(October 19)  BARSTOW—The new Barstow Hospital opened on October 13, with Barstow Community Hospital staff and Desert Ambulance transporting inpatients to their new beds at the state-of-the art facility, beginning at 6 a.m. Simultaneously, the emergency room at Barstow’s 50-year-old hospital shut down and a new ER, featuring a trauma bay, airborne infection exam room and 15 exam rooms, began taking in patients.
CEO Sean Fowler said the transition was a smooth one achieved through “meticulous planning.”
In 2005, when the city signed its agreement with Community Health Systems to build a new hospital, it was slated as a 60-bed hospital that would cost $60 million.
Due to higher-than-anticipated costs, Community Health Systems delivered a 30-bed acute care facility, although the floor plan and size of the structure will permit future expansion to a 60-bed facility. Hospital officials justify the downsizing by citing the consideration that an average of 23 patients utilized inpatient beds at the old hospital, which was licensed to accommodate up to 56 patients.
The opening of the facility at 820 E. Mountain View  was cleared by the California Department of Public Health Licensing and Certification, which completed a survey of the facility a week previously to ensure the new hospital is in compliance with state licensing requirements. Based on that review, the surveyors recommended licensure for the new facility effective Saturday.
The commencement of operations, however, was marred by protests by registered nurses from the hospital who said that management had “misplaced priorities” in undertaking the construction of a facility that was 15,000 square feet larger than the old hospital while there is yet a lack of clarity with regard to the contractual status of the nurses and other professional health personnel who work there. According to California Nurses Association/National Nurses United spokeswoman Suzette Pornelos Kaliko, “A hospital cannot be state of the art if it is only a building. It also needs committed, highly trained and dedicated RNs. More and more of our experienced nurses are leaving to work in hospitals where they can provide safer patient care.”
The city elected to undertake the hospital replacement as a consequence of Senate Bill 1953, which was passed in 1994 following the Northridge earthquake. That law required that the existing 50-year-old hospital be retrofitted by 2030 or replaced with one that meets state seismic standards. City officials believe replacement to have been the most cost effective approach.

(October19)  San Bernardino County voters are being tasked with deciding whether to support or reject two separate county governance reform measures that touch upon adjusting the compensation of members of the county board of supervisors.
One initiative, Measure R, would radically downscale San Bernardino County supervisors’ annual $151,971 salaries and $67,500 in benefits to $50,000 in salary and $10,000 in benefits annually, a drop in total compensation from $219,471 per year to $60,000.
That measure made it on the ballot through the somewhat unlikely confluence of efforts of  Wrightwood residents Kieran “Red” Brennan and Eric Steinmann, who drafted and initially circulated the petition for the ordinance as a means of reducing the salaries and benefits of county employees in general by starting at the top, and the county’s two largest employee unions, who adopted the petition drive to put the initiative on the ballot as an act of defiance against the board of supervisors because of  that panel’s expressed intention of reducing county employee benefits.
Another initiative, Measure Q, was placed on the ballot by the board of supervisors itself. It calls for a far more modest trimming of the supervisors’ compensation, a $5,269 reduction in their salaries to $146,702.per year, while allowing their annual benefits valued at $67,500 to remain in place.
The San Bernardino Public Employees Association, known by its acronym SBPEA,  and the San Bernardino Safety Employees Benefit Association, known by the acronym SEBA, pumped more than $100,000 into the effort to get Brennan and Steinmann’s measure before the voters. SBPEA represents most of the county’s general line employees. SEBA represents sheriff’s officers and district attorney’s office investigators. As the proponents of Measure R, SBPEA and SEBA maintain Measure R is justified because supervisors’ salaries and benefits are far too generous for the duties they perform – attending meetings twice a month and overseeing the governance of the county’s unincorporated pockets that sit outside the city limits of the county’s 24 incorporated municipalities.
The unions note that county supervisors over the last two years have reduced their meeting frequency from roughly four meetings per month to two per month, while delegating much of their responsibilities to county staff, and significantly increasing the authority of county chief executive officer Greg Deveraux.
The county’s charter currently categorizes  San Bernardino County supervisors as full-time elected employees whose annual salaries  are based on the average salaries paid to supervisors in Riverside, Orange, San Diego and Los Angeles counties. Voter approval of Measure R will reduce the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to a part-time status.  Measure R equates “part-time” with the requirement for attending a minimum of two regular board meetings each month, while permitting county supervisors to be employed full-time elsewhere.
Notably, the two candidates now vying for supervisor in the county’s First District, which is the largest San Bernardino County supervisorial district geographically and thus involves the most unincorporated land subject to supervisorial governance, support Measure R.
Sheriff’s lieutenant Rick Roelle and employment agency owner Robert Lovingood are locked in a battle to succeed incumbent supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, who elected not to seek reelection this year in lieu of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to be elected to Congress.
Roelle, who will soon be eligible to pull a pension of close $130,000 per year, and Lovingood, who is independently wealthy, are unconcerned that the post they are vying for could see its total annual compensation reduced to $60,000.
Opponents of Measure R argue that “the county needs supervisors who are able to spend the required amount of time carefully scrutinizing the $4 billion annual budget that serves the 2 million people that live within our communities.” Measure R would also reduce the combined supervisors’ staff budgets from $6 million to $1.5 million a year.
