process, proceeded with deeming him guilty of the code enforcement violations the city’s officers have cited him with and assessed him for the cost of the code enforcement division’s action against him, by using its administrative citation process, which does not afford the accused a trial. Through that administrative citation process, Cooper has been assessed with the $3,912 in fines. Moreover, according to Grossman, the city continued to hold over Cooper’s head the possibility that it would proceed with a criminal prosecution of the misdemeanors – producing excessive noise and disturbing the peace – referenced in those citations.
The lawsuit against Hesperia Grossman has filed on Cooper’s behalf is reminiscent of a similar suit filed by another Upland-based attorney, Louis Fazzi, on behalf of two other Hesperia residents, Janet and Esther Duran, based on the municipality having used its authority, bankroll and control of the code enforcement process to overwhelm its citizens and obtain an inevitable adjudication in the city’s favor.
In January 2010, the Hesperia code enforcement division took up a case that had as its focus a property on Redwood Avenue owned by Esther Duran. which her daughter, Janet, was using as a temporary rescue shelter for horses that would otherwise have been sent to slaughterhouses for euthanization or processing for the dog food or glue manufacturing industries.
Janet Duran, an ambulance driver, in 2004 took up the cause of doomed horses, including wild mustangs run to ground by cowboys in Nevada and Arizona and ones being sold by their owners at auction, for as little as $5, $10, or $15 a head, ostensibly to buyers interested in using them for horsemeat.
The Redwood property prior to city incorporation was zoned for agricultural use. The post-incorporation zoning was agricultural residential and the Durans were permitted under the city’s code to have up to six horses on the property per its acreage.
On January 13, 2010, a team of city employees that included two code enforcement officers, four armed sheriff’s department deputies in flak jackets and two animal control officers descended on the Durans’ property. One of the code enforcement officers served Esther Duran with papers and the team then seized three horses and five dogs, one of which was a stray whose owner the Durans were seeking to locate. Both Esther and Janet were cited and slapped with a total of $129,000 in fees, which upon the city’s processing protocol were ratcheted up into liens against the property. Those liens resulted in Esther Duran’s mortgage increasing from $1,400 to $4,700 per month.
Unwilling to take the city’s action lying down, the Durans hired Fazzi. Fazzi brought several principles to bear which the city had in the past routinely overlooked in its enforcement efforts, including compliance with the city’s own codes, which actually allowed for the presence of up to three more horses than the Durans had on the property on January 13, 2010 and up to five dogs, as well as the right to due process. The city’s response was to seek a series of delays, which had the effect of increasing the Durans’ legal costs while the underlying issue – the return of their animals – remained unresolved.
Despite the cost, the Durans did not simply duck out of the fight. Fazzi persisted on their behalf, successfully removing the matter to federal court. Still, the city told the court the Durans were maintaining a substandard property and that the animals for that reason should not be returned to them. Fazzi maintained that the property was up to code and in compliance in all regards. In March 2012, a court-appointed independent inspector went over the Redwood property with a fine-tooth comb, concluding the property was indeed up to code.
In April 2012, U.S. District Court Judge John E. McDermott ruled that the city’s action against the Durans was improper and that their animals would have to be returned to them. Fazzi immediately brought a motion to have McDermott consider whether the entire process the Durans had been subjected to was unconstitutional.
While McDermott’s ruling was pending, the city offered the Durans a $200,000 settlement. The tendering of that offer, and the Durans’ acceptance of it, put the matter to rest, preventing a potentially precedent-setting ruling that would prohibit the city from continuing to employ the same tactics against other city residents.
Four years later, Grossman finds himself knocking on the same courthouse door as Fazzi, again in an effort that would, if successful, establish that Hesperia’s administrative citation process is an inherently unconstitutional one.
That the Constitutional test of the entire municipal administrative citation process pertains to Hesperia is not an accident. There are elements in Hesperia’s approach that make it far more easy to demonstrate the unconstitutionality of the process, in particular the way in which the city escalates the fines it imposes on those deemed guilty of violating city codes. Whereas most other cities that have availed themselves of the administrative citation approach have a fining schedule that maxes out at no more than $1,000 per infraction, Hesperia has assumed unto itself the authority to ratchet its fines up to $2,500 per incident. Like other cities, Hesperia has a graduated fining schedule that begins with fines that are substantially lower. Nevertheless, once the city has levied the gamut of fines against a single individual or property owner up the ladder to reach the maximum of $2,500, every further infraction deemed to have been perpetrated by that offender brings with it a fine of $2,500. Hesperia goes further still, imposing a 30 day time limit for the offender to make restitution. If the fine is not paid within 30 days, a fifty percent surcharge is levied on top of the fine.
Grossman said, “Every city and jurisdiction has the authority to apply fines for violation of their codes, but they cannot suspend due process in imposing those punishments. Cities and counties have their local ordinances. Most have an enforcement structure that maxes out at $500 or in some cases $1,000. Anything beyond that, the person has a right to an impartial hearing and judicial process. In Hesperia, you get to a fine of $2,500 after the fifth incident in which the police have been called. If you don’t pay within 30 days, that goes to $3,750 per incident where someone has alleged something that requires a police response. The city has given itself the right to record liens against the houses of the offenders. Under the Hesperia statute you do not have a right to a hearing in front of a judge. All you get is a hearing in front of hearing officer designated by the police chief. So what you get is someone serving at the pleasure of the police department making a determination if the police department was justified in imposing a fine of that magnitude.
