(March 3) The county of San Bernardino will use a $3.94 million grant it just received from the state toward the construction of a crisis residential treatment facility in the city of San Bernardino
According to CaSonya Thomas, the director of the San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health, the funding will be adequate to construct and furnish the facility, and there is no requirement that the county put up money of its own to obtain the grant.
The board of supervisors this week complied with Thomas’s recommendation to “accept a grant award from the California Health Facilities Financing Authority for capital funding for construction of a crisis residential treatment facility in San Bernardino for the expansion of crisis residential treatment services, in the amount of $3,945,906, for the period of December 4, 2014 through June 30, 2016.”
Thomas told the board “The Department of Behavioral Health will use the California Health Facilities Financing Authority grant to fund construction of a new facility in San Bernardino to provide crisis residential treatment services to individuals throughout the county. The department of behavioral health anticipates the expansion will serve approximately 332 individuals through the residential facility annually. The construction of this facility will assist the department of behavioral health in implementing statewide goals by expanding access to crisis services within the County, minimizing law enforcement involvement, and reducing costs to local law enforcement and hospital emergency departments. The use of grant funding will provide for the health and social service needs of residents throughout the county and fulfill county goals and objectives by: 1) increasing access to crisis residential services; 2) effectively meeting the needs of individuals experiencing a mental health crisis in the least restrictive manner possible; and 3) working collaboratively with local law enforcement, hospitals, and community based providers. The department of behavioral health intends to sustain the proposed expansion of services indefinitely, past the two-year grant funding term, through the use of Mental Health Services Act and Medi-Cal funding. In order to secure the California Health Facilities Financing Authority funding,
Thomas said, “The majority of grant funding ($3,397,500) will be used for capital costs to build a new facility, housing a new Crisis Residential Treatment (CRT) program. The remaining grant funding will be used for furniture/equipment ($500,000), information technology (IT) software and telephone infrastructure, computers and other IT equipment ($48,406).
The crisis residential treatment facility will contain 16 beds, specializing in providing crisis intervention for individuals diagnosed with mental health and/or co-occurring substance use disorders. Services will include, but will not be limited to, assessments, treatment plan development, collateral services, crisis intervention, medication support services, and individual and group therapy. The goal of the program is to improve the appropriateness of care, increase access to community based mental health crisis services, reduce recidivism, and mitigate the burden on hospital and law enforcement resources.”
Thomas said the county applied for a grant in 2013, but that “the department of behavioral health did not receive an award for that submission; however, on July 9, 2014, CHFFA announced it would reopen the filing period for the programs” The county reapplied and was given preliminary notice on November 6, 2014 that it would get the grant. Official notice from the California Health Facilities Financing Authority came on February 4, 2015.
The department of behavioral health intends to use an existing county owned location in the 700 block of Gilbert Street in San Bernardino as the location for the facility.

TWENTYNINE PALMS—The Twentynine Palms community is make slow and incremental steps towards shoring up its fire department.
The Twentynine Palms City Council last month approved the first reading of an ordinance which increases the fire facilities impact fee that are already being levied on incoming residential, commercial and industrial evelopment within the city limits. The higher fees will go into effect on May 21, pursuant to the council giving approval to a second reading of the ordinance on March 10.
Thus, the fee for a single-family dwelling unit will go from $526 to $566. The fee for a multi-family dwelling unit will rise from $416 to $446.
The fees for commercial floor space will jump from $374 to $401 per 1,000 gross square feet. The fees for office floor space will increase by $19, going from $265 to $284 per 1,000 gross square feet. The fees for industrial floor space will go from $147 to $156 per 1,000 gross square feet.
In a report to councilmember, finance diirector Ron Peck stated the fire impact fees have been in place since 2011. Peck said they were intended to be revised annually.
“We haven’t increased the fee for three years,” he said.
The fire department is not a city division. Since 1958, the fire department in Twentynine Palms has been overseen by the water district. The department grew to include two fire stations and seven firefighters to cover the 59 square miles within the Twentynine Palms City Limits and the 29 square miles of unincorporated county area that also falls under the water district/fire department’s 88-square mile jurisdiction. The city does not contribute to, participate in or subsidize the fire department’s operational budget.
The city did, though, initiate the fire service impact fee in 2011. From its proceeds, the fire department was able to make final payments on the purchase of a fire truck.
Fire department operations are, or are supposed to be, funded entirely by a special tax, consisting of an assessment levied upon all of the city’s property owners. The current parcel tax is $80.
In 2012, water district voters rejected Measure H, a tax increase proposal, and the water district explored surrendering authority over the fire department to the county fire department.
That same year, the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission indicated the water district would need to find augmenting funding for the fire department or relinquish control of it.
The water district and the city of Twentynine Palms worked on a proposal to have the county’s fire division subsume the fire department but that goal was not achieved after county fire chief Mark Hartwig said that in working within the confines of the $1.244 million in available special tax funding for local fire service, he would need to close down one of the fire stations and reduce the department to no more than four firefighters.
So far the water district has maintained control of the fire department but as of July 1, 2013 the district closed out its Lear Avenue Fire Station. The water district is now leasing the station to Copper Mountain College, which is using the facility to conduct fire science courses.
All of the fire department’s operations are now run out of the Adobe Road Fire Station, known as Station 421, and its paid personnel have been reduced to five. Response times to certain portions of the 88-square mile fire protection jurisdiction have increased.
The water district last year made a commitment to keeping the fire department in place and under control, creating the Twentynine Palms Citizen Advisory Committee. The committee recommended that the city of Twentynine Palms pitch in with regard to making sure the fire department is adequately funded. Incorporated in 1987, Twentynine Palms has yet to evolve into a full service municipality. It contracts with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement service and the water district exists as an independent agency that provides water and sewer service as well as fire protection for the city of 25,768 and its surrounding area.
The Twentynine Palms Citizen Advisory Committee last year also recommended that the water district again seek voter approval of an increase to the parcel tax imposed on residents within the water district’s boundaries.
The committee advised that the district ask their customers to approve a $20.40 per year increase to that assessment on developed property and a $10.20 increase on vacant parcels. The committee has further suggested that the measure authorize the increase for three years and give the district the ability to add a three percent annual inflation adjustment in the years beyond 2018.
The district, however remains somewhat skittish about going hat in hand to the city’s residents.
The fire service funding proposal has not been brought forward and the district last week postponed a rate increase move on the district’s water customers.
Operations on the water district’s water side are supposed to be kept separate from the fire department operations. A water rate increase has been in the discussion stage for some time and the water board had tentatively set an April 1 date for a public hearing on the matter. But on February 25, with board member Roger Shinaver absent, the board voted -0, with Roger Shinaver absent, to move a proposed public hearing on the matter from March 25 to Nov. 18. This will put off implementation of the new rates from April 1 to December 1.

