SAN BERNARDINO–Bankruptcy appears to have inadvertently enabled San Bernardino city officials in a way they had not anticipated.
In 2011, the city of San Bernardino was  looking to join with a growing number of municipalities in San Bernardino County and California which had become disenchanted with the contracts those cities had for the operation of red light cameras and were opting out of those arrangements.
San Bernardino was bound by its arrangement with Scottsdale, Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions to keep the camera-surveillance-and-red-light-violation-ticket-issuing systems in place until July 2014. The system was not popular with a large number of the city’s residents, many of whom were being cited to appear for making what would turn out to be, upon a time-consuming court appearance, legal right hand turns against a red light.  When the city attorney’s office first looked into shutting that operation down, the city council was informed it would cost $114,075 to buy out American Traffic Solutions’ contract. On March 7, 2011, the council elected to bite the bullet, pay American Traffic Solutions the buyout fee, and discontinue the program which had been in place since 2005.
Then, however, the city learned that a clause in the contract made breaking the contract much more expensive, i.e., $1.8 million. The council rescinded the buyout.
Now, five months after the city of San Bernardino filed for bankruptcy protection, American Traffic Solutions is leaving the county seat of its own volition.
Among the city’s creditors and vendors not being paid is American Traffic Solutions. The city in fiscal 2012-2013 was scheduled to pay the company $417,870 and an identical amount in 2013-14 to keep the system at several of the city’s major intersectionss functioning. But since July, the city has paid American Traffic solutions nothing. Last month, the company pulled the plug.
There had been controversy over the program from even before it was put in place. Some opposed it on safety grounds, arguing that it would result in an uptick in rear-end collisions as many motorists in reaction to yellow lights came to an abrupt halt. Advocates of the system said that the cameras would nonetheless prevent more lethal T-bone accidents, i.e., ones that involved cars being broadsided in the city’s intersections. Others charged that the city was less interested in safety than in producing revenue from traffic tickets.
These later critics found some validation when many cities, including San Bernardino, soured on the systems when they did not produce the revenue originally envisioned by proponents.
In San Bernardino, a fulltime police department employee was devoted to working the system, augmented by at least three other employees who devoted part of their work weeks to the processing of tickets. When the fees paid to American Traffic Solutions and the courts were subtracted from the net ticket proceeds, the city was losing money on the venture.
The city, buffeted by a $45.8 million systemic annual deficit, sought the refuge of bankruptcy protection last summer. Accompanying that filing was an effort to rein in costs. In the police department, sworn officer positions lost to attrition went unfilled. And a major bloodletting of non-sworn personnel took place, with 62 of its 103 non-sworn members laid off.  The gutting of the department’s clerical staff made processing camera tickets an extremely low priority.
American Traffic Systems in reaction shuttered, disassembled and removed its cameras last month. It then marched over to U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Riverside, where it filed a $1.67 million claim for unpaid fees against the city. There is little prospect the city will be making good on that bill anytime soon. There are 12 other creditors with outstanding claims against San Bernardino larger than American Traffic Systems’ bill.

SAN BERNARDINO–A little more than an hour before midnight on December 31, Jason Kenneth Anderson of Victorville became the 47th homicide victim in the city of San Bernardino in 2012 when he was gunned down at 10:50 p.m. at 677 W 28th St.. The hail of bullets that felled Anderson injured three others. The assailant or assailants, whose identities at this time are unknown to investigators, remain(s) at large. Officers believe the crime may have been gang related.
The total San Bernardino murder count for 2012 did not reach the city’s record high of 58 killings in 2005. The death count for the just-concluded year nonetheless eclipsed the 30 killings that took place in San Bernardino in 2011.
Police say they have solved 28 of the 47 murder cases, that is, they have identified who they believe to be the perpetrators and uncovered in each of those cases what is considered to be a motive. Nineteen of the other cases remain unsolved at this time.
According to the police, seven of the murders were gang-related; three arose from domestic disputes; four were robberies; nine involved a dispute or confrontation that escalated into murder; five of the killings involved a complex mix of factors; and in 19 of the cases the motive for the slayings is unknown.
A handgun or handguns were used in 38 of the instances. A shotgun was used in one of the killings. Two slayings came about from the use of blunt force. Knives were used in five of the homicides. Hands were the instrument of death in the two others.
