(January 28)  With elections for two of its members approaching, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors this week unanimously approved liberalizing the terms of the campaign finance reform ordinance the board put into place two years ago.
On August 28, 2012, with much fanfare the board ratified restrictions on the amount of money candidates for county office could receive from individual donors, a measure taken in the wake of a multitude of scandals and prosecutions of local elected official on political corruption charges, nearly all of which involved action taken to benefit major campaign donors.
That ordinance restricted individual donors from providing more than $3,900 to any single candidate per election cycle and small contributor committees from giving more than $7,800 per election cycle.
Members of the board, in particular Second District Supervisor Janice Rutherford, touted the measure as one that demonstrated a new ethos in governance at the county level and a determination to reform politics and do away with the pay-to-play reputation that dogged the county’s leadership. At the time, Rutherford said it was her and her colleagues’ intent to “make it clear to the voters and taxpayers of this county that the board of supervisors and other county-wide elected officials cannot be bought by large donors.”
On Tuesday January 28, however, the board second-guessed itself, revising the ordinance to allow candidates for county office to accept up to $4,100 from individuals and $8,200 from small contributor committees for a general election prior to the primary election.
The revised ordinance will also, according to county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux,  allow “in part that contributions may be made after an election only to the extent that the contribution does not exceed net debts outstanding from the election and does not otherwise exceed the applicable contribution limit for that election. This portion of new Subsection 12.4305(b) is based on the Political Reform Act
provision on this issue, i.e., Government Code section 85316. New Subsection 12.4305(b) also provides that contributions made to retire debt incurred for elections held prior to the effective date of the ordinance, i.e., January 1, 2013, are not subject to the contribution limits of the ordinance. This portion of new Subsection 12.4305(b) is based on Government Code section 85321. New Subsection 12.4305(b) reflects the intent of the county when adopting the original Campaign Finance Reform Ordinance.”
Rutherford, now the chairman of the board, is one of the two members of the board whose position is up for election this year.
In December 2012, more than three months after passing the ordinance, the county entered into a contract with the California Fair Political Practices Commission to enforce its provisions. San Bernardino County was the first and remains the only county in the state to contract with that state political activities regulatory agency to do its enforcing.
Devereaux suggested in the staff report that was submitted to the board prior to the vote on amending the ordinance that the changes should be made to bring the county’s campaign limitation standards in line with those at the state level.
“The FPPC and the county recommend that the campaign finance reform ordinance be amended so that it better comports with the provisions of the Political Reform Act,” Devereaux wrote in his report.
Higher contribution limitations tend to benefit incumbent candidates, since incumbents generally have greater contact with, access to and authority to impact political donors with business before government.
In this way, the board’s action this week would appear to have an immediate beneficial effect on Rutherford, who is eligible to vie for reelection in the Second District, and Curt Hagman, currently a member of the State Assembly who is running for Fourth District supervisor this year. The Fourth District incumbent, Gary Ovitt, announced earlier this year he will not seek reelection.

By Terry Catlin
(January 27)  As a resident of Upland I am concerned about the poor fiscal health of the city and am interested in how the council will implement a “sustainable remediation plan’ to address both the internal and external factors that have adversely resulted in our current economic position.
While there are many recommendations that have been presented by the Fiscal Response Task Force to the city council for consideration, I want to  specifically address the task force’s Measure 13, which relates to privatizing the management of the water & sewer assets.
Compared to the other measures that have been identified, this measure asserts to provide the potential for an infusion of a one-time payment of $5 million  to $32 million  with annual lease payments of $1.5  million to $2 million, the most revenue of any other measure. Because of these favorable numbers, it has certainly received some attention and is characterized as one of the top 5 measures to pursue. (As a side note, the source of information for the numbers and the scope defining the extent of the privatization was unavailable).
The task force in its letter to the council provided its finding, opinions and direction as to the path Upland must take. Further, the task force recommends that time is of the essence to implement the prescribed work-out plan. It is my hope that the sense of urgency to avoid financial collapse or asserted bankruptcy may carelessly overshadow the need for careful, transparent, thorough and thoughtful examination of proposed Measure 13, if not for some of the other measures as well.
