(December 24)  Two Chino landowners are undertaking a petition drive to have the city rezone eight parcels on 29.6 acres south of Francis Avenue between Benson and Vernon avenues from their current low density residential use to a much more intensive residential land use designation that would allow for up to eight homes per acre.
Ron “Yogi” Brewer of 11915 Vernon Avenue and Matt Evans of 11867 Vernon Avenue are asking the city’s planning division to change the current single family residential (RD1) land use designation, which calls for one unit per acre, to single-family (RD8) allowance, which provides for up to eight units per acre.
Chino, which historically was an agricultural community, has transformed itself into a suburban municipality, but it yet contains a few hundred acres where the distinction between residential and equestrian as well as residential and commercial agricultural uses is blurred. The properties in question have zoning that currently allows horses to be kept there.
Brewer and Evans’ stated rationale in asking for the zone change is that the equestrian uses associated with the current zoning designations on the property have fallen out of favor with many of the nearby non-agricultural residential neighborhoods.
Maintaining that the property has become unsuitable for livestock or horses, Brewer and Evans are seeking the requisite signatures of 10 percent of Chino’s registered voters – in excess of 3,200 – to place a measure on next year’s ballot calling for higher density single family homes on the acreage than is permitted there now. Such a change, they claim, will eliminate unpleasant animal odors, flies and unanchored soil that results in dust.
While Brewer and Evans have stated that the rezoning they seek would guarantee high quality homes are constructed and that they are not asking the city to allow them to construct apartments, some opposition to their agenda has formed, including that of former mayor and current Chino councilwoman Eunice Ulloa.
Some of those in opposition to the zone change claim Brewer and Evans are actually trying to manipulate the city’s zoning code to engineer a quadrupling in the value of the property.

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Sentinel 12-20-13

(December 19)  Over the objections of a contingent of Upland residents, the Montclair and Upland city councils on December 16 embarked on what has been touted as the wave of the future for local governmental jurisdictions when they separately approved the consolidation of their respective city’s fire administrations.
“We are setting the model,” Montclair Councilman Bill Ruh proudly proclaimed.
Across the city limits in Upland, a handful of residents and business interests and one dissenting city council member expressed concern that the merger was one that benefited its smaller neighbor far more than it did the City of Gracious Living, which under the terms of the agreement would be essentially subsidizing a portion of Montclair’s public safety services.
Upland, the second most affluent of San Bernardino County’s cities as measured by median household income, pays its firefighters higher wages and provides slightly better benefits than Montclair firemen receive.
A previously contemplated accompanying dissolution of the service boundaries between the two agencies will be postponed until July 1, Montclair City Manager Edward Starr said.
The cities will split the compensation for Upland Fire Chief Rick Mayhew and a fire marshal, who will likewise devote his work week between the neighboring cities.73,732-population Upland, which heretofore employed 36 fulltime firefighters staged out of four fire stations will cover 67 percent of the cost of employing Mayhew and the fire marshal. 36,664-poulation Montclair, which now fields 24 firefighters operating out of two fire stations, will pick up 33 percent of those salaries.
Also subject to the merger will be battalion commanders sufficient to cover each station in both cities, augmented by a central administrative staff consisting of an executive assistant, a clerk and secretary.
Not subject to the merger will be two deputy fire chiefs, one for each city.
For the time being, each department will maintain its own identity and retain responsibility for its own firefighters below the command level. The two-year pilot program is being undertaken at this time, with the stated intention of merging the departments entirely down the road. According to Starr, the Upland firefighters will remain Upland city employees and the Montclair firemen will remain as Montclair city employees. In Montclair, the merger was particularly well-received.
