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 sentinel-12-02-16

Rod Butler

By Mark Gutglueck
Palace intrigue rivaling that of any in the royal courts of Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries played out at Upland City Hall earlier this year before hitting fever pitch earlier this fall.
A series of mostly clandestine events, triggering moves and countermoves and the merging of in some cases contrary political agendas resulted in a cascade of both formal and informal investigations, the ultimate outcomes of which remain in doubt. This has been accompanied by a drawn-out bureaucratic bloodbath which itself may or may not be through, one which has so far entailed the termination of the city manager and three department heads, and the narrow avoidance of the firing of the assistant city manager.
The dramatis personae in this tale include former city manager Rod Butler and the man brought in to replace him at least on an interim basis, Martin Thouvenell, assistant city manager Jeannette Vagnozzi, former fire chief Paul Segalla, former finance director Scott Williams and community services director Roberta Knighten.
At the heart of the matter are issues in large measure yet hidden from the public. Looming larger into the public consciousness are a series of decisions that have continually postponed a comprehensive reckoning with financial reality which at present is causing city officials to serious contemplate the ultimate dissolution of the city’s 110 year old fire and police departments. Moreover, more than four months after the city council cashiered city manager Rob Butler without any explanation, information has surfaced to indicate the council took that action because a majority of the members had come to believe that he had purposefully hidden from them or otherwise misrepresented to them crucial financial information.
Exacerbating the situation for Butler was the presence of his second-in-command, Jeannette Vagnozzi, an ambitious rising star in the municipal administrative constellation whom Butler had brought in last year, ostensibly to serve as his aide-de-camp and hatchet-woman, who had been serving as the assistant to the city manager for nearly a decade in the not-too-distant City of La Verne, three cities removed from Upland west across the border with Los Angeles County. Ultimately, Vagnozzi’s involvement in his administration would contribute to Butler’s demise in Upland.
Butler’s presence in Upland was itself remarkable. It is unlikely that there is anyone with as much municipal managerial experience as Butler possesses who was less suited to be Upland city manager in the time he would inhabit the office. A journeyman municipal administrator who had cut his teeth as a young man in Claremont, Butler slowly but steadily ticket punched his way up the governmental totem pole in Chino where he spent four years as a senior management analyst working on financial matters, Ontario, where he was an administrative officer in the city’s housing and redevelopment agencies, and Pomona, where he was assistant to the city manager. In January 2009, at the age of 44 he obtained his first assignment as city manager in Crescent City, where he remained for 23 months and abruptly departed to become the city manager of Patterson in December 2010. After a little more than three-and-a-half years there, Butler departed when he was offered the opportunity in August 2014 to replace Stephen Dunn in the role of permanent city manager in Upland.
Butler had been raised in Upland, where he attended Western Christian High School. He and others hailed his hiring in Upland as a homecoming, and there was talk of Butler, then 50, remaining for the rest of his career in the city of his youth. Upland, where he was given a three-year contract with a base salary of $189,629, was an indisputable step forward for Butler, who had been paid $100,000 yearly in Crescent City, the 7,643-population county seat of Del Norte County, and $135,000 annually with 19,033-population Patterson. But managing 74,000-population Upland, with its rocky recent history involving its former mayor John Pomierski and former city manager Robb Quincey having been indicted and convicted in 2011, 2012 and 2013 of political corruption, which both had engaged in with the collusion of much of city staff, would prove to be a far greater challenge than Butler anticipated when he took the job.

John Pomieiski

Upland had taken a beating with the Pomierski scandal, its reputation trashed, while its function had been undercut by a housecleaning undertaken by the reformist mayor, Ray Musser, the long suffering political outsider on the council who for nearly a decade had futilely resisted but then succeeded Pomierski after his downfall, and the former finance director, Stephen Dunn, who had been elevated to city manager to succeed Quincey. In that housecleaning, 26 city employees, including four department heads – some of whom were known to have or were suspected of having cooperated with Pomierski and Quincey in their depredations – were shown the door in June 2011. That move both boosted and dimmed morale at City Hall. At the same time, the city found itself saddled with what many deemed overly generous salaries and benefits that had been provided to city employees, including police officers, during the Pomierski regime to buy their silence with regard to the highly questionable activity that had been going on at City Hall during the first decade of the Third Millennium. That generosity included conferring upon city employees pensions that would pay many of them a yearly retirement stipend approaching or matching their annual salaries while they were working. In this way, the city, which by the time Butler arrived had a general fund budget in the $40 million range, was saddled with having to make an annual payout of approaching $7 million of that $40 million – roughly 17.5 percent – to pay for former employees no longer working for or contributing anything toward the current function of the city. This took a sizeable bite out of the money available for basic city operations. And while some city employees were unconnected and uninvolved in the excesses of the Pomierski years, still hiding among them were several of Pomierski’s enablers, ones who were yet enjoying the spoils – in the form of inflated salaries and benefits – of the Pomierski corruption.
Affable and easygoing, full of Christian charity, Butler was constitutionally incapable, it seemed, of taking a hard line with anyone. The prospect that he would ride herd on a municipal structure that was in need of constant guidance, not to mention committed discipline that would include forcing the city’s employees to give back the spoils of corruption by making concessions in contract bargaining, was equally unlikely. Indeed, Butler sought to outright ignore the more unpleasant and confrontative elements of his job, exuding warmth and bonhomie, endeavoring to get along with everyone, being responsive to all parties’ concerns in words or promise, but unable to be decisive when responding with action to one demand or set of demands put him in conflict with another demand or set of demands.
Complicating the circumstance was the leadership team Butler had inherited. Upon arriving In Upland, the closest thing Butler had to a second-in-command was Stephanie Mendenhall, Upland’s administrative services director/human resources director/city clerk. Mendenhall had been the city clerk contemporaneously with Pomierski being mayor and Quincey being city manager, and she had processed while she was city clerk a number of highly questionable arrangements directly related to the corruption of the Pomierski regime. Among those were seven enhancements to Quincey’s contract as city manager which resulted in his total annual compensation package zooming from $235,000, consisting of $195,000 in base salary and $40,000 in benefits and deferred compensation when he was hired in 2005, to a base salary and add-ons of $368,529 with benefits of $92,096 by January 2011, for a total annual compensation of $460,625, making him among the highest paid city managers in the state. Mendenhall, as city clerk, processed at least two of those enhancements without a vote of the council and based only upon the signature of Pomierski on the document granting Quincey each of those raises. What is more, Stephanie Mendenhall’s husband, Jeff, was Upland police chief when Butler became city manager. Mendenhall had been an up-and-comer in the police department during Pomierski’s reign, during which the department ignored increasingly obvious indications that Pomierski was on the take, shaking down individuals with applications for permits at City Hall or projects pending before the Upland Planning Commission or Upland City Council, which Pomierski controlled, and taking in bribes as fast as those who understood the political lay of the land in Upland were willing to hand them out. Repeatedly, in 2004 and in 2008, the Upland Police Officers Association supported Pomierski in his quest for reelection. In return, Pomierski utilized Quincey to continuously up both the pay and benefits for members of the police department, including that of the rank and file officers and those of higher rank, such as Mendenhall. Brought in to function within this milieu, Butler found himself unable to buck the current that called for keeping city employees, who had moved so far ahead by acceding to the Pomierski’s formula for governance and self-enrichment, in the money themselves.
To get along, Butler went along. He would soon be given the sobriquet of “Mr. Smiley,” in reference to his seemingly perpetually friendly countenance calculated to melt the heart of anyone he was dealing with. Still, the more he attempted to please everyone, it was beginning to become apparent that he was not pleasing anyone. Simply stated, Upland needed less of a Christian and more of a lion.
Paradoxically, two events very early in Butler’s tenure slickened the ground beneath his feet.
He had been hired in the midst of the 2014 municipal election cycle. Two of the council incumbents, Debbie Stone and Gino Filippi, were vying for reelection. Another incumbent, Brendan Brandt, had opted out of seeking reelection. Vying in that election were a number of others, including planning commissioner Carol Timm and Stephen Dunn, who had left as city manager in June of that year. While he was city manager, Dunn had installed as his administrative assistant Annette Guthrie, who had previously worked under Dunn as an employee in the finance department when he was Upland finance director. Guthrie had remained in that position after Dunn’s departure, however, and the interim city manager who had succeeded Dunn, one-time La Verne City Manager Martin Lomeli, and Stephanie Mendenhall, had determined that Guthrie’s administrative assistant position was superfluous. While the city was in the process of eliminating the administrative assistant post at the time Butler arrived, that process had not yet been completed. Stephanie Mendenhall, in her capacity as administrative services director and human resources director, took possession of Guthrie’s office computer, whereupon her review of email correspondence thereon showed communication between Guthrie and variously Stone and Filippi, which Mendenhall deemed as being related to Stone and Fillippi’s then-ongoing electoral efforts. The matter was complicated by the consideration that Guthrie and Dunn were at that point cohabitating and Dunn, Stone and Filippi were running for city council as a slate. Accusations that Guthrie was misusing city facilities for political purposes were raised and she was ushered toward the door, though a $50,000 severance was conferred on her as she left. Butler, who had been in the city manager’s position for less than a month when this was consummated, acquiesced in Mendenhall’s sacking of Guthrie. Because of the alliance that had developed between Dunn, Stone and Filippi by that point, Stone and Filippi’s relationship with Butler had essentially started off on the wrong foot.