Upland is rich in its water resources and its water portfolio is the envy of other municipalities. Not only is there a diverse water supply, there is good water quality.
Water service is unique in several respects, unlike the typical provision of goods and services. A sufficient, clean, and reliable supply of drinking water is necessary of life, requiring careful planning, infrastructure, and qualified operations, not only for sustaining life but also for fire service. Private water suppliers generally plan for return on their investment and not for the long-term public goals and interests. Private utilities are not necessarily more efficient than public utilities. There must be a careful scrutiny of assertions of proposed savings or revenue generation to avoid the use of inaccurate assumptions, or comparisons to privatizations that are incomparable. Private firms have the incentive to invest only so much as they will produce financial results for them during their period of private control, ignoring the necessary long-term forward planning to meet public demands and regulatory standards for generations to come.
Much of the privatization of public water supplies in the United States involves American subsidiaries of large multinational companies, primarily French & German corporations. Private water corporations have identified U.S. public water systems as profitable to own and operate. While there are successful public-private partnerships, there are also notable failures.
Privatization is not always the right answer and we must recognize that private partners are not charitable organizations. The role of private partners is not that of performing magic. I urge the council to explore all of the possible methods to leverage its water supply portfolio for its own financial benefit while maintaining control of our precious resource now and for generations to come.
Independent of whether or not there is privatization of the water & sewer assets, water rates will increase. I’d prefer to have local, public control or management of future rate increases.
Catlin is the president of the Inland Empire Utility Authority and the general manager of a treatment facility run by a joint powers agency consisting of the cities of Chino, Chino Hills, Ontario, Upland and the Monte Vista Water District.

(January 28)  A dairy operator in the former Chino Agricultural Preserve who was on the brink of disbanding his operation a little over two years ago has made arrangements to remain, pursuant to a favorable lease arrangement with the county for the property upon which the dairy is located.
For the last several years, dairyman Geoffrey Vanden Heuvel and his wife Darlene have been leasing the 74.57 acres located at 8315 Merrill Avenue in Chino to operate a dairy. Their present operation, paradoxically, came as a partial consequence of the decline of the local dairy industry.
In 1991, the county board of supervisors approved the Agricultural Open Space Land Acquisition and Post Acquisition Preservation program within the Chino Agricultural Preserve, using funds available to the county under the California Wildlife, Coastal and Parkland Conservation Act of 1988 and the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act of 1996. Nine major acquisitions totaling 371 acres were made utilizing Proposition 70 funds.
Proposition 70, approved by the state’s voters in 1988, authorized a $776 million general obligation bond to provide funds for the “acquisition, development, rehabilitation, protection, or restoration of park, wildlife, coastal, and natural lands in California.
The county also acquired fee title to the 74.57-acre dairy  at 8315 Merrill Avenue in the Ag Preserve, which is not part of the program properties. On May 21, 1996, the board of supervisors approved a purchase/leaseback agreement with Harry C. and Ruth Wiersema for the 8315 Merrill Avenue property. Escrow closed on February 7, 1997 and a ten-year lease with the Wiersemas commenced. Prior to the end of the ten-year term, the Wiersemas indicated they did not intend to request a renewal, and the property was advertised for lease to a new tenant.
The Wiersemas had sub-leased the dairy to Charles W. and Lynette E. Van Der Kooi, who continued dairy operations until a new tenant could be found.
On October 31, 2006 the board approved a nine-year, six-month, twenty-two day lease agreement with the Vanden Heuvels for the 74.57 acre county-owned dairy at 8315 Merrill Avenue  with a commencement date of February 7, 2007. In the first five years of that lease, the board approved one amendment to the deal, a sub-lease agreement between Vanden Heuvel and Van Der Kooi with a termination date of February 6, 2008, after which Vanden Heuvel became the tenant/dairy operator.  The dairy includes  a 2,440 square foot single family residence.