As a result of the state of California’s shuttering of municipal redevelopment agencies throughout the state, toward the end of the 2010-11 fiscal year, Montclair laid off 10 employees as part of its effort to make up for its loss of redevelopment money. Throughout much of 2010-11, one of the Montclair Fire Department’s paramedic units was parked and the city’s paramedics functioned from the department’s remaining engines, which stayed in service. Over the last year-and-a-half, what was a 27-firefighter department has lost three positions to attrition, and has not filled those vacancies, making up for the manpower shortage with overtime. In September 2012, Starr, in a cost-cutting move that saved the city a third of a million dollars a year in wages and benefits, elevated police chief Keith Jones to the position of director of public safety and gave fire chief Troy Ament his two-week severance notice. In June of this year, police captain Michael deMoet was appointed to the position of director of public safety, following Jones’ retirement.  de Moet will continue to function in the role of Montclair fire chief until the merger becomes effective, likely next month.
Starr projected that Montclair will realize $476,170 in operating cost savings as a result of the merger. The agreement will not result in any further layoffs of firefighters, Starr said, but the department will from this point get by without filling any of its vacant slots. Starr said the merger will also assist his city’s fire department in reducing overtime costs.
Unlike Montclair, which has been engaging in a drawdown of its service, the Upland Fire Department has been intensifying its level of service, including maintaining, over the past four years, an air ambulance, consisting of a paramedic team stationed aboard a helicopter based at Cable Airport. That enhanced level of service may in part explicate the discrepancy between the $476,179 in savings Montclair is to yield by the merger in comparison to the $156,000 in savings Upland is projected to see.
While there was marked enthusiasm for the limited merger of the two departments in Upland, where the city will likely see, according to city manager Stephen Dunn and Mayhew, $156,000 in savings, the approval of the consolidation, or at least its timing, was not unanimous as it was in Montclair.
The merger was opposed by one city councilman, the chairman of the council advisory committee and a prominent city businessman. City councilman Glen Bozar cited salary increases to management staff and resultant future pension benefit costs as a major factor in his opposition.
“There is no true savings in this,” Bozar said. “This is savings on paper only. This is not reducing our current operating expenses. Not enough scrutiny was given to this 42-page document before the council gave the mayor authority to sign it,  locking ourselves into an agreement with our neighboring city we cannot walk away from. Montclair previously made substantial layoffs in its fire department. How did those vacancies there come to be? They did not fill those because of budgetary problems.“
Bozar continued, “This agreement is going to expand the administration of the fire department. Our fire chief and three of our guys are going to get very generous salary increases out of this.  Where are we going to come up with the money to give all these raises?  No one on the council was informed of what the chief’s salary will be or where this is going to land in terms of the increases in our public employee retirement system costs for the fire chief and at least two others.  This does nothing with regard to our ongoing issues with the budget. This does nothing to control costs. Figures available from the state controller’s office show that as a city we have 12 people on our payroll who are making more than the governor of California. That was as of 2012. This does not alleviate that and now we are going to be on the hook for additional public employee retirement benefits.“
Tom Mitchell, the chairman of the Upland City Council Advisory Commission, told the Sentinel, “One of the things I had difficulty on was the creation of the two assistant chiefs positions and the creation of a third position. I was given a response to indicate there would actually be elimination of two existing command positions so that matter was resolved. Another problem, I thought, was the long term nature of this and were we entering into a two-year commitment we would not be able to get out of if problems developed. It was stated that either city can terminate this with six months notice, so that was resolved. The one issue that for me remains unresolved is what we are taking on by the promotions of our battalion chiefs who will  be getting a $20,000 per year pay increase. This could only make worse the situation with regard to our pension requirements. Our responsibility to the state pension fund already is an unfunded liability that we have not resolved. Under the current retirement formula, firefighters can retire at 55 and be eligible for a pension. There is a multiplier of three percent times the number of years worked, so at 55, a battalion chief who has been with the city for thirty years can retire and be eligible for 90 percent of his pay. We are already under the gun and unable to keep up or barely keep up with our pension fund payments. An increase of $20,000 per year for each of these battalion chiefs means $18,000 a year more when they retire. I don’t think we can afford that.