Thirty-nine of the victims were males; eight were female. Twenty-one of the victims were Hispanic; eighteen were African-American; and eight were Caucasian.
May was the deadliest month, when a total of 12 people died at the hands of another or others. Between April 28 and May 7, a period of nine days, eight people were murdered in the city.
In addition, there were five fatal officer-involved shootings and five other homicides that investigators ruled as justifiable self-defense in San Bernardino in 2012.
With deadly 2012 just concluded, 2013 began on an inauspicious note. Less than two hours of the new year had elapsed when at 1:52 a.m. San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies were summoned to a report of shots fired in the 7000 block of North Conejo Drive in unincorporated San Bernardino. There they found the city’s first homicide victim of the young year, Mark Mancha of San Bernardino, dead from multiple upper body gunshot wounds.
On January 2 at about 1:30 p.m., a man was found by San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies in the 8060 block of Sunnyside Avenue in an unincorporated portion of San Bernardino, shortly after they were summoned there by a call of shots fired. The victim, who has not been identified pending notification of next of kin, had been shot multiple times and was pronounced dead at the scene by responding paramedics. According to sheriff’s detective Steve Pennington, Donald Bryson has been arrested for that murder.

In 2013, Starbucks will open a state-of-the-art juice-making facility in Rancho Cucamonga that will employ 160 at what is to be the major production facility for the Evolution Fresh beverage company the coffee giant acquired in late 2011.
Evolution Fresh was created by Naked Juice founder Jimmy Rosenberg, who operated out of a 60,000 square foot production facility and executive suite in an industrial building in eastern San Bernardino. Evolution Fresh products were available only on the West Coast when Starbucks acquired the company for $30 million in November 2011. At that time, Starbucks said it intended to expand Evolution Fresh into a national and then international brand.
Bottled Evolution Fresh products are among a limited offering of foods and drinks beyond its own traditional coffees and teas which Starbucks makes available within its stores. In March the Seattle-based company opened its maiden stand-alone Evolution Fresh outlet in Bellevue, Washington and followed that up with another in Seattle in July and a third one in San Francisco in October. The company has plans of opening a string of Evolution Fresh stores or kiosks elsewhere on the West Coast before taking the brand nationwide.
Construction of the $70 million, 260,000-square-foot factory in Rancho Cucamonga has  begun  and will more than quadruple the production and distribution capability of the Evolution Fresh line. Upon completion some time after mid-year, 160 people will be put to work at the production and bottling plant. There are currently 120 employed at the Evolution Fresh operation in San Bernardino, which will be closed down when the new Rancho Cucamonga facility comes on line.
According to Starbucks spokeswoman Marianne Duong, “The new plant in Rancho Cucamonga will allow us to produce  four to five times as much juice as we are currently, still using our never heated, high pressure processing technology that allows us to keep more flavor and nutrients of the fruits and vegetables in our drinks. All of our current employees in San Bernardino have been offered positions at the new plant and we will be hiring at least forty more when the new factory is operational.”
Since Starbucks picked up Fresh Evolution, sales of the product have increased by more than 23 percent, and Starbucks has forged ahead with the creation of four new juices or juice combinations – raspberry watermelon, cucumber pineapple ginger, pineapple coconut water and spicy lemonade. The Fresh Evolution product is being marketed at Starbucks locations and the three Fresh Evolution stores, as well as in health food and natural food stores and grocery stores.
The Rancho Cucamonga facility will be Starbucks’ sixth manufacturing site in the U.S., joining ones the company has in Washington, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Nevada and Georgia.

MONTCLAIR – The 42,000-square foot vacancy in the building that formerly housed the Borders bookstore adjacent to the Montclair Plaza will soon be filled with a replacement tenant, Ashley Furniture Homestore.
Ashley is tentatively scheduled to take up occupancy there as early as April, according to city officials and corporate officers with Progressive Real Estate Partners, which served as a broker on the property. The move comes nearly 19 months after Ashley began negotiations for the purchase of the building, shortly after the Borders chain made wholesale closures of its outlets nationwide in April 2011.