Supervisor Gary Ovitt, who draws a hefty public pension as a retired school teacher on top of his supervisor’s salary, asked the county counsel’s office to draft Measure Q, which has no provision for a reduction in the supervisors’ staffs.
Measure Q, eliminates Los Angeles County from the formula of averages for the supervisors’ pay. The supervisors dismiss the suggestion that they have reduced their workload, saying they continue to work closely with Devereaux in formulating the policies he is charged  with carrying out.
“We have not given  up any of our authority,” Ovitt insisted. Collectively, the supervisors have said the impetus behind Measure R was the seriousness with which the board and Devereaux were engaging the unions on the issue of salary and benefit concessions.
The unions began assisting Brennan and Steinmann when the supervisors floated the concept of a ballot initiative to put future pension increases for county employees up to a public vote.
Opponents of Measure R are alleging that disgraced former supervisor and assessor Bill Postmus was involved with Brennan and Steinmann in formulating their measure. In their anti-Measure R campaign, the initiative’s opponents  are set to allege Postmus was the go-between who put Brennan in contact with Steinmann at an early crucial moment when the signature-gathering effort for the supervisors’ compensation reduction effort was just starting.
Brennan, however, told the Sentinel that he knew Steinmann before he knew Postmus.
Brennan said he did not believe Postmus had any involvement in the effort to gather petitions to qualify the measure for the ballot or to promote the measure now that it is headed to a vote.
“I can only speak from what I have experienced, but I have not seen Bill at all,” Brennan said.
He said his motive in creating the initiative and pushing to get it before the county’s voters was simply that “I believe the county supervisors are overpaid for what they do. It may be a full time job, but from what little I’ve seen, they are not working full time. Even if it were a full time job, that is a lot of money to get paid. They are paid more than some CEOs get in the private sector.”
The proponents of Measure R insist that Measure Q is a cynical attempt at sleight-of-hand to fool the voters and have them accept a bogus version of reform. Meanwhile, current supervisors and the other proponents of Measure Q insist that the impetus behind the qualification of Measure R for the ballot was the unions’ animus at the board for seeking to reduce spending in a context of dwindling revenue availability for local governments.

(October19)  NEEDLES—Three  factors have combined to result in significant reductions in the release of Colorado River water from Davis Dam north of Bullhead City.
Reduced water releases will result in lower than normal river water levels along a span of the river abutting San Bernardino County, and boaters below the Hoover and Davis dams are advised to exercise extra caution during this period of reduced river flows as sandbars, boulders and gravel will be exposed, creating hazardous and potentially deadly river conditions.
A break in the Central Arizona Project canal near Bouse, Arizona, approximately 50 miles southeast of Lake Havasu City, is a major contributory factor in the water level reduction. The Bureau of Reclamation is reducing releases from Hoover Dam, creating flow conditions that are atypically lower than those experienced at this time of year. There is also a decrease in demand at present for water downstream.
The reduction from Davis Dam will result in peak flows dropping from what is categorized as a four-unit flow, roughly 19,000 cubic feet per second, to no higher than a two-unit flow, or 9,200 cubic feet per second.  The two-unit change in flow will result in an approximately four-foot drop in the river’s depth below Davis Dam.

()ctober19)  An effort by the city of Chino Hills to have a lawsuit relating to a property line dispute against it dismissed has fallen short.
The city’s attorney’s office had requested that Superior Court Judge Ben Kayashima grant summary judgment in the case lodged by Michael and Kimberly Denton. The Dentons sued the city in 2011 after the city’s code enforcement division informed them in 2010 that the furthest extension of their backyard was encroaching on city-owned open space and that they had to remove their pool and spa along with landscaping that was already extant whey they purchased the home in 1999 from Gloria Vitagliano.
The Dentons, who live on Hunters Gate Circle, offered the city $10,000 for the property, but the city rejected that offer, instead saying it would provide them with a 15-year easement for the continued use of the property for a limited period .  The Dentons then retained the firm of Gresham, Savage, Nolan and Tilden to sue the city.
The Dentons claim the city allowed the Vitagliano/Denton encroachment, which was conspicuous and open, to stand, and did nothing to interfere with Ms. Vitagliano’s or their occupation of the approximately 1,574 square feet of land for more than 15 years. Nor did the city act in a timely manner to prevent them from removing a wrought-iron fence and replacing it with a glass wall and block fence, the Dentons assert.
The Dentons had no knowledge of the encroachment, which the city was obliged to redress in a timely manner, according to the Denton’s lawyer, Theodore Stream.
The city, however, maintains that a document recorded at the time of the sale contains a disclosure statement from Vitagliano to the Dentons stating there is a “possible discrepancy regarding lot size/fence line.” The city maintains that this demonstrates the Dentons were on notice as to the possible encroachment at the time of the sale. The city also maintained in its motion for summary judgment that there were no issues to be tried before the court since the city had offered the Dentons an easement, which the city was not required to offer.
Judge Kayashima rejected deputy city attorney Elizabeth Calciano’s request, and ordered both parties to be ready for trial, which he set to commence on November 13.
The case will conceivably impact other property owners in the city who are alleged to have encroached on open space owned by the city.

(October19)  Marc Steinorth is seeking a position on the city council after living for a dozen years in Rancho Cucamonga, he says, because “I think the city council really needs a business perspective. My experience in attracting businesses, making them sustainable and growing businesses is something this city needs.”