With the onset of the economic downturn in 2007, the dairy industry began experiencing rising feed prices and significant decreases in the price paid for milk. Many of the remaining dairy operations in the Chino Valley went out of business. Between November 2012 and March 2013, five dairies in the Chino/Ontario area disbanded their operations and sold their herds. Two of those were county-owned dairies acquired with Proposition 70 funds.
In December 2011, Vanden Heuvel requested that the county consider a reduction in the monthly rent because of a severe decrease in the income from his dairy operations. The county balked at that request. Then, according to  David Slaughter, the director of the county’s real estate services department, “Beginning in February 2012, the Vanden Heuvels began making monthly lease payments of only $8,500 instead of $11,250 as called for in the lease. While the Vanden Heuvels were technically in default, staff of the county’s real estate services department determined it was not in the best interest of the county to initiate eviction because a new tenant was unlikely to be found. More importantly, vacant dairies are difficult to secure from theft and vandalism, which, in some instances, have rendered dairies inoperable, too expensive to repair, and, consequently, unrentable.”
Instead of initiating a default proceeding, the county real estate services department conducted a market survey of comparable properties and determined that the market rent for a dairy of the size the Vanden Heuvels were operating was substantially below the rate set forth in the lease agreement. As a result of discussions with the Vanden Heuvels and with county counsel, the term of the previous lease in March 2013 was reduced by three years from August 31, 2016 to August 31, 2013 in order to decrease the monthly rent from $11,250 to $8,500, effective, and retroactive to, February 2012.
The Vanden Heuvels continued to operate their dairy after that revamped lease expired in September.  This week, Slaughter told the board of supervisors, “Prior to the expiration of the lease agreement with the Vanden Heuvels, [Geoffrey] Vanden Heuvel expressed uncertainty in his intent to continue to operate the dairy. The county commenced advertising the 74.57 acre dairy for lease, which, unfortunately, produced no interest in the property. Vanden Heuvel then approached the real estate services department about continuing to lease the dairy. During these discussions, Lease Agreement No. 06-1078 expired; however, Vanden Heuvel has remained on the property and continued to pay rent  under the holdover provision of the lease. Rather than amend the existing lease, the real estate services department negotiated a new lease agreement incorporating new standard lease language with Vanden Heuvel for the continued use of the 74.57 acre county-owned dairy and the single family residence retroactive to September 1, 2013 through August 31, 2016.
Under the lease terms Geoffrey and Darlene Vanden Heuvel, doing business as  J & D Star Dairy will pay monthly rent of $6,350, or  $76,200 annually for the dairy property and the 2,440 square foot home it includes.
According to Slaughter, the rent is “mid-range for existing dairy properties in the Chino area.”
The once-vaunted Chino Agricultural Preserve was formerly the most intensive milk-producing area in the world. Within its 17,000 acre confines were just under 400 dairies and 400,000 cows. With $800 million in annual dairy production in 1976, the relatively compact Chino Valley region alone was within the entire state of California a close third in milk output behind the much more expansive Tulare and Merced counties.
In the late 1950s, the Chino Valley had become a haven to dairy farmers, many of them of Dutch or Portuguese descent, who were displaced by the urbanization of southeast Los Angeles County. The preserve was formed in 1968 under the auspices of California’s Williamson Act — a 1965 law that was intended to preserve California farmland and to serve as a hedge against urban sprawl. The law granted substantial tax breaks to property owners agreeing to restrict their land to agricultural uses for at least 10 years. By 1970, the Chino Valley was the source for most of Southern California’s milk as well as a major supplier of the cheese for a much larger geographical area.
By the mid-1980s, growing numbers of dairy farmers in the preserve wanted out, as the local industry was itself being subjected to the same pressures that had been brought to bear on dairyman who had been forced to pull up the stakes of their Los Angeles County operations two decades before. Land speculators and developers eyeing the property and envisioning it as residential subdivisions supported politicians at the municipal and county levels to create a dairy-busting agenda that in time spelled the end of the preserve as a lasting entity.