According to information provided to the Sentinel, Ashley purchased the building outright and signed a long term lease for the property.
The development represents a considerable coup for Montclair. The vacancy in the big box represented a considerable blow to Montclair’s prestige and a further erosion of the ambience around Montclair Plaza, which for decades had been the premier shopping location in San Bernardino County, generating considerable sales tax revenue in Montclair, one of the smaller cities in the county land-wise. Over the last decade, however, Montclair Plaza’s cachet as a popular shopping destination has slipped, as it has been eclipsed by The Mills in Ontario, Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga and The Shoppes at Chino Hills.
The downturn in the local, state and national economy over the last five years has taken its toll on Montclair and its plaza as well.
For a time, it seemed that Ashley was going to pass on the opportunity to locate in Montclair, but the site offered several advantages the company in the end was unable to resist, the foremost of which included its proximity to, along with visibility and easy access from, the 10 Freeway.
Based upon an understanding and mutual interest with the city, the company is proceeding with preparations for interior tenant improvements at the location that have yet to be fully vetted and approved by the Montclair Planning Commission. Conceptual plans for what the company envisions have been shared with the city’s planning division, which provided a provisional okay for internal demolition work in the building that is now proceeding.
The remodel plans are in the final stages of preparation and will be submitted to the city soon. It is anticipated that approval of the makeover project in its entirety will come by the end of this month or in early February.
Those plans should segue into and complement work to be done in converting the plaza’s now shuttered Broadway/Macy’s building into a lifestyle center, which is to feature restaurants and smaller shops and retail outlets.

The city of Rancho Cucamonga has modified its development code to allow electricity-producing wind turbines to be erected on residential properties of one half acre or more.
In Rancho Cucamonga, properties designated as very low density have a minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet and a maximum residential density of up to 2 units. Owners of such properties are now eligible to apply for a permit to construct a wind energy tower in such properties’ backyards, pursuant to setback requirements.
City officials said they have cleared the way for the towers, which in residential zones cannot stand any higher than 40 feet, to supplement energy sources and encourage the use of renewable and non-polluting means of meeting power needs.
The new code calls for freestanding 40-foot-high maximum towers to be free of guy wires, and utilize a color scheme that is non-reflective and presents no startling contrast from its surroundings. No more than one freestanding tower can be erected on a parcel. Up to two roof-mounted turbines can be attached to a structure if they reach no higher than 15 feet. Such systems are to remain functional, according to the redrafted city code, and if they fall into disuse for more than 12 months must be removed.
In specified industrial areas, land owners are permitted to erect up to two 80-foot high turbines per parcel.

San Bernardino County Superior Court will discontinue  conducting  “night court” for traffic infractions, effective March 1.
According to Presiding Judge Marsha Slough, “The court has taken this action due to severe ongoing budget reductions.”
Night court is presently held once a month in each of the Barstow, Big Bear, Fontana, Joshua Tree, Needles, Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino and Victorville court districts. Those operations will discontinue as of March 1.
Drop boxes are provided in all court districts to receive fine payments by check or money order and traffic school proof of completion.
“California faces a financial crisis of historical proportions and neither the Superior Court for San Bernardino County nor the California judicial system is exempt from having to deal with the crisis,” said Slough. “After careful deliberation, I, as the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court for San Bernardino County, have concluded that the changes set forth above are one of the most reasonable and measured ways to meet the court’s extremely difficult financial challenges.”

(December 28)   The pre-trial jousting between prosecutors and defense attorneys in the celebrated Colonies Settlement Corruption Case has been extended for at least one more round with prosecutors’ appeal to the California Supreme Court of an appellate court’s October ruling that on balance favored the defendants.
At issue is whether bribery counts against the land developer at the center of the case will be reinstated. Those bribery charges are considered the linchpin of the case against all four remaining defendants.
The Colonies Settlement Political Corruption Case grew out of the November 26, 2006 3-2 vote of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors as it was then composed to approve a $102 million settlement of the civil action brought against the county and its flood control division by the Colonies Partners over drainage issues at the Colonies at San Antonio residential and Colonies Crossroads commercial subdivisions in northeast Upland.
