(November 30)   Chino Hills residents are very likely to receive an unwanted Christmas gift in December in the form of notice that the city’s households will be called upon to defray a significant portion of the cost of undergrounding power lines though the city.
Those costs could be as high as $26,000 per household to be amortized over 25 or thirty years, either in the form of increased electrical rates or assessments, the Sentinel has learned.
In 2009, the board of the California Public Utilities Commission granted Southern California Edison clearance to erect a series of 198-foot high power transmission towers through the heart of 44.7 square mile Chino Hills along a long-existing power corridor easement owned by the utility as part of the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project. Those lines are intended to convey electrical power,  generated at what will be the world’s largest windmill-driven electrical generating field near Tehachapi in Kern County, to the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. The $2.1 billion project is part of Southern California Edison’s effort to meet state-mandated renewable energy goals.
Fearing a host of problems from the imposition of the towers, including significant negative impacts on property values in the city, the Chino Hills City Council authorized the expenditure of over $2.3 million to employ attorneys and make other efforts to contest the Public Utility Commission’s action, including a suit against Southern California Edison  alleging the company had “overburdened” the power line easements. That legal effort failed when West Valley Superior Court Judge Keith D. Davis ruled the California Public Utilities Commission has exclusive jurisdiction regarding the route used by Edison, and the suit was thrown out. Chino Hills appealed Davis’s ruling to the 4th District Court of Appeal, asserting the city had the right to have the case heard by a jury, but in September 2011 the appeals court affirmed Davis’ decision.
Beginning last year, Edison, which has long had a 150-foot wide right-of-way for its power lines that runs for 5.8  miles through upscale Chino Hills from Tonner Canyon to the Riverside County line,  erected 12 of the towers within the city limits and another 5 in Carbon Canyon before a city appeal to the California Public Utility Commission (PUC) and Public Utility Commission Chairman Michael Peevey in particular succeeded in a temporary halt to the towers’ construction being granted in November 2011 while a potential alternative, such as undergrounding the lines or rerouting them through Chino Hills State Park, was explored.
The rerouting alternative has been discarded, such that the only realistic chance that the towers will be de-erected consists of the undergrounding of the lines. That approach, however, will be very expensive and the PUC has given indication it does not expect Edison to bear that cost alone. The primary beneficiaries of the undergrounding, the city of Chino Hills and its residents and landowners, are expected to participate in carrying that financial burden.
PUC President Michael Peevey previously asked Edison to provide cost data on a potential undergrounding by February 28, 2013. On November 15, Peevey asked Edison to provide the commission by December 3 with a detailed report cataloging the costs and scope of the materials and service contracts associated with the undergrounding alternatives, along with Edison’s cost recovery proposals.
The Sentinel has learned that Edison has calculated the cost of trenching out a six-foot wide and six-foot deep, 3.5-mile long swath through town and undergrounding a single line to be  $300 million to $473 million, and  undergrounding a double-circuit line to be $703 million to $1 billion.
Chino Hills homeowners will see annual assessments approaching $900 per year to cover the city’s cost for directly participating with Edison in undergrounding the Tehachapi Line or annual rate increases of anywhere between $800 to $1,000 if Edison undertakes the undergrounding on its own
Multiple options exist by which that share of the cost could be defrayed or amortized. One option would be to bypass the city government altogether and have the city’s ratepayers, as Southern California Edison customers, bear the cost through a special surcharge on their electric bills. Another option would be for the city to share in the burden by issuing bonds or taking out loans and using the bond proceeds or the loan to cover its portion. One formula proffered consisted of the city having its business and residential elements splitting the debt service responsibility on the loans or bonds. In this way, the debt service on an issuance of $500 million over 30 years would require total payments of roughly $1 billion, including interest. Assuming the business community would pick up half that amount over the 30-year life of the loan or bonds, Chino Hills’ homeowners would be called upon to pay $500 million to bondholders or the lending institution over the thirty year life of the obligation. With roughly 18,700 households in the city, each household would be responsible for $26,737.96 of that debt. Defrayed over thirty years, each household would be called upon to assume a yearly assessment of $891.26. Such an assessment, if passed by the city council, would be placed on each homeowner’s property tax bill.
Part of Peevey’s rationale for moving up the date for Edison to provide its figures is that the PUC wants to facilitate the completion of the Tehachapi project by 2015, and having a cost sharing mechanism involving the city of Chino Hills or a rate recovery process in place by mid-2013 is deemed crucial to that goal.

(November30)   Gloria Negrete-Mc-Leod’s surprise come-from-behind victory over longtime Congressman Joe Baca in the race for Congress in California’s redrawn 35th Congressional District has inspired some intense jockeying among a handful of local politicians who are now looking at succeeding Negrete-McLeod as state senator in the 32nd  District.
Negrete-McLeod, a Democrat, has two years left in the four-year term as state senator she was elected to in 2010. She embarked on what was widely viewed as a quixotic venture to capture the California 35th Congressional District seat in running against Baca during California’s open June primary earlier this year  in the Democratic-leaning 35th District. Baca, himself a Democrat and a former assemblyman and state senator, in 1999 was elected to succeed longtime Congressman George Brown following his death in office. At that time, Baca represented California’s 42nd Congressional District. Following redistricting based on the 2000 Census, he successfully ran for reelection in California’s 43rd Congressional District five times. This year, he opted to run in the newly configured 35th Congressional District, which was slightly afield from the 43rd, but his incumbency and perceived fundraising advantage over all other challengers, including Negrete-McLeod, appeared to give him a leg up on the competition. And indeed, in the June open primary polling, Baca bested Negrete-McLeod by what seemed a more-than-comfortable margin, 12,619 votes or 47.7 percent to 9,078 or 33.93 percent. A third candidate in the race, Anthony Vieyra polled 5,058 votes or 18.9 percent. Given that this year California had switched to an open primary, the two top finishing candidates qualified for the general election, despite party affiliation. In this way, the stage was set for a showdown between Baca and Negrete-McLeod, both Democrats, in the November race.