According to Steinorth, Rancho Cucamonga used to rely on its redevelopment agency for growth. But with the redevelopment agency’s dissolution, the city needs a new approach and new perspectives to continue the community’s growth and recovery.
“The redevelopment agency was what created the city’s most successful offerings, like the James L. Brulte Senior Center and Victoria Gardens. With the loss of the redevelopment agency, it is now more dependent than ever before on having businesses flourish. New businesses and better businesses bring in sales tax revenue. Without new ideas and innovative planning, our city is going to stagnate. I believe my experience developing and growing businesses is what the city needs at this time.”
But, according to Steinorth, the city’s first task must be addressing financial difficulties.
“Our focus has to be on the financial welfare of the city,” said Steinnorth. “All of the city’s departments are suffering. State pass-through money is drying-up, as are grants. Funding for the senior center is woefully inadequate. When the city tells more than half of its residents that their only choice is to either agree to raise the assessments in their landscape maintenance districts or the city will decommission the district and walk away from its landscaping, you know things are bad. They are willing to allow millions of dollars in trees and plants to just die; then you know we have a problem.”
Instead, Steinorth offered his solution.
“This shows how my business experience would be of help to the city,” said Steinorth.“This is a matter of business management. When you are dealing with outside vendors, you need to go and renegotiate those contracts or bid them. In this economy, there are plenty of vendors who will make that process more competitive and affordable for the city. Re-examining contracts and expenses is how you achieve accountability.
“City staff are fine and qualified people, but you are just not going to get the best value for the money being spent until you hold the people paying their bills accountable,” Steinorth continued. “They will not be as hardnosed in negotiating prices as they would be if they were being held accountable or were hiring someone to do the gardening or landscaping in their own yard and paying them with their own money.”
Getting the best deal requires a business mentality and accountability, said Steinorth.
“We cannot be wasting our financial resources.”
Steinorth said the city’s leadership has historically done well in building a quality community. But a new era has dawned, he said, and a new guard must take over from the old to move the city ahead.
“In running, I am challenging our current city leaders,” Steinorth said. “If you look at our current civic leaders, they go back for twenty years or more. They have been around and in office longer than our newest voters have been alive. I think it is time the torch was passed to younger people with experience, gifted people who are committed to the community and are willing to contribute.”
Steinorth said that this election gives voters the opportunity to engage the coming generation.
“For two decades we have had the same people running the city. I am not saying they were not right for their time. The economy is constantly updating itself and evolving. For the city to stay up with the rate of change, you need a civic leadership that fully understands what that change is, what it means, and what is going on.”
Steinorth cited accessibility as an example of the difference between the upcoming and the entrenched generations.
“My electioneering material includes my cell phone number on it,” said Steinorth. “I have gotten literally hundreds of phone calls from people saying they can’t believe I answered the phone. They say they have been trying to reach our current civic leaders for years and haven’t gotten through.”
Those he’s heard from include businesses and people who have permits pending at City Hall. In many cases, he says people have to hire consultants to get their permits through engineering and the community development department
“If businesses have to spend that kind of money just to reach members of the city council, the average citizen doesn’t stand a chance. And that is unacceptable,“ he said. “We should be holding our elected leaders to the highest standard of accessibility. They should be responsive to those that elected them. They are the ones ultimately responsible for the city’s policies. They should know what is going on in the city. They should see what their constituents want and need and they should not be constantly referring the people they represent to staff.”
Steinorth said that the best solution that the city could embrace is new leadership.
“The solution to what is bedeviling this city is leadership that views the issues from all sides with intellectual honesty and does not pander to one special interest group or another,” he said. “There are so many issues going on in this city. Being a city council member has to be a bigger job than just showing up at City Hall on the first and third Wednesday of the month.”
Enlarging on that point, Steinorth said, “Intelligent people with independent thought applying logic to resolve the issues will strengthen our city. We have everything necessary to resolve our problems.”
Steinorth pointed to the city’s excellent and well-trained work force, education facilities, and very good infrastructure as resources available to continue improvement in the city.
“We need to overcome the problems we face now by bringing in businesses. Our council members have to realize that by bringing in businesses, we will create a rising tide of opportunity and wealth. If we have more jobs, we have more people spending money, more sales tax revenue, and more than enough money to pay for police and fire services, recreation amenities, services for our senior citizens. Our public employee unions will not need to worry about people being laid off. If we have economic success in the private sector, the public sector’s condition will follow.”
Without the redevelopment agency to continue driving growth and transforming blighted and undeveloped areas, Steinorth said it falls to the city and its residents to continue that mission.
“Rancho Cucamonga did a good job of developing what was undeveloped,” he said. “We are to the point where we do not really need to create more, but what we need to do now is fill in what we have. If we bring in businesses, we will bring in residents, who will then become a factor in growing the economy. More workers mean more buyers for empty homes, improving our real estate market. Similarly, other issues can be resolved as the economy improves. We need to maximize what we have and I think that new blood  can do a better job than those who are running the city now.”
Citing some of his efforts as a private citizen, Steinorth said that he has been out in the community already.
“You do not need a title to go out there and make a difference and I have not been waiting around,” said Steinorth. “I have been extremely active in the community, essentially rebuilding the Lincoln Club. I have been raising money for the senior center. I have gone from organization to organization trying to build a network for the city. I am advocating volunteerism in promoting the city to bring in more business and take up the slack from our loss of the redevelopment agency.”