Prosecutors allege that earlier in 2006 Jeff Burum, who with Dan Richards was one of the two managing principals of the Colonies Partners, conspired with former sheriff’s deputies’ union president Jim Erwin to blackmail two of the then-members of the board of supervisors, Bill Postmus and Paul Biane, by threatening to reveal in mailers to be sent to voters the former’s homosexuality and drug use and the latter’s insolvency. After the November 2006 vote in which Postmus and Biane joined with their board colleague Gary Ovitt to approve the settlement, prosecutors maintain Burum during the first six months of 2007 delivered four separate $100,000 bribes to Postmus, Biane, Erwin and Ovitt’s chief-of-staff, Mark Kirk, in the form of political donations to political action committees the four had founded or controlled.
Postmus and Erwin were indicted on bribery and extortion counts relating to this alleged scheme in February 2010. After Postmus in March 2011 entered guilty pleas on 14 felony counts contained in that first indictment, he appeared as the star witness before a newly impaneled grand jury that heard a total of 45 witnesses in April 2011. The following month that grand jury handed down a superseding 29-count indictment naming Burum, Erwin, Biane and Kirk, who were charged variously with conspiracy to commit a crime, bribery, conflict of interest, tax fraud, tax evasion, perjury, forgery, and aiding and abetting.
In August 2011, after demurrers were filed on behalf of Burum, Erwin, Kirk and Biane by their lawyers, Judge Brian McCarville granted some but not all of those defense requests to throw out charges based on their  insufficiency or lack of clarity, dismissing five of the counts lodged against Burum, two of the counts Biane faced, two of the counts Erwin was charged with and one count pending against Kirk.
The prosecution then appealed McCarville’s ruling to the appellate court to have the charges reinstated. Defense attorneys likewise filed petitions with the appellate court, arguing that all charges that had been tossed should have been dismissed and asserting that McCarville should have sustained more of the demurrers than he actually did.
After nearly a year of consideration, the 4th District Court of Appeal on October 31, 2012 in a 41-page decision written by Justice Art W. McKinster and joined by associate justices Betty Ann Richli and Douglas P. Miller, upheld McCarville’s dismissal of part of a conspiracy charge plus four other counts against Burum, and tossed out a conflict of interest charge against Burum. At the same time, the appellate justices restored some elements of the conspiracy charge along with an aiding and abetting charge against Burum.
In the case of Erwin, the appellate judges dismissed three charges against Erwin that included engaging in a conflict of interest and that he aided and abetted Biane in his reception of a bribe. The court restored one charge against Erwin, that of misappropriating public funds. It upheld McCarville’s denial of a bid to dismiss the conspiracy and two other charges.
For Kirk, the judges denied his request to throw out two charges pertaining to conspiring with Burum and misappropriation of public funds. They also restored a charge that he had improperly lobbied his boss, Ovitt.
On December 10, the last day that it could do so, the state attorney general’s office, which is acting in concert with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office in prosecuting the matter, appealed the Fourth District Court of Appeals ruling, seeking to have four bribery charges and a public officer crime count against Burum that were contained in the original indictment but which have since been nixed by McCarville and the appellate court reinstated.
In its petition to the California Supreme Court, the state Attorney General’s Office asserts California’s bribery statutes are a half century out of date and not in compliance with federal law, and are further not in keeping with previous decisions rendered by the state Supreme Court. Prosecutors took issue with McCarville’s ruling, which was affirmed by the Fourth District Court of Appeals, that someone who has given a bribe cannot be simultaneously guilty of having aided and abetted the individual who received the alleged bribe.  McCarville and the Fourth Appellate Court’s rulings will hamstring prosecutors in the pursuit of political corruption cases in the future, the state attorney general’s office maintains.
“Because the Court of Appeal’s holding specifically limits the manner in which prosecutors can charge bribery crimes, it will have a chilling effect on public corruption prosecutions and cause the issue to evade review,” deputy attorney general Melissa Mandel propounded in the appeal petition. She asserted that Burum was the “mastermind” of the entire criminal enterprise, while decrying the dislogic that he was being let off the hook while Erwin, whom she characterized as Burum’s “underling” was being held to answer “for the identical conduct.”