In the final weeks before the general election on November 6, Negrete-McLeod’s campaign was infused with $3.8 million in donations from a political action committee controlled by Republican New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, which paid for a $2.3 million television advertising blitz during the last week of the campaign. Baca, who throughout most of the campaign had been complacent, was caught flatfooted and saw the election slip away, with Negrete-McLeod capturing  61,065 votes or 54.35 percent to his 51,281 votes or 45.65 percent.
Negrete-McLeod is now purposed to depart Sacramento for Washington, D.C. To succeed her in the state capital, four current office holders, including one who is about to depart Sacramento herself, have now emerged as likely contenders.
The new Congress is set to convene on January 3. Negrete-Mcleod will have to resign as a state senator prior to being sworn in as a congresswoman.
Under the law, Governor Jerry Brown has 14 days to call a special election after McLeod vacates office. A special primary election could be scheduled as early as late April or early May. A victor will have to receive a majority of the vote to be elected. If no candidate captures a majority of the vote, the two top vote-getters would compete in a special run-off election.
Wilmer Amina Carter, the current assemblywoman in the 62nd District, was termed out and could not run for reelection this year. She will leave office next week. A Democrat, Carter is now considering vying for the position Negrete-Mcleod will soon forsake.  Carter will need to move to be eligible to compete in the race.
Larry Walker, who is currently the county treasurer-tax collector/auditor-controller, is  interested in the position, and is actively seeking endorsements. A former Chino mayor and county supervisor, Walker is also a Democrat.
Another Democrat,  Norma Torres, who is at present the 61st District assemblywoman representing Pomona, Claremont, La Verne, Ontario, Montclair and parts of Fontana, just garnered reelection to the assembly, this time in the 52nd Assembly District, which covers Chino Valley, Pomona, Montclair and Ontario. Torres was formerly mayor of Pomona, which is in Los Angeles County.
A fourth potential candidate is Ontario mayor Paul Leon, a Republican. Leon this week told the Sentinel, “I’m exploring the idea. I’m open to serving in the state senate. I am confident I can represent this area well at the state level. With my experience in Ontario, I feel I can be a positive influence in the state capital. I think I can repeat the stable financial model we created in Ontario and I would welcome the opportunity to lead the state back to prosperity.”
Ontario boasts the soundest economy and largest municipal budget of all of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities, with more than a half billion dollars running through all of its funds annually.
The jockeying for political position has already begun, entailing intrigue and in at least one case a humorously awkward clash of intent.
Negrete-McLeod’s endorsement is coveted. As the incumbent in the district, her nod alone will carry weight. Moreover, she has some money remaining in her state campaign war chest which cannot be moved into her federal campaign coffers. In this way, she has the option of endowing her endorsement with money that could assist in his or her electioneering effort.
There is a degree of tension, however, between Negrete-McLeod and Torres. Last year, before Baca made it clear he would seek election in the newly redrawn 35th Congressional District, Torres had offered herself as a candidate there, threatening to make the run against Negrete-McLeod. For that reason among others, Negrete-McLeod does not appear disposed to endorse Torres. Consequently, both Walker and Carter are courting Negrete-McLeod, with no clear indication of which Negrete-McLeod is likely to favor.
Walker has been assiduously seeking endorsements. At one point he called Leon, seeking his support. At that point, Leon had to inform Walker that he could not do so since he was himself considering a run for the very same slot.
Given the voter registration numbers favoring Democrats in the 32nd Senatorial District, there has been speculation that Leon might change his party affiliation from the GOP to the Democrats to make himself a more viable candidate. At the same time, Leon, one of the leading Hispanic Republican officeholders in the county, could find an upside in competing as a Republican against the other three, forcing a Donnybrook between three Democrats who end up splitting the vote of their shared partisan constituency, very possibly giving Leon a berth in a run-off.

(November 30)   Timothy John Sabo, the controversial attorney who spent much of his career working as  counsel to municipalities and local governmental agencies in and around San Bernardino County, has died.
Sabo was valued as a “facilitator” who rendered legal opinions other attorneys were often unwilling to provide to enable government to undertake projects or make funding arrangements that allowed cities and joint public agencies to proceed with policies that were controversial and subject to legal opposition or challenge.
In the 1980s, Sabo pushed the legal envelope himself by accepting work as redevelopment attorney, bond counsel and bond disclosure counsel simultaneously for several municipalities in San Bernardino County, including Ontario, San Bernardino and Fontana. Serving in those capacities entailed a considerable conflict of his functions, as he would stand to reap, as bond counsel and disclosure counsel, a percentage of the bond sales for bonds which he as redevelopment attorney had recommended for issuance. In this way, Sabo personally profited as a consequence of the legal advice he was providing as redevelopment attorney, throwing the wisdom of that advice into question. Sabo was able to function in this manner for several years, but the practice was criticized and questioned, ultimately resulting in a state attorney general’s opinion that highlighted the conflict-of-interest inherent in such arrangements. One by one, the entities that had been using Sabo in such dual or triple capacities discontinued doing so.
A scandal that materialized as a consequence of Sabo’s lax oversight within the context of his conflict-laden service as redevelopment attorney and bond counsel was that relating to the issuance of $65 million in bonds by the Fontana Redevelopment Agency in the 1980s to pay for infrastructure at the massive Southridge development in southwest Fontana. That project’s developer, the Ten-Ninety Corporation, claimed it did not have the money to pay for basic improvements such as streets, curbs, gutters, sidewalks, storm drains, sewers and the like to accommodate the development. To facilitate the project, the city council, acting as the redevelopment agency board in accordance with Sabo’s advice, issued $65 million worth of public improvement bonds together with taking out $55 million worth of loans from a glaziers’ union to pay for that infrastructure. Sabo, as bond counsel and disclosure counsel, was paid a one half of one percent commission on the sale of the bonds – $325,000. The bonds were actually purchased by the owners of the Ten Ninety Corporation, which raised questions about the accuracy of the company’s earlier claim that it did not have the wherewithal to pay for the requisite infrastructure to complement its project. The city of Fontana continues to pay $3.14 million per quarter – $12.56 million per year – to those bondholders. Sabo was never held to account for failing to fully inform the Fontana City Council/redevelopment agency board that the agency was enabling the developers to boost their profits on the development, despite his role as disclosure counsel.
