(October 5)  REDLANDS—Violinist Jean Skrocki will debut as the Redlands Symphony’s new concertmaster on October 13 in a program which will showcase her own talent when she performs Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” The all strings program will also feature Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade in C Major, op. 48.”
The concert will commence at 8 p.m, with  Maestro Jon Robertson conducting, in the University of Redlands’ Memorial Chapel, with doors opening at 7 p.m. Robertson will give a brief lecture about the program’s contents at 7:15.
Tickets, starting at $15, will be available at the door.
Calling Skrocki “a musical force to be reckoned with,” Robertson said he was pleased to have her as part of the orchestra. Skrocki has stepped into the vacuum created by the departure of Pavel Farkas as the symphony’s concertmaster.
A native of Los Angeles, Skrocki is a member of the California Quartet, a string quartet that performs their own Connections Chamber Music Series in Southern California with resident composer Matthew Tommasini. A prodigy, Skrocki made her solo debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the age of 14 and three years later was awarded a full scholarship to study with Jascha Heifetz in his master classes at the University of Southern California.
Skrocki is currently the assistant concertmaster of the Pacific Symphony in Orange County, under music director Carl St. Clair. She was formerly for 12 years the concertmaster of the Opera Pacific orchestra, then under the leadership of John DeMain. In addition, she has served as concertmaster of the Pacific Symphony, American Ballet Theater, Zachary National Opera Auditions orchestra and San Bernardino Symphony.
Skrocki is a member of the Los Angeles-based Angeli Ensemble, a chamber orchestra, working closely with cellist Lynn Harrell. A collaborator of jazz artist Peter Sprague in the Peter Sprague String Consort, Skrocki is also a founding member of Les Amis Musicalles, a flute, violin and viola trio that has showcased the compositions of James Self,  Bruce Broughton, Arni Egilsson, and James Hopkins.
She is now the artist teacher at the University of Redlands.
The Symphony is offering a variety of concert subscription packages for 2012-13, including a Symphony Select card for $189, providing holders with six prime seating tickets at concerts of their choice at the performances they choose and four-concert ticket passes that start at $57.  Tickets and packages are available online at RedlandsSymphony.com, at the box office behind Memorial Chapel between the hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday or by calling the box office at 909-748-8018.

(October 12)  The Grand Terrace city council must fully apprise its constituents of the precarious financial state the city is in to form a consensus for a solution, council candidate Sylvia Robles says. If the city’s residents are willing to impose a tax on themselves, the city can maintain the current level of services, she said. If there is not a collective will to use a taxing mechanism, the council then must make further reductions at City Hall, she said.
“The major issues facing Grand Terrace are fiscal solvency and rising residential crime and car thefts,” Robles said. She said the city is hamstrung in how to deal with those problems because from the outset it has faced financial challenges and the past and current city leadership has not formulated an effective strategy for overcoming those financial obstacles.  “Grand Terrace, according to a city commissioned study, was approved for cityhood by the Local Agency Formation Commission in 1978 even though the property tax projections were not solid. Property taxes are the principal source of funding for cities. The passage of Proposition 13 [which capped property tax rates on residences] further complicated matters. The city began to delve into using tax-increment financing, also known as redevelopment agency (RDA) powers to siphon property tax revenues that would have gone to other local taxing agencies and schools to augment city revenues and speculate with tax dollars ways to increase sales tax by giving financial entitlements to developers. Some have stated that schools were made whole via pass-through agreements and did not suffer from RDA tax shifts. The reality is that since schools were guaranteed financing via Proposition 98, pass-through agreements were not vigorously negotiated. The Colton Joint Unified School District is facing a substantial deficit. The local financing scheme is impaired.”
Robles said the city’s past reliance on redevelopment funding has complicated things.