Mandel said it was imperative that the appellate court’s decision be reconsidered since the case is likely to “be used as a benchmark to inform the conduct of both public officials and those seeking to influence them as to what acts they can commit without subjecting themselves to prosecution” and “the state’s bribery law has not been meaningfully considered in more than 50 years.”
Stephen Larson, a former federal judge who is Burum’s defense counsel, wrote in court papers that prosecutors are flailing. The Fourth Appellate Court’s decision to dismiss the bribery charge was based on sound reasoning and Mandel’s citation was to a case that did not pertain to bribery and was irrelevant to the appellate court’s decision, Larson stated.
“The Court of Appeal’s decision is entirely consistent with every published case addressing these already well-settled issues,” Larson wrote in his response to Mandel’s appeal. “The only cases that have addressed this question have squarely held that a bribe-giver cannot be charged with aiding and abetting the alleged receiver of bribes.” Larson intimated in his response that the prosecution was overzealously prosecuting the case out of an untoward political motivation and vindictiveness toward his client, while misrepresenting the circumstances that led up to the filing of the lawsuit and the efforts of several individuals, including some of the defendants, to settle the matter. “The People’s unsupported recitation of facts at this stage of the case mischaracterizes the record and demonstrates their lack of prosecutorial objectivity. What the People fail to mention is that the $102 million settlement that Mr. Burum supposedly obtained through bribes actually involved the taking of over 60 acres of prime real estate by the county of San Bernardino from Mr. Burum’s company, Colonies Partners, L.P., for the construction of a regional flood-control facility—and thus Colonies was constitutionally-entitled to just compensation,” according to Larson.
Larson also wrote that since the case is an unpublished one it will not have a bearing on future rulings and is not eligible for Supreme Court review. “The opinion will have absolutely no precedential impact on future cases, nor will it affect the charging discretion of other prosecutors in other cases,” Larson asserted.

(December 28)   TWENTYNINE PALMS—It is anticipated that early in 2013, the city of Twentynine Palms will make a historic departure from its tradition of entrusting to the Twentynine Palms Water District financial responsibility for and autonomy over the fire department.
For fifty-four years, the Twentynine Palms Water District has overseen the Twentynine Palms Fire Department. In 1958, when the California Department of Forestry ceased providing local fire service, the Twentynine Palms Water District extended its responsibilities to include fire protection. When the city of Twentynine Palms incorporated in 1987, it did not take on authority over the fire department and it has never contributed to, participated in or subsidized the fire department’s operational budget.
Under the arrangement that has been in place since 1958, fire department finances have been held independent of the water district’s water division operational budget, with water rates totally devoted to the provision of water to customers. Fire department operations are defrayed entirely by a special tax on properties throughout the service area of the district. That special tax currently generates slightly more than $1.24 million per year.
In 2007, the city and the district began earnest discussion of annexing the fire department to the city, but because of complications with regard to the authority for the special tax and the formula for the distribution of tax revenues, as well as the discrepancy between the city limits and the district’s service area, the city elected to forego the takeover.
Developments over the last seven months, however, have created a situation in which city participation in the fire department’s operations, or at least partially defraying the cost of those operations, is now likely.
In April, Twentynine Palms voters rejected the Measure H tax initiative by a substantial margin. Measure H would have levied an $80 to $120 per parcel assessment on customers of the water district to provide enhanced fire protection and emergency medical aid to the community. Needing the endorsement of two-thirds of the voters to pass, Measure H garnered 850 votes of endorsement, or 48.27 percent, and 911 in opposition, or 51.73 percent, during the mail-in balloting concluded on April 17.
The Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), which oversees jurisdictional issues throughout the county, did a five-year service review of Twentynine Palms earlier this year, delivering that report on May 7. According to that report, the demands of operating the fire district have for some time been outrunning the water district’s funding ability such that “the water district’s fire operations are unsustainable as presently financed.”
LAFCO called for the water district to overcome the financial challenges facing the fire department or cede control  to another entity by July 1, 2013. On June 27, with director Nicholas “Bo” Bourikas not present but voting in absentia in writing, the water board moved to file an application with the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission to sever fire service from the district. On July 12, at a joint meeting of the Twentynine Palms Water District, including its legal counsel and staff, Twentynine Palms Fire Chief Jim Thompson, the Twentynine Palms City Council and its legal counsel, county fire chief Mark Hartwig and LAFCO chief executive Kathleen Rollings-McDonald, a decision was made to have the county’s fire department subsume the fire department.