Sabo, who grew up in New York, went to college at Youngstown State University in Ohio where he graduated magna cum laude in 1969, and later attended and graduated from the University of Denver College of Law in Colorado.
Shortly after passing the bar, he went to work for renowned municipal-bond lawyer James Warren Beebe. Under Beebe’s tutelage, Sabo learned first the rudiments, then the finer points and in time all of the permutations of public financing instruments and arrangements.
He eventually forged off on his own, forming his own law firm, which focused primarily on the practice of  municipal law, redevelopment law, public finance and municipal bond law. At various times, his firm included David Gondek, Alexis Crump, Stephen Deitsch and Charles Green. He and his firm were particularly active in various municipalities in San Bernardino County, Los Angeles County and Riverside County.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Sabo was counsel to the San Bernardino Redevelopment Agency, which utilized his guidance in arranging for the redevelopment of several of the city’s dilapidating districts, including the area that was transformed into Hospitality Lane, which now is one of the few areas of that city thriving economically.
Sabo was considered a leading authority on all versions of financial mechanisms, instruments and strategies within the public sector, such as tax allocation bonds, industrial development bonds, residential mortgage revenue bonds, hospital bonds, public benefit corporation bonds and capital appreciation bonds, as well as financing schemes that entailed a public agency’s formation of adjunct agencies with varying types and intensities of taxing, borrowing, lending, revenue producing and utilizing, and bond issuing capabilities.
Sabo’s clients recognized he could be counted upon to find a way to proceed with their programs and agendas, despite legal restrictions or regulations that hamstrung them.
In 2000, Sabo signed on with the law firm of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, a large national law firm which employs more than 800 attorneys at offices in Atlanta, Beaumont, Charleston, West Virginia, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, La Quinta, Lafayette, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Madison County, Illinois, Newark, New Orleans, New York, Orange County, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, Temecula and Tucson.
His association with that prestigious firm, however, did not prevent him from continuing to court controversy. One such brouhaha manifested when he took on representation of clients engaged in litigation against the city of San Bernardino, the parent authority over the redevelopment agency and economic development agency he was legal counsel to.
At the time of his death, Sabo’s actions in his capacity as counsel to the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, a joint powers authority involving the cities of San Bernardino, Highland, Colton and Loma Linda and the county of San Bernardino focused on the civilian use conversion of the former Norton Air Force Base, were under scrutiny by the FBI. Federal agents were looking into Sabo’s relationship to Scot Spencer, who until recently was the contract developer of the airport, and one of Spencer’s business partners, T. Milford Harrison. Harrison was formerly the executive director of the San Bernardino International Airport Authority.
Spencer, who served time in federal prison in the 1990s following his conviction on bankruptcy fraud charges stemming from his efforts to revive Braniff Airlines, was hired by the authority board to develop the airport on the basis of his contacts in the airline industry.
Spencer’s management of what was supposed to be a $38 million renovation of the airport’s passenger terminal and a $7 million development of its concourse was dogged by cost overruns, boosting the combined cost of the passenger terminal and the concourse to $142 million. No commercial airlines have yet flown out of the airport, despite the completion of those improvements. Instead, Spencer exploited his position at the airport, showing favoritism toward companies he owned or controlled and set up at San Bernardino International Airport, including SBD Aircraft Services, Norton Aviation Maintenance Services, Unique Aviation, San Bernardino Airport Management, SBD Properties LLC, KCP Leasing and Services, SBAM Technics, and SBD Aircraft Services, to the detriment of other aviation-related companies located there.
One such company was Aeros Aeronautical Systems Corp., a blimp builder which did work on dirigibles and other lighter-than-air craft in Hangar 695, which it had leased at the airport.
In 2008, business was booming for Aeros, and the company was making its lease payments to the airport authority on time and in full. But that year, two companies Spencer was a controlling partner with, SBD Aircraft Services and Norton Aviation Maintenance Services, entered into a subcontract with another Spencer-affiliated outfit, Unique Aviation, for the renovation and refurbishing of a then-35-year-old Boeing 727-227. Spencer claimed he needed the hangar space Aeros was using to have SBD and Norton Aviation do the work. Despite the consideration that Aeros was a tenant paying top dollar for the space it was using and that it had secured in June 2008 two successive short term leases with 30-day termination notices to undertake tests on a dirigible, Spencer used his leverage with the San Bernardino International Airport Authority to have Sabo author a letter which the airport authority’s then-executive director Don Rogers signed that essentially evicted Aeros.
In July 2008, before Aeros vacated the hangar, Spencer signed a lease for Hangar 695 at a rate less than half of what Aeros was paying for the space and despite the consideration that Aeros had yet to vacate it. When Aeros did not leave quickly enough to satisfy Spencer, who said he was prevented from completing $750,000 worth of repairs on the 727, he threatened to sue the airport authority. Before the incident was over, Aeros, which had offered the promise of remaining as a longtime paying tenant, left in a huff, never to return. The authority kowtowed to Spencer even further by providing him over $1 million worth of concessions, including the forgiving of a $155,000 balance on a previous loan, the extension of another $550,000 loan at 5 percent interest, and an ongoing $315,000 hangar rental subsidy, all of which were approved by Sabo. Sabo had also signed off on Spencer’s partnership with T. Milford Harrison, a former executive director of the airport authority.
In September 2011, the FBI raided San Bernardino International Airport Authority headquarters and offices and hangars at the airport itself, seizing hundreds of documents. An investigation into the potential delivery of kickbacks to airport authority officials was continuing at the time of Sabo’s passing.

(November 30)   Upland City Manager Stephen Dunn has been authorized to actively seek bids on outsourcing several key components of the city’s municipal services, including law enforcement, fire protection, engineering, code enforcement, computer systems, fleet maintenance, animal control, and operation and management of the city library.
Upland has long been a full service city, with in-house departments that carry out practically every aspect of its municipal function.