“Our client had a dispute with his next door neighbor who is a police department insider,” Grossman continued. “His neighbor happens to be a volunteer member of the citizens patrol, which is a quasi-police reserve group. They do ride-alongs with the sheriff’s department, which in Hesperia is the police department. In fairness to Hesperia, the $2,500 fine level is not triggered until you get to a fifth so-called offense. Most calls about noise or riding motorcycles get ignored in a city with 90,000 that is spread out like Hesperia is with as few officers as they have. But when our client’s neighbor calls, she gets a response. These are complaints about things that were they to emanate from anyone else, would have gotten no response. But with those complaints, she [Joann Chavis] and her family have pushed him into the fifth tier. And once you are in the fifth tier, every call triggers a fine of $2,500 which a month later turns into $3,750 if you can’t pay it. What we have offered is to end this litigation, without me or my firm getting attorney’s fees, if the city will just put an end to this, reset our client so at the drop of a dime he is not subject to another $3,750 fine. The window on keeping him in the fifth tier is three years. So that means that if he goes two years and ten months and his neighbor calls to complain about too much noise, he gets hit with another $3,750 fine. And if he goes two years after that without any incident and someone complains about dust being churned up when he rides his motorcycle, it costs him another $3,750. And if two years and ten months later his dog barks and someone complains, he gets fined $3,750 again, every time with no impartial hearing officer. We have asked that the city end this situation in which he remains subject to having these liens slapped against his house. The city has refused to meet that request.”
The city is represented by attorney Allen Christiansen in its response to Cooper’s lawsuit. In court papers and correspondence relating to the suit, Christiansen maintains that the city, in an effort to arrive at a settlement, has removed the previous lien against Cooper’s property. At the same time, Christiansen maintained, Cooper is “trying to run an unlicensed business out of his home.” Christiansen characterized the lawsuit as “frivolous litigation” in which Cooper is “seeking to make a federal case out of a neighborhood dispute instead of just requesting an administrative hearing.” It would be better, Christiansen said, for Cooper “to obey the law, stop and try to make amends with his neighbors. It seems fairly apparent,” Christiansen said, that Grossman was “pursuing this litigation without any justification.”
As to the assertion that the City of Hesperia’s administrative citation process is unconstitutional, Christiansen told Grossman, “other cities have similar ordinances and your representation that these are ‘massive fines without appropriate process’ is a farce. Your client simply refused to take advantage of his due process rights and instead found you to bring a federal lawsuit. You’ve got no basis to argue that the process is not appropriate because your client has never used the process.”
Initially, the federal judge hearing the case, Michael Fitzgerald, expressed skepticism over the propriety of bringing the case at the federal level, and he suggested to Grossman that the proper forum was within the California Superior Court System or even more properly small claims court. Grossman endeavored to explain that the issues as to the constitutionality of the administrative citation process and Hesperia’s accelerated and excessive fines were issues best adjudicated in federal court, persuading Fitzgerald that the matter merited the United States District Court for the Central District of California’s scrutiny. Fitzgerald has allowed the case to proceed.
In this way, the case represents a credible challenge to not only Hesperia’s fining schedule which allows for the imposition of a $2,500 fine that can be bootstrapped up into a $3,750 fine for what are simple infractions or minor code violations, but the city’s administrative citation regime, which does not adhere to the principle of allowing those accused to get a full-fledged hearing of the evidence against them before an independent magistrate. This has led to city officials and city attorneys with municipalities throughout the state which have themselves adopted administrative citation ordinances to sit up and take notice, as a ruling against Hesperia in the Cooper case could conceivably invalidate a tool those communities heavily rely upon for their code enforcement efforts.
Grossman, who has committed to seeing the case to a conclusion in the United States District Court for the Central District of California that will remove the City of Hesperia’s threat of subjecting Cooper to the city’s accelerated fines/liens without billing his client, said he will, if he does not achieve a favorable ruling from Fizgerald on the issues at stake in the case, appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. And his client will not, as occurred in the Duran case, bug out and take a monetary settlement from the city to drop the case to head off a landmark decision that will establish the administrative citation process as an unconstitutional one, Grossman said.
“In her capacity as a volunteer in the Hesperia Citizens Patrol Program,” Grossman said, “Joann Chavis has trained with the police department and works closely, communicates regularly and has developed contacts with members of the Hesperia code enforcement division and other agents and agencies of the city. Acting under the color of law, the defendants worked a denial of Alexander Cooper’s rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the United States Constitution or by federal law and conspired to deprive him of his liberty without due process of law, causing him to be taken into custody and held there against his will. They made an unreasonable search and seizure of his person or property without due process of law and impeded and hindered the due course of justice, with intent of denying him equal protection of laws, depriving him of his rights, privileges, and immunities as guaranteed by the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.”