In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the county’s land use professionals were seeking to examine the desirability of maintaining the preserve’s dairies as a hedge against the burgeoning urbanization and to determine if the dairy industry had a reasonable prospect of sustaining itself in the changing environment. At the same time, the county’s elected leadership was heavily influenced by developmental interests, the major providers of political contributions. With a few exceptions, the supervisors leaned in favor of breaking up the preserve.
In 1986, the county took the first step toward deconstructing the Williamson Act’s applicability in the Chino Valley. By 1997, half of the dairies that had been operating in the preserve at its peak had left. The jousting between Ontario and Chino over annexation of the preserve had begun.
In 1999, while there were still 140 dairies operating in Chino Valley, the city of Ontario annexed nearly 8,200 acres of the 15,200 remaining acres in the preserve. Chino laid claim to the other 7,000. The county, for the most part, alternately passively and actively accepted the inevitability of the pending urbanization. Ontario drew up master plans for development of 31,000 homes, 5 million square feet of retail space and 5 million square feet of industrial space.
Chino designated over 400 acres for industrial development and earmarked 2,000 acres for new residences, with complementary plans for commercial development.
But that anticipated development came only in fits and starts. By 2005, the number of dairies had dwindled to 70. The eventual transformation of the land away from its agricultural heyday was under way in earnest. Nevertheless, the development community’s reach exceeded its grasp and the expected building boom within the preserve in the early 2000s failed to materialize. With the economic downturn of 2007, building in the area slowed to a crawl. The county, which had acquired some property in the area under the auspices of sustaining agricultural operations as well as under the assumption the land could be sold in relatively short order at a profit, became a landlord to several dairy operations the county’s political leadership and its political supporters wanted to see shelved.
Ironically, recent events have transpired to put the county in the position of continuing to prop up some of the dairy farms its political leadership a few years ago was angling to extinguish.

(January 26)  Longtime Phelan Pinon Hills Community Services District Board Member Joe Fahrlender has resigned from his position, effective January 15.
A fiscal conservative, Fahrlender refused on more than one occasion to support appropriations passed by his board colleagues over the years.
In recent months, Fahrlender, who  long had access to the county leadership of the Republican Party, expressed his doubts that Jim Brulte’s leadership of the GOP at the state level or Curt Hagman’s leadership of the party at the county level, could make inroads on the clout of the Democrats.
Fahrlender was the runner-up to Richard Hall in the 2012 race for the Division 3 position on the Mojave Water Agency Board of Directors.
Fahrlender became a Phelan Pinon Hills director on January 28, 2009. While he yet owns property in Phelan and has a legal residence there, he is now dividing his time between California and Arkansas.
As a result of Fahrlender’s resignation, the Phelan Pinon Hills Community Services District is undertaking a search to replace him for the two years that remain on his current term.
The district has now advertised for any interested candidates meeting the district residency requirement to submit a letter of interest, a personal resume and any other materials deemed by the candidate to be appropriate by 5 p.m. today (January 31) to the district’s office at 4176 Warbler Road in Phelan.

(January 28)  The county of San Bernardino is preparing to pay half of a million dollars more than it earlier anticipated to acquire property for the Cherry Avenue Interchange Reconstruction Project.
The interchange project was previously slated as a  $61,546,000 undertaking to improve traffic access to the Fontana area through the I-10 Cherry Avenue Interchange, which lies at the far west end of Fontana near the unincorporated county frontier between Fontana on the east and the cities of Rancho Cucamonga and Ontario on the west.
On March 23, 2010, the county board of supervisors approved Cooperative Agreement No. C10191 with the  San Bernardino County Transportation Authority and the city of Fontana  to establish the roles and responsibilities for administering and funding the original $9,503,000 estimated cost of completing the right-of-way work for the project. The county was identified as the lead agency for the right-of-way services, which included property acquisition, appraisal, and utility relocation. On January 25, 2011, the board approved entering Cooperative Agreement No. C10191 with the authority and the city to establish the roles and responsibilities for construction and funding of the original $61,546,000 estimated construction cost for the project. In accordance with the agreement, the authority would serve as lead agency for the construction phase of the project.