But in recent years the city has been beset with financial challenges, including a contracting economy that has reduced revenue into city coffers, coupled with rising expenditures such as legal costs on lawsuits in which the city has been both a plaintiff and a defendant, as well as escalating salary, benefit and pension costs for current and past employees.
On November 7, Dunn outlined separate and combined general options, including seeking concessions from employees in all of the city’s divisions and departments with regard to current and future contracts, including downward adjustments on salaries and benefits; dissolving the city’s police, fire, engineering and inspection departments and contracting for those services with outside agencies such as the county, the California Division of Forestry or the city of Ontario; selling the fire department’s ladder truck and converting Fire Station #2 to a paramedic team by going from a three-man to a two-man crew; periodic shutdowns of one fire station to drive down overtime; renegotiating the existing contract for the city’s air ambulance; leasing communication towers to cellular phone companies; and selling off certain assets for one-time revenue. If expenditure reductions cannot be made, Dunn said the city will need to explore new forms of revenue, including increasing the cost of municipal services or seeking citizen approval of a city-wide sales tax  or a parcel tax for the library.
Over the dissenting vote of councilman Gino Filippi, the balance of the council directed Dunn to explore each of those options, quantify the savings they will provide, and return to the council in January with a refined set of specific recommendations.
The city’s general fund reserves, which were earlier projected at $4.2 million, have dwindled to $932,000 and the council had previously okayed two short-term measures Dunn offered them, cutting $229,000 from various elements of general government operations, including within Dunn’s office and in that of the city’s development services division.
The council has also given Dunn permission to transfer $250,000 from the city’s gas tax fund, normally utilized for street and road improvements and required by law to be deposited in a separate bank account, to the city’s general fund, if the general fund becomes depleted. The general fund is used to pay for the city’s day-to-day operations.
A certain level of resistance against the outsourcings has already surfaced. Filippi, who three weeks ago said the city should explore all cost saving alternatives, this week balked at actually giving Dunn latitude to purposefully explore closing out the fire and police departments.
Whether the threat of just such budgetary fixes are sincere or intended to induce the Upland Police Officers Association and the Upland Professional Firefighters Association into serious bargaining mode remains to be demonstrated.  In this regard, the city’s current assumption of many employees’ contributions toward their retirement funds and the employee bargaining groups’ willingness to surrender that perquisite for those they represent is at issue. In years past, during brighter economic times, the city, while providing what was designated as its part of that contribution toward employees’ pensions, also agreed to pay that portion of the pension fund that was put up by the employees themselves. At present, the city is paying $1.6 million per year in covering what would otherwise be the employees’ burden. If the city’s seven employee bargaining groups would make that concession alone, Dunn indicated he is reasonably sure that layoffs will be avoided for at least the next two years.

(November 30)   In one of his last acts as Third District county supervisor, Neil Derry convinced his board colleagues to take a stand against a British company’s proposal to erect several score 197-foot high wind turbines in the desert north of Yucca Valley on Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa north of Pipes Canyon Road between Pioneertown and Yucca Mesa.
London-based Element Power, which has its main North American office in Portland, Oregon, has been doing exploratory work to determine whether it will seek permits for the project under the aegis of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which calls for 33 percent of California’s commercially-produced electricity sales to be provided by renewable sources by 2020. Element is banking upon an expedited permitting process that is available for projects applied for under the plan.
The board of supervisors this week, however, significantly complicated that approach when it collectively endorsed a resolution brought forth by Derry opposing Element Power’s application.
In making his recommendation for the resolution, Derry noted that the Black Lava Butte Wind Project was proposed to be sited where previously an electrical transmission line project known as Green Path North was to have been located.
“On December 4, 2007 the board of supervisors adopted Resolution No. 2007-367 opposing the Green Path North project proposed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power,” Derry stated in his report to the board with regard to the resolution. “The project called for the erection of power transmission lines throughout western portions of the Morongo Basin and endangered natural wildlife corridors, sensitive habitat areas and important cultural resources. Following the abandonment of the Green Path North project, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power once again solicited requests for proposals to be filed for proposed projects on the Green Path North alignment. The Black Lava Butte Wind Project application filed by Element Power and approved by the Bureau of Land Management calls for the exploration of potential wind energy capture and transmission within the backcountry of the Morongo Basin. Element Power would first seek to ascertain the viability of wind energy development by measuring data from two meteorological towers approximately 200 feet in height that have already been constructed.”
In July 2011, Element Power erected the two 197-foot high towers Derry referred to in order to collect data on wind speed and direction at that height at that location. The Bureau of Land Management in 2010 gave Element permission to build those towers. Element hopes to determine from that data whether building a wind farm at that location will prove commercially viable.
While some endorse the concept of aggressive corporate efforts to develop renewable energy and certain environmentalists embrace the wind farm concept, others, including some environmentalists, are opposed to the project proposal.
Some opponents cite the harm they perceive the placement of turbines will have on the desert vista. They and others find objectionable the danger they say the wind turbines represent to eagles, bats, and other birds that fly through or inhabit the area. Another point of protest hinges on the possible destruction of Native American rock art and other archeological artifacts in the area. Other critics point out that the remote location of the wind field will require that the electricity be transported a considerable distance, and that a significant percentage of the energy will be lost during that line transport.
Three groups opposed to the project on environmental grounds, the California Desert Coalition, Save Our Desert, and the Center for Biological Diversity, are seeking to have that portion of the desert which was identified as an area of critical environmental concern in the Desert Protection Act introduced to Congress in 2011 extended to include Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa.
If Element Power elects to proceed with the project, it will need to erect eight miles of transmission lines and towers to deliver the energy to the California Power Grid’s existing electrical transmission lines.
Derry made reference to the transmission line and its placement in his call for the board to oppose the project.
“In order to supply the region’s electrical grid with the wind power, an eight-mile transmission line would need to be constructed over environmentally sensitive habitat,” Derry wrote. “Over 4,000 acres of undeveloped public lands would be subjected to transmission lines and networks of wind turbines. This project area required helicopter transport in order to erect the meteorological towers and further development would require the building of road infrastructure in order to reach two scenic jewels of the Morongo Basin: Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa.”