Steinorth continued. “The council could do more,” he said. “Its members have been focused lately on lowering the hurdles for businesses. They should be focused on eliminating those hurdles.”
Steinorth said he is qualified to serve on the city council because of his experiences in the private sector.
“For over 20 years, I have marketed and proved myself,” he said. “Through that work, I have built a network that has helped me keep my hand on the pulse of the community. Frankly, I care more about this community, and I am already more accessible than those now on the city council.
“I believe the current council has shown some improvement in the last year,” Steinorth acknowledged. “They have discontinued using reserve funds to balance the budget and have reduced the size of government instead.”
But Steinorth said the council slipped backward when it promoted three fire inspectors to captain. “When you lay off foot soldiers, you don’t promote more generals,” he said. “They still don’t seem to have their priorities where their priorities need to be.”
In his assessment of Rancho Cucamonga, Steinorth said, “I see needs. I see vacuums.And my instinct is to try to fill them.”
As to why he should receive his fellow citizens’ votes, Steinorth said, “I think I will be of benefit to the city because I offer an independent perspective. I am not tied to any group. I am an independent businessman with excellent business credentials. I believe I offer the sort of forward thinking that is needed in the city for the years to come.”
Steinorth attended Ramstein American High School at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany while his father was in the military. He then attended the University of Maryland in Munich and obtained his bachelors degree in political science from the University of California at Riverside. He has lived in Rancho Cucamonga for twelve years. Married, he has two children. He owns a full service advertising agency based in Rancho Cucamonga that specializes in print, radio and television media. He is married with two children.

(October12)  Upland Planning Commissioner Carol Timm, who is vying against four others seeking the city council position now held by Ken Willis, finds herself in the uncomfortable position of having to defend a controversial vote she made nearly four years ago to allow a tavern to set up operations inside an historic church in one of Upland’s upscale residential neighborhoods next to a junior high school.
Like all five candidates in the race, Timm is seeking to show that she has the experience, judgment and demonstrated commitment to serve on the council. But the December 2008 vote is being cited by her opponents and residents of the neighborhood where the tavern was slated to be located as an indication that she has not mastered the rudiments of urban planning, as her 14 year tenure on the planning commission would suggest she possesses, and that she was too easily swayed by political pressure placed on the planning commission by now disgraced former mayor John Pomierski.
At the basis of Timm’s political dilemma is Old St. Mark’s Church, the original Episcopal church in Upland, which was constructed at the corner of Euclid and F Street in 1910. In 1965, it was moved to its current location at 525 West 18th Street, between Euclid and San Antonio avenues as part of proposed park,  after the congregation, which now meets at a larger church located on 16th Street, outgrew the picturesque structure. The park was never developed and most of the park property with the exception of the church museum site was sold by the city during Pomierski’s ternure as mayor for residential subdivision use.
The church building was acquired by the Chaffey Communities Cultural Center Foundation, which serves as the benefactor to the Cooper Museum, also known as the Cooper Regional History Museum, in downtown Upland. The Chaffey Communities Cultural Center Founcation shares some of its membership with Upland Heritage, a group promoting the preservation of historic buildings in the city of Upland, of which Carol Timm is president.
The church now  serves as a repository of  many of the historical exhibits acquired by the Cooper Museum. Additionally, in 1997, the Chaffey Communities Cultural Center Foundation obtained from the city of Upland a conditional use permit to operate 3,125-square foot Old St. Mark’s, renamed a chapel, as a ceremonial forum where weddings and/or funerals were held. The proceeds from these ceremonies, which were restricted to concluding no later than 8 p.m. and host no more than 125 attendees, were used to support the Cooper Museum.
In the fall of 2008, the Chaffey Communities Cultural Center Foundation applied for a modification to the conditional use permit granted in 1997 in order to allow up to six events, including  retirement dinners, funerals, weddings and/or wedding receptions per week that would accommodate as many as 175 people and allow for the dispensing of alcohol, in the form of beer and wine, and the serving of meals, accompanied by music. The hour to which the events could continue was extended to 11 p.m. six days a week  and 10 p.m. on Sunday. Under the application, the foundation listed restaurateur Ray Podesta, a longtime political supporter of John Pomierski who at the time operated both Spaggi’s restaurant and the International House of Pancakes in town, as a partner in the effort to transform the chapel to a more lively and profit-making venue.
On December 17, 2008, two of the Chaffey Communities Cultural Center Foundation’s board directors, Dave Stevens and Max Williams, succeeded in convincing the Upland Planning Commission to grant the conditional use permit modification, despite the protests of eleven nearby residents, who entreated the commission to consider the incompatibility of a commercial  venture  with an otherwise quiet residential neighborhood beside a school. Project opponents, anticipating that the conditional use permit would be granted, went to the uncommon length of hiring a court reporter to faithfully record the proceedings and take down the utterances of all individuals putting statements on the record. The vote to allow the serving of alcohol and the other intensifications of use inconsistent with the zoning of the property passed by a 4-0 vote, with commissioners George Morris, James Sheridan, Robert Schauer and Timm assenting.
In response to residents’ expressed concerns that the expanded conditional use permit would attact an undesirable element, commissioner Schauer assured those in attendance that “We’re not going to see the Hell’s Angels there.”