When the Sentinel offered Christiansen the opportunity to refute Grossman’s contentions, he said, “As much as I would enjoy talking with you, I don’t comment on pending litigation.”

Olga Pacot, who was already recognized by the Fontana Unified School District School Board as Teacher of the Year at Citrus Elementary School, was chosen as one of only six teachers nationwide as a recipient of the 2016 180 Educator Awards.
The 180 Educator Awards Program, sponsored by educational textbook publishing giant Houghton Miflin Harcourt Brace has existed for ten years. It honors educators across the United States who have devoted themselves to helping struggling students turn their lives around by building their reading
and math literacy.
According to the 180 Educator Award webpage, “Ms. Pacot is a distinguished educator who provides effective instructional practices that has (sic) resulted in a 211 point average classroom Lexile™ growth. Her colleagues describe her as ‘a teacher who excels in all areas of the California Standards for the teaching profession.’ They also admire her commitment to provide the necessary scaffolding to ensure students experience success with effective instructional practices such as close reading.”
Lexile is a scale for measuring both reading ability of an individual and the text complexity of materials he or she encounters.
At the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year, instructors were given a goal of having their students achieve a 137 average Lexile gain in the reading program. By December 2015, Pacot’s students registered an increase of 173 average Lexile growth.
Pacot distinguished herself not only on the basis of the gains her students made, but for pursuing the enrichment of her pupils’ lives outside of regular classroom time by making herself available both before and after school and during recess for extra learning and support.
Pacot said, “As a reading and intervention teacher, I am in a position to give hope and inspiration to the students who have the greatest academic challenges. I want to encourage my students to believe in themselves and know that they can and will succeed in life through literacy.”
Pacot previously taught in Dallas, Texas, where she was recognized for her teaching expertise. She has been invited to attend the 24th annual Model Schools Conference in June, where in addition to picking up her award, she will be provided with the opportunity to select Houghton Miflin Harcourt Brace titles calibrated to her student’s grade and reading levels.

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors has approved a $300,000 contract with a family psychologist and a $400,000 contract with a pediatric psychologist to provide psychological and traumatic incident recovery services to preschoolers.
The provision of these services is part of the county’s Head Start effort. Head Start is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that has been in existence since 1965 and provides comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families.
Those given these contracts are Dr. Aine Bergin and Dr. Mary-Catherin Freier, also known as Dr. Kiti.
According to Diana Alexander, the director of San Bernardino County’s Preschool Services Department, “Head Start Performance Standards have specific requirements related to children enrolled in the Head Start program who have mental health issues [and] who are experiencing trauma due to bereavement, loss, or separation. Head Start agencies are required to provide licensed mental health professionals with experience and expertise counseling young children and their families. Head Start agencies design and implement program practices that are responsive to the identified behavioral and/or mental health concerns of a traumatized child. The mental wellness of traumatized children is a primary concern to the Head Start agency and provides parent, and group and individual staff education on trauma-related issues. Education on trauma-related issues is provided during trauma treatment service sessions.”
Alexander said that, “In addition, Head Start regulations require mental health screenings and evaluations that include a formal assessment conducted by a licensed mental health professional. The preschool services department will fulfill mental health requirements through the recommended contract with Dr. Bergin Psychotherapy Family Services, PC doing business as Dr. Bergin Family Counseling Services. Dr. Bergin has been providing mental health services to the preschool services department since 2008. The preschool services department will fulfill behavioral and/or mental health trauma treatment requirements through the recommended contract with Dr. (Kiti) Mary-Catherin Freier Randall (Dr. Kiti). Dr. Kiti has been providing trauma treatment services to children enrolled in the preschool services department’s programs and their families since 2009.”
According to Alexander, “Dr. Bergin provides individualized mental health screenings and evaluations utilizing Head Start recommended assessments to children enrolled in the preschool services department’s Head Start programs and their families. She also supervises the preschool services department’s marriage and family therapist interns who provide individualized mental health screenings and evaluations using a designated preschool services department assessment tool to identify mental health issues. Under Dr. Bergin, marriage and family therapist interns also provide support services for preschool children, caregivers, and teaching staff. Mental health screenings and evaluations are provided to approximately 500 children and their families per year.”
With regard to Freier Randall, Alexander said, “Under the recommended contract, Dr. Kiti will provide trauma treatment services, quantitative research outcomes, as well as research and analysis of outcomes, for supervised group pediatric psychology services for children with grief due to a traumatic loss. The research results are used to provide reports to the county’s department of behavioral health. The overall goal of the program is to provide children the opportunity to learn the tools used to express the traumatic loss or grief they have experienced in a socially acceptable manner. Trauma treatment services are provided to approximately 150 children and their parents per year.”
Head Start and state preschool programs have been operating in San Bernardino County since 1965. Since 1999, the preschool services department has provided these programs through a combination of direct and contracted services.