Derry said that neither he nor the county are opposed to the harnessing of the wind to produce electrical power, but that such projects should be undertaken in areas that will not suffer environmental or ecological degradation as a consequence.
“As stated previously in Resolution No. 2007-367, while the county supports the use of renewable resources and encourages programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions; the county of San Bernardino also places a high value on protecting and preserving the natural resources of the California desert and as a result opposes the construction of high tension power lines through environmentally sensitive areas in the Morongo Basin, and recommends that additional power lines be located within existing energy corridors,” Derry stated.

(November 30)   While project proponents who come before city and county government are required to obtain environmental certification for their projects as part of the local governmental approval process, government-sponsored projects experience far less in the form of red tape when it comes to obtaining clearance to proceed.
Cases in point were six county projects given go-ahead in one fell swoop by the county board of supervisors earlier this month.
The major environmental regulation hoops project proponents, builders and developers are made to jump through are those contained in the California Environmental Quality Act, known by its acronym CEQA. The California Environmental Quality Act calls for developers of projects of any significant size to undertake an environmental impact report for their contemplated projects, entailing an expensive examination of the project that is compiled in draft form and then offered to the public for review, particularly those living near where the project is to be completed. The report must catalog the range of effects and impacts, together with measures to be taken to mitigate those impacts. The review of the tentative report allows the adequacy of those measures to be considered by the public and lead agency for the project.
Such is the case of projects proposed by the private sector. In the public sector, however, extensive regulations experienced by private developers are not applied as stringently. The need for an environmental impact report on public projects is often waived by the governing board of the governmental agency proposing a project within its own jurisdiction.
On November 6, county public works director  Gerry Newcombe asked and received six such waivers from the county board of supervisors. The request was so routine that it was not deemed at all controversial and was placed on the board of supervisors’ consent calendar at that week’s meeting. The multiple items on the consent calendar are deemed non-controversial and are agendized together for approval   on a single vote.
Upon Newcombe’s recommendation, the board found that  the reconstruction project on Bellflower Street, between Mojave Drive and Cactus Road, in the Adelanto area;  the rehabilitation and reconstruction project on Slover Avenue, between Cedar Avenue and Cactus Avenue, in the Bloomington area; the rehabilitation and reconstruction project on National Trails Highway, from Vista Road to one mile north, in the Oro Grande area; the raised median project on Cedar Avenue, between El Rivino Road and Jurupa Avenue, in the Bloomington area; the rehabilitation and reconstruction project on Bear Valley Cutoff, between Joshua Road and State Highway 18, in the Apple Valley area; and the median project on Valley Boulevard, from Locust Avenue to Spruce Avenue, in the Bloomington area are all exempt under the California Environmental Quality Act, Class 1 exemption, Section 15301c.

(November 23)   Momentum is mounting behind a movement to discourage the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors from acceding to outgoing sheriff Rod Hoops’ selection of deputy chief John McMahon as his successor.
Hoops, who was himself appointed sheriff by the board of supervisors when former sheriff Gary Penrod resigned mid-term in 2009 and endorsed him for the job, has tendered his resignation, effective at the end of December. Running as the incumbent sheriff in 2010, Hoops defeated two challengers in that race, Paul Schrader and Mark Averbeck. There will be two years remaining on his term when Hoops leaves office and he wants McMahon to step into his post upon his departure. He has made such a recommendation to the board of supervisors.
But Schrader, who was the runner-up in the race two years ago, and former county marshal Keith Bushey have publicly stated that they believe the board should not conform with Hoops’ expressed preference, as the appointment of McMahon will endow him with the power of incumbency and give him a leg up on any and all opponents he may face in the 2014 election.
Bushey, whose marshal’s position was absorbed into the sheriff’s department when the board of supervisor’s merged the marshal’s office with the sheriff’s department in 1999, served as a deputy chief in the sheriff’s department for six years before retiring in 2005. In a letter to the board of supervisors earlier this month, Bushey announced his own candidacy for sheriff and said there was “universal perception” throughout the sheriff’s department “that sheriff Hoops has already brokered an agreement with the board to ensure the appointment of John McMahon as his replacement.”
Schrader said he intends himself to again run for sheriff in 2014 and he wanted the board of supervisors to carefully ponder the propriety of appointing a replacement from within the department. He said he hoped the county “will abandon sheriff Hoops’ request to appoint an incumbent to his office, which has been a very bad past practice.”
If the board does appoint McMahon, he will become the sixth consecutive holder of the top position in a political machine first established by Frank Bland that has extended back unbroken for 58 years. The Bland dynasty within the sheriff’s department is the second and longest lasting as well as most tenacious one in the county’s 161-year history.
The first political machine to dominate the sheriff’s department over the multiple terms of different sheriffs was that one which began under Walter Shay in 1918. Walter Shay began his law enforcement career in 1899 as a deputy sheriff under then-San Bernardino County Sheriff Charles Rouse. In 1903 he was elected San Bernardino marshall and in 1905 was appointed by San Bernardino Mayor Hiram Barton as the city of San Bernardino’s first chief of police. He twice vacated that post to serve as a railroad company investigator, which paid more money at that time, but was twice induced to come back as San Bernardino police chief. He was working as the chief special investigator for the district attorney’s office in 1918 when he was elected county sheriff, succeeding J.L. McMinn. He was re-elected thrice, in 1922, 1926 and 1930. In 1931 he succumbed to cancer. It was at this point that the Shay regime became a dynasty in the true sense of the word, when his brother, Ernest Shay, was chosen by the board of supervisors to complete his term. Ernest Shay did so, and in 1934 stepped aside so his nephew and Walter Shay’s son, Emmett Shay, could run in his stead. Emmett Shay was elected and he served three full terms in his own right. In 1946, Emmett Shay was defeated by Jim Stocker, bringing the Shay family’s hold on the sheriff’s office to a close.