Myopia is an all too common condition, both physically and metaphorically. I myself suffer from it, more so in one eye than the other. Here in America it is known as near-sightedness and in Britain short-sightedness. It is a condition where the light that enters the ocular orb does not focus on the retina but rather in front of it, causing the image that one sees when looking at a distant object to be out of focus, but a close object to be seen with sharp clarity…
I shall not bore the reader with the too many examples in my long life when I focused on the immediate at the expense of the long term or took a route of convenience one day that I deeply regretted the next or even ever after. I have not been immune to foolhardy blunder, and if the truth were known to the general public, the catalog of my own errors would undercut whatever air of authority I try to assume…
A benefit of living as long as I have is that it leaves one with a degree of wisdom, the ability to see error when none was perceived before, the ability to acknowledge error after having foolishly attempted to hide it for so long, and the ability to recognize myopia whereas before it seemed to be simple focus…
What brings this up is the recent appearance of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, before a joint session of Congress. His message was that the United States, by dialoging with Iran and attempting to arrive at some accommodation over that country’s acquisition of nuclear technology, is endangering Israel, the United States and the rest of world. According to the prime minister, the greatest danger facing the globe is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. He said that Iran is intent on imposing a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world…
I think I can understand his perspective, as his country perceives the regime in Iran as one antithetical to the interests of his own people. And I understand, or think I understand, why he feels that Iran’s possession of nuclear technology could undermine the security of his country…
At the same time, I think it is myopic for the prime minister to believe, or anyone to believe, that the nuclear genie can ever be put back into the bottle. While it may be possible for us present day nuclear-haves to delay for a few years, or maybe a decade, or even a generation the nuclear-have nots from obtaining such technology, we cannot suspend the proliferation of that technology forever. The know-how to harness the atom exists. It is taught at hundreds of universities throughout the world. It is unrealistic to think that we can stop the spread of knowledge…
The difficulty is that we are all functioning from our own limited national perspective with little appreciation for the perspective of others or a clear understanding of what our actions are going to provoke. I am reminded of the Suez Crisis of 1956, when four countries, all of whom had far more interests in common than differences of any sort, acted and reacted in ways that immediately seemed in keeping with each’s own interest but which collectively proved damaging to the long term prospects of all four…
The crisis was precipitated by Israel’s invasion of Egypt, which was quickly followed up by invasions by Britain and France. Each invading country had its own motives, but all shared the common aim of removing Egyptian President Gamal Nasser from power, attenuating Soviet influence in the region and regaining Western control of the Suez Canal. And while the Israeli, British and French military forces executed well, with the Israelis overrunning the Egyptian Sinai, the British and French using that as a pretext to issue a joint ultimatum for a cease fire followed by the landing of paratroopers along the Suez Canal and the defeat of Egyptian forces, the move proved a debacle. Despite the denials of their governments, it became clear that the Israeli invasion and the subsequent well-coordinated Anglo-French attack had been planned beforehand by the three countries. As the fighting progressed, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations forced the three invaders to withdraw. Shipping through the canal was blocked entirely until March 1957. Nassar remained in power. President Dwight Eisenhower, miffed at the British action, which he had previously warned against, threatened action against the British financial system, opening up a rift in the Western Alliance. The Soviets then exploited this to the detriment of the West, using the opportunity the disarray presented to crack down on growing dissent in Hungary, where the populace was progressing toward throwing off the yoke of communism. Many historians believe that the Suez Crisis, more than any single other event, precipitated the utter demise of the British Empire…
In the current circumstance involving Iran, all parties need to remind themselves that precipitate action, while perhaps useful in stemming what may be perceived as an immediate threat, carries with it a long term implication that may saddle all of us with a legacy we would rather not bear…

By Ruth Musser-Lopez
It’s funny how I think of my Aunt Miriam and Aunt Pauline whenever I hear someone use the word “ascared.” I always liked that word…”ascared.” To me, it means both “afraid” and “scared” so it gives the feeling of really being frightened…I must have heard that word from my mother. But, when I was just a little girl, my aunts (my mother’s sisters) fresh back from the African mission field where they had worked side by side with real English people from the UK told me that to use that word “ascared” would be IMPROPER…an improper use of the English language and would make me sound uneducated. “Ain’t” was another of these “forbidden” words that they concerned themselves with and corrected me for.
Now later on in my life, as an anthropologist, I rather enjoy hearing the use of this American slang. I also love the very recent new wave of “stateside” regrouping of words to form new words like Disney’s “imagineering,” one I heard on Family Feud, “fish-cation” and the one that is on my husband’s manly Old Spice deodorant “Believe in your Smellf.” I think of variations, new accents and dialects as “tracers” of cultural movement either by migration (people moving) or diffusion (ideas moving).
My mother’s younger sisters who followed in her footsteps and left the family farm in the midwest, also migrated to California on Route 66 during the 1940s from the southern Kansas/Oklahoma area. Both sisters went to Upland College, a “Brethren in Christ” church college that is no more but did once occupy the complex that does now still exist on the southeast and southwest corner of San Antonio and Arrow Highway in Upland. Both of the younger sisters became English teachers, and then went “abroad” to Africa for five or ten years to teach English at the Matopo “Brethren in Christ” mission in a country that was then called Rhodesia.
I was a young girl in the 1950s when my aunts returned. Later I understood them to say that the English were turned out of the newly reformed country that eventually became known as “Zimbabwe” with governance returned to its native people. Nonetheless, there were apparently an abundance of Brits in Africa at the time Pauline and Miriam were there, from whom they could learn very proper English.
Both found teaching positions at schools in the Upland area when they returned and were quite successful. Pauline, passed away last year. She had taught school in the Ontario-Upland School District and her only child, a daughter, Marjeanne, is also a grade school teacher today. The other aunt, Miriam, now retired from teaching, is living in an assisted care facility in the Upland area.
I haven’t heard the word “ascared” for years but this week, we had a guest in our home and I was pleased to hear him using the word “ascared.” He used that word to describe his little doggy’s reaction when she had obviously become spooked by some dolls with big eyes sitting on a little chair in the corner of my kitchen. Later in the conversation, the young man told me that he was from Oklahoma—near the southern region of Kansas where my mother and her sisters were from.
This all makes sense from an anthropological “glottochronology” perspective. Anthropologists who specialize in linguistics, will take a word like “ascared” to track and connect cultural groups and to make inferences about movement of cultural groups through time. This is called glotto for “tongue” or “language” and chronology for “time” and involves lexicostatistics dealing with the chronological relationship between languages–language changes over time.