Alexander said, “Contractor performance will be measured by reviewing the required monthly reports and annual site visits by county staff to monitor compliance with the administrative and program requirements of the agreement. In addition to week
ly meetings with the preschool services department program managers, contractor performance is monitored by review of invoices and annual site visits to ensure compliance with the administrative, program, and fiscal terms and conditions of the contract.”
On the same day, December 21, 2015, the county initiated a bidding process for mental health screenings and for trauma treatment services. The requests for proposals were advertised in the county’s ePro system, through direct mailings to 24 providers with experience providing mental health services, and advertisements in local newspapers. Dr. Bergin submitted the only proposal received in response to the request for proposals relating to mental health screenings and Dr. Kiti submitted the only proposal received in response to the request for proposals relating to trauma treatment services.
“Dr. Bergin’s proposal met the contract requirements and the county’s needs,” according to Alexander. And she said, “Dr. Freier Randall’s proposal met the contract requirements and the county’s needs.”
The contracts are 100 percent state funded by the Mental Health Services Act through a memorandum of understanding with the county department of behavioral health.

The community of Hinkley is about to see the return of its post office, subject to a rather elaborate arrangement.
Hinkley’s population has been dwindling for years as consequence of the contamination of the local water supply that occurred during the 1950s and 1960s when Pacific Gas & Electric utilized chromium-6 as an anti-corrosive agent in the cooling towers for the pressurizing stations built along the route of its West Texas-to-San Francisco natural gas line. Water from those towers was disposed of in unlined trenches near Hinkley and the chromium-6, a highly toxic substance, has leached down into the water table as a result. Some local residents, concerned with the presence of chromium-6 in the environment, have sold or outright abandoned their property. Pacific Gas & Electric, which has paid large settlements as a consequence of the contamination of the property, for many years participated in efforts to redress the contamination as well as supply the community with bottled water trucked in from outside the area or outfitted homes in Hinkley with water filtration systems. More recently, the company has hit upon the strategy of simply purchasing the property of all of the remaining residents or businesses in the community and transforming the area into a ghost town so that the chromium-6 clean up effort, which could cost well in excess of $200 million, does not need to be completed.
The Hinkley Post Office, which had been at the same location since 1958, closed on March 20, 2015, due to the termination of the United States Postal Service lease upon the sale of the property to Pacific Gas and Electric. Rural delivery of mail has continued in the interim, but postal customers have to travel to the Barstow Post Office, 12 miles away, for other postal services.
A public community meeting was held on June 3, 2015 to discuss the proposed relocation of the Hinkley Post Office.
Hinkley is not an incorporated city but rather lies within County Service Area 70 W, which was originally formed by a resolution of the county board of supervisors on March 12, 1973 to provide fire protection services to the community of Hinkley. The board added recreation and park service powers to County Service Area 70 W on July 15, 1991, to allow for the operation of the Hinkley Community Center, in which the Hinkley Senior Citizens Club meets. The center was constructed with grant funding obtained through a Community Development Block Grant under the Housing and Urban Development Program. The center, located on approximately 2.5 acres of CSA 70 W-owned land at 35997 Mountain View Road in Hinkley. is approximately 3,180 square feet in size, and its construction was completed on March 27, 1996. It boasts two large meeting rooms, an office, commercial kitchen, restrooms and storage areas. The board approved Lease Agreement No. 96-137 with the senior citizens club on February 27, 1996. The center allows space for senior activities, community events, and also acts as an emergency shelter area for the community. A children’s playground was constructed at the location in February 2011, using grant funds from the California State Park’s Proposition 40 Roberti-Z’berg-Harris Block Grant Program and CDBG under the HUD Program.
Hinkley residents proposed to the county that the United States Postal Service be permitted to set up a post office in the building. The US Postal Service was amenable to that proposal if certain conditions were met.
After the the club requested CSA 70 W consider relocating the Hinkley Post Office to
the center, the USPS informed the community that the United States Postal Service would incur the cost of the construction of a new post office at the center, comprising approximately 200 post office boxes, one counter, a letter drop and a wicket door. The initial concept was that the Hinkely Senior Citizens Club would sublease the space to the United States Postal Service, but the USPS requires that the lease agreement impose on the leasor the liability to remove any contaminated soil or water on the premises not caused by the USPS that are found to exceed the applicable federal, state, or local action levels, including but not limited to any “hazardous/toxic materials or substances.” This provision is very broad and could include contamination caused by third-parties, such as groundwater contamination, and does include contamination not caused by CSA 70 W. The senior club would not have the wherewithal to make such a remediation.
Accordingly, the county’s real estate services division stepped in and terminated the previous lease with the seniors club and created a new lease which excised from its terms the square footage to be used by the Postal Service, creating a new five-year lease agreement with one five-year option with the club for the exclusive use of 2,498 square feet of office space, and the non-exclusive use of 297 square feet of common area space. The lease is for the period of June 1, 2016 through May 31, 2021 for total revenue in the amount of $30,600.
This week, the board of supervisors, acting as the governing body of County Service Area 70, Zone W, approved a five-year revenue lease agreement with one five-year option to extend the term with the United States Postal Service for the exclusive use of 385 square feet of office space and the non-exclusive use of 297 square feet of common area located at 35997 Mountain View Road in Hinkley, for the period of June 1, 2016 through May 31, 2021, for total revenue in the amount of $21,540.