“Redevelopment agencies were abolished by Assembly Bill 26x and Assembly Bill 27x last year,” she noted. “Grand Terrace has enough fund balance to wind down its RDA projects and to help pay for staff. The city also floated $20 million in bonds for infrastructure improvements in the southwest section of the city zoned for commercial development. However, ongoing economic malaise and the fact that the state denied any land assembly funding makes it highly unlikely in the near term that the city will be able to generate investment in that area. The city owes the redevelopment agency $3.1 million dollars. We only have a general fund of roughly $3.5 million, when you include all other sources of revenues, such as other funds of $3.4 million, capital projects of $2.6 million and residual RDA funding for the operational budget of $4.5 million, for a total is $13.9 million through all funds.  That number does not account for instances like child care and wastewater accounts, in which fees collected are almost equal to expenses. Out of the general fund we pay for public safety, public works, park maintenance and a full-time city manager, finance director, public works director, city clerk and city attorney and other administrative staff. We have only about two years fund balance to support this level of city government.
We have an estimated Fund Balance of $810,000 and that may be cut to $510,000 depending on a state ruling on residual receipts for low-income housing. “To explain what I would do for Grand Terrace and how I can distinguish myself from the other candidates, I would say that I fully understand that Grand Terrace cannot grow itself out of this fiscal crisis,” Robles said. “Time is not on our side. New retail, including the Town Center, which is anchored by Stater Bros and includes a new Miguel’s Drive Thru, has generated in aggregate less than $90,000.
I have experience balancing budgets during recessionary times. I worked for San Bernardino County’s special districts department, when the state, which was unable to meet its obligation to fund schools, took back state support from many of our districts including fire. In government a budget analyst recognizes that salaries and benefits typically make up 85% of the budget. Any meaningful savings must come from cuts in staff. The city has incrementally cut staff and is in balance for now. But structural change must be implemented.”
Robles said the current city council is courting disaster by failing to make clear to the city’s residents what is at stake in the effort to put the city’s financial house in order. Hiding the problem from those who will be asked to carry the financial burden will not solve the problem and likely create anger at City Hall that will render the problem even harder to deal with, she said.
“The City Council has been meeting in closed session since at least last December to discuss a utility tax, declaring a fiscal emergency and meeting with unrepresented staff,” she said. “It is my experience that the voter must be in on the crisis, a part of the dialogue and a partner in seeking alternatives and solutions. If this council expects to weather this election cycle and then unveil a ‘fiscal crisis’ and proposed utility tax, I expect that trust with the voters will be the hardest asset to regain.”
Robles said Grand Terrace’s fiscal condition will require an increase in revenue in the form of taxation or drastic cuts. “All redevelopment-like legislation was vetoed by the governor,” she said. “Unless, voters are quick to approve a utility tax, Grand Terrace must live within its means. I propose via attrition to transfer those savings to restoring the traffic officer position cut from our law enforcement contract. We can do this immediately by not filling the $173,000 redevelopment agency director position. It is my preference to replace current top managers with less expensive positions as natural attrition occurs. The timeline is short. But, the reality is we are a city of only 12,000 residents and core municipal services must be funded. To me that is public safety, park maintenance and support of youth sport leagues.”
The council should not delude itself that everything will just naturally take care of itself, Robles said, and should prepare to bite the bullet and ready itself for the worst. “If the City Council fails to convince voters to approve a new tax, we must have a plan,” she said.
Born and raised in San Bernardino, Robles has a BA degree in business management from the University of Redlands and a Master’s Degree in public administration from Cal State University, San Bernardino.
She is a 35-year resident of Grand Terrace. Married, she has three adult children.
Robles is retired from a 25-year career with the county of San Bernardino, having spent five years in social services, seven  as a field representative for former Supervisor Barbara Riordan and 13 years as a staff budget analyst and supervisor of the budget section.

(October 5)  In an action of historic proportion, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on October 1 voted 4-1 to allow a water extraction project in the east Mojave Desert to proceed, removing the last procedural obstacle to a Los Angeles-based company’s plan to profit from the exportation of billions of gallons of San Bernardino County’s water up to 230  miles westward for sale and use in Orange, Los Angeles and  Riverside counties.
Notably, San Bernardino County was not  the lead agency on the project. Rather, Monday’s hearing was a formality required under the terms of a memorandum of understanding between the company undertaking the project, Cadiz, Inc., and Orange County-based Santa Margarita Water District, which served as the agency-of-record for the approval of the project and its environmental certification, and the Fenner Valley Mutual Water Company, an entity owned by Cadiz, Inc. The county by its action signed off on the Santa Margarita Water District’s approval of the project and certification of the environmental impact report, and it approved a groundwater management, monitoring, and mitigation plan to facilitate it.