You might wonder what all of this has to do with rock art in San Bernardino County. The study of language connections and changes through time, glottochronology, is important to understanding who made the prehistoric rock art not just in San Bernardino but in other places in the world.
For example, we have an “archaic” style of rock art in San Bernardino County that no one really knows who made. Yet this archaic style and the abstract art that characterizes it is found broadly dispersed throughout the west, often underlying newer art motifs. We also have a linguistic family, the Hokan, that appears to be one of the oldest if not the oldest language families in California and western states.
The Voegelin & Voegelin (1965) Native American language classification was the result of a conference of Americanist linguists held at Indiana University in 1964. This classification identifies 16 main genetic units of which Hokan is one. There’s been some variations on this idea, but depending if you are a lumper or splitter, it is generally agreed that the Hokan language family includes ten or fifteen “phylums” one of which is the Yuman language which is used by the tribes on the lower Colorado River including our San Bernardino County Pipa Aha Macav or “Mojave.” Linguistically, the Yuman-Cochimi are related to other Hokan speakers in northern and coastal California, including the Pomoan, Washo, Shastan, Salinan, Karuk, Himariko, Palaihnihan, Yana, and Esselen. South of the Yuman-Cochimi are the Seri.
Coincidentally, a young visitor accent engaged me in an intellectual conversation that got me thinking again about what glottochronology and lexicostatistics can tell us about who made the rock art here in San Bernardino County.
Since we are both interested in the prehistory of the East Mojave Desert, we were discussing the possible direction of migration of the Yuman speakers who lived along the lower Colorado River, including the Mojaves. He was of the opinion that glottochronology would prove that the tribes would have moved up the river from the ocean, the Bay of California, and that the oldest branch would be the ones living closest to the ocean, down the river from Needles to the south near the border of Mexico—that would be the Seri. My friend’s supposition could be shown if the southernmost tribes shared the most root words common with other related phylum dialects.
I suggested that, on the contrary, lexicostatistics indicate that the pattern of movement was overland for the Hokan speakers who I asserted were the likely occupants of the western pluvial lakes of the Mojave Desert and Great Basin during the archaic period and that I believed that the Needles area would be shown to have the most root words in common with all of the other tribes along the river since the Hokan speakers entered the Colorado River area from inland. I suggested that they would have subsisted off of the pluvial lake resources after the ice age and wound up on the lower Colorado River as warming and dessication of the desert lakes continued. I suggested to him what the late Dr. Clement Meighan, founder of UCLA’s Archaeological Survey, who studied under the great anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, said to me: the Needles area/Mohave Valley is the cultural hearth for the river tribes of Yuman-Hokan speakers.
Theoretically, the Hokan speakers (lime color on map) that include the Mojave of San Bernardino County, were much more widespread in the archaic period but were split apart after waves of Penutian tribes (Yokuts, etc.) (peach color on map, Figure 8) from the north and Uto-Aztekan tribes (Shoshonean/Paiute) (plum color on map from Mesoamerica to the south moved into the area. In my “Who made the Archaic Rock Art” theory, this split would account for the blanket of older archaic rock art, which the Hokan are responsible for, underlying newer imagery throughout the California and Great Basin area. On the Lower Colorado River however, the stronghold of Yuman-Hokan speakers, like the Pipa Aha Macav (Mojave), there is archaic art but a lack of the type of representational rock art motifs and images that are linked with these later groups, such as bighorn sheep imagery and blanket people. There are other stylistic clues as well which I do not have room to expound upon here.
Similarly, style patterns, changes and differences in prehistoric rock art are used by anthropologists all over the world to make determinations as to authorship: Who made it?
The American Rock Art Research Association (ARARA) will be meeting to discuss topics surrounding rock art and report new findings. The conference will be held just beyond the easternmost edge of San Bernardino County, in Laughlin, Nevada, at the Colorado Belle Resort and Casino on May 22 – 25, 2015. I intend to present findings with regard to stylistic clues that suggest the ancestral Pipa Aha Macav (Mojave) should be credited with the archaic rock art predominant throughout the desert area.
Coincidentally to my “African Aunts” story above, one of the Archaeologists/Rock Art researchers to be making a presentation at the conference is Archaeologist Anne Stoll who, along with her husband George, conducted research in 2013 at Nanke Cave, in the Matopo Hills National Park, western Zimbabwe not far from where my aunts had taught 50 years prior.
Anne provided the Sentinel with a preview of her upcoming presentation (See Figures 2 – 6). She writes “The rock art in the shelters in the Matopo Hills (See Figure 2) was painted by the San people perhaps thousands of years ago and it has faded with time. George and I use a method of photographic enhancement called “DStretch” on all painted sites because it brings out important interpretive details which are often otherwise virtually invisible.
“The image in Figure 3 is the ‘normal’ color. To make the faint paint visible DStretch was used and you are able to see the result in Figure 4, an enhanced, brightly colored panel with imagery and motifs that were not readily visible before. Note the copious over painting and the many giraffes and kudu. The strange tube-like shape in the art work is called a ‘formling’ — just because no one really knows what these represent. There has been some good research done recently with the idea they are beehives or termite nests.”
“Formling?” –now there’s another new combo word to track.
Anne is very eager to freely pass on the DStretch technology. “Honestly, if we could get people to use Jon Harmon’s DStretch more, we’d feel very good about our message (www.dstretch.com ). It’s FREE and easy to use and replaces tracing or (horrors!) wetting a surface to bring out an image (widely done in Africa, for tourists). We’re well aware that not everyone can travel to Africa but there are many interesting painted sites closer to home that would benefit from photographic enhancement, permitting faint details to be seen, and it does work on some petroglyphs where the patina has a reddish cast as well.
“For example, the before and after DStretch of the curious motif from Los Coyotes, Baja, Mexico.”
Both Southern Californians are officially retired now from professional careers in teaching archaeology and engineering. For many years Anne and George photographed painted sites across the western US and now in over sixteen countries. The last four years the team has focused on the San painted art of southern Africa – specifically South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.
San Bernardino County is very fortunate to have such high caliber rock art experts like the Stolls coming to see rock art in our county’s East Mojave. The Stolls presence elevates the ARARA conference to be held here over Memorial Day weekend which may awaken the attention of the local community as to the important work we have here at home that attracts visitors from around the world. The Stolls appearance at the conference lifts the status of rock art in the local region and lends credibility to the importance of protecting rock art on and along the Lower Colorado River.
Theirs is a “vision” for our youth which by-the-way, ARARA is now promoting a “rock art” poster contest for young people, with cash prizes. Categories are 1) new imaginative imagery/motifs and 2) site etiquette/respect. The deadline for entry is April 15. Winners will be recognized at the conference on the evening of May 23. Learn more about the ARARA conference and the contest at www.ARARA.org

YUCCA VALLEY—(March 1) The Hi-Desert Water District Board of Directors has chosen Riverside-based Carollo Engineers to manage the construction of Yucca Valley’s wastewater collection system and treatment facility.