Secondly, during Butler’s first week on the job, Lomeli remained at Upland City Hall as a consultant to assist in getting the newcomer oriented. On his second day, Lomeli hosted a meeting with former Upland Police Chief Martin Thouvenell. In the course of this meeting it was suggested that Butler have the city hire Thouvenell as a consultant/adviser. Butler, who said he would consider the suggestion, never acted upon it.
Not quite six months into his assignment as city manager, Butler encountered signs that his tenure with the city might not be all that secure. As the council took up his six-month performance review, Stone and Filippi’s displeasure with the resolution of the Guthrie matter and Filippi’s unspoken disappointment that Thouvenell had not found a place in Butler’s cabinet manifested. At that point, there was an indication that both Stone and Filippi would entertain having Butler replaced. That proposal failed to get the necessary support of a third member of the council.
In the late winter of 2015, Butler himself privately expressed his hope that many of the difficulties facing Upland could somehow resolve themselves, that a modus vivendi between the factions on the council could be worked out and that he might just be able to hang on to his job at least through his second anniversary in Upland in August 2016 and maybe to the completion of his contract in August 2017. But as Winter 2015 transitioned into Spring 2015, it became increasingly clear that Butler would not be able to carry any of that off by the force of his milquetoast personality alone. To remedy the situation, Butler asked for, and was granted, authority to hire an assistant city manager.
Thus, Jeannette Vagnozzi entered the Upland picture. Vagnozzi came to Upland from LaVerne, where for 25 years she had held increasingly more important, involved, and complicated positions of responsibility, ranging from public information officer to municipal elections officer, public outreach coordinator, risk manager, city treasurer, strategic planner, city clerk and finally assistant to the city manager.
Officially, Vagnozzi was expected to take on the assignments that Stephanie Mendenhall abandoned when she retired from the city in July 2015 – administrative services director, human resources director, risk management director and city clerk. Those were her official functions and she was vouchsafed the title of deputy city manager. Unofficially, but more accurately, she was to serve as Rod Butler’s backbone, serve as his hatchet-woman, do the dirty work he was incapable of or unwilling to do himself.
It is not known, precisely, at what point, Vagnozzi, who is not without ambition of her own, came to recognize the opportunity before her. Within five to six months, upon fully acclimating herself to Upland, she would realize that Butler’s grip on the post of city manager was growing tenuous. Indeed, a city consultant would offer a warning to Butler that he need be very careful with regard to Vagnozzi, expressing himself in strong language, telling Butler he could end up with his “throat cut.” In his typical fashion, Butler disregarded such a disquieting suggestion and he instead embraced Vagnozzi as a key member of his managerial team. He was in no position, nor was he psychologically equipped, to run an organization in which he was at odds with the individual handling the primary elements of his function. Governance in Upland was already complicated enough.
A wild card in the mix was the mercurial political ebb and flow in Upland, not too much different from some other cities, with interlocking but constantly interchanging alliances that modulate, shift and evolve with the emergence of different issues or the rush of time and exigency.
Upland is a quasi-bedroom community that nevertheless has the attenuated benefit of two of its major arterials – Mountain Avenue and Foothill Blvd. – featuring relatively robust commercial uses. In terms of economics, it also bears a relative disadvantage in that its major arterial – Euclid Avenue – exists as one of the most resplendent residential venues regionally, indeed in the entire State of California, or the entire United States, Newport, Rhode Island, Palm Beach, Florida, Brentwood, Beverley Hills and San Marino notwithstanding. Thus, while boasting status as an upscale community, Upland’s municipal structure suffers because it lacks the intensified revenue stream available to less wealthy cities in which their major streets are devoted entirely to being sales tax-producing commercial districts. In this way, Upland’s financial situation is more delicate than many less affluent communities in San Bernardino County, such as Ontario, or Chino Hills, Rancho Cucamonga, or even Fontana or Victorville.
Consequently, Upland is constantly under the gun to make ends meet. The generous giveaways it made to its employees under Pomierski and Quincey have exacerbated the situation. A key position at Upland City Hall is thus the finance director. Indeed, the last full time city manager prior to Butler, Stephen Dunn, was elevated to the city manager’s post largely on the belief that the city would do better under someone who had a full dimensional understanding of the city’s fiscal circumstance than it would if it were guided by an outsider steeped in the principles of general municipal management. In this way, Scott Williams, who had previously served as the financial adviser for the Regional Governmental Services Authority in Napa and the finance director in Sonoma and as finance director in San Bernardino, was on the front line, as it were, in Upland’s struggle to survive as a municipal entity. A little more than three years before Williams’ arrival in Upland, an auditor’s opinion made in 2012 by the certified public accounting firm Mayer Hoffman stated there were serious questions with regard to Upland’s solvency to the point that in a short while “it will be unable to continue as a going concern.”
Williams considered it his first duty, as did others, to provide the city council, the city employees up the chain of command, the department heads abreast of him at City Hall, city employees at all levels and the general public with straightforward information relating to the city’s financial condition. His second duty, he felt, was to supply all of those entities with a panoply of options to assist the city in maintaining its solvency. Williams, whose hiring by Upland predated by more than three months the hiring of Vagnozzi, initially was able to perform those tasks essentially unfettered. He developed a rapport with all five members of the city council, despite their political differences, and had established within his first three months on the job a reputation as no-nonsense bean counter, who nevertheless embodied a degree of imagination in his make-up, and was seriously dedicated to keeping the lifeblood of municipal life, revenue, flowing in and in the proper proportions to the various city departments, no matter how parsimoniously it had to be doled out because of fiscal reality. Simultaneously, he was mindful of the importance of husbanding the city’s reserves and keeping them in interest-bearing accounts or lodged in investment instruments that would assure the city was not losing ground against inflation or permitting its holdings to stagnate. And he respected, as well, the legal restrictions a municipality such as Upland must function within, keeping funds earmarked for specific purposes sequestered and safe from being tapped into and used for unauthorized programs or operations.
One of the issues within his creative field was visualizing how current operations might be altered to derive some savings. Already undertaken in this regard were so-called outsourcings. In 2014 and 2015, the city moved to shed itself of its library and animal control divisions. Williams would suggest to top city officials that they seriously consider enlarging upon this concept. Reasoning that the city’s public safety division – the fire department and police department – accounted for 72 percent of city spending on salaries and benefits, he suggested serious contemplation be given to having the police and fire departments closed out and the county sheriff’s department being brought in to provide law enforcement services on a contractual basis and that the city look at having the county’s fire division or the California Division of Forestry assume firefighting and emergency medical service provision within the city limits.
In January 2016, the city council, acting on a concept first put forth by Jason Gaudy, a member of the Upland Fiscal Task Force that was formed in 2013 to analyze the city’s options for dealing with its financial challenges, passed the Upland Fiscal Responsibility Act. The Upland Fiscal Responsibility Act, which was passed unanimously by the city council, mandates that the city “base its operating capital on demonstrable sources of revenue.” Moreover, the act states, “The city shall maintain cash balances to adequately provide for economic uncertainties, local disasters or catastrophic events, and other financial hardships or downturns in the local or national economy or contingencies for unforeseen operational needs. The city shall retain, per policy, a minimum unassigned fund balance of at least 12.5 percent of general fund operating expenditures, with a goal of bringing the total level of reserves up to 25 percent.”
Simultaneously, Butler, who was working with Williams on constructing a city budget for 2016-17, had assigned Vagnozzi to carry out contract negotiations with the city’s firefighters through their union as part of the collective bargaining process. After some back and forth, Vagnozzi offered, and the union accepted, a contract enhancement that called for granting the firefighters substantial pay increases in accordance with their accrued experience, referred to as “steps.” Vagnozzi would report that this pay increase would represent a relatively minor added cost to the city of $50,000 or thereabouts per year. By mid-spring 2016 the contract negotiations with the firefighters union and work toward a budget had coalesced into a budgetary package proposal that was previewed – in stages – by the city’s finance committee, consisting of council members Debbie Stone and Glenn Bozar along with city treasurer Dan Morgan. Over the course of two meetings, planned expenditures and anticipated revenues were mapped out. Based upon the feedback from the committee, Butler, Vagnozzi and Williams presented a proposed budget to the committee at its last scheduled meeting in May, well ahead of the traditional June 30 deadline to have such budgets in place in accordance with the July 1 to June 30 governmental fiscal year.
The committee, led by Bozar, a proclaimed fiscal watchdog whose political trademark was his commitment to prevent the profligate spending of taxpayer dollars, rejected Butler’s proposed budget, taking issue in particular with the divergence of gas tax, which the city had traditionally used for road repair and street maintenance, into the general fund. Moreover, the committee objected to the proposal, layered into the budget, of raising salary and benefits of city workers by 10.02 percent and upping expenditures by 8.13 percent, and bemoaned that the proposed budget was overrunning the projected 0.47 percent sales tax growth and 6.3 percent property tax increase the city would experience. This, Bozar proclaimed, and both Stone and Morgan agreed, violated Upland’s Fiscal Responsibility Act.