The Postal Service will pay $4,308 each of the 12 month periods commencing next month and covering June 1, 2016 to May 31, 2017; June 1, 2017 to May 31, 2018; June 1, 2018 to May 31, 2019; June 1, 2019 to May 31, 2020; and June 1, 2020 to May 31, 2021 for a total cost of $21,540.
The Hinkley Senior Citizens Club, Inc. will pay $5,400 to occupy its square footage at the center from June 1, 2016 to May 31, 2017; $6,000 to occupy it from June 1, 2017 to May 31, 2018; $6,000 to occupy it from June 1, 2018 to May 31, 2019; $6,600 to occupy it from June 1, 2019 to May 31, 2020; and $6,600 to occupy it from June 1, 2020 until May 31, 2021, for a total of $30,600.
The county’s assumption of the liability with regard to contamination at the site was a formality that needed to be met so the Postal Service could move into the center. If a problem with contaminated water or soil crops up, the post office will be shut down.
“At this time, neither the county’s real estate services division nor the district have sufficient information from which to assess the potential scope of this liability,” county real estate services director Terry W. Thompson told the board of supervisors. “The USPS has agreed that in the instance where such contamination is identified, the district may terminate the lease.”
The USPS estimates the construction will take approximately 60 days. The community will be notified by the Postal Service when the new Hinkley Post Office is scheduled to open within the center.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
Is California Attorney General Kamala Harris on the take? It sure looks like it. But let us be fair here. Perhaps she is not being paid off. The alternative explanations are that she lacks character, or that she is a political hack or she lacks courage or she is merely incompetent. Those are the five possibilities. It seems to me that exhausts the potential interpretations. I will lay out the facts and allow you, gentle readers, to draw your own conclusions…
In 2010 in San Bruno, in the northern part of our state, a gas pipeline operated by Pacific Gas & Electric exploded, killing eight people. A technical evaluation of what occurred was carried out by several entities, including the California Public Utilities Commission, local law enforcement and the district attorney’s office. What was learned through these inquiries was that Pacific Gas & Electric had failed to follow safety rules for the pipeline’s operation. San Bruno filed suit against Pacific Gas & Electric and in the course of that legal action came across some irregularities with regard to the way the California Public Utilities Commission addressed the issue. The city has accumulated a cache of internal PG&E emails as well as exchanges with commissioners and commission staff that indicate there was something less than an arm’s length relationship between the commission and PG&E. San Bruno officials are particularly incensed with the action of Mike Florio, appointed to the commission by Governor Jerry Brown. Documents San Bruno obtained show that PG&E executives had meetings, e-mail exchanges and other communications with Florio that were conducted without public notice. Such communications are strictly prohibited and where incidental contact between commissioners and a utility occurs, those contacts are supposed to be outlined in a summary that is disclosed. Other documents in San Bruno’s possession show that Governor Brown was clearly aware of Florio’s conflict-fraught involvement. Another, one authored by a senior PG&E executive, shows that Brown was not merely entrusting decisions to the commissioners but had pressured a commissioner to change his vote. Other communications show that Brown is told in advance – well in advance – of actions to be taken by the commission. And why would that be? His right-hand woman, that is, his chief of staff, is Nancy McFadden, who was previously a senior vice president at Pacific Gas & Electric. There are conflicting reports as to whether Nancy McFadden has a financial interest – a huge financial interest – in Pacific Gas & Electric. In 2011, McFadden left Pacific Gas & Electric to serve as Brown’s executive secretary two days after he became governor. At the time she left the company, McFadden owned between $100,001 and $1 million in PG&E stock options, according to a filing with the state.