According to Gerry Newcome, the county director of public works, “Construction costs for the project are anticipated to be less than originally estimated, but the right-of-way costs for the project have increased due to additional right-of-way work, such as property permit-to-enter agreements, billboard relocation support, cell tower site relocations, site clearance, and third party utility relocation work. The authority, county, and city have agreed to shift $500,000 of the fund savings from the construction phase to the right-of-way phase to fund the increased costs in that phase. Therefore, Cooperative Agreement No. C11091 for construction needs to be amended to reflect the reduced construction costs and the reduced financial contribution amounts from each party. Further, Cooperative Agreement No. C10191 needs to be amended to reflect the increased right-of-way costs and the required financial contribution amounts from each party. Since the construction savings are being used to finance the right-of-way increases, there is no net increase in required financial contribution from the parties.”
Thus, while the right-of-way cost on the project will increase by $500,000, from $12,503,000 to $13,003,000, there will be a $1,265,000 decrease in the cost of the construction phase of the project, from $61,546,000 to $60,281,000.
“With the adjustments,” Newcombe said, “it is anticipated that the net result is that the county’s overall share of cost for the project is not increasing and remains estimated at $18 million.”

(January 29)  In reaction to the drought condition that has created uncommonly dry conditions this winter, mountain fire officials have reinstated the county’s curbside chipping program.
The lack of rainfall this season and most of last year has left vegetation in much of the San Bernardino National Forest parched.
Despite the cool temperatures, the fire hazard in the San Bernardino Mountains is unusually high. In reaction, the Crest Forest Fire Protection District has stepped up fire prevention efforts, including inspections aimed at hazardous weed and debris abatement.
The fire department has initiated and in large part completed inspections within two blocks of the forest boundary in the communities of Crestline, Cedarpines Park, Valley of Enchantment, Rimforest and Twin Peaks.
The intent of the stepped-up program is to have homeowners create and maintain “defensible space” around homes. Defensible space is created by clearing the area surrounding a structure of excess vegetation, wood debris or any other flammable materials.
In conjunction with this, the county of San Bernardino, which last year subsumed the Crest Forest Fire Protection District, is making a mobile wood chipper available to the community to perform curbside chipping.
The chipper is used to chip wood debris such as tree limbs and branches. That debris must be prepared by being reduced to a diameter of no larger than 10 inches in diameter in order to be fed into the chipper and thereby processed. The wood chips are then redistributed back onto the property from which they originated. In chip form, the flammability of the wood is degraded.
Information on the wood chipping program can be had by calling the county Land Use Services Department at (909) 884-4056 or the Office of the Fire Marshal at (909) 386-8400.

(January 30)  The largest solar project ever built has gone online in northeast San Bernardino County.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, located fifty miles northwest of Needles and about five miles from the Nevada border, was tied into the state’s power grid last September. After months of system check-outs and final preparations,  all three of the plant’s 46-story towers began commercial generation of power on December 30, meeting a corporate-imposed deadline for the system to be operational by the end of 2013.
The project proponent was BrightSource Energy Company, which was responsible for obtaining the permitting. It is now being operated by NRG Solar, Inc.  Among the investors in the project were NRG Solar, Google and BrightSource. Bechtel was the contractor on the $2.2 billion project.
Utilizing BrightSource’s LPT solar thermal system consisting of 173,500 heliostats –paired mirrors that track the sun and focus the captured thermal energy onto a  459-foot tall tower  – the plant uses that heat to achieve a temperature of 1,000 degrees in a condenser that boils water, creating steam to power a turbine that generates electricity.
The facility will provide power to meet the needs of 140,000 California homes and will be sent via the grid as far as Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The land upon which the project was built is being leased from the federal government. It is a habitat of the endangered desert tortoise, a protected species.