Moreover, Bozar and Morgan were pushing for the budget to include an overt indication of the specter of future debt the city was accruing in the form of the city’s continuously growing pension costs. Bozar and Morgan focused in particular on the consideration that the pension fund the city participates in, the California Public Employees Retirement System, known by its acronym CalPERS, relies upon meeting a 7.5 percent earnings goal with its investments annually to remain solvent. When that earnings goal is not met, the governmental entities involved with it must make up the difference. Bozar noted that for three years running, CalPERS’ investment pool had badly underperformed, requiring Upland, like all other cities participating in it as well as the state government, to pull money away from its budget and fork it over.
During June, the committee and the council considered and reconsidered subtle reworkings of the budget made by Butler in conjunction with Williams and Vagnozzi. But again and again, Bozar took the lead in questioning facets of the spending plan, and the routine approval of the budget Butler hoped for stalled. Both Butler and Vagnozzi were resistant to the concept of eliminating or limiting staff compensation increases. On multiple occasions during public meetings, Bozar endeavored to peer behind the numbers presented in the budget, putting both Butler and Vagnozzi on the spot. In doing so, Bozar would engage in direct questioning of Williams, who had an absolute command of the numbers in the budget. Williams, in answering Bozar straightforwardly and truthfully, empowered Bozar in making his case that Butler and Vagnozzi would need to return to the drawing boards and make further cuts in individual department budgets. During such exchanges the tension in the room was palpable, and it was noteworthy that these represented one of the few times when the perpetual smile that inhabited Butler’s face while he was in the limelight disappeared, as he glowered at Williams while he was responding to Bozar.
While the balance of the council initially supported Bozar in his demands that the budget be adjusted, Butler, somewhat intransigently, refused to move the gas tax revenue out of the general fund. At the last city council meeting in June before the June 30/July 1 new fiscal year deadline, Bozar again importuned his council colleagues to delay approval of the budget. At that point, however, it appeared that Butler had succeeded in outwaiting Bozar. The four other council members – Stone, Gino Filippi, Carol Timm and Mayor Ray Musser – had lost their patience with Bozar’s budgetary fastidiousness. Tellingly, Stone would offer the sound bite that signaled the council was prepared to finally let Butler have his way on the budget. In a comment that was pointed at Bozar, Stone said, “I completely disagree with Glenn on this. I know you [Butler] are doing your due diligence to be up front. I don’t see why we have to be notified every time Rod wants to do something. We hired him as city manager. Let’s let him do his job.” The budget, as submitted by Butler, passed on a 4-1 vote, with Bozar dissenting.
Butler’s victory over Bozar, however, was a Pyrrhic one. As Bozar had suspected, and as his questioning of Williams in public had partially revealed, the budget was constructed on what might politely be referred to as “soft” numbers, that is, ones that were anywhere from slightly to grossly inaccurate. A case in point was Vagnozzi’s calculation that the raises provided to the city’s firefighters per her collective bargaining agreement with them would run the city an extra $50,000 per year. In actuality that $50,000 figure was applicable to only the last two months of that current fiscal year. In the first full fiscal year under the new contract terms, the actual cost would be $450,000. In the years beyond that, the per-year cost would escalate further, such that by the third full year, the three-year cost to the city would total at that point $1.8 million, and at five years run to approximately $2.5 million.
Williams, who had been put in the very uncomfortable position of having to decide between answering Bozar’s public questions truthfully or demonstrating loyalty to his superiors – Butler and Vagnozzi – by supporting their numbers, sensed, based upon the city council vote in favor of Butler and Vagnozzi’s budget, that he was in a very vulnerable position. Under Upland’s managerial system, the finance director, as do all department heads with the exception of the police chief, serves entirely at the pleasure of the city manager. Moreover, Vagnozzi, as the city’s human resources director, had extended, artificially, Williams’ probationary period with the city. Williams had hired on with Upland in March 2015 as a temporary employee. Normally, a new hire’s probationary period lasts a full calendar year, 365 days, during which time he or she can be terminated without any recourse. Under the standard course of things, as the one-year anniversary of hiring approaches, the employee is given a performance review and if such is satisfactory, the probationary period ends upon that anniversary date and the employee cannot be terminated without citation of cause. Vagnozzi, however, had not officially entered Williams as other than a temporary employee until November 2015, essentially six-and-one-half months after he had actually started with the city. At that time he was hired not as the finance director but as the finance manager, a subtle but nonetheless lower classification than finance director. By the summer of 2016, Vagnozzi and Butler had not yet undertaken Williams’ performance review, and thus the cessation of his probationary status had not taken place. At the drop of a hat, Butler could fire Williams for any reason whatsoever.
Looking over the numbers available to him from his perch in the finance department and examining the representations made to the city council by Vagnozzi and Butler with regard to the budget as well as employee contract negotiations, Williams detected that the figures provided to the city council during its consideration of the 2016-17 budget were inaccurate.
Within a fortnight, word had reached members of the city council that the numbers in the budget they had just passed were unreliable. Stone, in particular, expressed anger and frustration that she had been “lied to.” The primary focus of her anger was primarily with Butler and secondarily vectored toward Vagnozzi. In the backchannels of City Hall, something was up, while nevertheless occurring well below the public radar. The first indication that something was up came when the city council, which normally meets on the second and third Monday of each month in the evening, scheduled an extremely rare daytime special meeting set for July 27, a Wednesday, at 10:30 a.m. That morning, after holding a short public input session on the matter, which was problematic because at that point there was no official announcement with regard to which employee was being considered for termination, the council went into a closed session with city attorney Richard Adams. When the council emerged, Mayor Ray Musser designated Adams to brief the public on what had occurred. Adams then related that Butler had been terminated on a 3-2 vote, with Musser, Stone and councilman Gino Filippi supporting the action.
Since January and February 2015, when Stone and Filippi had given indication of their discontent with Butler, Bozar had been the only member of the council who had evinced any level of serious difference with Butler, primarily with regard to his more conservative attitude with regard to the budget. Indeed, all four of his council colleagues had, just a month before, sided with Butler over Bozar in regards to the budget. Ironically, Bozar and councilwoman Carol Timm were the dissenters in the move to cashier Butler. The council cited no cause in doing so, placing Butler on administrative leave through August 29, making his termination effective as of that date so that he would achieve his two-year service milestone with the city. The council further conferred on the departing city manager the nine months of salary from that date going forward due him under his contract. It was widely hinted that had Musser, Stone and Filippi been amenable to firing Butler with cause and thus withholding from him a severance, Bozar would have supported Butler’s termination.
Significantly, the council did not move to install Vagnozzi, who as the deputy city manager, would in most situations be the logical interim replacement for Butler. Instead, the city council directed, on a 4-1 vote with Bozar dissenting, that Martin Thouevenell, Upland’s former police chief who for a time was also acting fire chief and on two occasions stood in as interim city manager in the 1990s, be appointed interim city manager.
Unspoken at that point was that Jeanette Vagnozzi would be, after a brief but decent interval, out the door behind Butler.
Nevertheless, Vagnozzi remained in place, and for the week or so it took to hammer out a contract with Thouvenell relating to his interim city manager assignment, Vagnozzi served as the de facto city manager. This made Williams, who had already begun to feud with Vagnozzi over city finances, extremely nervous. In her capacity as acting city manager, Vagnozzi had the authority to terminate Williams. Williams took the extraordinary step of asking that the city attorney initiate an investigation into misrepresentations and fraud. In kick-starting the investigation, Williams proffered documentation and sat down with the lawyers and investigators for Jones Mayer, the law firm which employs Upland City Attorney Richard Adams, for a 65 minute interview. In addition, Williams vectored those attorneys and investigators to city employees who, he believed, would confirm his version of what was occurring.
Shortly after his arrival, Thouvenell did a size-up of the situation, as he was brought up to speed with regard to the state of the city. He would meet one-on-one with Musser, Stone, Timm and Bozar, hearing from them their concerns and vision for the direction the city should take. No such meeting with Filippi would be necessary, as Filippi and Thouvenell have long been close friends such that Thouvenell is considered by many to be Filippi’s primary adviser. Thouvenell would learn of Butler’s inveterate indecisiveness and review the myriad of issues that remained unresolved as a consequence of that. He also held similar brainstorming sessions or meetings with the city’s department heads. On August 11, Thouvenell held a three-way meeting with Williams and Dunn, seeking from them, as the two individuals with the most comprehensive understanding of the city’s finances, to get a better handle on the challenges facing Upland.
In addition to being directly tasked with running the city on an interim basis, Thouvenell was assigned to review candidates to permanently replace Butler.
During his several meetings with city officials, Thouvenell expressed his belief that the presence of Vagnozzi as Butler’s right-hand woman was a sign of administrative weakness, that she was an unnecessary vestige and that the next city manager should be one that would be able to function with complete autonomy and on his or her own authority. The implication was that Vagnozzi would soon be a permanent part of Upland history.
Within a very short time, however, Vagnozzi would be able to leverage her seemingly indefensible position to one of, if not strength, survivability.
During a series of meetings with Thouvenell, Williams more fully oriented the acting city manager with regard to the city’s financial circumstance. Thouvenell listened, relatively passively but intently, appearing to take it all in, asking occasional questions for further detail.