In her separation agreement from PG&E that paid her more than $1 million in February 2011, McFadden signed a clause saying she “agrees to refrain from performing any act” that “adversely affects the best interests of PG&E.” According to Consumer Watchdog, Ms. McFadden violated the Political Reform Act of 1974 “by using her official position to influence governmental decisions in which she knew she had a financial interest. Her actions impacted the value of the PG&E stock options she held,” according to the complaint. At a minimum, San Bruno officials want Florio prohibited from participating in any decisions related to PG&E. They have gone on record as demanding his resignation from the California Public Utilities Commission. Privately they have requested that Harris prosecute him. For her part, Harris has refused to prosecute Florio or involve itself at all in authoring an opinion letter that would essentially tell Governor Brown that he needs to make sure that McFadden and Commission straighten up and fly right. Nor has Harris seen fit to chastise, let alone prosecute, Brown or McFadden for their involvement in this coverup…
Not to minimize the deaths of the eight people in San Bruno, but there is even stronger indication of criminal wrongdoing involving the California Public Utilities Commission here in Southern California and equally disturbing information to show that Kamala Harris is ignoring it…
That matter is the conflict-ridden decision by the Commission in November 2014 that saddled the customers of Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Company with paying $3.3 billion of the shutdown costs at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station following a 2012 radioactive leak which has been established as being the result of plant operational errors by Southern California Edison. That settlment came nineteen months after a secret meeting at the swanky Bristol Hotel in Warsaw, Poland between then- California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey and Stephen Pickett, Edison’s executive vice president of external relations. In the course of the discussions between Picket and Peevey, who was formerly the president of Southern California Edison, they hammered out the gist of an agreement that is essentially indistinguishable from the final San Onofre settlement, including the multi-billion dollar charges to customers…
In February 2015, Southern California Edison filed with the California Public Utilities Commission what it called a “late-filed notice of ex parte communications” which disclosed that the meeting in Poland between Peevey and Pickett took place. The company did so only because San Diego public interest attorney Mike Aguirre and some investigators he is in league with had done some impressive spade work to unearth that the meeting had occurred…
More than six months later, in September 2015, investigators with Harris’s California Attorney General’s Office obtained a search warrant for Pickett’s emails. In his affidavit in support of that search warrant, Reye Eugene Diaz, an investigator with the California Attorney General’s Office since 1997, stated, “There is probable cause to believe Stephen Pickett, former executive president of external relations at SCE, and Peevey knowingly engaged in and conspired to engage in prohibited ex parte communications regarding the closure of a nuclear facility, to the advantage of SCE and the disadvantage of other interested parties.”
At issue in the investigation were the illegal private contacts between a member of the Commission and a conspiracy to construct a settlement contrary to the interests of the public, coupled with obstruction of justice. In short order, the California Attorney General’s Office acknowledges, it obtained the evidence needed to establish those charges. Inexplicably however, Harris earlier this spring allowed the three year statute of limitations on the Warsaw meeting to elapse. The once-secret meeting at the Bristol Hotel took place on March 26, 2013…
Why did Harris miss the deadline for bringing a key criminal charge in the case in March? Some will say it is a matter of sheer incompetence. Others think that someone, probably Edison, has paid her off.
Let me suggest this: Harris is stalling the San Onofre probe because she lacks character, because she is a political hack and she is, at her core, a political coward…
Right now, she is running for U.S. Senate, hoping to replace Barbara Boxer, who like her, is a Democrat. Going hard on these issues relating to the California Public Utilities Commission and Southern California Editions – and for that matter PG&E – would be highly damaging to Democrats with whom she is closely aligned and to big donors to the Democratic Party as well as to her own ongoing campaign. Michael Peevey is married to California State Senator Carol Liu, one of the leading Democrat’s in the California legislature and a staunch Jerry Brown and Kamela Harris ally. Ms. Harris succeeded Jerry Brown as attorney general. They have endorsed each other right down the line and she has consistently carried his political water for him and is not about to stop now. On June 6, 2013, Governor Brown was in Rancho Mirage, meeting with President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Under those circumstances, one might think the governor would have handed his phone off to an aide with instructions that any calls that came in be held until his palaver with two of the world’s most powerful men came to an end. One would be wrong because when Edison International Chairman Ted Craver called our governor in the middle of that meeting, Jerry Brown took the call. That was the day before the utility announced it would not seek to restart the San Onofre plant. In an email, Craver told his board of directors about his exchange with the governor during that call. He said Governor Brown was supportive of Edison’s plan to close the plant and that he provided Jerry Brown with talking points, to the effect that Edison was “taking the high road” and “insuring system reliability for our customers.” The next day Brown put out a news release in which he was quoted as saying, “Since San Onofre nuclear power plant went offline last year, energy utilities and the state have worked to provide Southern California with reliable electric power year round.” Clearly, Harris is not her own woman, and despite her sworn duty to look after the best interests of California’s residents and to enforce the law, she is more interested in not crossing up Jerry Brown. This is no different than her action in San Bruno, where she has deemed getting to the bottom of the corporate irresponsibility there that led to the deaths of eight people less important than not embarrassing the governor by exposing one of his appointees to the California Public Utility Commission as Pacific Gas & Electric flunky…
Before anyone sends me some stinking letters maintaining that all of this is an illegitimate partisan attack and that my opinion doesn’t mean anything because I just happen to be a Republican, consider this: among the most vociferous critics of Ms. Harris’s failure to act in San Bruno is California State Senator Jerry Hill, whose district includes San Bruno. Senator Hill is a Democrat.
In my opinion, Ms. Harris lacks the strength of character and courage to stand up to members of her own party when they have acted in contravention to the interests of the people of California and to the law. Her political ambition outweighs her commitment to the people she was elected to serve. Her unwillingness to her job as California Attorney General, which is to stand up to the powerful forces that would prey upon the citizenry, suggests to me she is not qualified to be a U.S. Senator…

By Mark Gutglueck
Mrs. Nancy Elizabeth (Kennedy-Deshon) Smith was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 1, 1912, the daughter of Rex and Edith Kennedy. Orphaned at the age of four, Nancy was raised by her grandparents, Will and Della (DeSalyard) Deshon and soon adopted that surname. Della DeSalyard Deshon was a noted actress, artist and teacher, and raised Nancy as her own child, often on the theater stage as a mother-daughter act. Nancy acquired her early schooling in West Virginia and Illinois, living her adolescent years on the Southside of Chicago, graduating from high school, and attended the Chicago Normal College. After moving to California in 1933 with her grandmother, she had starring roles in six western films in 1935 and 1936, four of which were with the famous cowboy star, Bob Steele. After leaving the movie business, she studied music and other special courses at USC and obtained employment as an assistant in the program management department of the Warner Brothers Radio Station, KFWB, in Hollywood.