Armed with the work of the court reporter, a group of residents, represented by the law firm of Reiss & Johnson, filed an appeal on December 31, 2008, seeking to nullify the planning commission’s decision.
Those involved in the appeal questioned the wisdom of allowing alcohol at the site, a short distance from Pioneer Junior High School, and delved into indications that the city’s planning staff and the planning commission had been directed by then-mayor John Pomierski to facilitate the modification  of the permit. Widely disseminated at that time was a report that Pomierski, who had an affinity for alcohol, wanted to establish Old St. Mark’s as a location where he could carouse into the early morning hours with a select group of his associates outside the scrutiny of the public. Old St. Mark’s, for Pomierski, had the added advantage of being a relatively short driving distance – entailing just five stop sign intersections – from his residence.
An energetic effort to galvanize the public against the modification of the conditional use permit ensued, including the printing and distribution of 8,000 leaflets that protested the Chaffey Communities Cultural Center’s plan to operate the tavern.
More than 300 residents turned out at the February 9, 2009 evening council meeting when the hearing on the appeal was scheduled, filling the entire seating capacity of the meeting chambers and leaving dozens standing in the aisles as the meeting was to begin. Several came armed with information and prepared statements with regard to Pomierki’s role and motivation in the approval process, including notation of the consideration that he had personally appointed five of the commission’s seven members, including three who had voted in favor of the conditional use permit on December 17, 2008.
Earlier, that day, however, at 3:39 p.m., Stevens, the chairman of the Chaffey Communities Cultural Center Board, had filed with the city clerk’s office a letter in which he had stated “The board of trustees for Chaffey Communities Cultural Center are requesting to withdraw our original application for conditional use permit 97-10 modification No. 1 without prejudice. We have listened to the tremendous concerns of the neighborhood and wish to step back and try to work with the citizens of the area neighboring the St. Marks Church building.
“Chaffey Communities Cultural Center wants to re-file at a later date for a conditional use permit that does not include alcohol or outdoor music, Stevens’ letter continued. “We would at that time work with city staff and residents to come up with a compromise that will allow us to have food only. We need time to come up with another plan that the community can be comfortable with.”
Shortly after the February 9, 2009 meeting commenced, Mayor Pomierski informed the teeming crowd in City Hall that the conditional use permit modification had been withdrawn, and speeches and statements by as many as fifty residents who had come to put their concerns  on the record were never heard.
There tumbled out thereafter acknowledgements that locating a tavern in the midst of a tranquil residential neighborhood next to a junior high school was not that good of an idea.  Steve Ipson, the recording secretary on the Chaffey Communities Cultural Center’s board would call the scheme to get the conditional use permit approved “harebrained.”
Even Stevens seemed to distance himself from the alcohol sales concept, although there were indications he was biding his time to reinstitute the application. In time, however, any vestige of hope for the tavern expired when Pomierski’s political career flamed out. In June 2010, City Hall was the target, along with Pomierski’s home and those of three of his associates, John Hennes, Jason Crebs and Anthony Sanchez, of an FBI raid. In February and March of 2011, all four were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges related to extortion plots against individuals and businesses with permit applications before the city. Pomierski utilized his authority at City Hall and his influence over the city’s planning division and the planning commission to shake down businesses by either threatening to withhold permit and project approval or offering to facilitate that approval. Hennes, who was on the city of Upland’s Housing Appeals Board, was like Timm, a Pomierski appointee. As a consequence of his indictment Hennes was forced to resign his city position.
One revelation to emerge from the Pomierski indictment was the depth of the mayor’s alcoholism. His attorney, H. Dean Steward, told the court that many of the depredations his client had engaged in were alcohol-fueled and the court stipulated that a six-to-eight-month alcohol rehabilitation program should be part of his two-year sentence.
Pomierski reported for prison and alcohol rehab earlier this month, just as the Upland municipal race was heating up. In that race, Timm, who was originally appointed to the planning commission by the late mayor Robert Nolan in 1998 and reappointed by Pomierski three times subsequently, now finds herself pressed to defend why it was that she went along with granting the conditional use permit for the tavern.
She says she stands by the commission’s decision, which she saw less in the context of a land use issue than a historic preservation effort.
“The Chaffey Communities Cultural Center was proposing to have entertainment to include food and beverages at St. Mark’s Chapel,” she said. “This was for weddings and funerals. This was not for the sort of wild parties that some people suggested. It would have been a good thing for St. Mark’s Chapel and the Chaffey Communities Cultural Center, which supports the Cooper Museum. They are in danger of losing St. Mark’s because they can’t afford to pay the taxes on it since it’s not [considered by the county assessor] a nonprofit and Dave Stevens says they will have to sell it or give it to some other entity. They were already having funerals and weddings and they wanted to be able to serve alcohol like they do in restaurants so they could generate money. That money was needed to have more services at the Cooper Museum and to hold on to the chapel. They were simply offering alcohol for entertainment purposes to make sure the museum was properly funded.”
As to the land use aspect of the decision, Timm downplayed suggestions that allowing alcohol to be served there or extending closing time from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. constituted an onerous burden on the neighboring properties.