Jim Stocker’s tenure as sheriff lasted but a single term, when he was defeated by Upland police chief Eugene Mueller. Mueller suffered a similar fate, losing to Frank Bland in the 1954 election after serving one term. Bland was the police chief of Needles and a one-time FBI agent, and he campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, calling for the closure of the houses of prostitution that proliferated in the county along with the pinball halls that he said were distracting teenagers from doing their homework. Upon election, Bland held true to his word and embarked on an effort to shutter the county’s various dens of iniquity, major and minor. Bland would be re-elected six times. In the course of his tenure as sheriff, Bland would establish a political machine that held a cinch lock  hold on the office of sheriff, consisting of scores of political donors who filled his campaign coffers and made running against him successfully a virtual impossibility. That political invulnerability drew to him even more support as time went on and nearly every mover and shaker in the county would pay homage to him, either in the form of political contributions or endorsements or both. Bland would return the favor, endorsing candidates of his liking and putting the arm on his donors to in turn support his political choices.
So powerful was Bland as a political, social and legal entity that he twice overcame political disasters that would have very likely felled any other candidate.
In 1966, information surfaced that Bland himself had pilfered thousands of dollars from a fund that had been set up to provide his deputies working the vice/narcotics detail with money for drug buys, place bets with bookies or make the monetary exchanges needed to arrests  pimps and prostitutes. Despite the revelation, Bland remained in office and was never molested by the district attorney as he was able to bury the negative publicity under an avalanche of positive sounding mailers and handbills and gain re-election.
In 1978, Bland again dodged a mortal bullet when a scandal enveloped his campaign that showed 24 years after his maiden campaign for sheriff based upon eradicating the county of the scourge of prostitution, Bland’s department had become mired in questionable ties with ladies of the evening. At a Bland campaign fundraiser in April of that year at Sweeten Hall in Rancho Cucamonga, donors and others in attendance with Bland were offered the services of prostitutes inside a trailer within the hall’s parking lot. A bust of the proceedings corralled a couple of the girls, a member of the sheriff’s department and one of Bland’s supporters. The ensuing case was prosecuted by deputy district Bill Parker, leading to revelations about the matter that came too late to prevent Bland from being elected to serve a seventh term.
In 1982, Bland, then 69, stepped down, intending to hand off the reins to his second-in-command, undersheriff Floyd Jones. But Jones had a heart condition and instead, the Bland Political Machine swung in behind Bland’s second choice, Floyd Tidwell, an inspector and assistant sheriff with the department. The development community had long before demonstrated itself as a powerful element in the sheriff’s electioneering team. In 1982, Garry Brown, the executive director of the Baldy View chapter of the Building Industry Association, served as Tidwell’s campaign manager. Tidwell handily defeated his opponent, sheriff’s candidate Chuck Callahan, who was considered a renegade with the department for defying Bland’s will.
Just prior to the 1986 election Garry Brown was caught on tape telling undercover operative David Kenneth Thomas that he and another key Bland political supporter, James Hunter Price, could arrange for Thomas and those Thomas was associated with to get licensing for and open massage parlors that would be fronts for brothels. The owners of those establishments could prevent arrests of their employees and evade prosecution of themselves and their businesses’ operators through the delivery of large-scale campaign contributions to the sheriff, Brown and Hunter told Thomas, who was wearing a hidden sound recording device. That money would provide the bordellos’ operators with advance warning of the time and place of vice operations, Brown and Hunter said.
Brown and Hunter, as well as Herschel Jennings, the operator of two such operations in Bloomington and Adelanto, were arrested and charged with activity relating to keeping a house of prostitution, along with several girls who worked in the massage parlors. That scandal did not prevent Tidwell from being elected in 1986, but revelations about the case, including Thomas’s alleged suicide during an armed standoff with 27 sheriff’s deputies in 1988 threatened Tidwell’s prospects for reelection in 1990. He stepped down and the political machine that Bland had created which was now at his disposal was made available to his hand-picked designee, Dick Williams.
Williams cruised to an overwhelming victory and served one term as sheriff. Williams then  handed the political machine over to Gary Penrod, at that time a deputy chief with the department. Penrod used more than $500,000 in campaign money provided to him by that machine to hold off challenges by six other candidates in the 1994 race. Penrod was reelected three times before he retired half way through his fourth term in 2009, endorsing Hoops as his successor. The board of supervisors complied with his wishes.
Next Tuesday, November 27, the board of supervisors is scheduled to discuss the process for choosing Hoops’ successor. A growing contingent of county residents opposed to the board’s ratification of his designee, including those advocating either Schrader or Bushey, are expected to be present during the board’s discussion.
One county resident, Fritz Koenig of Yucca Valley, noted that the board of supervisors’ chairwoman, Josie Gonzales, said she hoped the discussion at the November 27 meeting would serve to determine the process the board will use to designate Hoops’ replacement “so the position is filled before he leaves at the end of the year.”
Koenig told the Sentinel, “In my judgment, a fair and objective process to select the next Sheriff and all the top executives of any county will include a recruitment process drawing from across the nation. Such would take far longer than one month.”
Koenig added, “Here we have a county attempting to gain control of an international airport, which implies they have some competency with international business, but they continue to suggest that they need not look farther than their most immediate resources to fill this office. I will be at that board meeting, and I hope to address the board.”

(November 23)   Board members of the San Bernardino International Airport Authority have extended A.J. Wilson’s contract to oversee airport development operations at the now shuttered Norton Air Force Base for another year.
In continuing Wilson’s original contract, which was for $315,000 per year when he was hired in November 2011, the board on November 14 upped it to $351,000.
Wilson was brought in last year in the wake of the resignation of Don Rogers, who had served for eight years as the airport’s executive director. Roger’s departure was precipitated by an FBI raid of San Bernardino International Airport Authority (SBIAA) headquarters and offices and hangars at the airport itself in September 2011, along with a scathing grand jury report in July 2011. That report and the raid concerned themselves with the highly questionable activities of Scot Spencer, who had been hired during Rogers’ watch as the contract developer of the airport. Spencer, who had served a four-year federal prison sentence for bankruptcy fraud pertaining to his efforts in the early 1990s to revive Braniff Airways, was hired by the SBIAA board upon Rogers’ recommendation, largely because of the perception that he had extensive contacts throughout the airline industry.