While working at KFWB, Miss Deshon met Mr. C. Lowell Smith, producer and newscaster. They were married two weeks after they met on August 16, 1944, by the groom’s father, the Reverend J. Bert Smith, a Baptist minister, and in 1948 they moved to San Bernardino, where Mr. Smith took a job as a broadcaster with KFXM Radio in the California Hotel in downtown San Bernardino. Later, he became a successful real estate broker and appraiser.
In 1956, running against ten men in the primary, and after walking the entire Fifth District, speaking with residents, and leaving notes with her home number for those who were not at their houses when she visited, Nancy Smith was elected in a landslide victory to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, representing the Fifth District. She became the second woman in the county’s history to be elected to this office, the first having been Magda Lawson of Needles, who served from 1952 to 1960.
Her husband was her manager through each of her electoral campaigns. He supported her in her political career despite the fact that her status as supervisor prevented him from aggressively pursuing making a lot of money in the real estate and appraisal business, primarily because he was fearful that doing so might reflect negatively on his wife. On more than once occasion, he was cheated out of money on real estate transactions, once for a rather huge amount, but he did not sue, as he didn’t want talk about it that might negatively impact on Nancy’s status as a supervisor.
A Democrat, she was close to Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, Congressman Harry Sheppard, and Assemblyman John Quimby as well as several other Democratic political figures in the region during her tenure.
Smith served on the Advisory Board for Cal State San Bernardino for years, and in the early years worked in concert with and was a close friend of college president John Pfau. She was very close with Tino Garza, who also served on the advisory board and who was a prominent local attorney nominated for the California Supreme Court.
The prime mover behind the creation of the county’s “regional parks,” concept, which resulted in the Glen Helen and Yucaipa Regional Parks, she has since been considered for the honor of having the Glen Helen Regional Park named after her, although that eventuality has yet to be realized.
Her work on the board consumed most of her time, six days per week. She had no hobbies, but was a very religious woman, attending Judson Baptist Church in her local neighborhood.
Being a woman in political office at that time was not easy. Smith never made an issue of it, but if someone did, that person could be unpleasantly surprised.
In the 1960s, she defied the county’s highest ranking staff member, County Administrative Officer Robert Covington, when he ordered that women working for the county could not wear pantsuits. There was a bit a media frenzy when Smith, who was technically Covington’s boss, came to work in a pantsuit the following day.
She ran for State Senate in 1970. The Republicans opposed her, using a variety of campaign themes, including that it would cost too much to have to build a women’s restroom in the Senate Building in Sacramento while devising a campaign slogan that she was so great at what she was doing in San Bernardino that the voters needed to keep her at home. She was outspent 10 to one during the campaign and narrowly lost.
Mrs. Smith was the first woman in the county, and only the second in the state, to become chairwoman of the board of supervisors, serving in this capacity from December 3, 1962 to December 7, 1964 and again from January 3, 1973 to January 6, 1975.
Throughout her years on the board of supervisors, Mrs. Smith handed out business cards with her home phone number and home address. She took calls at home until 9 p.m., asking that Sunday callers wait until the afternoon. She always returned
her calls. It was not uncommon for her constituents to visit her at home.
During her five terms of service to the people of San Bernardino County, Mrs. Smith was elected in 1964 to the presidency of the Southern California Regional Association of County Supervisors, becoming the first woman to hold that office. She was the secretary-treasurer of that association during 1962 and 1963. Former Governor Edmund Brown appointed Mrs. Smith to the State Welfare Study Commission and to the Santa Ana Regional Water Pollution Control Board. A major federal assignment she was given was an appointment by President Lyndon Johnson to the Public Land Law Review Commission, which made a five-year study and subsequent recommendations to the Congress pertaining to public property, which comprise one third of the nation’s land.
Mrs. Smith served as a member of the County Council of Community Services, as director of the Tuberculosis Association, as an honorary director of the San Bernardino Chamber of Commerce, as chairwoman of the 1962 Arrowhead Fund Drive, as chairwoman of the Resolutions Committee of the County Supervisors Association of California, and as co-chairwoman of the Resolutions Committee of the County Supervisors Employment Program (which preceded the federal program). Mrs. Smith, with the other supervisors, was active in the National Association of Counties, working closely with the California Congressional delegation, pertaining to legislation affecting counties.
Mrs. Smith retired from the board on December 6, 1976, after twenty years of outstanding and dedicated service. She was succeeded by Robert Hammock of San Bernardino.