On July 31, the Santa Margarita Water District, which lies 217 miles from the Cadiz Valley and serves the affluent communities of Rancho Santa Margarita, Mission Viejo, Coto de Caza, Las Flores, Ladera Ranch and Talega, approved the project, officially known as the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation and Recovery Project, certified the environmental impact report for the project and agreed to purchase 20 percent of the water Cadiz, Inc. drafts as a consequence of that approval. The environmental impact report states that Cadiz, Inc. can draw an average of 50,000 acre-feet of water per year from the desert aquifer for the next century.
The controversial plan was given go-ahead over the strident objections of desert residents and landowners, who said they viewed the project as an unprincipled theft of the desert’s water resource by Cadiz, Inc. and the water district. Environmentalists registered opposition to the project, asserting the amount of water to be extracted from the desert will exceed the natural recharge rate of the region’s groundwater basins, that springs within the immediate area of the project’s well field will dry up, and  near-lying aquifers that are linked to the Cadiz Valley and Fenner Valley’s water tables will be depleted.
While Scott Slater, the president and general counsel for the Cadiz Land Company, and Christian Marsh, an attorney representing the county of San Bernardino, asserted that the October 1 hearing fulfills all of the procedural requirements for the project to proceed, John Goss, a former assistant administrative officer with San Bernardino County who had worked for 18 months drafting the county’s desert groundwater management ordinance before it was adopted in 2002, said that ordinance was violated when the memorandum of understanding between the county, Cadiz, Inc. and the Santa Margarita Water District had been entered into before a groundwater management plan for the Cadiz project was adopted. There were also suggestions that the county had failed to live up to its own procedural requirements when it failed to provide a ten-day public review of the documentation considered by the board on October 1.  That documentation, consisting of the groundwater management, monitoring, and mitigation plan, was not made available until September 26.
The board of supervisors would have normally been the lead agency responsible for approving the project and granting it environmental certification. After Cadiz, Inc. arranged for the Santa Margarita Water District to commandeer that process, San Bernardino County officials initially contemplated filing an appeal with the California Office of Planning and Research to wrest from Santa Margarita authority over the project and its application for approval. The county, however, did not file such an appeal and acceded to the Santa Margarita Water District’s assumption of lead agency authority over the project application and environmental certification. Earlier this year, the county upon a vote by the board of supervisors entered into a memorandum of understanding with Cadiz, Inc. and the Santa Margarita Water District that gave the county limited power to second-guess the district’s decision on the environmental certification and compliance with its own ground water management ordinance as well as requiring that Cadiz, Inc. defray the cost of any legal action taken by parties against the project or in reaction to its impacts.
The project still faces four legal challenges.
A brine mining operation in the desert, Tetra Technologies, has already filed a lawsuit against San Bernardino County over the memorandum of understanding. Tetra alleges the monopolization of water in the area will harm its operation.
Four environmental groups – the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Parks Conservation Association, the San Gorgonio chapter of the Sierra Club and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society – filed a suit in San Bernardino County Superior Court, naming both the county of San Bernardino and the Santa Margarita Water District. That suit asserts the county should not have allowed the environmental review of the project to be carried out by the Mission Viejo-based Santa Margarita Water District. The suit challenges the county for allowing Santa Margarita to assume lead agency status and calls into question as well the water district’s approval of the environmental impact report.
The Colorado River branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association filed suit in federal court against Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and San Bernardino County, further naming the Santa Margarita Water District, project proponent Cadiz, Inc. and the Cadiz, Inc. corporate offshoot  Fenner Valley Mutual Water Company, as real parties in interest. That suit cited the failure of Salazar and the Department of the Interior to invoke the protocols and requirements of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, as well as the National Environmental Protection Act, which the association maintains should have been done because part of the project will involve a 42-mile right-of-way for the aqueduct on federal land. The suit further alleges the county failed  to live up to its obligation to comply with federal law in reviewing the impact a permitted project might have on federal public resources in transferring the authority for environmental certification of the project to the Santa Margarita Water District.