“I don’t think this would have affected the students at the school,” she said. “The school wasn’t in session most of the times they were having these events. I stand behind how I voted. I am not a large alcohol consumer. I saw this as something more like when you go to a restaurant and have a glass of wine, and they were not having anything there that went past what a restaurant would have. There are restaurants that are close to schools in Upland. There are restaurants that are near the high school. This is a facility like that. It was a restaurant, not a wild party atmosphere. That is how I saw it.  I do not approve of wild bashes where alcohol is served. I am very conservative. I have been a teacher at Christian schools for thirty years. I am a person who cares about kids and I would never put them in harm’s way.”
Timm said she did not think it out of line to suspend the residential zoning restriction on 18th Street in granting the conditional use permit alteration.
As to the overwhelming sentiment of the residents of the area who were against permitting the tavern, Timm asserted she and the commission had done nothing contrary to their interest.
“I don’t consider the commission or myself to have fallen down on this issue,” she said.
Timm categorically rejected the suggestion that she and the commission were doing Pomierski’s bidding in approving the conditional use permit or that she had exhibited weakness of character or resolve by not standing up to him.
“I never heard that it was to be a drinking place for him,” she said. “That is absolutely absurd and something somebody just made up. If that was the case, I would have shut it down myself.”
She dismissed the suggestion that it was the pending revelation that Pomierski wanted to utilize Old St. Mark’s as a nighttime lounge that prompted Stevens to withdraw the conditional use permit modification application. “There was too much controversy,” she said. “That’s why Dave pulled it.”
Timm insisted that she was not answerable to Pomierski and had no contact with him, despite his having thrice reappointed her to the planning commission he was alleged by federal prosecutors to have manipulated for his own gain. “I never had any conversations with Mr. Pomierski,” she said. “He never told me how to vote.”
Her taking the heat  for her December 17, 2008 vote was unfair, Timm said.
“It was not portrayed as a wild place where we would have problems with wild characters,” she said. “This was a non-profit asking for a license. The planning commission looked at it in a balanced way. We never heard this was a drinking establishment. It was supposed to be a place of culture where people would be able to have a glass of wine. These were all pure motives. A non-profit had needs and we were trying to help them. That is why I voted for it.”
Stevens told the Sentinel, “We weren’t thinking of this as a bar or even a restaurant. We wanted to hold retirement dinners, things like that. It was going to be catered by Spaggi’s There was no intent to hurt the people up in that neighborhood. We were doing this to raise money for the museum.”
Stevens said that early on February 9, 2009, Upland’s then-director of community development, Jeff Bloom, informed him that Pomierski was going to vote to overturn the conditional use permit modification and that he elected to withdraw it.
Cathrine Osberg, a resident of 18th Street proximate to the Old St. Mark’s Chapel, said the planning commission’s action on December 17, 2008 was an example of atrocious land use decision making.
“People who purchased property in this neighborhood since 1965 expected they would be able to continue to live in a quiet residential district and to one day learn that a bar was about to go in across the street or just up the block was just outrageous,” Osberg said. “It is ridiculous to think they would even consider encroaching upon a residential neighborhood with a commercial development. Ray Podesta, who owned the International House of Pancakes and co-owned Spaggi’s, would not have gotten involved in something like that if he was not going to see a significant return on his investment. For that banquet facility to be profitable it was going to be heavily and regularly used.  To extend the hours of use to 11 p.m. on school nights or work nights was an insult to the residents of the neighborhood.  And to put in a tavern, which is a place where alcohol and food is served, in a residential neighborhood bordered by a junior high school? Come on! That is unacceptable.”
Osberg related that some time after Stevens withdrew the conditional use permit modification, a funeral for a member of the Devil’s Diciples motorcycle club was held at Old St. Mark’s during a weekday afternoon. The Upland Police were called and remained in place while the outlaw motorcycle gang members congregated in the parking lot and students from the school made their way home on foot.  “I guess commissioner Schauer was right,” Osberg said. “The Hell’s Angels weren’t there.  But the Devil’s Diciples were. Can you imangine what that might have turned into if they had been serving alcohol?”
Osberg questioned Timm’s suitability to serve on the city council, given the disregard she had shown toward the residents of the 18th Street neighborhood and the students at Pioneer Junior High when she was on the planning commission.
“She has fourteen years on the planning commission and you would think that she would be familiar with zoning from the aspect that you cannot compare what goes on along the Foothill Corridor, which is a major thoroughfare, with what we have on 18th Street, which is a quiet residential street where there is very little traffic, especially after sundown,” Osberg said. “The high school was located along Foothill Boulevard into a mixed use zone where the only significant residential properties are apartment complexes that came in as infill development in what is primarily a commercial zone. The junior high fronts on a residential street. That she cannot tell the difference between those two does not indicate to me she learned what she should have in her time on the planning commission.”

(October12) An effort to oust Hesperia Unified School District Superintendent Mark McKinney and three of his top assistant’s has apparently fallen short, the Sentinel has learned.
With the initial backing of board members Eric Swanson and Niccole Childs, Hesperia Unified School District Board President Chris Bentley last week sought to schedule a special emergency  meeting  that was intended to take as its agenda the termination of McKinney along with three other district employees, Jovy Yankaskas, David McLaughlin and Karen Kelly.
Bentley, who is up for reelection in November, was said to have at least one other vote to fire McKinney and was on the brink of obtaining a third.  But before the meeting actually took place, it was abruptly cancelled.
Bentley is under attack by a number of district teachers as the election nears.