Under the water district’s guidance, the fire department has grown to boast two fire stations, Station 421 on Adobe Road, which provides first response to the 59-square mile incorporated portion of Twentynine Palms and some unincorporated pockets close to town, and Station 422 on Lear Avenue, which is the first logical responder to fire and medical emergencies in the 29-square mile unincorporated, outlying communities of Twentynine Palms, including the Desert Heights area. The department employs seven permanent/professional firefighters, including the fire chief, two fire captains, and four engineers. The department also employs an administrative assistant. The department counts on 30 volunteers, who work one shift per week.
Under the county’s management, however, the fire department would be drastically reduced. Officials have gone back and forth over whether the operation of both existing fire stations will be maintained. There have been differing proposals to close out Fire Station 421  and headquarter the entire department at Station 422; to scale back Station 421’s operations while relying on paid call firefighters; and to keep both stations up and running with what can best be described as skeleton crews.
Crunching numbers and looking at fiscal realities, including the necessity of the department’s employees becoming members of the firefighters union representing San Bernardino County firefighters, who as such will be entitled under contract to hefty salaries and benefits, it appeared that four of the seven firefighters currently with the district would have to be laid off, given the $1.24 million in annual revenue into the district. There was one proposal floated that called for having a fire division consisting of four firefighters, entailing one two-man crew at each fire station.
Immediately upon becoming a creature of county government, the department would have to begin paying into the state Public Employees Retirement System. With three employees, the department could sustain itself with $1.16 million per year. But upon hiring a fourth firefighter, the cost of running the department would jump to $1.3 million, and that assumes that the fourth firefighter would earn no overtime.
Under California Public Employees Retirement System rules and the county’s contract with the firefighters union, firefighters are eligible to retire at the age of 55 and then receive three percent of their highest annual earnings times the number of years they worked with the department. This would include all the years the firefighters were employed by the water district. The county has indicated it would not be willing to cover that portion of the contribution into the California Public Employees Retirement System pertaining to the previous years worked by the three or four firefighters to be hired by the county upon takeover of the district. That contribution or “liability” of the water district would be at least $700,000 for three firefighters and $940,000 for four firefighters.
At one point, Hartwig proposed having the newly-constituted Twentynine Palms Fire Department consist of one chief and one firefighter/paramedic at Station 421 in downtown Twentynine Palms and two firefighters/paramedics at Station 422 on Lear Avenue, with a total operating budget of  $1 million to $1.3 million annually.
Subsequently, after Hartwig spoke in depth with current fire chief Thompson and made a consideration of various staffing scenarios, it was determined that the most likely form the department would take would be three firefighters composing one engine company which would operate out of one station, most likely the one on Lear Avenue.
More recently, Hartwig indicated a two-station department could be provided for $1.2 million per year, with the Adobe Road facility, Station 421, being  staffed by a single professional fire captain, a “limited term” firefighter/paramedic and one “limited term” firefighter, and the Lear Avenue Station, No. 422, being manned by paid-call firefighters. The department would continue to rely upon its corps of volunteers/paid call firefighters, who are provided with training and equipment, including a pager that is used to summon them when an emergency so dictates. They are paid up to $10 an hour for their service but receive no benefits and no guaranteed minimum.
By utilizing volunteers/paid call personnel and the three professional firefighters, Hartwig said he could make do with $1.24 million per year and still “balance the books.”
While no previous city council has consented to augmenting the fire department, city officials are now carefully considering the consequences of having the water district lose  control over the fire department to the county. At present, the water district receives  $1,241,000 in revenue from the special fire tax. Running the fire department as it is currently constituted incurs annual expenditures of $1,480,202. Essentially, because the water district is $239,000 short in the revenue it needs to run a seven-man department, it is on the brink of reducing itself to a three-man department.
For approximately $80,000 to $85,000 per year, the city could subsidize the fire department such that it could remain under the control of the water district as a five-man fire department. For $165,000 to $175,000 per year, the city could preserve the fire department as a six-man operation yet under the control of the water district. For $239,000 per year, the city could preserve the fire department in its current configuration.