A group of Orange County residents calling itself  Citizens and Ratepayers Opposing Water Nonsense have sued the Santa Margarita Water District over its approval of the environmental impact report and the water purchase agreement it entered into with Cadiz, Inc.
In addition, Senator Dianne Feinstein has signaled continuing opposition to the project, which is consistent with the stance she took when Cadiz, Inc. floated a similar water mining operation more than a decade ago. In an October 1 letter to board chairwoman Josie Gonzales, Feinsten reiterated that opposition, urging Gonzales and her board colleagues to deny the project endorsement if the amount of groundwater to be extracted from the aquifers exceeds the natural annual recharge rate of the local desert basins, which was determined by the United States Geological Survey in 2001 to be 5,000 acre feet per year.
Only supervisor Neil Derry, whose Third District includes a portion of the East Mojave, voted against the project.
Project proponents asserted the project represented no harm to the desert and its environment, and they said the county should embrace it because it represented economic development and employment opportunities. Opponents retorted that the jobs to be created would be temporary and that the monopolization of the region’s water by areas outside of the county would inhibit or outright prevent future economic growth and development in the Eastern Mojave.

(October 5)  The recent Congressional testimony provided by a San Bernardino County-based economist which laid the blame for declining passenger traffic at Ontario International Airport at the feet of the city of Los Angeles and the division it uses to run four airports that city owns came under severe criticism this week.
On September 27 at Ontario City Hall during a specially-convened session of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation, John Husing said the outfit managing Ontario Airport  –  Los Angeles World Airports  –  is responsible for a 41 percent drop in passengers flying into and out of the aerodrome since 2007.
Husing said the severe economic downturn that has gripped the nation, the state and the region since 2007 does not account for that decline.
The hearing was called to vector attention on the future of the airport, which is classified by the Federal Aviation Agency as a medium hub facility. For nearly two years, Ontario city officials have been undertaking an intensive effort to convince Los Angeles to return ownership of the airport to Ontario.
Los Angeles took over management of Ontario Airport in 1967 as part of a strategy to increase flights out of the airfield. That ploy worked, as Los Angeles was able to use its control of gate positions and other considerations at Los Angeles International Airport to induce airlines to fly into and out of Ontario. Just under 200,000 passengers enplaned at Ontario Airport in 1966. Under Los Angeles’s management, over $550 million in improvements were made to the facility. In 1985, Ontario deeded the airport to Los Angeles for no consideration. In 2007, usage of the airport peaked, with 7.2 million passengers moving through the airport’s gates.
Since that time, passenger traffic through Ontario International has dropped dramatically, with 4.2 million passengers using the airport in 2011, and further declines registering this year.
Ontario city officials have repeatedly asserted that Los Angeles World Airports is purposefully mismanaging Ontario Airport’s operations to increase passenger traffic at Los Angeles International Airport, which has undergone significant renovations in recent years.
Los Angeles World Airport officials reject those claims, maintaining that the drop in passenger traffic through Ontario is a function of the sputtering economy and the doldrums in the airline industry generally.
But at the hearing before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation, led by Rep. Tom Petri, R-Wisconsin and including senior member  Rep. Gary Miller, R-Brea, Husing repeatedly asserted that Ontario Airport was suffering under the yoke of Los Angeles’s mismanagement. He called, along with others in attendance, for a change in airport administration, asserting that transferring ownership and control of the facility to Ontario will turn operations there around.
Husing was playing to a highly partisan crowd of about 120, nearly all of whom were there to support the proposition that Los Angeles should surrender control over the airport.
Miller, who indicated he was in favor of transferring management of the airport to Ontario, was still somewhat taken aback at the hostility and vitriol evinced toward Los Angeles and the hyperbole evident in elements of the case made against the megalopolis’s administration of Ontario Airport.
At one point the congressman reminded Husing that the purpose of the hearing was not to “beat up on Los Angeles.” Miller said that he came away from discussions he had with Gina Marie Lindsey, the executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, convinced that Los Angeles officials were committed to working through challenges that beset the airport to reestablish it as a successful aviation hub.