“I just wanted to make sure that the city council looked at this all the way around before moving forward with it,” Mitchell said.
Albert Pattison, a resident, businessman and major property owner in Upland, expressed concern that the council’s action might be counterproductive and premature.
Pattison said the city had not publicly released a cost analysis of the consolidation, saying he wanted the public and the council to see a side-by-side accounting of the number of fire department command positions currently and what those employees receive in salary and benefits and the city’s total costs in employing fire department commanders after the merger. Noting that the city’s budget management task force is currently considering the city’s revenue enhancing and cost cutting options, Pattison said the council’s commitment to the command level staffing numbers contained in the merger agreement with Montclair did not allow the task force to bring forth proposals related to eliminating battalion chiefs within what might be considered to be a top-heavy department. We did not give the committee, which is composed of top-tier business people and residents of our city, an opportunity to weigh in on this.”
“What it boils down to,” Pattison said, “is they have given us razzle-dazzle, not facts. There has been no disclosure to the public on the detail needed to analyze this thoroughly. They have not divulged what is actually in the contract. I have not seen the contract and neither has anyone else. They have not given this process enough time. They  rushed it through before the specially-appointed budget committee had time to consider it. There has been a totally inadequate discussion of how this will impact the financial stability of the city. Montclair is going to realize savings of $470,000 on this and Upland is going to supposedly see a $156,000 reduction. But Upland is putting two-thirds of the horsepower into this and Montclair is providing one third. I’m not sure there is a cost-benefit equity in this deal. This was not put on the  budget task force’s agenda and now that the council has ratified the agreement, it is another element that will contribute to the confusion and retard the city’s ability to deal with its financial challenges.”

(December 14) Furthering its reputation as the most upscale and exclusive of San Bernardino County’s 24 incorporated cities, Chino Hills last week consented to the creation of yet another gated community within its 44.7-square mile confines.
Located in the extreme southwest corner of San Bernardino County and nestled against Riverside County to the south, Orange County to its southwest and Los Angeles County to its northwest, the 74,799 population city boasts the highest median income and highest household median income among all cities in the county.
The gate is to be located at the entrance to the neighborhood on Summer Canyon Road at Canyon Hills Road, north of Carbon Canyon Road.
This week, Irvine-based Forester Canyon Hills had its plan to set off the 76 homes it has developed on Summer Canyon Road, Spring Oak Way Rock Vista Lane Viewcrest Road Hawk Canyon Road, Feather Hollow Court, Flint Hollow Place, Canyon Glen Road, and Rock Ridge Way as a gated community which will be accessible only to the residents of the neighborhood and public safety personnel.
According to findings first made by the planning commission in October and confirmed by the city council this week, the vacation of those roads as public thoroughfares is consistent with the Chino Hills General Plan and exempt from environmental review as a minor alteration to land under the California Environmental Quality Act.
Vacating the streets for public roadway purposes, according to a city document “is a benefit to the public because the city will not be responsible for the maintenance and liability costs associated with such roads.”
As such maintenance of the streets will now be the responsibility of a private homeowners association.
According to the city, “The gate will make it a well defined neighborhood. The surrounding land and homeowners met design review and access standards.”
To ensure emergency response to the area is not interrupted the fire department will be provided with a key system consisting of switch overide capability. The city also said the proponents of the gated community met minimum setback requirements on structures and provided a 40-foot radius turnaround on the roadway to ensure unrestricted access from the gate area. Putting in the gate, the city said, “won’t inhibit the general public from access to parks and other public facilities.”

(December 18)  LOS ANGELES—The California Public Employees Retirement System will get another bite at the apple in trying to establish that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury erred when she ruled four months ago that the city of San Bernardino qualified for bankruptcy protection.