Spencer’s management of what was supposed to be a $38 million renovation of the airport’s passenger terminal and a $7 million development of its concourse was dogged by cost overruns, boosting the combined cost of the passenger terminal and the concourse to $142 million. No commercial airlines have yet flown out of the airport, despite the completion of those improvements. Instead, Spencer exploited his position at the airport, showing favoritism toward companies he owned or controlled and set up at San Bernardino International Airport, including SBD Aircraft Services, Norton Aviation Maintenance Services, Unique Aviation, San Bernardino Airport Management, SBD Properties LLC, KCP Leasing and Services, SBAM Technics, and SBD Aircraft Services, to the detriment of other aviation-related companies located there. Spencer’s action resulted in decisions by Aeros Aeronautical Systems Corp. and BaySys West, both of which were making substantial lease payments for hangar space at the airport, to leave San Bernardino. Spencer also became a franchisee of the corporate jet-servicing company, Million Air, which was based at San Bernardino International Airport. Million Air terminated its relationship with Spencer earlier this year after the company claimed Spencer had failed to pay  hundreds of thousands of dollars he owed it.
Spencer also formed at least two business partnerships with T. Milford Harrison, who had formerly served as the executive director of the San Bernardino International Airport Authority and its sister agency, the Inland Valley Development Authority (IVDA), which is dedicated to the development of the property surrounding the airport.
By the summer of 2011, Spencer owed the county more than $604,000 in unpaid taxes on property and equipment at the airport since 2005 and was in arrears on interest and principal payments on $1.2 million in loans to him through the airport authority.
Rogers, a certified public accountant and the founder of one of the Inland Empire’s most prestigious accounting firms, found himself under fire for his tolerance of Spencer’s depredations. To replace Rogers, board members hired Wilson, who had previously served as the chief administrative officer of St. Louis, the city manager of Portland, Maine, Santa Ana, Pomona and Norco, as well as the executive director of the St. Louis County Municipal League, the Pomona Valley Educational Foundation, the Western Riverside Council of Governments, and the International Association of Arson Investigators.
Wilson was effective in prying the airport and its operations from Spencer’s grip. That accomplishment accounts, in part, for the board’s enthusiasm in extending his contract. Still the same, there are questions about the remaining portion of the basis for the board’s favorable disposition toward Wilson, which consists of the strategy he is advocating in attempting to preserve some $342 million in funding for future operation of the airport.
In 2011, Governor Jerry Brown induced the state legislature to pass ABXI 26, and its companion law, ABX1 27, that called for the elimination of redevelopment agencies and for money normally passed through to them by the state to be utilized for education and law enforcement funding. The San Bernardino International Airport Authority, a joint powers agency involving the county of San Bernardino and the cities of San Bernardino, Highland, Loma Linda and Colton, and the Inland Valley Development Authority, which includes the county and the cities of San Bernardino, Loma Linda and Colton, were in large measure dependent upon redevelopment funding. Wilson, together with attorneys for both agencies, maintains they should be exempt from  ABXI 26 and its companion law.
Wilson is guiding the SBIAA and IVDA in making a case with the state that since they are joint powers authorities dedicated to the reuse of what was formerly federal military property, SBIAA and IVDA are not municipal redevelopment agencies and, accordingly, not subject to ABX1 26 and ABX1 27.
SBIAA and IVDA maintain the property tax money from the area around the former air base should continue to be available to it and be used to defray the $949.5 million in debt and obligations those agencies have accumulated in the airport conversion effort so far. IVDA and SBIAA issued hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds to fund improvements and the bonds were sold to investors under the assumption that the infrastructure to be purchased with the bond proceeds would lead to the creation of an aerodrome with operational revenue, and together with property tax revenue increases enough money would be generated to make timely payments to the bondholders.
SBIAA and IVDA officials contend  that by being allowed to proceed with the airport’s development, they will ensure that those revenue streams remain intact and all obligations will be met.
The California Department of Finance, however, has rejected those assertions, holding that SBIAA and IVDA have no legitimate claim to the projected property tax revenue, known as tax increment.
Wilson is leading SBIAA and IVDA in an effort to appeal that ruling and exhaust any further administrative remedies to retain that future tax revenue, while preparing to sue the state if the money is not ultimately returned to the agencies.
In renewing and increasing his contract, the board is making a strong show of faith in Wilson’s leadership and judgment.  The $351,000 represents the full cost of keeping Wilson in place, since he receives no other financial benefits of any sort. The contract calls for Wilson to be paid $150 an hour to a maximum of 45 hours per week.

(November 23)   County officials have vacillated in recent weeks with regard to whether they will keep both of the Twentynine Palms area fire stations operating.
Under the gun to divest itself of the fire department, the Twentynine Palms Water Agency is in the process of handing both the financial responsibility for, and the operational authority over, its fire protection division to the San Bernardino County 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.
Under the water district’s guidance, the fire department grew 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 fire department’s service area is thus not coterminous with the 29 Palms city limits. The city does not contribute to, participate in or subsidize 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, 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.
In 2007, the city and the district began earnest discussion of annexing the fire department to the city, and formed what was dubbed the Joint Agency Fire Department Committee to look into the matter. On June 9, 2009, then-city manager Michael Tree told the council that if the transfer were to be made it would be best to do it totally and in one fell swoop rather than in stages. 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.
The Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), which oversees jurisdictional issues throughout the county, in its five-year service review of Twentynine Palms delivered on May 7, 2012 stated that the demands of operating the fire district have for some time been outrunning the water district’s funding ability. The report, authored by LAFCO executive officer Kathleen Rollings-McDonald, assistant executive officer Samuel Martinez and project manager Michael Tuerpe, said LAFCO’s review of the water district’s financial books “identifies a significant deficiency in funding” such that “the water district’s fire operations are unsustainable as presently financed.”
Rollings-McDonald on May 24 told the water district’s board members that the district would have to overcome the financial challenges facing the fire department, or cede control of the department to another entity by July 1, 2013. She said the water district could either hand the downtown station over to the city of Twentynine Palms and the Lear Avenue station to the county fire division and thereby surrender the special tax to both of those entities or in the alternative invite the county fire division to expand its sphere of influence and annex the water district’s territory for the purpose of providing fire service, complete with an arrangement to have the county inherit the special tax.