McKinney, who was appointed as the interim superintendent in 2007 and had the assignment of permanent superintendent conferred upon him in 2008, has rolled with a number of punches over the years. He has had a hot and cold relationship with Bentley. In March 2009, Bentley placed a discussion item on the school board’s agenda about the “potential replacement of the superintendent.” He withdrew that item before the meeting took place, however.
Last year, Bentley backed McKinney when he suspended former Hesperia Unified School District police chief Mike Graham after Graham and other district police officers objected to what they said were McKinney’s efforts to prevent the police department from investigating accounting irregularities in Sultana High School student government funds.
An investigation into the matter determined that McKinney had moved to handle the matter pertaining to the missing funds administratively but had not, as the officers alleged, sought to obstruct justice. Bentley supported McKinney in having treated the matter as a personnel issue, and said at the time that McKinney had the authority as superintendent to run the district as he saw fit.
McKinney appears to have dodged a bullet in that two of the district’s current board members, Hardy Black and Anthony Riley, have previously given indication that they would be open to discussing replacing McKinney, and together with Bentley, they would appear to have the requisite political muscle on the five member panel to hand McKinney a pink slip. At this point, however, Bentley has found himself at direct political loggerheads with Black and Riley, making any prospect that they would coalesce into a majority to terminate McKinney remote, at best.

A federal lawsuit against the Cadiz, Inc. water project has been vacated, at least temporarily.
The River Branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association filed suit against the county of San Bernardino, Cadiz, Inc., Santa Margarita Water District, the U.S. Department of the Interior, its secretary Ken Salazar, and the Bureau of Land Management over Santa Margarita’s approval of the so-called Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project, which would extract an average of 50,000 acre-feet of water from the East Mojave Desert and convey it via pipeline to Orange and Los Angeles counties for use there.
San Bernardino County contemplated but ultimately elected against challenging Orange County-based Santa Margarita’s assumption of lead agency status on the project and  entered into a memorandum of understanding with that district and Cadiz, Inc. and its corporate entities over a groundwater monitoring plan to facilitate completion of the project. The Santa Margarita Water District lies some 217 miles from the Cadiz Valley.
The River Branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association suit took issue with the failure of both the county and the federal government to ensure that federal protocols with regard to the approval of the project were followed, including protection of Native American and historical artifacts on federal land the project’s pipeline will cross over which might be disturbed or destroyed as a consequence of the project.
That lawsuit, the only federal complaint filed against Cadiz Inc.’s water mining project, was withdrawn by  the River Branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association last week.
Three related lawsuits filed against the Cadiz project are active in California State courts.
The federal lawsuit filed by Ruth Musser-Lopez, on behalf of the River Branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association, sought a temporary restraining order, and an injunction, to halt the county from signing off on Santa Margarita’s approval of the project until the environmental study included a federal review under the National Historic Preservation Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
The federal court denied the requests based upon lack of jurisdiction and procedural issues. Previously, a spokesman for Cadiz, Inc. erroneously reported the court had dismissed the case.
Musser-Lopez said that report was inaccurate.
“The court did not dismiss the case,”  she said.  “The court gave instruction that the cited federal protective laws do not allow individuals the right to file a redress action prior to the exhaustion of administrative remedies,” Musser-Lopez said. “I withdrew the complaint to fully comply with that instruction. Depending on the outcome of that effort, we may refile.”
The voluntarily dismissal was without prejudice and leaves open the legal merits of issues that have arisen over the failure of the Barack Obama Administration to enforce established regulations that protect federal resources.
Salazar’s office has been non-responsive to repeated requests for information filed under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Senator Feinstein (D-CA) has voiced concerns over the project and is considering legislation to protect the desert from the project. Cadiz has presented groundwater recharge rates that conflict with U.S. Geological Survey findings.  Cadiz’s geologists have asserted recharge rates at 5 to 25 times higher than the U.S.G.S.
According to http://CadizWater.com, the lack of Salazar’s enforcement has reportedly benefited the Cadiz project by ignoring historical and environmental concerns.
The same Browntstein law firm that is representing Cadiz, Inc. conducted Secretary Salazar’s earlier successful campaigns for Colorado Attorney General and for the U.S. Senate.
Citing quarterly reports and SEC filings, Rancho Santa Margarita resident, Craig Innis is concerned that potential defaults and foreclosures on million dollar loans taken out by Cadiz, Inc., could place project liability upon ratepayers.

(October 12)  NEEDLES—A combined panel of Needles Hospital Trustees and Needles City Council members late last month accepted Community Healthcare Partner Inc.’s proof of funding for the purchase of the  Colorado River Medical Center.
Immediately after that split vote, Community Health Care Partner principal Bing Lum, Needles Mayor Ed Paget and hospital board president Terri Anderson affixed their signatures to the purchase agreement.
While hospital board members Jeff Williams, Pam Blake and Norma Jean Williams and Anderson voted to recognize Lum’s financial arrangements as adequate, Adela Owensby voting against doing so and Lana Shaw abstained. City council members Shawn Gudmundson, Terry Campbell, Pat Murch and Tony Frazier voted to accept the proof of funding.
Lum did not present a letter from a financial institution documenting the funding. Rather, he provided an uncertified roster of anticipated funding from a multiplicity of sources. He did have two of those funding sources, his brother Larry Lum and Dr. Bertha Gonzales, present to speak to the availability of the financing they would provide. Lary Lum and Gonzales provided bank statements related to accounts they controlled.