After years of staving off financial challenges, San Bernardino filed a Chapter 9 bankruptcy petition in August 2012. In its filing, the county seat asserted it had $180 million in ongoing unfunded liabilities and a $49 million annual operating deficit. Shortly thereafter, the state’s public employees retirement system, known by its acronym CalPERS, contested the city’s filing, maintaining San Bernardino has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets it could liquidate to make good on its responsibility to its creditors.
CalPERS is San Bernardino’s largest creditor. The city currently has a $25 million annual obligation to the retirement system and it withheld more than $14 million in pension fund payments from July 2012 until July of this year. The city wants to continue to make partial payments until such time as it gets back on its feet financially. Even more alarming to CalPERS is the perception that the city is looking down the road at a longer-term solution that would include renegotiating the amount of its commitment to the retirement system, one that would indeed set a precedent in California of reducing the pensions of retired or soon-to-retire city employees.
In addition to opposing San Bernardino’s bankruptcy petition outright, CalPERS has asserted that the pension fund system has a special status among the city’s creditors and that it should go to the front of the line when the city begins to pay those to whom it is in arrears. Jury did not accept that, ruling that CalPERS has no greater or lesser standing than the scores of other entities the city owes money to.
Moreover, Jury has consistently ruled that San Bernardino is as insolvent as it claims. In August, she ruled that the city’s bankruptcy should be granted pursuant to a pendency plan by which the city continues to pay its employees and other expenses critical to its day-to-day operations but services its other debts on the basis of the limited financial means available to it.
CalPERS wants out of Jury’s courtroom and previously pressed for leave to appeal the matter to another judge, a request Jury denied.
CalPERS took a writ to U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, where Judge Dolly Gee granted the pension fund’s request to appeal Jury’s findings directly to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Gee’s decision merely gives the California Public Employees’ Retirement System permission to request that the 9th Circuit here the case. The 9th Circuit can turn down the appeal request or agree to hear arguments that Judge Jury was wrong in allowing the city to envelope itself in the blanket of bankruptcy protection.
Jury had been reluctant to allow CalPERS to pursue the appeal because she was hopeful that ongoing mediation sessions involving the city and its creditors before one of her colleagues, U.S Bankruptcy Judge Gregg Zive, were making considerable progress and she was concerned the appeal would divert both the city and the pension fund’s focus to non- productive issues.
As it stands, the Zive-led efforts to reach an accommodation will continue while the 9th Circuit considers whether to hear the appeal.
That appeal and the mediation come in the midst of a profound examination of a basic public financial and policy issue, i.e., the question of whether public pension obligations are to be held as sacrosanct, no matter how generous or reasonable individual pensions are, or whether troubled municipalities can skip out on their commitments to continuously fund the retirement accounts of  their current and past employees.
San Bernardino is at the forefront of that issue, having sought to have its pension fund obligations categorized as indistinguishable from its responsibilities to its other creditors.
In the cases of two other cities in California that have sought bankruptcy protection, Stockton and Vallejo, those cities have chosen to stay current on their obligations to CalPERS.
Seven–ninths of the way across the continent, in Detroit, the Motor City had its bankruptcy petition granted on December 3 as a consequence of having run up a monster debt so humongous it could only be estimated – at an unfathomable $18 billion. The U.S. Bankruptcy Judge  hearing that case, Steven Rhodes, threw public employee unions and pension funds into paroxysms when he  ruled that Detroit is not only eligible for bankruptcy but can also cut pension benefits as part of its strategy to map its way out of the financial abyss it has found itself in. Pensions, just like any other contracts, can be altered, given the exigency of bankruptcy, Rhodes ruled.
Rhodes’ ruling provides a precedent that outfits San Bernardino with more leverage in its match with CalPERS, providing the city with the potential option of abrogating a contract that CalPERS and the city’s municipal employee’s unions considered absolutely ironclad.
Like that of Jury, Rhodes’ ruling is now the target of an appeal request.

(December 17)  RIVERSIDE—San Bernardino Second Ward Councilman Robert Jenkins pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to the thirty criminal charges lodged against him by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.