A consortium of environmental groups sued the Interior Department and its Bureau of Land Management to block the Ivanpah plant from being built, contending that the facility’s disruption of the desert landscape would damage the desert tortoise’s habitat on federal land. The Sierra Club, which qualifies as the major environmental group in California, did not join in that lawsuit. While some Sierra Club members were disturbed by the potential harm the plant would do to the tortoise habitat, they were conflicted because the overarching impact of the plant is at one with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, which calls for the elimination or reduction in the use of fossil fuels for the provision of energy. .
One percent of the $2.2 billion project’s budget –  $22 million – was used to hire biologists, purchase conservation land for the tortoises elsewhere, incorporate protective measures for the reptiles and relocate about 200 of the tortoises captured on the property into pens.
Native American groups also raised objections to the project, maintaining it would disturb sacred grounds in the Ivanpah Valley.
The project was backed by a $1.6 billion federal loan. Sale arrangements for the electricity have already been made with Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. Pacific Gas and Electric, the largest utility in  Northern California, has entered into an agreement to  purchase roughly  two-thirds of the electricity the Ivanpah plant is producing.  Southern California Edison will purchase roughly one third of the electricity produced at Ivanpah.

The project will assist those companies in meeting a state mandate that one third of California’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.
Protests and objections to the plant on environmental grounds continue to be registered. When the plant was started up for testing last year, a number of birds that flew into the the resultant  super-heated plumes of air from the towers and mirrors died.  Federal fish and wildlife officials stepped in and began collecting bird carcasses. No shut down order was lodged against the Ivanpah plant but on December13, the California Energy Commission held off on permitting another BrightSource on the basis of the bird deaths demonstrated at Ivanpah.
Environmentalists also protested the use of water to keep the mirrors at the facility clean and the creation of dust by the vehicles during that upkeep. In response NRG is using robotic devices designed by BrightSource, which are outfitted with infrared cameras and are capable of being remotely controlled from the plant’s operations floor, allowing them to be operated at night.   The plant was designed so that its boiler tubes are cooled by air flow rather than water, minimizing water usage.
That area of the Mojave Desert, which is notable for three nearby casinos as well as the major highway to Las Vegas, is now distinguished during the day by a vast  sea of mirrors and at night by the glow of the tower tops.

You can download a pdf of the January 24 Edition of the Sentinel by clicking on the following portal:

Sentinel 01-24-14

(January 23)  The Upland Fiscal Task Force Committee has completed its analysis of the financial crisis facing the City of Gracious Living without arriving at a definitive strategy for stanching the hemorrhaging of red ink onto the city’s ledgers, instead giving the city council a smorgasbord of choices on measures to make incremental inroads into Upland’s future deficits.
Four members of the task force will present the committee’s analysis  to the city council at the January 27 city council meeting. Those findings will be based upon a written report, now being authored by task force member Anthony Ghosn.
The decision to form the committee came in October, when Upland City Manager Stephen Dunn told the public and the city council that the city was functioning with a balanced budget but was on a collision course with fiscal reality in coming years. Dunn said the city’s financial circumstance is bleak, as is indicated by a 2012 auditor’s opinion from the certified public accounting firm Mayer Hoffman and McCann as well as the financial rating company Standard and Poor’s intended downgrading of the city’s credit rating. Mayer Hoffman and McCann said there are serious questions with regard to the city’s solvency and Standard and Poor’s had already downgraded the city from an AA credit rating to an A+ and was considering downgrading its credit rating even further. A municipality’s credit rating directly impacts the interest rate it must pay when borrowing money.
The city’s currently balanced $39 million budget is being held together by means of heavy borrowing from rapidly evaporating reserves, while relying on income from two of the city’s enterprise funds which remain in the black, its water and sewer service funds, Dunn said.