Following the retirement of her husband in 1978, the Smiths moved to Newport, Oregon. There they pursued their mutual hobbies as ham radio operators, both holding general class licenses. Nancy E. Smith undertook a life-long ambition to become a novelist. Her first tome was the story of her grandmother’s life as she knew it. She produced a second novel and several short stories. In her later years severe macular degeneration nearly blinded her and she had to forego that avocation. One of her novels was praised by a New York literary agent who gave suggestions for improving it, but increasing sight loss rendered her unable to see the screen on her computer monitor.
The Smiths had two children, son Gary Wenkle Smith, an attorney in San Bernardino who with his wife Pat had three sons; and daughter Sherry E. Bell, who was a personnel analyst for Marion Couty, Oregon and resides in Salem, Oregon, with her husband, Don. Nancy Smith had three grandsons, Jason, Aaron and Patrick, and a great grandson, Kaleb.
Death seized Nancy Smith on Friday, November 10, 2000 following a brief illness. She was 88.
There is a scholarship fund in her name at California State University San Bernardino. Donations in her memory will be gratefully accepted.

The California chipmunk (Neotamias obscurus) is a species of rodent in the squirrel family Sciuridae. They are an important part of the ecology of the San Bernardino Mountains.
Small and striped rodents, chipmunks are generally classified either as a single genus, Tamias (Greek: ταμίας), or as three genera: Tamias, which includes the eastern chipmunk; Eutamias, which includes the Siberian chipmunk; and Neotamias, which includes the 23 remaining, mostly western, species. These classifications are arbitrary, and most taxonomies over the twentieth century have placed the chipmunks in a single genus. However, studies of mitochondrial DNA show that the divergence between each of the three chipmunk groups is comparable to the genetic dissimilarity between Marmota, which are large squirrels, and and Spermophilus ,which are generally smaller.
The genus name Tamias is Greek for “treasurer”, “steward”, or “housekeeper”, which is a reference to the animals’ role in plant dispersal through their habit of collecting and storing food for winter use.
The common name originally may have been spelled “chitmunk,” from the native Odawa (Ottawa) word jidmoonh, meaning “red squirrel.” The earliest form cited in the Oxford English Dictionary (from 1842) is “chipmonk,” however, “chipmunk” appears in several books from the 1820s and 1830s. Other early forms include “chipmuck” and “chipminck,” and in the 1830s they were also referred to as “chip squirrels;” probably in reference to the sound they make. In the mid-1800s, John James Audubon and his sons included a lithograph of the chipmunk in their Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, calling it the “chipping squirrel [or] hackee.” Chipmunks have also been referred to as “striped squirrels,” “chippers,” “munks,” “timber tigers,” and “ground squirrels,” although the name “ground squirrel” usually refers to other squirrels, such as those of the genus Spermophilus.
Chipmunks have an omnivorous diet primarily consisting of seeds, nuts and other fruits, and buds, including pinyon nuts, acorns, manzanita and juniper fruits. They also commonly eat grass, shoots, and many other forms of plant matter, as well as fungi, insects and other arthropods, small frogs, worms, and bird eggs. Around humans, chipmunks can eat cultivated grains and vegetables, and other plants from farms and gardens, so they are sometimes considered pests. Chipmunks mostly forage on the ground, but they climb trees to obtain nuts such as hazelnuts and acorns. At the beginning of autumn, many species of chipmunk begin to stockpile nonperishable foods for winter. They mostly cache their foods in a larder in their burrows and remain in their nests until spring, unlike some other species which make many small caches of food. Cheek pouches allow chipmunks to carry food items to their burrows for either storage or consumption.
Water sources other than food are not necessary for survival, but are used if available.
Western chipmunks breed only once a year, from January to June. Most females lactate in May. A litter size averages about four. The young emerge from the burrow after about six weeks and strike out on their own within the next two weeks.
These small mammals fulfill several important functions in forest ecosystems. Their activities harvesting and hoarding tree seeds play a crucial role in seedling establishment. They consume many different kinds of fungi, including those involved in symbiotic mycorrhizal associations with trees, and are an important vector for dispersal of the spores of subterranean sporocarps (truffles) which have co-evolved with these and other mycophagous mammals and thus lost the ability to disperse their spores through the air.
California chipmunks are abundant in pinyon-juniper, chamise-redshank and mixed chaparral, and ponderosa pine habitats within range. They flourish at elevations from 2,500 to8,500 feet.
Chipmunks construct expansive burrows which can be more than 11 feet in length with several well-concealed entrances. The sleeping quarters are kept clean as shells and feces are stored in refuse tunnels.
The eastern chipmunk hibernates in the winter, while western chipmunks do not, relying on the stores in their burrows.
In the summer, chipmunks use rocks, logs, brush, and trees for cover. They retreats to shade when the weather grows hot.
Chipmunks play an important role as prey for various predatory mammals and birds but are also opportunistic predators themselves, particularly with regard to bird eggs and nestlings. In Oregon, mountain bluebirds (Siala currucoides) have been observed energetically mobbing chipmunks that they see near their nest trees.]
Chipmunks typically live about three years although some have been observed living to nine years in captivity.
Chipmunks in captivity are said to sleep for an average of about 15 hours a day.