On October 17, Jenkins was charged with 18 felonies and 12 misdemeanors pertaining to his use of the internet to place several personal advertisements on Craigslist seeking sex liaisons and then diverting responses to those ads to his one-time boyfriend or the man whom Jenkins is alleged to have believed his former boyfriend to be involved with, as well as with forging a San Bernardino Police Department internal memorandum. Jenkins is represented by attorney Virginia Blumenthal, who has consistently proclaimed her client’s innocence, as well as by attorney Jeff Moore.
Blumenthal previously suggested Jenkins, who once hid but now openly acknowledges his homosexuality, was set up by his former lover, who had a key to his home and access to his computer.
But the Riverside District Attorney’s Office says evidence churned up during the course of its investigation contradicts that version of events. Investigators traced the online ads to Jenkins directly at locations beyond his home, linking the postings, through IP, or Internet protocol, addresses at his workplace at the Riverside Office of Education and the home of his relatives, where his former boyfriend had no access.
Moreover, the forged San Bernardino Police Department memorandum was conclusively shown to be the handiwork of Jenkins, investigators insist. Jenkins is said to have relied upon his access, as a city councilman, to materials unavailable to the two alleged victims in the case. The forged memorandum utilized the names of two department employees, Sgt. Tom Bielaszka and Lt. Dario Robinson, along with police department seals. The memorandum was intended to make it appear that Jenkins had also been a victim of online harassment, according to the district attorney’s office.
Jenkins, who avoided arrest and being taken into custody when Blumenthal arranged for a bondsman to post $25,000 bail on Jenkin’s behalf through the court on the day he was charged, was nevertheless hurt by the negative publicity surrounding the affair. On November 5, Jenkins failed in his reelection attempt, losing to his only opponent in the race, Benito Barrios. Jenkins will remain in office until March, when Barrios is to be sworn in.

(December 16)  JOSHUA TREE — The Hi-Desert Medical Center’s governing board on December 11 voted unanimously to promote Robert Tyk, the hospital’s chief financial officer for the last 11 months, to the position of chief executive officer.
The board’s action follows by less than two months what was termed a mutually agreed-upon  decision  for current chief executive officer Lionel “Chad” Chadwick to depart at the end of the year.
Tyk will officially take over the reins of the hospital on January 1.
The decision to hire Tyk came during a half hour-log closed session in which Dianne Swella was not present but participated by the means of a remote communication device.
The same secrecy that shrouded Tyk’s selection attended Chadwick’s departure. Throughout the first nine months of 2013, Chadwick appeared to be working diligently on the financial challenges facing the hospital district. On October 29, however, the district made an abrupt announcement that Chadwick would be leaving his position on December 31. Despite statements to the effect that all parties were amenable to the departure, an indication of the board’s discomfiture with Chadwick came in the form of the terms of his departure, which did not include the conferring of a severance payment.
A terse press release that went out with the announcement of Chadwick’s pending departure cited “irreconcilable incompatibility of management approach” between Chadwick as hospital CEO and the board. “Dr. Chadwick has made meaningful and appreciated contributions to the district’s mission and operations,” according to the release. “We thank him for his many contributions and wish him well in his future endeavors.”
The hospital district’s financial woes are variegated, consisting of burgeoning patient care costs and dwindling revenue from solvent patients, insurance carriers and governmental programs set up to cover the medical costs of indigent patients or those otherwise eligible for subsidized medical assistance.
Many of the services rendered at the hospital by doctors are not billed for by the hospital but by the  physicians themselves, who are not employees of the hospital, by law.  The hospital does not now have clearly delineated revenue sharing agreements with local healthcare providers such as Oasis Healthcare and the county of San Bernardino.