The community of Yucca Valley is under a mandate by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board to complete, or have made substantial progress toward completion of, the first phase of the town’s sewer system in less than 14-and-one-half months.
The water district board made a commitment to the arrangement with Corollo, which will pay the firm $2.8 million over the next three-and-a-half, despite there not yet being in place an assessment district or other set means of financing the undertaking.
In 2007, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state agency responsible for protecting water quality, adopted a resolution identifying the town of Yucca Valley as one of 66 communities throughout the state with groundwater threatened by the continuing overuse of septic systems. Lacking the financial wherewithal to undertake the construction of a sewer system, local officials resisted taking immediate action. Nor did the city have the will to impose any kind of building or development moratorium that would stabilize the problem. Town and water district officials delayed the imposition of state mandates by forging a memorandum of agreement with the Regional Water Quality Control Board to allow interim permits for new septic systems while planning for a wastewater system proceeded. .
By 2010, Yucca Valley’s population had zoomed to 20,700, an increase of 3,835 or 22.7 percent over the 16,865 town residents counted in the 2000 Census, and the following year the town was firmly informed it had only five years to take a definitive step toward water quality compliance.
The Regional Water Quality Control Board at that point imposed three progressive phases of septic discharge prohibitions on Yucca Valley. Under the state mandate, phase 1 of a waste water system must be completed or significantly on its way to completion by May 19, 2016 or enforcement action will be initiated. The first phase of the project is to cover the downtown area of Yucca Valley, the area most proximate to the heart of the groundwater basin. Similarly, phase 2 must be completed or nearly completed by May 19, 2019 and phase 3 must be completed by May 19, 2022. The last two phases lie further out where future concentrated development is most likely to occur.
The imposition of that deadline four years ago was intended as a wake-up call to local officials to undertake an effort to avert the growing water quality crisis. But little progress toward the goal of planning and funding the system has been made and there has been absolutely no physical progress with regard to establishing it.
In 2012, the Yucca Valley Town Council tested the community’s willingness to pay for or otherwise finance the construction of system, sponsoring Measure U, a once cent sales tax initiative, the lion’s share of the proceeds from which town officials said would be devoted toward building the sewer system. The measure failed.
Cost projections have been made, with one covering the price for a contractor building the system and another sizing up the cost of having water district staff carry out the project. It will cost, according to this documentation, between $133,248,401 and $140,651,089 for the design and construction work to be performed by Atkins North America and somewhere between $111,539,901 and $117,736,562 for the district to construct the project using Atkins North America’s proposed design. The system would consist of a water treatment plant and a collection system entailing over 400,000 linear feet of pipe.
Within the last fortnight, a wastewater treatment assessment schedule has been drawn up, showing variable contributions from different landowners depending on the value of each parcel. Those total assessments would run from roughly $4,000 to $19,000.
Carollo was chosen to serve as the project manager because it has been involved in planning for the wastewater project for years, having represented the Hi-Desert Water District with companies considered as potential contractors or sub-contractors on the project.

(March 5) Upland city officials next week will inform both the public in general and advocates of an initiative to allow three marijuana dispensaries to function within the city limits specifically that the vote on that matter will not take place until the November 2016 election.
That development comes as a setback for the initiative’s advocates and others who want to see the sale of marijuana in the City of Gracious Living legalized.
In October, a group of Upland residents, nominally headed by Nicole DeLaRosa and James Velez and sponsored by the California Cannabis Coalition, Craig Beresh and Randy Welty, undertook a petition drive to qualify for the ballot in Upland an initiative aimed at overturning the Upland’s ban on marijuana dispensaries.
On January 14, Beresh and Welty on behalf of the California Cannabis Coalition and those involved in the signature-gathering effort came to Upland City Hall and handed over to Upland administrative services director/city clerk Stephanie Mendenhall the initiative petition endorsed with 6,865 signatures gathered in Upland. Welty, Beresh and another member of the California Cannabis Coalition, Michael Cindrich, who is also an attorney, said the signatures were sufficient to require the city to hold a special election to overturn Upland’s ban on medical marijuana dispensaries. The registrar of voters office subsequently verified that most of those signatures were, indeed, valid.
Welty, Beresh and Cindrich were met with Mendenhall’s assertion, based on information provided to her by city attorney Richard Adams, that the coalition did not file the proper notice that a special election was being sought at the time the petition drive was initiated in October. She informed them that the ballot measure would come before the city’s voters at the next general election in 2016. The initiative advocates overcame that obstacle in short order by virtue of the intercession of Cindrich and another attorney, Roger Diamond, who is officially representing the California Cannabis Coalition. Diamond, a top constitution issue lawyer whose reputation as a tenacious legal representative of advocates for controversial but constitutionally protected activities and enterprises such as adult entertainment and medical marijuana dispensaries proceeds him, convinced Adams that the city’s theory that the lack of a notification and request for a special election on the summary for the petition filed in October obviated the need for a special election was not legally sufficient.
Nevertheless, three of Upland’s city council members – Mayor Ray Musser, councilman Glen Bozar and councilwoman Carol Timm – who are resistant to the concept of permitting cannabis dispensaries in the city, instructed Adams to redouble his efforts to find some justification for postponing the election until next year.
The timing of the election, that is, whether it will be a specially scheduled one held this year or whether it will be consolidated with the regularly scheduled municipal election to be held next year, is a significant one for two reasons. The first is the cost. The county registrar of voters would charge the city as much as $180,000 to handle the election as a stand-alone event this year. The city would reap considerable savings by putting the election on the 2016 ballot, when the mayor’s post, a single city council position and city treasurer spot are up for reelection. Moreover, advocates of the initiative see a special election as the forum in which sale of medical marijuana within the city limits of Upland is most likely to gain acceptance of the voters participating. Informal surveys of Upland voters show that, on balance, the city’s residents are against the initiative. But special elections normally have poor voter turnout and the initiative’s advocates believe that through the aggressive and energetic use of social media and networking among that portion of the city’s electorate most favorably inclined to the accessibility to medical marijuana and marijuana use in general, they can drive enough voters to the polls to prevail in a special election while a significant portion of the city population opposed to the concept of open access fail to participate.
In this political crucible, with Musser, Bozar and Timm anxious to see the vote delayed to next year and the two-member minority of the council – Debbie Stone and Gino Filippi – more favorably inclined to a special election, Adams researched the issue and in January tentatively found what he said was potential grounds for delaying the initiative vote until the next regularly scheduled municipal election.