Shaw said she did not believe that the presentation of the statements sufficed as proof that the money in them would be committed to completing the project. A brief display of the statements, totaling $4.4 million, was made to the public present at the September 25 meeting.
Another issue that had some city residents requesting that the certification be held up is Bing Lum’s tardiness in qualifying Community Healthcare Partner, Inc. as a nonprofit entity. A  portion of the property upon which the Colorado River Medical Center sits in owned by the Bureau of Land Management. A federal requirement is that the purchaser of that property have full nonprofit status.
Former Needles councilwoman Rebecca Valentine, who led an effort by a qualified nonprofit, Needles Hospital, Inc, to purchase and operate the hospital  only to have that effort fail when financing could not be lined up, insisted that an application with BLM for the land purchase would have to be processed and no waiver on the tax-exempt status could be made.
Valentine said it appeared the city was bending over to accommodate Lum in a way the city had not accommodated Needles Hospital, Inc. The city entered into a previous arrangement with Needles Hospital, Inc., headed by Valentine, to sell the hospital for $3,587,002. Ultimately, that deal fell apart when Needles Hospital, Inc. was unable to close escrow by a stipulated April 26 deadline.
Another entity controlled by Lum, A.M. Pharmacy, which operates contract pharmacies within existing hospitals, had made a competing $3 million bid for the Colorado River Medical Center last year before losing out in that go-round to Needles Hospital, Inc. Lum, a doctor of pharmacology, grew up in Needles and graduated from Needles High School with the Class of 1979.
A.M. Pharmacy is a for-profit company and as such, was at a disadvantage with regard to the takeover protocol for the hospital because Needles voters in June 2010 passed Measure Q, which called for keeping the hospital open and absolving the city of the financial burden of subsidizing the facility by having a non-profit entity selected to run the hospital.
The city of Needles took on ownership of the Colorado River Medical Center in April 2008 after Brentwood, Tennessee-based Lifepoint Hospitals, a for-profit corporation, embarked on an effort to move the institution’s equipment and personnel to Valley View Hospital, another facility it owned in Arizona, roughly 12 miles from Needles.
Because of long-running inadequate billing practices, including failures to invoice Medicare and Medi-Cal as well as insurance companies and patients in a timely fashion, the hospital has lost money while under city ownership, representing a financial liability to taxpayers.  The city created the board of trustees to oversee the hospital, and that panel, together with the city council, came to a consensus that spinning the facility off to an independent operator is the best solution for ensuring that the community has adequate medical care without soaking the taxpayers.
Lum undertook to form Community Healthcare Partner as a non-profit entity to be able to make a bid in compliance with conditions of Measure Q. Lum said Community Health Care Partner is an entity entirely distinct from AM Pharmacy, although he said he would be able to call upon the resources of AM Pharmacy and the experience he has in having run that company in operating Colorado River Medical Center. Lum’s offer through Community Healthcare Partners for the hospital came in at $500,000 less than the $3 million bid AM made last year.
The hospital, together with the 5.71 acres upon which it is located, was covered under the $2.5 million purchase agreement.
While some elements of the community were sympathetic to Valentine and Needles Hospital, Inc., others were looking forward to the city facilitating Lum’s takeover of the hospital. Needles City Manager David Brownlee, who earlier sought from Lum a letter of intent from a financial institution to cover Lum’s purchase, said he now understands that the money Lum will be putting up will come from private investors.
Lum told the Sentinel he believes Community Healthcare Partner will be able to “close escrow by the first of the year.

(October 12)  YUCCA VALLEY— The Yucca Valley Town Council has approved a resolution that commits the town to assisting the Hi-Desert Water District with the financing for a sewer system that is to be constructed over the next several years.
The council stated in the resolution that the town stood ready to make a “substantial financial contribution to the district, currently anticipated to be approximately $70 million.” The council’s resolution indicated the town’s financial participation will be contingent upon the shape of town finances, so that the town contribution “will not jeopardize the fiscal integrity of the town’s general fund.”
The town will structure its participation in the project through a lease arrangement with the district for the infrastructure. That lease agreement will not be executed until the project is 30 percent completed.
The resolution called upon the water district to utilize the town’s largesse to lower assessments property owners will be hit with to pay for the wastewater system.
The town’s participation will include between $4 million and $5 million that will go for road repairs that will be necessary to reinstate pavement that must be displaced to accommodate trenching for the sewer pipe to be laid.
Yucca Valley, with a population of 20,700, is entirely reliant on septic systems. In 2007, the state agency responsible for protecting water quality adopted a resolution identifying the town of Yucca Valley as one of 66 communities throughout the state with groundwater threatened by the continuing overuse of septic systems. As such, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board has imposed septic discharge prohibitions due to be triggered as of May 19, 2016. Under that mandate, phase 1 of a wastewater system must be completed or significantly on its way to completion by that date or the state will initiate enforcement action. The first phase of the project is to cover the downtown area of Yucca Valley, the area most proximate to the heart of the groundwater basin.  Similarly, phase 2 must be completed or nearly completed by May 19, 2019 and phase 3 must be completed by May 19, 2022. The last two phases lie further out where future concentrated development is most likely to occur.