A major portion of Hi-Desert Medical Center’s financial travail is attributable to the persisting economic recession, which has been accompanied by the reduction of government payments to hospitals, including 25 percent cuts from the Medicare and MediCal programs, entailing an annual loss of revenue to the institution exceeding $500,000.  Simultaneously, federal law mandates that hospitals deliver emergency care whether or not patents have medical coverage or the ability to pay for that treatment.  This has been coupled with steady increases in the cost of delivering medical care.
Chadwick had advocated the aggressive use of case management to discharge recovered patients earlier and reduce the length of time they remained in the hospital consuming costly services. This was of only limited success.
In order to remain operational, Hi-Desert Medical Center has for the last three-and-a-half years burned entirely through its operating budgets and tapped into financial reserves.  Chadwick’s attempts to stem this hemorrhaging of red ink have failed, resulting in the consternation of the board. Chadwick’s efforts to directly lobby both state and federal legislators for relief, coupled with similar requests of other civic and community leaders he had enlisted for that cause were largely ineffective.
In a last-ditch effort to right the hospital’s listing financial ship before he was essentially forced out, Chadwick in September induced the board to vote to put a tax initiative on the November 2014 ballot.
That move was considered a long shot. In the less lean economic atmosphere of 2005, the hospital sought voter approval for Measure N, a tax bond that would have added $24 to individual homeowners’ annual property taxes to provide funding for emergency room improvements and other hospital service enhancements. Measure N went down in defeat in a mail-in ballot election.
The board, led by board president Korina Cole, is staking the hospital’s future on what it hopes will prove to be the superior financial management skills of Tyk, who boasts more than three decades of experience in the healthcare industry, including a stint as chief financial officer for Roswell Regional Hospital in New Mexico and interim financial management and reform work at several institutions while he was with Kaizen Consulting.
Tyk said he took pride in his selection by the board to “lead our healthcare district through these challenging times. I look forward to working with this board, our physicians and staff to ensure the viability and future of our healthcare district.”

(December 17)  Travelers will have another reason to utilize Ontario International Airport over the next five months as its two main terminals will host a display of the work by several contemporary artists relating to international themes.
Los Angeles World Airports), in partnership with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, announces a group exhibition featuring twelve Los Angeles-based artists who derive inspiration from the urban and natural worlds to create photographs, paintings, sculptures, and installations, which are on display at Ontario International Airport, on the Departures Levels in Terminals 2 and 4 through May 2014.Curated by Ginger Van Hook, Out of Thin Air features a blend of original contemporary artworks reflecting the individual artistic processes intrinsic to working and creating in Southern California amidst an assemblage of people, places, and ideas from across the world.
Los Angeles World Airports, known by its acronym LAWA, is the airport oversight and operations department for the city of Los Angeles, which owns and operates  Los Angeles International Airport, Ontario International Airport, and Van Nuys Airport.  Over the last several years, city of Ontario officials have been critical of LAWA as ridership at Ontario International has declined from its peak of 7.2 million passengers enplaned there in 2007 to 3.9 million this year. In response, LAWA is seeking to attract passengers to San Bernardino County’s largest commercial airport, a medium-hub, full-service facility with seven carriers offering 14 daily nonstop flights to 13 major U.S. cities plus seven daily non-stops to Guadalajara, Mexico.
Out of Thin Air is a free exhibit on the second floor of both terminals, beyond the airport’s security screening barriers, making it accessible only to ticket-bearing passengers.
The nine artists on exhibit in Terminal 4 use a variety of media and methods to survey their surroundings.
Kenneth Ober, Luke Van Hook, Holly Tempo, and Michael Giancristiano demonstrate distinct approaches in examining and interpreting the landscape, in its organic and artificial states, from intricate renderings to fields of color and pattern.  Renée Foxcombinesornate paintings and sculpturesto depict microscopic occurrences, such as the propagation of a flower or the power of a seed, while Shizuko Greenblatt incorporates synthetic and organic objects to reference Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement.