The initiative imposes a set of limitations on the dispensaries and a protocol for their application and licensing. Under the terms of the initiative, the number of dispensaries in the city would be limited to three and they would have to be located within the relatively confined area north of Foothill Boulevard, south of Cable Airport, and between Airport Drive to the east and Monte Vista to the west. Each of the applicants for the three dispensaries would have to pay a $75,000 nonrefundable licensing fee intended, the initiative’s sponsors say, to cover the city’s costs in carrying out background checks and making other inquiries and efforts to process the applications.
It was with regard to this last point that Adams in January said the city might yet have what he called a “profound” basis for holding off until a regular election to let the city’s voters consider the initiative.
“This particular measure calls for only three medical marijuana dispensaries to be established in the city,” Adams said. “A special $75,000 licensing fees is to be paid annually for each dispensary. The State Constitution indicates that if the fee exceeds the cost of providing the services, licensing and inspection, it is not a fee. It is a tax.”
According to the California Constitution, Adams said, a vote on a tax cannot be held in the venue of a special ballot but must be held during a regularly scheduled election.
The city council, in a split 3-2 vote, with Musser, Bozar and Timm in ascendency and Stone and Filippi dissenting, directed Adams and city staff to ascertain if in fact the $75,000 specified in the initiative would exceed the city’s actual costs in carrying out background checks and processing the applications.
The Sentinel has learned that city staff’s survey of the costs associated with such a background check and application processing has determined that $75,000 “substantially exceeds” the anticipated city outlay to perform that work, which Upland Administrative Services Director Stephanie Mendenhall quantified as $3,822. As a result, Adams next week is set to offer his recommendation that the city hold off on the election until November 2016. While it is anticipated that Musser, Bozar and Timm will follow that recommendation, the city clerk’s office has given the council three other options, including simply adopting the initiative as proposed without change; scheduling for June 16, 2015 a special election pertaining to the initiative; scheduling for June 16, 2015 a special election at which the city’s voters will be faced with the DeLaRosa/Velez/Welty/Beresh/California Cannabis Coalition initiative and a competing initiative sponsored by the city council which will ask city voters whether an “ordinance, to affirm existing local law which prohibits both medical marijuana dispensaries as well as prohibits mobile medical marijuana dispensaries, within the City of Upland, be adopted?”
The Sentinel has learned that city officials anticipate the likelihood that Welty and the California Cannabis Coalition, represented by Diamond, will file suit to enjoin the city from delaying the initiative vote until 2016. Nevertheless, Adams has told city officials that the city’s position is well fortified and based upon Section 17.158.100 of the coalition sponsored initiative, Article XIII C section 1(e) of the California Constitution and Proposition 26 approved by California’s voters in 2010, the city will withstand any challenge against holding the vote in November 2016 and will be able to recover its legal costs from the plaintiffs after standing down that challenge.

SAN BERNARDINO—(March 6) A jury on March 2 awarded Fontana Unified School District administrative technician/police dispatcher Amanda Vandervoort $1.487 million after a 21-day trial in her lawsuit in which she alleged negligence on the part of the district and sexual assault by former district police officer John Frank Garcia.
Before the punitive damages phase of the trial was to begin on March 3, the jury was informed that the attorney for Garcia, Michael Marlatt, had agreed on $5 million punitive damages stipulation.
Unless the district appeals the award amount, Vandervoort will indeed receive the $1.487 million, which will be paid out by the district. Her prospect of receiving the $5 million is dim, since it was assessed against Garcia, who does not have sufficient assets to make such a payment. The school district, while liable for actual damages, as a public agency is immune under the law from having to pay punitive damages.
Vandervoort and three other female district employees claimed that Garcia, a former coordinator of the Fontana Leadership Intervention Program (FLIP), either sexually assaulted or harassed them while they were at work and in the field. According to statements on file with the court, Garcia repeatedly made sexual advancements to the women while making reference to his sexual prowess and bragging about his sexual conquests of two mothers of FLIP students.
Vandervoort’s ordeal with Garcia culminated in three incidents, one on November 25, 2010 and two others on unspecified dates in February and April 2011. In the first encounter, Vandervoort was working as a dispatcher for school police services during the evening shift. When Garcia’s shift ended at 11 p.m., he attacked her, forcibly disrobing her and raping her. He repeated that action some three months later and five months later.

Vandervoort eventually reported what had occurred to Fontana School Police Chief William Megenney. An internal investigation of Garcia was conducted, but he remained in place as a police officer. Vandervoort took a stress leave in November of 2011, and sought and received psychological treatment, according to court testimony.
The district considered Garcia, who was hired by the district in June of 2008, an “award winning” officer. After he was assigned to Fontana A.B. Miller High School, Garcia was recognized for several arrests he effectuated on weapons and drug possession and drug sales charges, which involved activity in close proximity to a school or city park. Due to “his commitment to duty,” Garcia received the district’s Excellence in Policing Award on May 21, 2009.
Garcia, however, had a somewhat checkered history as a police officer prior to landing with FUSD. He went to work for the Riverside Police Department in April 2001 and resigned in October 2005 for undisclosed reasons, perhaps to take a job with the Fontana Police Department, which hired him the same month. He did not make it past his 18-month probationary term after he was accused in September 2006 of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old female police cadet. He also briefly worked for the Riverside Sheriff’s Department.
A complaint relating to Garcia’s sexual assaults of Vandervoort and another district employee went to the district attorney’s office, which declined to prosecute him over either matter.
Vandervoort did not leave the employ of the district, and continues to work as an evidence clerk for Fontana Unified’s police division. The district indicated it might appeal the jury’s damage assessment, though that was seemingly contradicted by a public statement to the effect that the jury’s award was for less than 10 percent of the amount Vandervoort and her attorneys, Brian Hannemann, Angel Plaus and Joshua Milon, sought. The district sought to put the best face on the situation, declaring, “Fontana Unified School District is committed to ensuring a zero-tolerance policy for sexual misconduct or sexual harassment in the workplace and is doing everything in its power to help ensure a safe environment for all employees, students, and parents.”

The Mojave hole-in-the-sand plant, bears the Latin name of Nicolletia occidentalis and is of the asteraceae or sunflower family. It is a desert-adapted perennial herb with a skeletonlike appearance. The plant grows from a deep taproot in the desert sand and the stem is sometimes surrounded by a depression in the sand, a trait that gives it its common name. This plant bears showy flowers with curving bright pink ray florets and yellow centers.
The leaves are narrow and fleshy and end in a bristle. They have large oil glands which exude a strong unpleasant scent.
They range from the Mojave Desert to the High Sierra Nevada and most commonly inhabit sandy desert soils, such as dunes and washes at elevations of 1,800 feet to 4,200 feet. They flower from April until June.