Williams was yet concerned that in the uncertain atmosphere of change at City Hall, his position was less than fully secure. Relatively early on, Williams confided this concern to Thouvenell, who reassured the younger man. Thouvenell himself needed guidance as to what the true lay of the land was. He needed financial numbers he could rely on if he were to do his own job competently. Williams, though he was floating in a sea of uncertainty himself, represented a solid Rock of Gibraltar when it came to reliable information about where the city actually stood, what it could afford to do and what was beyond its means, what qualified as unnecessary frills that should be dispensed with and what critical elements of the city’s function could be salvaged by the applications of judicious economies. Williams need not worry, Thouvenell told him. As long as Thouvenell remained as city manager, he said, Williams would remain as finance manager.
To Williams, Thouvenell seemed sincere, angling to not only fulfill the stopgap caretaker role that had been suddenly thrust on him but do what he could to enable whoever it was that would succeed him to make a go of righting the listing Upland ship of state and turn a corner on the seemingly interminable and ubiquitous financial challenges the City of Gracious Living was cursed with. And Williams was anxious to assist Thouvenell in that regard to the extent that he could.
It was at that point that Williams made a crucial move that would in one stroke seal his fate while rescuing Vagnozzi from what appeared to be certain perdition. To assist Thouvenell in mapping out the semblance of a strategy for Upland’s economic recovery, Williams returned to the economic scorecard he had been working on six, seven, eight, nine and ten months previously, the one pertaining to creative means of driving down municipal operational costs. Front and center on that scorecard were further outsourcings, in particular the fire and police departments.
When Williams broached the subject with Thouvenell, the older man did not blanch outwardly, though internally, no doubt, Williams had hit a nerve, indeed an incredibly sensitive one. As Williams ran the numbers by the interim city manager, showing that the city might reap a savings of [$2 million] yearly by surrendering fire protection responsibility to the county and upwards of [$4 million] by closing out the police department and contracting with the sheriff’s department, a major portion of Thouvenell’s life – three decades of it – reeled panoramically through his mind. For thirty years Thouvenell had been a policeman with Upland P.D., from the lowest level as a patrol officer right up the chain of command to becoming police chief.
To be sure, when Thouvenell’s tenure as police chief came to a close in 2005, it had not ended on the best of terms. Not quite five years before that, in November 2000, John Pomierski had been elected Upland mayor. For the first two years Pomierski held office, things went relatively smoothly. Sometime thereafter, however, issues manifested, gradually and somewhat vaguely at first, ones that initially might have been nothing or perhaps passing anomalies, slight aberrations, peculiarities with no deeper or dire meaning. But those anomalies persisted to the point where they were no longer anomalies but the norm, something that was real and recurrent. To Thouvenell, at that point a man with 27 years’ experience as a police officer, the signs were unmistakable. The mayor was on the take. Proof of the sort that could be used in a court of law was somewhat elusive, at least at that point. Those being shaken down, or extorted or paying the bribes, willingly or not, had much to lose and would be in no frame of mind to implicate someone of Pomierski’s stature, the mayor and a major pillar of the community. And Pomierski, while brazen in certain ways, was cautious in others.
Thouvenell was caught in the classic dilemma of a power struggle in the public arena: If he were to strike the king, he must kill the king. If the blow he wielded fell short and he merely wounded Pomierski or simply irritated him and he yet held the scepter in his hand, Pomierski would wield the power of that scepter against Thouvenell, and it would be Thouvenell who would be struck down. And so, Thouvenell tarried.
Along the way, Upland’s then-city manager, Mike Milhiser, was seeing some of the same things that had come to Thouvenell’s attention. The city manager and the police chief traded notes. One reassured the other that what they were perceiving was real. To an extent, they were able to hold Pomierski in partial, but not total check, curtailing the degree to which the mayor’s avarice was in play but not actually stopping it. Neither was in a position, on his own, to effectively bring Pomierski to heel and, for whatever reasons, they never formulated a concerted strategy to do so. Time was passing and as Thouvenell and Milhiser temporized, Pomierski grew stronger. In 2004, he would run for reelection. He did so as an incumbent and from a position of strength. Just like he had illegally and covertly shaken down developers and businessmen with projects subject to city approval, as a candidate for reelection he could legally shake down business and development interests for campaign contributions. In the election, he vanquished his challenger, Ray Musser.
He emerged from that election stronger than ever, with the solid backing of the three other members on the council excluding Musser and the endorsement of the district attorney and the sheriff. If ever Thouvenell and Milhiser could have combined forces to effectively challenge the corrupt mayor, let alone fell him, that time had passed. Pomierski bestrode Upland as some kind of political colossus. In March 2005, with Pomierski marshaling his political might in the form of the support he had from councilmen Tom Thomas, Ken Willis and Brendan Brandt, Milhiser was persuaded to leave without a fight, and Pomierski had the council confer on the departing city manager a $200,000 severance, effectively buying his silence. Within three weeks of Milhiser’s departure, Thouvenell likewise elected to retire.
At some point, Thouvenell would contact the FBI, informing them of his suspicions with regard to Pomierski. Ultimately, the FBI would move on that information, but in a deliberate and excruciatingly slow fashion. In June 2010, more than five years after Milhiser’s and Thouvenell’s departures, the FBI would carry out a raid at Upland City Hall as well as at Pomierki’s home and the homes and business offices of a number of his associates involved with him in securing and laundering bribes. Eight months later, at the end of February 2011, Pomierski would resign as mayor and the following week, in March 2011, he was named in a federal indictment, against which he initially maintained his innocence. Ultimately, in April 2012, he entered a guilty plea to those charges and was given a 24 month sentence.
But in 2005, after the departure of Milhiser and Thouvenell, Pomierski was at liberty, and would remain so for five years, to escalate his depredations. He did so by prevailing upon the three members of the council he controlled to hire his handpicked replacement for Milhiser, Robb Quincey. And Pomierski induced the police department to willingly subjugate itself to his will. He did so by getting the city council to consent to giving Quincey the same contract enhancements that the police department’s employees would get and then further consenting to having Quincey carry out the negotiations with the police union during the collective bargaining process. Since Quincey stood to benefit by the same degree in whatever he provided to the police officers, he proved a soft touch during those negotiations. In this way, Pomierski corrupted the entirety of the post-Thouvenell police department. Since Pomierski was their ultimate benefactor in this arrangement, Upland’s policemen, individually and collectively, from beat cops right up to the chief of police, were in no hurry to investigate Pomierski, let alone go to the effort to actually bring him to justice. By 2008, it was a rare applicant for project approval in Upland who was not in some fashion paying tribute – i.e., bribes – to Pomierski.
In collecting this tribute, Pomierski was in some cases crude and in others more sophisticated. He owned his own construction company – J.P. Construction. One way of ensuring one’s project would be approved was to hire him to do some phase of the project. Another was to hire one of his partners in the “consulting” business – Anthony Orlando Sanchez or Jason Crebs – to assist in presenting the project proposal to the city’s planning division. Pomierski occasionally used one of his associates – John Hennes, the owner of JH Builders who was one of Pomierski’s appointees to the Upland Building Board of Appeals – to collect the money for him. In still others, Pomierski accepted the cash directly himself. The graft was becoming woefully obvious. Yet the Upland Police Officers Association, the union representing Upland’s finest, endorsed Pomierski for reelection in 2008. He handily won that contest, once again against Musser, this time by an even wider margin than in 2004.
Painfully, Thouvenell knew all, or most, of this. He lived through it and could not ignore it, as he was himself an Upland resident. Both of the police chiefs who succeeded him and who had served under him and whom he had personally groomed – Steve Adams and Jeff Mendenhall – were the immediate beneficiaries of the largesse conferred upon them by Pomierski and Quincey. Both would see the per-year multiplier in their pensions increased to 2.5 percent from the 2 percent he himself received, compliments of Pomierski and Quincey. Though he might not articulate it, and though he might not even admit it to himself, at some level Thouvenell knew, in his heart, that the Upland Police Department, after his departure, had been compromised. The members of the department had laid down for Pomierski and Quincey. It was undeniable. The proof was that when at last events overtook Pomierski and Upland’s crooked mayor found himself between the Wheels of Justice, it was the FBI turning those wheels and not the Upland Police Department, under whose jurisdiction those crimes were being committed.
When this summer Scott Williams earnestly laid out for him the option of shuttering the police department and the fire department as a means of saving the City of Upland up to $5 million on the law enforcement component and $2 million on the fire/emergency services side for a total of $7 million per year, whatever lingering bitterness Thouvenell might have felt over the fashion in which he had been forced to prematurely relinquish the job as police chief he loved and the failure of the police chiefs that inherited that position from him to live up to the principles he had abided by were overwhelmed by another factor: his love and loyalty to the department above all else. Flawed as it was, the department was a continuing element of his personal legacy. It would outlast him and his time on this Earth. He would not participate in its demise.
He did not say as much to Williams. He merely took from Williams what he had offered, hardly batting an eyelash.