Michael Massenburg and Mark X Farina mix color, language, and abstract forms to create a sensory experience and express human relationships with the environment. Artworks by Scott Griegeralter manipulate perspective using digital art and design.
The three artists on exhibit in Terminal 2, Siri Kaur, Yoichi Kawamura, and Anne Marie Rousseau, use photography to explore the expansive and limitlessness nature of the skies. Kawamura’s images of distant horizons and Kaur’s diptych of photographs capturing the Aurora Borealis reference themes of infinity, vastness, and contemplation. Rousseau’s combination of air show photographs creates a collage of intersecting lines and open space.
Initiated in 1990, the purpose of the Public Art and Exhibitions Program at Los Angeles World Airports is to educate and entertain the traveling public at Los Angeles International, Ontario International and the FlyAway Bus Terminal at Van Nuys Airport. The program showcases local and regional artists through temporary exhibitions and permanent public art installations, which enhance and humanize the overall travel experience for millions every year. Additional information is available at www.lawa.org.
Ontario International Airport is located near the confluence of the I-10 and I-15 freeways, roughly 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, and close to Orange County, the San Gabriel Valley, and Palm Springs. making it the Inland Empire’s preferred airport for nonstop flights throughout the West.  Information on flights and schedules is available at  www.flyontario.com.

(December 19)  Paul Chabot has given indication he will run for the lower house of the California Legislature if  40th Assembly District Assemblyman Mike Morrell is obliged to leave that post if he achieves success in his bid to succeed bill Emmerson, who resigned as 23rd District state senator effective December 1. That senate seat will be filled in a special election next year.
Chabot, a Republican who unsuccessfully sought election to the Assembly in the 63rd District in 2010, touts himself as a conservative, Navy veteran and anti-drug crusader.
Morrell’s 40th Assembly District includes Rancho Cucamonga, the foothills and mountains around San Bernardino, and the cities of Highland, Loma Linda and Redlands. It is considered to be a relatively safe district for Republicans.
Though he has not officially declared his candidacy, Chabot sought to deflate the chances of others who might vie to replace Morrell. In an email sent to his supporters on December 15, Chabot mentioned without being specific a Republican rival to succeed Morrell who he said is claiming to have endorsements of GOP higher-ups. Chabot said that is not true.
“[T]here is misinformation being spread regarding the Assembly race I intend to formally enter after the New Year,” Chabot said. “First, the state party and state party chairman have not endorsed nor are they supporting my soon-to-be opponent in the race. This piece of misinformation has been told to a number of officials in our region. The chairman, by rules, cannot support, and neither can the party. There are two local Republicans in this race so far, and could be others.”
Chabot did not name who those local Republicans are. He said he had personally “just returned from a trip to Sacramento and “leadership” [i.e. Republican Party leadership] has made absolutely no decision on ‘support’in this race –It’s too early.”
Referring to his campaign, Chabot said, “We are not making an official announcement until after the New Year – and even then it’s too early. Morrell still holds the seat and has yet to resign from it.”
“I will go to Sacramento as your future elected Assemblyman and lead with courage, honor, integrity, faith, passion, leadership and dedication,” he declared on one of the website’s pages.

(December 17)  A growing Southern California Company has expanded its manufacturing footprint, moving some two-thirds of its operations into San Bernardino County.
The expansion of CELCO Manufacturing, Inc. from what was formerly its main base of operation in East Los Angeles into the city of Ontario’s industrial district is the model that Inland Empire officials are hoping will be repeated over and over again as business owners are learning that lower property leasing and purchasing prices in and around San Bernardino County represent a decided advantage for entrepreneurs.
Celco is is the corporate personification of the Cortés  Family, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the mid-1970s. Seven of the eight Cortés brothers found employment with Hamilton Fixtures West,  a manufacturer of display furniture located in Brea, learning the various aspects of the fabrication of both wood and metal furnishings and display racks. In 1994, the eleven Cortés  brothers  and sisters – who then ranged in age from 18 to 37 – contributed to starting Celco. They drew their clients from both the retail industry and display furniture manufacturers.  They specialized in providing display racks and cases for companies such as Nabisco and Kraft Foods as well as component parts such as shelving and case legs.