Nicolletia occidentalis, is a dicot, native only to California , although there are other plants with dep taproots referred to as hole-in-the-sand plants.

By clicking on the portal below, you can download a PDF of the February 27 San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 02-27-15

By Mark Gutglueck
(February 27)  An involved contretemps has manifested at the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Agency amid labor agitation/union formation efforts as well as a-yet-unresolved claim by a staffing company that the agency underpaid its workers, against a backdrop of political intrigue relating to the principals involved.
Featured as main players in the drama are former Victorville Councilwoman Angela Valles, incumbent First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood and former Hesperia councilwoman Diana Carloni-Nourse.
Highlighted prominently in the controversy is what is described by a multiplicity of former Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority (VVWRA) employees as Valles’ unsuitability for the position she holds at VVWRA. In that capacity, according to at least six employees who have left the agency over the last several years, Valles has been callous, dictatorial, and heavy handed in her management of the employees, capricious and vindictive in meting out discipline, and unprofessional in the way she has interacted with employees. Moreover, she has engaged in nepotism and cronyism in the hiring process, and pursued managerial policies that are contrary to the efficiency of the agency and the best interest of taxpayers, according to those who have publicly filed complaints in which their identities are disclosed.
Also brought in for severe criticism in these signed complaints are Logan Olds, the general manager of the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority, and Gilbert Perez, VVWRA’s director of operations, who are alleged to have ignored longstanding complaints about the fashion in which Valles has acted or engaged in similar treatment of employees themselves. Valles is the VVWRA’s director of administration, overseeing day-to-day finance operations and human resource functions. The Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority is an agency of the state of California which provides wastewater treatment service along the Mojave River in the Victor Valley. It is a joint powers authority, which by its charter has as its board members one member from each of the Hesperia, Victorville and Apple Valley councils as well as the San Bernardino County First District Supervisor.
The charges against Valles, Olds, Perez and the VVWRA, however, come at a time and under circumstances in which there are procedural, legal and political efforts ongoing to wrest money from the agency, unionize its workers and undercut Valles’ potential future political ambition. Moreover, the concerted volley of charges vectored at Valles come in the aftermath of complaints she filed with the district attorney’s office, the California Fair Political Practices Commission and the FBI regarding a financial conflict of interest on the part of Lovingood, whose staffing company formerly had a contract with the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority. That company’s lawyer is now maintaining that the company is owed some $3.6 million by the authority. In her complaints to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office in July 2014, the FPPC, and the FBI in December 2014, Valles stated that she believed Lovingood ran afoul of the law, specifically Government Code Section 1090, because of his influence over the VVWRA’s contract with his firm Industrial Clerical Recruiters, Inc, which is also known as ICR or ICR Staffing.
In this way, there are factors that both support and weaken the case being made against Valles, Olds, Perez and the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority. And the wider circumstance opens up an even more disturbing set of questions regarding Lovingood and the degree to which his company’s dealings have become intertwined with the county.
The most convincing aspect of the recently lodged charges targeting Valles and the VVWRA are the number of complainants, the relative consistency of their versions of events, the verifiability of the basic elements of their narratives and their willingness to be identified. At the same time, the nature of this concerted and obviously coordinated attack gives rise to doubts as to whether it was a spontaneous outpouring of complaints by aggrieved former employees or whether it was formulated specifically for the purposes of discrediting Valles.
Former VVWRA employees Katherine Beyers, James Bryant, Gina Cloutier, R.C. Elliot, Elaine Gutierrez, Natalie Mirmontes and Haik Seropian have all provided signed statements in which they relate circumstances pertaining to their employment at the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority and their departures. All cite poor or deteriorating personal interaction with Valles, which included, they say, bullying, intimidation and unfair treatment.
Seropian, an accounting technician, said Valles had insulted him when he sought her guidance on the contents of a financial statement he was putting together and that she had made deprecating comments about his grooming habits.
Miramontes, who had been a secretary to a now-retired general manager, said she had been pressured by Valles to give up the name of an employee who had anonymously reported a safety violation at the VVWRA plant.
According to Miramontes, Valles was guilty of “putting VVWRA staff to work for her own illegitimate political gain” and said Valles “uses her paid time ‘working’ at VVWRA tweeting about elections, or other meaningless things all while wasting taxpayers’ hard earned money.”
Gutierrez, a former environmental compliance administrative aide of five years standing with the agency, said she was “forced out of my position … and was not presented with the evidence acquired against me and was not afforded an adequate opportunity to present my side of the story before a disciplinary decision was made.”
R.C. Elliott, who held the position of day operator for six years, stated that “During my time there I endured a hostile work environment under the management of Angela Valles, Logan Olds, and Gilbert Perez. I was forced out of my position and endured a lot of unneeded stress. Management trained me to hold specific duties but would purposely change my job functions without enough training in order to catch a mistake and then make the write ups they needed to pressure me out; and then to finally terminate me with the paper trail they had created.”
Cloutier, who was formerly the laboratory/environmental compliance supervisor at the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority said that because of “intimidation, bullying retaliatory disciplinary actions and other employment actions” by Valles and Gilbert Perez “employees are afraid to come forward with concerns, including safety issues. This has been reported to Logan Olds, who seemed to do nothing to stop it and in many cases the behaviors would worsen after discussions with Mr. Olds.”
Cloutier charged that “Angela Valles released confidential personnel and medical information to unauthorized persons. In at least one case, such information was used to intimidate and threaten another employee.”
Cloutier maintained that Perez had altered the operation of the plant during the time lab sampling of discharge was taking place to prevent the collection of data that would show the plant was functioning in violation of its environmental permit.
James Bryant, an 18-year employee who rose to the position of operations manager, said that “Intimidation of employees is common practice” by Valles, and he said the agency was marred by unfair hiring practices “When jobs are posted, the posting is closed, interviews are conducted [and] then they decide to ignore experienced people that have donated thousands of hours in the intern program with the agency for friends and neighbors of management staff with zero knowledge of or experience in the industry. My hands were tied as a supervisor having any say in who was hired for my department. I was forced to work with the cards I was dealt, which made my job even more difficult. VVWRA has an excellent intern program that has produced very qualified people, yet the director of human resources chose who she wanted during the interview process based on personal feelings about someone rather than the qualifications or how well the candidate performed during the interview process.”
Kate Beyer, a public information officer with the agency, said Valles had concerned herself with criticisms of “irrelevant details about [employees’] appearance, demeanor, life-style choice, sexuality, race, office décor” and ruled by intimidation tactics that included interrogations of employees. Beyer said that “Often, a frightened text would go around the office when Angela Valles arrived at the plant.”