On November 6, Cora Heiser replaced John Cole on the city council. She has indicated her support for shoring up the fire department. Recent public statements by councilman Jim Harris indicated he would provide a second solid vote for maintaining local control over the fire department and keeping  its current staffing level.
There has been discussion of a joint public meeting between the water district’s board of directors and the city council in January, but at press time this week, no date had been set. Meanwhile, the water district, which voted to begin the jurisdiction transfer process last summer, has yet to put up the $15,400 processing fee that has to be provided to LAFCO to initiate those proceedings. LAFCO chief executive officer Kathleen Rollings-McDonald earlier indicated that the application for the transfer needed to be initiated by last October 1 to ensure a timely transition by next July 1. It now appears that the district will miss that transfer date. Rollings-McDonald told the Sentinel earlier this month it was her understanding that the water district was suspending the transfer application.
Indications are the transfer effort will be withdrawn entirely, as city officials cast about for some solution to the fire department’s funding dilemma.

(December 28)   The city of Upland, which more than three years ago broke Mercy Air Ambulance’s monopoly on medical emergency helicopter transport in San Bernardino County by contracting with Reach Air to fly out of Cable Airport and service the southwestern portion of San Bernardino County, has renegotiated the service contract with that company.
According to city manager Stephen Dunn, the renegotiation will generate as much as $200,000 in additional revenue for the cash-strapped city.
To maintain the franchise, under the new terms of the contract, Reach will pay $1,437,600 each year, i.e., $119,800 per month. Reach does its own billing to customers and was previously paying the city $85,834 per month to provide three nurses and three medics to staff the helicopter. Reach covers the cost of providing the helicopter, maintaining it and paying the salaries of its pilots and mechanic.
Last year, after all of its $1,005,859 in costs were set against the $1,030,008  franchise fee, the city netted $24,149 in revenue.
In negotiating with Reach, Dunn and acting fire chief Dave Carrier were  able to boost the city’s projected take over the next several years.
The air ambulance is chartered through the city of Upland and is called upon to provide service throughout the local area, including Chino Hills, Chino, Montclair, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, San Antonio Heights, Mt. Baldy, Claremont, Pomona, Guasti and Los Serranos. It has averaged over the last 42 months about two service calls into Upland every month.

(December 28)   Three months before they were required to do so, the Victor Valley Unified High School District’s board of directors voted to hand out preliminary layoff notices to 80 district employees.
Under state law, teachers and other school district employees must be provided with preliminary notice of their potential layoffs by March 15 and actual notification of their layoffs by May 15 prior to the initiation of the school instructional year in August or September.
The proposed cuts, which have yet to be finalized, include reducing district staff by 37 teachers and eight counselors. The reductions are being made as the district struggles with severe budgetary constraints exacerbated by debt payments.
Bond  debt service payments are outrunning income into the district, according to Michelle McClowry, a fiscal advisor to the district on loan from the county superintendent of schools office. McClowry said that by late March the district will be out of money and will be unable to fully meet its payroll.
Given its encumbrances, the district cannot borrow money at any reasonable rate. With its current rate of spending, the district’s deficit will reach $19 million by June and $51 million by June 2014.
“The magnitude of overspending is so huge that you must deal with it now,” McClowry told the board.  She said the preliminary layoff notices should be sent out prior to efforts to induce the district’s teacher and employee unions to return to the bargaining table where substantial contract concessions are to be requested.
Finances in the district have deteriorated to the point that if the district has not put together a game plan for reducing its deficit spending by February 15, the process of turning the district over to a state receivership will be initiated. District officials said a state takeover would likely result in a curriculum devoted solely to core educational courses with the elimination of most or all electives. Included in the layoff notices were two for teachers in the district’s popular cadet program.
Board member Evelyn Glasper said the district had no realistic alternative to sending out the layoff notices, which were in the mail the week before Christmas.
Board members Barbara Dew and Timothy Hauk said they had not had an opportunity to review the proposed cuts and they voted against making the layoff notices at this point. The motion to send them out passed 3-2.
Under the proposed plan, 35 non-instructional workers including information technology specialists, clerical staff and custodians, will be let go as of April 26. The remainder of the layoffs will come in June.