Meanwhile, down the corridor at City Hall, Vagnozzi could not have been unaware of the sword of Damocles hanging over her head. She yet had her job, but barely and by the grace of a collection of factors, some of which she understood and others which she did not. What she understood was that Butler’s demise was a likely precursor to her own. She also recognized what had undone Butler and her own participation in it. Butler had been unwilling to seize the day, when there was still daylight. His inability to be harsh and blunt, to articulate to the city’s remaining employees that they and their predecessors had long been the beneficiaries of corrupt generosity and that their expectation and sense of entitlement to that generosity on the taxpayers’ part was going to have to end, contributed further to the expectation and culture of entitlement that continues to grip City Hall. Rather than serving as Butler’s backbone, truly being his hatchet-woman and informing Upland’s municipal employees that they had ridden the gravy train for too long and that with the city teetering on the financial abyss it was now time for them to give back rather than demand more and if not to hit the road, Vagnozzi instead offered them more. And after she offered them more, she participated with Butler in hiding that from the city council. Her head was on the chopping block.
But Vagnozzi is a brilliant political infighter, with the guts of a cat burglar. She did not panic. Calmly, she evaluated the situation.
At that moment she was safe because to fire her in one purge at the same time as, or sharply on the heels of, Butler’s firing would create an ugly scene and more questions than the city council was at that point prepared to answer. Moreover, she knew, the city would be averse to jettisoning all of its top level institutional memory at once. And the council, after having gone awry twice in the last eleven years by hiring an outsider as city manager as opposed to hiring from within – witness the cases of Quincey and Butler – was as likely as not to select a current city department head to replace Butler. She surveyed the competition: police chief Brian Johnson, public works director Rosemary Horning, community development director Jeff Zwack, community services director Roberta Knighten, fire chief Paul Segalla and finance director Scott Williams. Segalla had the least time in the city and for other reasons, including that he was at that point yet committed to overseeing operations in Montclair as part of a shared fire administration/management agreement with that city, was not a likely candidate. Knighten, Horning and Zwack had the longest tenures of the six with city. Horning and Zwack had sufficient experience in budgeting and administration, sufficient educational credentials and enough technical understanding of their own lines of expertise to make a stab at running the city. Johnson was less familiar with Upland, having come into town from the Los Angeles Police Department in 2014. His commitment to being a law enforcement professional made the prospect of his transferring into the top tier of city management a stretch. Williams, with his command of the field in which the city faces its most critical problems, made him an attractive candidate for the position. Moreover, he possessed the academic credentials – a bachelor of arts degree in business from Business Master’s University, an MBA in business administration from California State University at Monterey Bay and the completion of the first year of course work toward his doctorate in public administration with American Baptist University – and he has ambition of moving into the upper echelons of public agency management.
While she remained at City Hall, Vagnozzi was not without resources. Her position overseeing the city’s human resources division gave her access to a comprehensive degree of information pertaining to all city employees, that is, the city’s personnel files, including each individual employee’s application, resumé, health insurance applications, letters of recommendation, performance evaluations, as well as discipline jackets containing corrective action notices, notations of procedural violations and any negative performance or incident write-ups from superiors.
Within the next month, information lifted directly out of Williams’ personnel file was being bruited about City Hall and had reached the ears of the council, specifically that relating to his own personal finances. The damage was immediate and the implication clear: the person at the forefront of overseeing and managing the city’s finances had a round of difficulty with his own financial affairs. The impact was that Williams’ status within the Upland organization was lowered and any prospect that he would be considered for the city manager’s post ended.
Out of the blue, Segalla was placed on administrative leave in August. Officially, in Upland, the response to questions of what Segalla had done to merit being relieved of command was that some unspecified complaint had come in from Montclair about his action or performance. Since 2014, Upland and Montclair had merged their administrative/managerial functions, while maintaining their own respective fire stations and both cities considered the possibility of merging the totality of their fire operations in the future. Thus, Segalla was serving as the fire chief for both Upland and Montclair. When reached by the Sentinel, however, Montclair City Manager Ed Starr said the issues relating to Segalla’s suspension emanated from Upland.
In September, Community Services Director Roberta Knighten, who began with Upland in April 1999 as management analyst in the public works department and was reassigned to the city’s recreation division in November 2002 and then moved up the ladder to become community services director in 2011, overseeing the animal shelter, library and recreation division at a base annual salary of $160,838 annual salary plus $76,029 in benefits for a total compensation package of $236,867, was thanked for her 17 years of service to the city, provided with a plaque and certificate of recognition, honored with a dinner and shown the door. Calling it a cost cutting move, Thouvenell said the position of community services director had been eliminated, since the city’s library and animal services divisions had already been outsourced.
With minimal fanfare and without first informing Montclair that it was doing so, Upland at its last city council meeting in September unilaterally terminated its joint powers arrangement for shared management and administration of their fire departments, citing the underperformance of the program in saving the city money.
On October 17, just days before his probationary period which had been atypically increased from 12 months to 18 months was set to expire, Williams interacted with Thouvenell. During their exchange, Thouvenell engaged with Williams with regard to the city’s financial concerns, seemingly as if all was well. Some two hours later, Williams was summoned by Vagnozzi into the office of the human services manager and ignominiously handed a pink slip.
Last Wednesday, just prior to Thanksgiving, the city in publishing its agenda for the Monday November 28 city council meeting announced that it would be taking the first step toward outsourcing the city’s fire department. Coming as it did, just prior to the Thanksgiving Holiday, much of the community missed the announcement. Others were caught flatfooted. At the meeting, Kathleen Rollings-McDonald, the executive director of the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission, and San Bernardino County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig were on hand to familiarize the council with the process of transitioning to county service and how the county fire department intended to carry out the assignment once the transition was effectuated. The arrangement with the county would not involve a contract, Vagnozzi said, but entail the entire city annexing into a county fire agency district, such that all property owners would be assessed $148 per year to help defray the cost of fire and emergency medical service provision. Ultimately, the council voted to initiate that annexation process.
Earlier in the evening, during her presentation of the city’s proposed financial stability plan, which was also approved by the city council upon Thouvenell’s and Vagnozzi’s recommendation, Vagnozzi said that staff had examined the options of outsourcing both the fire service and police service. While the outsourcing of the fire service would deliver the city savings, Vagnozzi said, there would be no savings from dissolving the police department and contracting with the sheriff’s office.
“This would actually be more expensive than what we are currently paying,” Vagnozzi said.
Absent from the meeting were Segalla, who might have provided the city council with a description of how the city’s current firefighting operations match up against the service to be provided by the county, and Williams, whose extensive research and numbers crunching with regard to the city adopting the sheriff’s department as its law enforcement service provider indicated the city would achieve substantial monetary savings approaching $5 million a year by such a move.
This week, Williams told the Sentinel that Vagnozzi’s report with regard to outsourcing concluding that the delivery of law enforcement services by the sheriff’s department would cost the city more money versus continuing to rely on the city police department was “intellectually dishonest. Jeannette provided the council with selective information to reach a preconceived conclusion. Given a true side by side comparison of the costs of law enforcement activity in Upland it is clear using the sheriff’s department would result in substantial savings, even with the debt service of Upland’s current unfunded liability.”
Moreover, Williams said, “The future increases in the cost of keeping the police department in-house will rise much more sharply than the five percent annual increase that would come with the sheriff’s contract.”
Williams said that it was his perception that a “bureaucratic symbiosis” has developed between Thouvenell and Vagnozzi over the last two months that has resulted in Vagnozzi having overcome the very real threat of termination she faced at the time of Butler’s firing.
Butler, who has recently been hired by the City of Port Hueneme to serve as city manager there, could not be reached at his Rancho Cucamonga home. Nor did he answer or return phone calls placed to his phone there or his other known phone numbers.
Early this week, Vagnozzi told the Sentinel that the suggestion that she or her action played a role in Butler’s forced exodus from Upland was absolutely incorrect. “I was begging them to not fire him,” she said.
After Vagnozzi was provided with an early draft of this article so that she could provide cogent response to its content and offer input for inclusion in the finalized version, she said, “So much in here borders on slander and libel, I would not want to participate in it. I cannot comment.”
Thouvenell, who was provided with the same early draft, was similarly scathing in his assessment of the way events had been recounted in the narrative. “What you have written is skewed and inaccurate,” he said. “You are just printing what other people are telling you. What you are doing isn’t right, so I don’t want to participate. I have no comment.”
Ray Musser, the current mayor who was on the council from 1998 until 2011, was the only political opposition to Pomierski among Upland’s elected officials during Pomierski’s time in office and succeeded him as mayor, chose not to seek reelection this year and will leave office this month.
He said of Vagnozzi, “She tried to please her boss. She did that under Rod Butler and now she is doing that with Marty [Thouvenell.]”
Musser said, “Scott [Williams] was a threat to Jeannette. That is pretty clear. But that chapter is over.”
Musser said he is leaving office, but that he believes the city is in the process of altering the lines of authority to prevent the contretemps that occurred involving Butler, Vagnozzi and Williams. “Once they get an actual permanent city manager, the finance director should report directly to that city manager and not through Jeannette or whoever is the deputy city manager,” Musser said. “At least, that’s how I hope they will set it up.”

San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman has parted ways with his chief of staff, who for more than seven years was an intrinsic element of his successful political machine.
Mike Spence’s bona fides as a rock-ribbed Republican adhering to conservative values landed him a long-running job as the chief of staff for then-assemblyman Joel Anderson (R- El Cajon), a five-year stint as Hagman’s chief of staff when he was a California Assemblyman, selection as Hagman’s chief of staff as county supervisor following his exodus from the Assembly and election as San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor in 2014, and a political career of his own as a West Covina city councilman and mayor. But Spence’s fortunes have dipped since his DUI-related crash in Covina on June 12.