Beyer said that Valles had engaged in “illegal hiring practices” and had falsified her own time sheet and had worked “from home a lot due to a ‘medical condition,’ even though it is against her own rules and regulations policy.”
Beyer’s statement carries with it the added weight of having been made “under the penalty of perjury.”
Surfacing at this point is a more than seven year old letter dated October 15, 2007 purported to be from “concerned employees” at VVWRA. It stated that upon acceding to the position of human resources director, Valles had installed her sister as her assistant and that “she worked on her [political] campaign, taking people to lunch while using the agency’s funds.”
Despite the purported substance of the letters, their timing and focus raise questions as to the motive behind the sudden outpouring of information. An accompanying collective statement of former and current employees notes that in the past nine years, of those leaving the employment of the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority, four, or seven percent, took normal retirements while 28, or 47 percent, were terminated. Eleven, or 19 percent, the collective statement notes, left willingly to get out of a hostile environment or avoid harassment, and the reason for the leaving of the other eight, or 14 percent, is unknown. An effort to unionize the agency’s workforce appears to be under way.
That effort is coupled with an unresolved $3.62 million claim against the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority by ICR Staffing Services, Inc., which is owned by San Bernardino County 1st District Supervisor Robert Lovingood. In that claim, dated August 22, 2014 and served September 11, 2014, ICR Staffing Services alleged that VVWRA failed to pay prevailing wage to ICR’s contract workers between 2011 and 2013 and solicited ICR’s temporary employees to jump ship to a competing staffing agency.
The federal prevailing wage law and the California Davis-Bacon Act requires that workers on governmental projects be paid prevailing union scale wages. There is a question, however, of whether it is the responsibility of the government agency or the company employing the workers to meet the prevailing wage requirements. In the case of the ICR contract with VVWRA, ICR participated in a bidding process for the work, and obtained the contract on the basis of having submitted the lowest responsive bid.
Lovingood’s company filed the claim sometime after the two-year contract, which ran between 2011 and 2013, for ICR recruits to work on the Upper Narrows Pipeline project, came to a close. Subsequently, VVWRA utilized workers provided by Hesperia-based iLink Business Management, which underbid ICR.
While ICR had competed in a bid process to gain the two-year arrangement with the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Agency in 2011 and was paid approximately $260,000 per year for the services its recruits provided, ICR attorney Diana Carloni Nourse maintains that the ICR workers should have been paid prevailing union scale wages and that ICR should have been paid in excess of $1.5 million per year for the work. ICR further maintains that after the agency contracted with iLink, it attempted to lure ICR’s recruits to work for iLink.
Such claims are considered a precursor to a lawsuit. Upon a public agency’s rejection of a claim or after failing to respond to the claim for 45 days, the claimant is eligible to initiate a lawsuit based on the issues raised in the claim. As of this week, ICR had not yet filed such a lawsuit. Such a lawsuit would have complications, among which is that Lovingood in December 2012, while his company yet had the contract with VVWRA, automatically became a Victor Valley Water Reclamation Agency board member. A joint powers authority arrangement between the county and VVWRA installs the county’s First District supervisor as a VVWRA board member. Lovingood remained as a board member until August 2013, at which point arrangements were made to substitute Lovingood’s colleague on the board of supervisors, James Ramos, in as the VVWRA board member to replace him.
Despite that change, Lovingood was technically a member of the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Board while the arrangement his company now maintains was illegal was in place. Additionally, he was the owner, president and chief executive officer of ICR when it entered into what the company now claims was an illegal arrangement with the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority.
Given Valles’ position as the authority’s human resources director, there appears to be a confluence between the claim, which alleges the VVWRA mishandled personnel issues with regard to the proper remuneration of its contracted workers, and the charges against Valles raised by the agency’s current and former employees.
In addition to this legal angle, there is a political one. Valles served four years on the Victorville City Council before leaving last year. In 2012, she made an unsuccessful run for Congress in the 8th Congressional District. In 2014, she married former Apple Valley mayor and councilman Rick Roelle. Roelle in 2012 ran for First District supervisor, forcing the race into a November run-off against Lovingood. Lovingood prevailed. Recently, however, there has been much speculation about whether Valles, who garnered something of a reputation as a reformer while in office in Victorville as she challenged the staid and established political establishment that had grown up under former mayor Terry Caldwell who left office in 2010 just as Valles was taking office, is again considering a political run.
Valles on February 26 addressed in detail the charges that have been hurled at her.
“I have never been unprofessional with employees,” she said. “As a manager, it is my primary duty to hold staff accountable. It is unfortunate that you will always have staff that cannot differentiate between accountability and harassment. These disgruntled employees had their opportunity to make complaints during their employment and upon exit. Any complaint of harassment has to be investigated and acted upon. All personnel actions and investigations are thoroughly vetted and approved through the VVWRA Board’s legal counsel, the law firm Best Best & Krieger. Any termination of employment is signed off by the general manager. What is interesting is all but one former employee that complained was under my direction. The rest were in the operations department. Only one requested to be transferred under me and resigned on their own accord. The supervisor of the department makes the case against the employee. Human resources ensures both parties are dealt with fairly and according to law with the guidance of legal counsel.”
Valles continued, “I have never been vindictive in my dealing with employees nor have these accusations ever been brought up until now.”
She dismissed accusations that she thwarted the promotion of qualified employees and promoted unqualified employees, saying “VVWRA has a very strict hiring process that includes a diverse panel (2 to 4) made up of the department’s supervisor, a human resources representative, if available an outside-the-agency individual with expertise in the area, and maybe a director if available. I am not on all panels. I may send the human resources technician or director of operations in my stead. Education, experience, profile assessment, and interview are all scored and the general manager makes the final hiring decisions after careful review of scores and files. He takes the recommendation of the panel into consideration. As the director of administration, I do sign all offer letters to employees at the direction of the general manager.”
Valles addressed the nepotism charge lodged against her. “VVWRA has never hired a relative of mine despite baseless accusations,” she said. “Nepotism is prohibited. If an applicant knows someone employed at VVWRA, that employee is completely removed from the hiring process and the general manager is alerted.”
Accusations that she violated agency policy “are purely subjective and baseless,” she said. Nor had she violated employees’ rights, she said. “All personal actions and investigations are thoroughly vetted and approved through the VVWRA Board’s legal counsel, Best Best & Krieger. Any termination of employment is signed off by the General Manager after approval from legal counsel. Contractual employees, probationary employees or resignations are not entitled by law to the Skelly process.“
California public employees are entitled to a so-called Skelly hearing, which allows an employee who is to be disciplined or fired to respond to the allegations prior to the imposition of any actual disciplinary action or termination.