The company struggled initially as it sought to break into a market dominated by well-established companies, but forged a toehold in the industry and grew steadily if slowly for a dozen years. By 1996, Celco boasted 35 employees and exceeded the $3 million revenue mark. The economic downturn that began the following year took its toll, however, and by 2009 the company brought in only $1.8 million and was forced to shed 17 of its employees.  Beginning that year, the company intensified its marketing efforts, targeting furniture design companies with needs for the type of components Celco could readily supply.
By late 2010, the company experienced a turnaround, with a 40 percent uptick in sales. And even as the recession’s grip on the local and national economy persisted, the company continued to prosper. In 2010, the company had $2.6 million in sales. This year, the company is on track to hit over $6 million, and it now employs 58, of whom, according to president and CEO Cesar Cortés, “27 are immediate family.”
The decision to set up shop in Ontario, Cortés said, was one that naturally evolved as a consequence of the company’s success, the lower cost of functioning outside of Los Angeles, the quality of the manufacturing and warehouse space available in Ontario, the nearby presence of a number of the company’s customers and suppliers, as well as the consideration that the new location is much closer to where the majority of Celco’s employees reside.
“We have a 17,000 square foot building in East Los Angeles,” Cesar Cortés told the Sentinel during an exclusive interview at his company’s new 30,000 square-foot plant, located at 1524 West Brooks Street in Ontario. “We are going to keep that facility open while we move 70 percent of our operation here. We chose to relocate here, first, because we need a bigger place and, second, some of our best customers are in this area.  One important difference is it is almost 30 percent less expensive here. Six out of eight of our supervisors live nearby in Chino. Most of our suppliers are closer – San Dimas and Ontario. There is also the advantage of 45,000 square feet of enclosed yard at this location, which is very valuable for the type of business we do.”
Cortés gave a description of the niche his company has found.
“Our basic product line is point of purchase displays – racks and fixtures for department stores such as Sears and Forever 21,”  Cortés said. “Our products include some office furniture. We incorporate wood, metal and plastic into our production process. We provide wood products for companies that fabricate or deal mostly in metal products.  We do thousands of wood components for the La-Z-Boy, United Furniture Industries and Jonathan Louise. We have a couple of customers who purchase close to a million dollars worth of merchandise from us.  We have had great sales for four consecutive years, with each year exceeding the last. In 2010, we predicted sales of $2.8 million and the company hit $3.2 million. We are now up to six million.”
In touting his company’s fabricating capabilities, Cortés said he would like his prospective customers “to know that we are one of just a few companies in Southern California that has the machinery and capacity to meet high capacity demand in a very short turnaround time.  We have a proven track record fabricating a quality product to our customers’ specifications. We work primarily as a subcontractor to businesses that want to increase their sales but find themselves too busy to complete new job proposals. We offer fabricating outsourcing that carries with it the advantage of reducing a company’s machinery requirements and capital investments, decreases its direct labor costs, and saving not only time on prefabrication cutting and preparation of materials but on material handling and on ordering raw materials. We have at our disposal ten CNC [computer numerical control] machines, two edgebanders, one panel saw, a CNC dowel inserter and ten conventional woodworking machines. We have a full-blown engineering department that can do volume engineering.”
The consideration that Celco is a family-owned and operated business provides the advantage of cohesion and dedication that is not always available elsewhere, Cortés said.
“My brothers, including myself, worked 103 combined years at Hamilton Fixtures West and we now have 83 more combined years working together with Celco,” Cortés said. “We are an unusual family in that we have been working together – the four of us who are the corporate officers with Celco – for 32 years. We occasionally have differences of opinion but we get along and we all take pride in meeting our customers’ needs and expectations.”