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 Rollings-McDonald, a decision was made to have the county’s fire department subsume the fire department.
Since that time, 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 entirely 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.
At present, the department consists of seven permanent/professional firefighting personnel: the fire chief, two fire captains, and four engineers. The department also employs an administrative assistant. The department boasts 30 volunteers, who work one shift per week.
As the fire department is currently being operated, the water district anticipates revenues throughout fiscal 2012-13 of $1,241,000 and expenditures running to $1,480,202. Without some further infusion of revenue into the fire service’s budget, with the continuation of current staffing and operational levels, by the end of the 2013-14 fiscal year all of the fire division’s funds, operational and reserve, will be exhausted.
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.
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 $1.2 million in annual revenue into the district.
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.
In a posting to the on-line version of the Desert Trail, Twentynine Palms only newspaper, former Twentynine Palms fire chief Greg Moore was critical of the Local Agency Formation Commission’s action to force the water district to divest itself of the fire department and was likewise critical of the city for not leaping into the breach to assume responsibility for the department.
Moore said he “hated” to see the county fire department merger and decried the “loss of a fire station to support the California Public Employees Retirement System costs.” He said the change being foisted on the community by outside elements “degrades the safety of people. The loss of a station is not just about fire protection. Firefighters provide emergency medical assistance. Closing a station means a delay in providing critical care. I do not understand why the city would not bring the fire department on as a public service. I pitched this idea to the city council members when I was chief and most seemed in favor of it.”
Hartwig suggested a four firefighter force was desirable because the department could then function as a two-engine company, two-fire station department.
One proposal briefly looked at was laying off just three firefighters upon the county takeover, and running the department as a two-engine, two-station department for one year, and transitioning to a three-member, one-engine department as of July 1, 2014.
On November 13, Hartwig came to Twentynine Palms and told the city council and members of the public present that a two-station department could be provided for $1.2 million per year.
According to Hartwig, the Adobe Road facility, Station 421 could remain open, staffed by a single professional fire captain, a “limited term” firefighter/paramedic and one “limited term” firefighter. The Lear Avenue Station, No. 422, would remain open as well, but be manned by paid-call firefighters, he said. The department would continue to rely upon its corps of volunteers/paid call firefighters. Those volunteers 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 $1.2 million per year and still “balance the books.”
The county is cutting the water district no slack, with the Local Agency Formation Commission charging $15,400 to process the fire department divestment application. That application is still pending, contingent upon a determination that the available special tax revenue will provide enough funding to cover the county fire department’s costs in assuming the responsibility of running the Twentynine Palms department.
Current fire chief Jim Thompson assailed Twentynine Palms municipal officials for their unwillingness to contribute financially toward the operation of the department. He charged the city council with being stingy with the its 26 percent general levy taxes and said it was shameful that Twentynine Palms is the only one of the county’s 24 incorporated cities to not be funding at least in part its fire department.
When the city of Twentynine Palms incorporated in 1987, the city did not create its own fire department and the water district’s fire department subdivision has continued to provide fire protection to all areas within Twentynine Palms’ city limits.
City council members in response implied that Thompson had erred repeatedly during his nine years as head of the department. They said he  purchased at a cost of $250,000 a ladder truck in 2011 that was not needed, given that all of the city’s high rise buildings are equipped with fire sprinklers.  They also charged Thompson with allowing salary costs in the district to get out of control.
Thompson retorted that the firefighters under his command are among the lowest paid and most overworked firefighters in the county, who put in 72-hour shifts, which are 16 hours beyond the industry standard.

(November 23)   BARSTOW—The city council and city manager Curt Mitchell have tapped lieutenant Albert Ramirez to succeed Dianne Burns as Barstow police chief.
Since late June, Ramirez has served in the capacity of acting police chief. He was elevated to that position upon Burn’s decision to retire, just three days before her five-year contract as chief was to expire and the city council was weighing whether to renew it.
The council in this instance chose to appoint a police chief from within the department rather than carrying out a recruitment drive and considering officers from outside departments, as had been the case with Burns’ hiring in 2007.
Burns, who had a law degree and had risen to the post of lieutenant with the Los Angeles Police Department where she headed a gang suppression unit, was the first woman to head a police department in San Bernardino County history. She drew praise from many quarters, the county grand jury among them, for her work in Barstow, which included establishing a shooting and tactical training school just outside of Hinkley and mandating that officers take target practice at least once every two months; her rewriting of the department’s policies and procedures manual, which had not been updated since 1983; and her authorship of an until-then non-existent internal affairs manual for the department.
Nevertheless, within the department, she was in some measure distrusted as an outsider. Her formalized, big city approach was deemed by some as inappropriate for a desert city with a population of less than 23,000.  Last February, the Barstow Police Officers Association, rep-resenting 30 officers, corporals and detectives, and the Barstow Police Management Association, representing six sergeants and lieutenants, provided a vote of “no confidence” in Burns’ ability to continue to lead the department, charging her with “poor performance [and] extreme favoritism,” as well as a “hostile work environment” along with “severe instability in her emotions while in an official capacity.”
Ramirez began his career in law enforcement with  Barstow’s police department on Jan. 7, 1991. He has served in nearly every capacity within the department, including detention, booking, patrol, evidence, and  investigations. On December 16, 2000, Ramirez was ambushed by John Salsbury while  responding to the scene of Salsbury’s murder of his neighbor,  Ronald Schraff.  Salsbury was convicted of murder and Ramirez was able to eventually return to the police force, despite having been shot in both legs.
Upon the retirement of former lieutenant Rudy Alcantara in July 2007, Ramirez was promoted from the rank of sergeant to lieutenant by Burns in one of her first major acts as police chief.
Mayor pro-tem Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre, who will become mayor next month, hailed Ramirez’s selection as the right one for the city, given how he has “led, served and protected our community for many years.”
Upon being sworn in as police chief on November 19, Ramirez told the city council, “My vision for the Barstow Police Department is to set a standard of excellence in public safety by coming together in a partnership with the citizens of Barstow to solve community issues.”