Prior to going to work for the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority, Valles was the warden of the privately operated 550-bed, adult male, Victor Valley Medium Community Correctional Facility in Adelanto. One former VVWRA said she “runs the VVWRA the operations plant like a prison.”
She responded, saying, “I do not run VVWRA. I am the director of administration. I work under the direction of the general manager. The general manager runs VVWRA and if the general manager is absent the director of operations has general manager powers. Again this statement is subjective and baseless.”
Valles said she did not see any connection between the bevy of charges levied at her and any ongoing effort to unionize VVWRA employees. Rather, she gave indication she was sympathetic to employees’ efforts to up their remuneration.
“I did not see that [union formation efforts] as related,” she said. “I have always heard complaints of low wages and benefits from staff. The VVWRA has not approved any salary surveys for adjustments to salary and benefits in approximately 10 years. We have documented surveys from the majority of employees asking for higher wages and benefits. These subjective comments are only coming from former disgruntled employees.”
She did, however, say that the charges against her, Olds and Perez may have been inflated to galvanize employees and the public to support the formation of a union. “That could be a possibility,” she said. “There are always those employees that don’t want to be held accountable. It is our job as management to hold staff accountable to the ratepayers.”
Valles acknowledged that the authority had hired former ICR staff. “Yes, we have,” she said. She reversed the question, suggesting that ICR may have hired former VVWRA employees, thus giving them an incentive to make what she said are spurious charges against her and the authority. “The better question is: ‘How many of these disgruntled employees are seeking or sought employment through ICR?’” she said.
Valles said she “most definitely” saw the attacks now being leveled against her, which coincide with a claim against the agency by a company owned by Lovingood, as an effort to reduce her political viability.
“It is strange that I am being singled out,” she said, and when asked if she believed her outspokenness in the past with regard to public issues and her reformist stance as a member of the Victorville City Council had attracted the concerted and obviously coordinated attack she is experiencing, she answered in the affirmative. When asked if she harbored any future political aspirations, Valles said, “Right now I don’t have any specific office in mind, but I am not ruling anything out in the future.”
Valles said the positive achievements of the authority were being buried beneath the current contretemps and that a disinformation campaign was ongoing, which intended first and foremost to advance Lovingood financially, by benefitting his company, and secondarily politically by casting her, since there has been speculation about her running against him, in an unfavorable light. She said at least some former Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority employees were in league with him.
“Unfortunately, I cannot comment specifically on personnel matters,” she said. “However, I can say that VVWRA would not be where it is today if we didn’t ensure that our staff is competent, accurate and efficient. VVWRA has been recognized over and over for its technological innovation and its renewable energy programs, while receiving the highest awards available for governmental accounting and budgeting. These awards and recognitions are the result of the hard work of management and our employees. Sometimes we have to make tough decisions to protect the best interests of our member agencies and local ratepayers. We have a cohesive management team at VVWRA that is united in providing the best service at the lowest cost possible for the Victor Valley. I believe our years of outstanding performance and cost savings along with a long list of recognitions and accomplishments speak for themselves.
“With that said,” she continued, “I do find the timing of these frivolous allegations suspicious. In 2013 First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood was awarded a $250,000 contract from the VVWRA Board for temporary staffing services for the upper narrows emergency. As the director of finance I spoke during public comments at the May 2013 meeting warning the current VVWRA Board members that this award could be a possible 1090/conflict of interest violation. The contract was awarded to ICR Staffing which First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood owns and operates. Since Supervisor Lovingood has been in office, VVWRA has paid his ICR Staffing agency $560,000.”
Valles continued, “Lovingood recently lost the bid in 2014 for another temporary staffing contract award. Supervisor Lovingood sent his attorney to make defamatory remarks in open session attacking myself and VVWRA to include iLINK who was the lowest bidder. The VVWRA Board decided to rebid the contract, giving ICR a second chance at winning the contract. Again, ICR lost to iLINK. Lovingood’s attorney then filed a claim against VVWRA for $3.6 million.
“Since then I have filed 1090 inquiries with several investigative bodies such as the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office in July 2014, the FPPC, the Attorney General through Congressman Paul Cook’s office, and the FBI,” Valles said. “Now the same VVWRA Board members that awarded First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood’s possibly illegal contract is calling for an investigation focusing on me, who filed inquiries of possible 1090 violations. It has come to my attention that these same disgruntled employees have been meeting with two members of the VVWRA Board and Lovingood. I expect this investigation to disclose those facts as well as who on the VVWRA Board has received campaign contributions from Supervisor Lovingood, his wife, and ICR Staffing. I cannot help but believe this is in direct retaliation for whistle- blowing and an attempt to tarnish my reputation in the community.”
Overall, Valles said, “The former employees’ claims are false. All personnel actions are thoroughly vetted through the Best Best & Krieger Law firm, who are retained by and work directly for the VVWRA Board members. The allegations of falsifying timecards are false. I am an exempt employee that can account for all my time. My accomplishments at VVWRA speak for themselves. The allegation of campaigning on agency time is false. I am not in office nor did I seek reelection. I directly oversee the public information department and may attend occasional community functions as part of my job duties. Unfortunately, there are always those employees that cannot differentiate between accountability and harassment. As a director over the human resources department it is my primary duty to hold staff accountable to the ratepayers. It is unfortunate that the ratepayers have to pay tens of thousands of dollars on investigations for frivolous claims from disgruntled employees who have exhausted their administrative remedies at separation. Since First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood lost his contract with VVWRA, he has vowed to destroy me and VVWRA. It is too bad the taxpayers will have to pick up the tab for his political agenda and profit.”
The attorney for ICR Staffing, Diana Carloni Nourse, is a former Hesperia mayor and councilwoman, who served in the 1990s. Like Valles was in Victorville over a decade later, Carloni-Nourse was estranged from her male council colleagues for most of her tenure, and perceived as something of a reformer and political dissident. Her emergence as the legal mouthpiece for Lovingood, and by virtue of that station at odds with Valles, is viewed by some of those with historical perspective, as ironic. According to Carloni Nourse, Valles, while “acting within the scope and course of her employment” with the Victor Valley Water Reclamation Authority created “a sham bidding process” that favored iLink over ICR “in an attempt to deter and eliminate ICR from competing for the contract.” As a result, according to Carloni Nourse, claimant [i.e., ICR] and its employees have been damaged in an aggregate sum of $3.6 million for wages and profits unpaid taken from claimant.”
The Sentinel has confirmed that Valles did file similar complaints touching on the ICR contract with the VVWRA with the district attorney’s office, the FPPC, Congressman Cook’s office and the FBI. A copy of the complaint filed with the FBI obtained by the Sentinel ran to 315 pages and contained a full range of back-up materials relating to the contract and ICR’s claim against VVWRA.