In that crash, Spence slammed into a utility pole near the intersection of Azusa Avenue and Cypress Street, breaking his hip, femur, back and ribs. A toxicology report states that a blood sample taken from him after he was hospitalized showed the presence of an as-yet unidentified controlled substance, characterized as a stimulant, in his system.
Spence had been through thick and thin with Hagman for more than a half decade, and was the architect of his strategy in the 2014 election when Hagman, a Republican and former Chino Hills mayor, edged Gloria Negrete-McLeod, then a sitting Democratic congresswoman in the Fourth District, in which Democrats have a registration advantage over Republicans.
Spence, like Hagman, built his reputation and public persona on conservative values and decrying the liberalism and permissiveness of the Democrats. But since his accident, Spence, 50, has acknowledged he has had a problem with both alcohol and drugs. He did not admit to being under the influence on June 12, however, saying he had blacked out entirely and does not remember what led to the accident.
He has been charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office with driving under the influence of drugs. Spence underwent an extended hospitalization, at the beginning of which Hagman said he would not take any action regarding Spence’s employment status with his office until Spence had made a recovery from the injuries he sustained in the accident.
On November 23, Hagman announced he would not renew Spence’s employment contract.

Sue Roche, the once-highly respected educator who founded the Oxford Preparatory Academy and transformed it into the most academically successful school in San Bernardino County and among the strongest scholastic performers in the state, was overtaken by greed and used secondary entities she created to provide educational-related materials and services and administrative assistance to the academy to personally profit and launder those proceeds, according to a recently released audit done at the request of San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Ted Alejandre.
The characterization of Roche and her action contained in the audit is misleading and inaccurate, Roche’s attorney this week told the Sentinel. He said the entity performing the audit has a bias against charter schools. The Chino Unified School District, which triggered the audit by backing out of its sponsorship of the Oxford Preparatory Academy after sponsoring its creation nearly seven years ago and sustaining it since then, he said, is acting out of spite because the academic performance of students at Oxford has overshadowed that of students elsewhere in the district.
The Fiscal Crisis & Management Team, an adjunct to the California Department of Education, delivered the 45-page audit summary and report last week, concluding Roche’s action may have crossed the line into criminality, while recommending that state and local education, fiscal and prosecutorial entities be apprised of the situation.
The audit states Alejandre should “Notify the governing board of Oxford Preparatory Academy charter school, the governing board of the Chino Valley Unified School District, the State Controller, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the local district attorney that fraud, misappropriation of assets or other illegal activities may have occurred.”
The development is the latest chapter in the rise and fall of Roche, who obtained noteworthy success while functioning as a school administrator within the state’s traditional public school system and then moved to the absolute forefront of the alternative education trend that has manifested as a consequence of California’s indulgence of a charter school system utilizing public funds to allow specialized campuses using intensified, specialized or unconventional teaching methods and modalities.
Roche had been the principal at Rhodes Elementary School, the highest-performing school in the Chino Valley Unified School District in the early 2000s.
With the support of Chino Valley Unified School District Superintendent Wayne Joseph, the district board in 2010 agreed to gamble over $3 million of the district’s revenue in having the district sponsor the establishment of Oxford Preparatory Academy, with Roche at the helm. Initially, both the district and Oxford’s advocates considered housing the charter school at the former Los Serranos Elementary School site in Chino Hills, but eventually settled on converting El Rancho Elementary School, located at the corner of C Street and Oaks Avenue in Chino, into the Oxford grounds. The academy was to be devoted to innovative and specialized approaches to the education of students from kindergarten to the 8th grade, using an even more intensified application of Roche’s already proven formula that relied on heavy parental involvement and steady doses of academic focus in the classroom.
The gamble on Oxford Preparatory Academy paid off, as students at the school performed spectacularly on academic achievement tests administered by the state. In 2011, students at Oxford Preparatory Academy collectively outperformed their counterparts at every other elementary and junior high school in San Bernardino County.
For three years running, Oxford had the highest score of any school in the county on California’s Standard Testing And Reporting exams, in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Known by the acronym STAR, the tests provide an academic performance rating or index, known as API, for second through 11th graders in every class, and at every school and district in the state. The tests measured students’ progress toward achieving California’s state-adopted academic content standards in English–language arts, mathematics, science, and history/social science. The results were used, until 2014, for student and school accountability purposes. Oxford had an Academic Performance Index (API) score of 958 in 2011 and improved to 972 in 2012.
Enthusiasm for the Oxford undertaking was so high, that the number of student applicants to attend the school routinely outran the number of desks and classroom space for them by as much as 600 per year, requiring that the district hold a lottery as a means of granting admission to it. Even more significantly, Joseph had to take the extraordinary step of forging a memorandum of understanding between the district and Oxford Preparatory, preventing the academy from poaching the district’s highest performing teachers. That memorandum of understanding prohibited district teachers from taking a leave of absence from the district to teach at the charter school. The charter school was also tasked with the responsibility of providing special education services.
In 2011, the school board unanimously extended Oxford’s charter for five years, from 2012-13 through 2016-17.
In the meantime, Roche expanded the Oxford model, convincing the Capistrano Unified School District to sponsor another campus, the Oxford Preparatory Academy in Mission Viejo. Roche transferred Jason Watts, who had been the principal at Oxford Preparatory Academy in Chino to Mission Viejo, where he served as the Mission Viejo’s inaugural principal/chancellor.
At the Mission Viejo campus, students rang up an impressive 993 academic performance score on the 1,000-point maximum index during the first year the school was open.
A year ago, it would have appeared unthinkable that the Chino Valley Unified School District would not renew the academy’s charter for 2017-18 and the four school years beyond that with the time to do so approaching, as Oxford was an exquisite feather in the district’s cap.
But Roche had taken action by that time which tarnished her reputation and threatened the very existence of the academic gem she had polished to near perfection.
Roche withdrew from the position of executive director of Oxford Preparatory’s corporate entity and promoted Barbara Black to that position, while assuming an undefined administrative role in the academy that would in time come to be occupied not by herself but a for-profit entity, Edlighten Learning Solutions, in which she is the central figure and prime mover.
Upon Roche’s direction, Black had Oxford Charter Academy enter into a contractual arrangement that would have paid Edlighten $5.3 million to, essentially, employ Roche as the school’s contract administrator and operations director.
With the date for the school board’s determination with regard to renewing Oxford’s charter approaching last spring, Joseph learned of what Roche had done. Roche was, Joseph became convinced, seeking to exploit the non-profit Oxford Preparatory Academy and line her own pockets. He publicly accused Roche of creating and then engaging in a financial conflict of interest which would have the effect, he implied, of shortchanging Oxford Preparatory’s students while enriching herself. Roche had engaged in “arrogance, overreach and greed” in the administration of the academy which victimized Oxford’s students and parents, Joseph told the school board, while employing “machinations” by which she fired dedicated educational professionals or otherwise advanced herself. Roche, the superintendent said, was cynically manipulating the academy’s reliance on consultants to cash in. In compliance with Joseph’s recommendation, the school board declined to renew Oxford’s charter.
Initially, Oxford’s internal board asserted the school district’s action was unjustified but then regrouped and terminated its relationship with Roche and Elighten in May. It then appealed the district’s decision to the county school board, but that body declined to take any action, maintaining that by changing its management structure, the proposal that Chino Unified had rejected no longer existed. Oxford then turned to the State Department of Education, seeking to get a charter from it. In the meantime, Alejandre had made his request for the audit.
With the completion of the audit and the language it contains, it would appear unlikely that Oxford, despite its enviable academic track record, will be able to continue in San Bernardino County.
The audit catalogs how Roche created a system that involved Yorba Linda-based Edlighten and another entity, the Nevada corporation Educational Excellence, in dodging accountability through what was characterized as a “daisy chain” of payments between for-profit companies which employed her family, friends and associates. Roche purposefully hid or obscured financial transactions and operations in such a way that the auditors, not to mention Chino Valley Unified officials and even Oxford’s own in-house employees could not easily track them, according to the audit report. Ultimately, public school funding was diverted to bank accounts controlled by Roche and her associates, according to the audit. Oxford Preparatory, Edlighten and Educational Excellence employed two of Roche’s children, her cousin and several of her friends.
“Interviews indicate that following the petition renewal in 2012, the founder created a complex structure of charter management corporations that exercised significant influence over transactions and contracts between these entities, and secured considerable financial benefit through contracts that charged management service fees up to 10 percent, funneling charter school dollars from Oxford Preparatory Academy schools,” the audit report states, such that Oxford was charged “for services that already existed.”
Oxford Preparatory paid Edlighten $4.2 million in management fees between January 2013 and June 2016, according to the audit. Those numbers were steadily growing, from $821,490 in 2013, $1.2 million in 2014 and $1.3 million in 2015. Edlighten was on track to take in more than $2 million from the academy in 2016, when Edlighten’s contract with Oxford was terminated in May. Because of that, Edlighten received payments of just $834,522 in 2016.