Years of deferred maintenance are beginning to catch up with the city, Dunn said, pushing it to a point beyond which it will no longer be able to stave off those problems into the future, as potholes, streets and dilapidating equipment are being neglected, funding for promised post employment benefits is non-existent, and no programs are available for attracting businesses into the city or dealing with the city’s burgeoning homeless population.
The city council chartered the fiscal task force committee with finding solutions to the city’s financial challenges.
With the specter of bankruptcy looming over the city, the task force went to work. Based upon the tenor of the comments made during the course of the group’s meetings on December 5, January 11 and January 18, four of the group’s members appeared to be less sanguine about the prospect of the city’s ability to fashion workable fixes to the city’s gaping financial hole than the other six. Ghosn, who was appointed by councilman Brendan Brandt, attorney Robert Gaudy, who was appointed by Mayor Ray Musser, and certified public accountants Bob Nelson and Steven Spears, both appointed by councilman Glen Bozar, were highly skeptical of proposals to right the city’s listing financial ship by means of a taxing proposal, either in the form of a utility tax or sales tax, on the grounds that it would be regressive if passed and would potentially prove counterproductive by prompting businesses to leave town, residents to shop elsewhere or new businesses to avoid setting up in Upland. They also questioned whether the city’s residents would consent to such a tax if an election to impose it were held.
Nor did the quartet readily embrace a proposal for the city to sell off, lease long term or in any other fashion privatize its water division, a move which would generate a considerable amount of cash immediately and would redress much of the city’s current deficit spending, but would provide only a one-time infusion of funds and would result in saddling the city’s residents with astronomical water and sewer service rates to provide the private company involved in the takeover with a profit for its part of the undertaking.
And collectively, Ghosn, Gaudy, Nelson and Spears appeared to be convinced that the only two viable paths out of interminable fiscal turmoil for the city consisted of either bankruptcy or radical cuts in the number of municipal employees and commensurate reductions in the salaries and benefits to the employees that would remain after the bloodletting.  The main thrust of Ghosn, Gaudy, Nelson and Spears’ assertions was that whatever savings and revenue enhancements could be had from the other considered measures, they simply would not be enough to redress the city’s financial problems, given that 68 percent of the city’s operational and existential costs consist of payroll and the provision of benefits and pensions. Nelson, in particular, propounded the argument that the city needed to get a handle on and reduce its pension commitments at once to head off the further deterioration of the city’s financial picture in the future, when more and more of its current employees will join the ranks of the retired.
Despite the dire projections of what it would cost the city to ignore the hazard of maintaining its current manpower levels and labor cost structure, the committee rejected what Nelson felt was a modest but needed proposal to impose a hiring freeze.
Over its two-month active life, the committee looked at 47 different proposals to help cure Upland’s budget ills. Seventeen of those, such as the hiring freeze, imposing labor concessions on city employees or eliminating benefits for the entire city council and treasurer, were rejected. But thirty of those were deemed to be worth either pursuing or further study. In the end, through a selection process by which the task force members were able to essentially vote on their top ten choices, ten cost cutting or revenue enhancing provisions have been earmarked as recommendations to the city council. Those recommendations are not binding, and the council will be free to consider those options which did not make the top ten cut.
The ten top recommendations are: seeking voter approval of a half-cent sales tax, contracting out or privatizing sewer and water service; reductions in the operation of the fire department, including a brown-out of its least used station and selling its ladder truck; renewing the city’s trash contract to generate revenue  the city is not currently receiving; contracting out fleet maintenance;   updating the city’s business license tax schedules; reopening labor contracts; “regionalizing” the police department; combining police and fire dispatch; and outsourcing the animal shelter.
Other money-saving ploys accorded a lesser priority were outsourcing library management as well as the planning, building and engineering departments and information technology functions.