Roche’s actions was both deliberate and calculated, the auditor’s opined, and they said there was “sufficient evidence that affiliated and/or related party organizations were intentionally created to divert and launder funds from Oxford Preparatory Academy.”
In response to the audit and its eroding public position, Oxford Preparatory Academy has greatly altered the blanket denials of wrongdoing it issued nearly eight months ago.
“We concur that the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team findings are of great concern,” Oxford Preparatory’s board chairman, Michael Delgado said in a message to parents of students at the school. “The current Oxford Preparatory Academy board and administration had no knowledge of Mrs. Roche’s inappropriate expenditures and had zero authority over the way in which Edlighten spent its funds. News of this apparent mismanagement of funds – specifically the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team’s allegations of money laundering by [Edlighten] – is shocking and disappointing to all of us. The current board and administration were kept in the dark about the activities during Mrs. Roche’s tenure and outraged by the revelations in the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team report. Oxford Preparatory Academy has already implemented numerous changes to address many of the issues that have been raised.”
Delgado said the matter involving Roche should not detract from Oxford’s reputation for academic excellence or curtail its mission to offer a top-notch education to students. “In the classroom, our results speak for themselves,” Delgado said.
Marc Greenberg, Sue Roche’s attorney, told the Sentinel the audit and its report were flawed in that the auditors based their conclusions on an erroneous pretext, essentially that the academy was connected to Edlighten and Educational Excellence.
“The Fiscal Crisis & Management Team assumed those entities are connected and all of their conclusions, which are slanderous and libelous, flow from that.”
In a letter to the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team dated November 27, Greenberg emphasized this point, writing, “The Fiscal Crisis & Management Team built its entire report upon a core misstatement of fact. According to The Fiscal Crisis & Management Team ‘Oxford Preparatory Academy Services and Edlighten Learning Systems are nonprofit public benefit corporations that support Oxford Preparatory Academy and meet the definition provided in the district’s memorandum of understanding with Oxford Preparatory Academy as affiliates.’ [Report, page 34.] Nearly all of the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team’s findings flow from this core, false, conclusion that Edlighten and Oxford Preparatory Academy are ‘affiliated organizations.’ The support for the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team’s conclusion is a paragraph from the memorandum of understanding, partially quoted in the report. But the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team chose to leave out the most important sentence from quote. The language the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team chose to leave out completely refutes the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team’s finding.”
Greenberg then reproduces the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team’s quote from the memorandum of understanding on page 11 and again on page 34: “Whereas, ‘Affiliated Organizations,’ for the purpose of this agreement, shall mean the Oxford Preparatory Academy nonprofit public benefit corporation, all charter schools operated by the Oxford Preparatory Academy nonprofit public benefit corporation, and any foundations that may later be formed by Oxford Preparatory Academy to support the nonprofit organization and/or one or more of its charter schools . . .”
In his letter Greenberg then points out that “The rest of the words in the same paragraph state that: ‘It shall not include parent organizations so long as Oxford Preparatory Academy does not control the board of such organizations.’ As a matter of agreement signed by Wayne Joseph on behalf of the School District, the same people that requested the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team Report, Edlighten is not an “affiliated organization.” In signing the memorandum of understanding on January 19, 2012, Mr. Joseph warranted that ‘such execution shall bind the designated entity to the terms of this Agreement.’ Edlighten and its counsel, Procopio, relied on Mr. Joseph to stand by the agreement he drafted and signed on behalf of the district. The district and Mr. Joseph expressly excluded Edlighten as being treated as an affiliated organization and yet the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team treated them as if they were an affiliated organization.”
Furthermore, according to Greenberg, “It is not credible that the selective quotation from the memorandum of understanding was ‘accidental.’ While the Fiscal Crisis & Management Team appears to, unfortunately, be an advocate against charter schools, that does not give it license to misquote the memorandum of understanding between the district and Oxford Preparatory Academy. This ‘misquote’ is the foundation for the entire report. This type of misrepresentation of the facts would be punishable if this were a court of law.”
Greenberg’s letter states, “While the report may fit with the narrative the school district has about charters schools, it is not accurate and at times is intentionally misleading and defamatory.”
Greenberg said the audit and its report was a “hatchet job meant to attack the charter school, which was performing much better than the district’s schools. This was an embarrassment to Wayne Joseph, who would have done better to use Oxford Preparatory Academy as inspiration and a model of what can be done in an academic setting.”

by Ruth Musser-Lopez
In last week’s Sentinel, election data was provided that clearly demonstrates that rural voters in the San Bernardino County’s desert “Dust Belt” or “Joad Belt” (described as route John Steinbeck’s Grape’s of Wrath Joad family took through California toward Bakersfield along the I-40/Hwy 58 beltway), support Republican candidates over Democratic candidates without too much regard as to what they represent (See Rural Elections Report, Sentinel 11/25/16).
In the race between two Republicans for the first district county supervisor position however, issues pertinent to the voters became important. Republican Angela Valles who was endorsed by the Teamsters, presented to Democratics an alternative choice to incumbent Republican Robert Lovingood’s demonstrated standing in opposition to labor’s wage increase efforts.
Nevertheless, Valles may have lost some of those constituent votes in a failed attempt to gain victory by targeting a perceived “isolationist” constituency in her appeal for votes when she led a protest march across the I-15 overpass in Victorville against 25 immigrant Syrian families who were brought in by Catholic charities after 3 years of vetting.
Meanwhile, Lovingood picked up votes from Democratic environmentalists when early in the election cycle he made a motion, voted and influenced two other Supervisors to vote to deny the Soda Mountain Solar project permit, a project that county activist including many Democrats had been militating against for over a year (see August 30, 2016, issue of the Sentinel). David Lamfrom, director of the California Desert and National Wildlife programs for the National Parks Conservation Association, after the hearing told the Sentinel, “His vote opposing the project will definitely cause me to encourage others to vote for him, wouldn’t it you?”
The Sentinel is informed that some among the Teamsters, the union representing the lion’s share of San Bernardino County’s government employees and the employees of some of the cities within the county, were embarrassed by the march led by Valles, whom they had previously endorsed. However, the Teamsters also endorsed other known or perceived isolationists in the county.
Just across the California line from Arizona which remains a red state, Needles, at the far eastern end of the county, remains a Republican stronghold, with a significant number of its population expressing isolationist leanings.
All of the Needles City Council members are Republicans save two, Louise Evans, who is registered in the George Wallace party as an American Independent and newly elected Clayton Hazlewood, who is registered to vote as an “African-American” Democrat. Some have questioned Hazlewood ethnicity claim. Some find significance in Hazlewood having not sought the endorsement of the Democratic Party.
For the 2016 Needles council election, the Teamsters endorsed three candidates, Hazlewood and two Republicans, Tona Belt and Shawn Gudmundsen, for the three open seats on the council. All three of these candidates won in the November election. Gudmundsen overcame the allegation that while on the council he helped himself to a “loan” of city utilities amounting to thousands of dollars that are not available to other rate payers.
The Teamsters represent the City of Needles employees. Its members include city employees who conducted the candidate interviews. The only Democrat the Teamsters endorsed in the Needles contest was Hazlewood, though three other Democrats ran in the November 2016 election.
An explanation for the isolationist attitude along the “Joad Belt” is that the rural descendants of those from the Dust Bowl in the Great Depression era have a collective and learned memory of going without, being unable to make a living and living in fear that an influx of new residents would threaten their livelihood, current standard of living and way of life. A rural approach to producing a living requiring large acreages for farming or one of a kind businesses contrasts with the urban approach where more people means more customers.
On November 8, 2016, at a city council meeting in Needles it was reported during public comments that a very large expensive Hillary sign had been stolen. In response, outgoing councilman Anthony Frazier, Republican, announced that his big Trump sign had been stolen too, evincing a burst of laughter from those in the room who were savvy to the joke that Frazier had no such sign. No action was taken nor was their a voice from the council to admonish thievery.

San Bernardino County officials will make a progressive review of more than a dozen unincorporated communities this and next month, seeking input as it updates its existing Community Plan, a blueprint for the provision of services and government action in local areas.
“All workshops will provide the opportunity for those who live or conduct business in each community to talk one-on-one with county representatives and in groups with their community neighbors,” according to a county announcement.
In the first eight communities where the workshops will be held, an effort will be made to gather feedback on those communities’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, challenges, as well as residents’ perceptions of what improvements can be made. A second set of workshops will focus on strategies and tools to reach goals and objectives.
Workshops will be held from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on these days for the following communities: Baker, Nov. 29 and Jan. 23; Daggett, Dec. 1 and Jan. 24; El Mirage, Nov. 30 and Jan. 25; Newberry Springs, Nov. 30 and Jan. 25; Oak Hills, Dec. 1 and Jan. 26; Oro Grande, Nov. 29 and Jan. 24; Wrightwood, Nov. 28 and Jan. 23; and Yermo, Dec. 1 and Jan. 26.
There were seven previous meetings between county officials and local residents in those communities in September and October.