While Nelson, Spears, Gaudy and Ghosn expressed varying levels of disappointment over the task force’s lack of willingness to embrace a much tougher program of austerity for city operations, with each hinting a belief that the city would not be able to turn a corner in its footrace with financial disaster and the possibility of being confronted with bankruptcy down the road, all appeared to be willing to stay on the reservation by endorsing the overall committee’s final recommendations to the city council. Gaudy, who early on both privately and publicly opined that the city appeared to be on the treadmill to bankruptcy, later in the process considered but ultimately rejected asking the committee to consider a 48th option in the form of considering declaring bankruptcy. Ultimately he elected against that course, not wanting to saddle the council member who had appointed him, Mayor Ray Musser, with the legacy of bankruptcy.
On January 27, the committee’s recommendations will be presented to the council by four of the task force members. Three of those – former Upland Mayor Richard Anderson, former Upland Police Chief Marty Thouvenell and Randall Lewis, Upland’s most successful businessman – will represent the more optimistic and numerous members of the task force who believe the city can cure its ills and stave off bankruptcy by means of the nostrums they are recommending. Only one of the pessimistic wing of the committee – Ghosn – will be among those making the presentation.
Ghosn’s perspective – and that of Gaudy, Nelson and Spears – will thus at some level be insinuated into the information presented to the council. Ghosn, a managing director at Worldbridge LCC where he works on pre-bankruptcy preparations involving multimillion dollar corporations, will make that dissenting perspective available through the written report he is to present. The Sentinel has obtained an early tentative draft of Ghosn’s report, which features subtle language intended to drive home the point that the city of Upland is not out of the woods yet and cannot hope to simply shake off the fiscal doldrums with measures that nibble around the edges of a huge problem.
“The city of Upland currently holds a qualified opinion regarding ’its ability to continue as a going concern’ as stated in the  auditor’s letter for the 2013 consolidated annual financial report,” Ghosn’s draft states. “This is a serious matter in need of comprehensive, thorough and orderly attention from an operational and financial perspective across all departments, funds and related entities within the city of Upland.”
The report then calls for a “remediation plan to correct the city’s current financial condition with sustainable and balanced action, revenue enhancement, cost containment policy and asset reallocation.” Ghosn pulled no punches in declaring “the city of Upland finds itself in this situation for the second time in 12 years and the third time in 20 years. Each time the conditions have worsened, creating the death spiral of an organization and its viability to constituents and others stakeholders. A new workout plan is now required to avoid bankruptcy and reorganization. Quick fixes will put us back in the same boat.”
The only way the city can climb out of its financial abyss, Ghosn suggested, is through “reallocating assets and effectuating a cultural change among municipal staff.”

(January 22)  Spurred by the death of an 9-year-old girl and injuries to her 7-year-old brother as they were crossing a street en route home from Etiwanda Colony Elementary School, the Etiwanda School Board last week voted to reverse its decision three years ago to end school bus service.
The board members were confronted with petitions signed by hundreds of parents requesting the return of bussing for the students.
During the 2010-2011 school year, the board terminated district bus service, based on the cost it represented.
An informal survey indicated district voters were overwhelmingly averse to assessments to defray the cost of district bus service. State law does not require districts to provide bus service to pupils other than those who qualify as so-called special needs or special education students. The state partially subsidizes the provision of bus transportation within school districts that offer it, but a significant portion of the cost must be borne by the district.
The death of Ashlyn Gardner, a third-grader who was crossing the street at East Avenue at Banyan Street in Rancho Cucamonga with her younger brother when they were struck by a pickup truck, galvanized the community of Etiwanda, which  was one of the three former wine-producing districts including Alta Loma and Cucamonga that combined in 1977 to form the city of Rancho Cucamonga.
Calculating that the cost of bussing a single student to school each year ran to more than $700, board members gambled three years ago that they could eliminate the district’s bus service without dire or fatal consequences. They lost that bet.
On January 17 they collectively consented to reestablishing bus service for Etiwanda Colony Elementary, Summit Intermediate, Heritage Intermediate, Day Creek Intermediate and Etiwanda Intermediate schools, utilizing seven busses, effective at the return of students from Spring Break in April  for the two remaining months in the school year.
Board members referred to the change as a “pilot program,” saying they would determine at the end of the school year whether to continue with the transportation program when school starts again in August.