The Community Plan is part of the Countywide Plan laid out in Countywide Vision adopted in 2011. For more information on Community Plans and workshop locations, visit CountywidePlan.com/cp.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
My butler, Hudson, recently came across a video of a child born with two heads. Both of them looked healthy enough, that is, they were crying, indeed screaming up a storm, as infants are wont to do. Among my first reaction was pity. Certainly, being bound up together like that must represent a major inconveninence. At some level, we all treasure our privacy, and for these two there will be precious little, or none, of that. And that would be but half of it…
Most of us are familiar with the story of Cheng and Eng, what the world has come to think of as the original Siamese Twins, although there were probably twins such as them before. Somehow they led pretty full lives, in ways, I am sure, more full than many of us, who are independenly bodied. Cheng and Eng married different women, had children, were productive. They were, indeed, remarkable..
I shed my pity and then took up considering the advantages. What I could do with an extra brain! There are but 24 hours in my day. What if I had 48? Four eyes are better than two. Others are constantly bringing to my belated attention my mistakes which my own eyes missed. With another companion constantly at my temple, I should never be, I fancy, lonely…
We are what we are, are we not? We all have limitations. We all have unique facilities, faculties, potentials and actualities. All represent something incredibly precious and meaningful…

Donald Carl Beckord was born on September 15, 1905, in Waco, Nebraska. He was the son of Robert and Adolphine (Ziegenhagen) Beckord. Donald obtained his bachelor’s degree at Peru State Teachers College in Peru, Nebraska, and his master’s degree in political science from George Peabody University in Nashville, Tennessee. He then spent twelve years teaching American government in secondary schools in Madison, South Dakota.
Don Beckord and Gladys York were married on January 12, 1941 in Tampa, Florida. They had two daughters, Jane, the future Mrs. Mike Henry; and Mary, the future Mrs. Richard McEachen; and five grandchildren.
Beckord was a member of the United States Army Reserve Corps and was called to active duty during World War II in 1941. He served in the Information and Education Branch and received an honorable discharge as a major in 1945. From 1945 to 1951, Beckord was the chief of the Guide Service for the United States Bureau of Reclamation at Boulder Dam, Boulder City, Nevada.
The Beckords moved to Redlands in 1951 and engaged in citrus growing, through which he became and acquaintance and then associate of Wesley Break, who was San Bernardino County’s Third District Supervisor from 1944 to 1968. Beckord became active in civic and community affairs, serving as president of the San Bernardino County Board of Education, president of the Redlands Unified School District, president of the Redlands Union High School District and president of the Mission Elementary School District. He was awarded life membership in the Parent-Teacher Association and held membership in the American Legion, the Elks Club, the Rotary Club and the Redlands Masonic Lodge. He was also a member of the Farm Bureau.
Beckord’s other civic activities during his many years of community service included membership on the board of directors of the YMCA, chairman of the board of directors of the First Congregational Church and vice-president of the Plymouth Village Association. He served as president of the Salvation Army’s advisory board and as a member of the board of directors of the Community Chest. He also served as vice-president of the Redlands Chamber of Commerce and president of the Inter-Service Club Council. He served as a vice president of the East Valley Planning Agency and was a member of both the Corporate Redlands Community Hospital and the American Legion’s 25th District Veterans’ Hospital Committee.
All of this glad-handing rendered him well known throughout the community and in 1968, when Wesley Break chose not to run for reelection as Third District San Bernardino County supervisor, Beckord ran in his place and was elected. Beckord served from December 3, 1968 to December 2, 1972. During this period he was a member of the Environmental Quality Committee, for the Southern California Association of Governments, a member of the Revenue and Taxation committee for the County Supervisors Association of California, and he served on the Local Agency Formation Commission. Mr. Beckord died on September 30, 1983, at the age of 78, following a lengthy illness. He was survived by his wife of 42 years and by his two daughters and their families.

The western spotted skunk, while not particularly common in San Bernardino County, is nonetheless present in the region. One place it has been seen on occasion is in the southwestern portion of the county, in Chino Hills and Carbon Canyon.
The western spotted skunk (Spilogale gracilis) as a species can be found west of the Continental Divide from southern British Columbia to Central America, as well as in some parts of Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and western Texas. Eastward, its range borders that of the eastern spotted skunk (Spilogale putorius).
The name Spilogale comes from the Greek word spilo, which means “spotted”, and gale, which means “weasel.” Gracilis is the Latin word for “slender.
Spilogale usually like to reside in covered thickets, woods, riparian hardwood, shrubbery, and areas that are located near streams.
Shy creatures, they prefer to dwell in a den or natural cavities such as stumps or hollow logs. Although they have very effective digging claws, they prefer to occupy dens that are made by gophers, wood rats, pocket gophers or striped skunks. They occupy dens that are positioned to be completely dark inside. Spilogale are very social creatures and frequently share dens with up to seven other skunks. Although skunks often live in this way, maternal dens are not open to non-maternal skunks.
Despite their name they do not have spots. The only spot is found on the forehead. The spotted skunk has various areas of white on the body that mix with the black. They don’t feature the famous white stripe that goes down the middle of the back. The coloration scheme isn’t the only difference for the spotted skunk. They have a body that seems very similar in style to that of the weasel. They have short feet and they are very slow moving.
Spotted skunks protect themselves by spraying a strong and unpleasant scent. Two glands on the sides of the anus release the odorous oil through nipples. When threatened, the skunk turns its body into a U-shape with the head and anus facing the attacker. Muscles around the nipples of the scent gland aim them, giving the skunk great accuracy on targets up to 15 feet away. As a warning before spraying, the skunk stamps its front feet, raises its tail, and hisses. They may warn with a unique “hand stand”—the back vertical and the tail waving.
The liquid is secreted via paired anal subcutaneous glands that are connected to the body through striated muscles. The odorous solution is emitted as an atomized spray that is nearly invisible or as streams of larger droplets.
Skunks store about 1 tablespoon (15 grams) of the odorous oil and can quickly spray five times in row. It takes about one week to replenish the oil.
The secretion of the spotted skunks differs from that of the striped skunks. The two major thiols of the striped skunks, (E)-2-butene-1-thiol and 3-methyl-1-butanethiol are the major components in the secretion of the spotted skunks along with a third thiol, 2-phenylethanethiol.
Around the time of March, the males’ testes begin to enlarge and are most massive by late September. The increase in size is accompanied by a larger testosterone production. Similarly, a female begins to experience an increase in ovarian activity in March. Spilogale begin to mate during March as well. Implantation occurs approximately 14–16 days after mating. For the western spotted skunk, most copulations occur in late September and the beginning of October. The males will go looking for harems of females that are living together. He will try to mate with all of them. He will have competition though from other males that want to have that right with those females. Only one male can mate per female though so the stronger and more aggressive one will win.
The females won’t mate again until the following year. However, the males will go on a quest to find as many females as possible during the mating season. He will be very skinny and tired by the time that is over because he will rarely even stop to eat.
Although litter sizes vary considerably, the average litter size is about 5.5. The overall gender ratio at birth is 65 males to 35 females.
The newborn skunks are covered with fine hair that shows the adult color pattern. The eyes open between 30 and 32 days. The kits start solid food at about 42 days and are weaned at about two months. They are full grown and reach adult size at about four months. The males do not help in raising the young.
Skunks are omnivorous and will eat small rodents, fruits, berries, birds, eggs, insects and larvae, lizards, snakes, and carrion. Their diet may vary with the seasons as food availability fluctuates.[4] They have a keen sense of smell that helps them find grubs and other food. Their hearing is acute but they have poor vision. They are nocturnal, coming out at dusk to look for food. They will spend the daylight hours in a den where it is cool. Males will live alone but it is common to find several females in one. They won’t do so though when they have young to care for.
Spotted skunks can live 10 years in captivity, but in the wild, about half the skunks die after 1 or 2 years.
They often fight over food and location, but they don’t spray each other with their oils. Instead, they will bite and scratch until one of them runs away from the battle.

By Grace Bernal
This past week I traveled outside of San Bernardino County to the Los Angeles Mission and visited with kitchen manager Scott Johnson. I had the opportunity to meet with Christian Urias who lives in the L.A. Mission. Christian was one of 15 people accepted into Pepperdine University’s special program degree certification for the homeless. He will be graduating December 15th 2016. Upon completion Christian’s goal is to go mobile with his fashion ideas. He intends to help homeless people living on the streets and low income people by bringing his mobile boutique to them with affordable fashion prices. Twentyfive-year-old Christian was living dangerously on the streets, and with the help of the Los Angeles Mission and the Mission chaplain he received help to jump start into society through the enterprise program offered by Pepperdine University for L.A. Mission people who are wanting to better themselves. The program teaches entrepreneurial skills, and through this Chris got the idea of his mobile boutique. Pepperdine also offers a grant once the course is completed, and Chris is part of the grant due to his completed business plan. The small grant is to help get started and get out of homelessness. This kid has definitely been through some trials and tribulations but his plan and love for fashion is what has kept him from going back to a life on the streets and onward to a life that he really wants. He is on his way to to getting his mobile boutique, and clothes lined up but will continue to need help. If you would like to learn more about Chris and how to help jumpstart his career, please reach out: Scott Johnson (Los Angeles Mission) at: (213) 629-1227 x 467, or email: johnson@lamission.net. Chris’s art is sure to take him places, and it is only because of his determination and passion for living doing what he truly loves. He has a way to go to get his Mobil boutique but for now he’s survived the fashion street scene.

“City streets are the real runways” – Anonymous