In the aftermath of Husing’s presentation, Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airport officials were questioning the validity of many of Husing’s conclusions and observations, most notably his maintaining that the foundering economy has not had a tremendous impact on the downturn at Ontario Airport.
In particular, it was suggested that Husing, the proprietor of Redlands-based Economics & Politics, Inc., which has contracts with several local governmental entities, was coloring his testimony to favor local sentiment and pander to local politicians.
They cited a Department of Transportation study of performance all across the aviation industry, which was authored by Calvin L. Scovel III, the Transportation Department’s inspector general.
According to Scovel, airlines in general are still reeling from the recession that set in more than four years ago. Airlines are scrambling to adopt new strategies and change their operational models, the report states, that include factoring in rising fuel costs, which account for 35 percent of airline operational expenses,  and raising ticket prices. Consequently, airlines have reduced flights. Los Angeles officials said the report, which covers the same 2007-to-2011 period that corresponds to Ontario’s decline, directly reflects conditions at Ontario Airport.
And, according to the report, Ontario will continue to wrestle with downward moving passenger traffic, no matter who runs the airport.
“Ultimately, the trends presented in this report suggest that the changes in the number of airlines controlling the industry, fare increases, and capacity reductions that began in 2008 are not a brief phase, but rather are signs of a greater shift in the industry that will remain for years to come,” the report states.
Ontario and San Bernardino County have formed a joint powers authority intended to oversee the transition of the airport to local control and thereafter assist in the management of operations there.
On October 1, Husing spoke with the Sentinel, defending his statements before the House panel. He said that passenger traffic at Ontario Airport has receded to the level the airport was functioning at when the city of Ontario deeded it to Los Angeles 27 years ago.
“To say the economy has shoved us back to where we were in 1985 does not hold up, particularly when you consider that the overall decline in air travel in the Southern California market is 6 percent, not 42 percent,” Husing said. “We’re at the same level of passenger traffic we had in 1985. Since 1985 the Inland Empire has added well over 2 million people and 500,000 jobs. The downward trend started with the change of management LAWA [Los Angeles World Airports] instituted five years ago. Before that, we were 8 percent of the market. We are down to 5 percent now. They say the economy caused this to happen and the data contradicts that. There is no way what has occurred in the local economy pushed us back to the 1985 level of passenger traffic. There has been a 102 percent growth in jobs despite the recession. The number of companies is up by two-thirds. What our analysis shows is that the airlines’ costs per passenger in using Ontario was by far the most of any airport in Southern California, far beyond the costs of any regional airport anywhere. The cost for the airlines at Ontario is $18 per head. Compare that to Long Beach, where the cost is $2. That is just completely out of line. LA’s numbers in terms of what people are paid at Ontario are completely out of line with local pay scales. Ontario Airport used to have a full time manager. It now has a part time manager, who is shared with another facility. There is no way you can look at what they have done with the airport and feel anything other than dismay.”
Husing continued, “If you look at Southern California, at the harbors, the transportation authorities, the Southern California and South Coast air quality management districts, all the various cities, everyone has been striving to reduce vehicle miles driven, to facilitate ease of travel and lower congestion and improve air quality. Only one agency is out of sync with that, which is LAWA. LAWA has caused a million more passengers to be travelling on the roads to get to Los Angeles International instead of flying out of Ontario. What they are doing is indefensible.”

(October 5)  BARSTOW—Considerable detail emerged late last week with regard to the events that led up to the June resignation of former Barstow police chief Dianne Burns, the first woman in San Bernardino County history to serve as the chief of a municipal police department.
Burns voluntarily retired on June 29, three days before her five-year contract with the city was set to expire, just about a year after the first public indications of dissension and difficulty attending her trailblazing tenure on behalf of her gender within the ranks of southern California law enforcement.
The actual nature of the contretemps involving Burns and certain elements of the Barstow community was heretofore only partially publicly known. It was revealed early this year, just as Burns was returning from a nearly seven-month extended paid hiatus that a majority of the police department’s members were chaffing under her leadership and were opposed to her coming back. It is now known that Burns was also out of favor with at least one member of the city council, Tim Saenz, who accused her of having wrongfully used her authority as police chief to threaten him personally and politically.
After a 20-year career with the Los Angeles Police Department during which she served in the capacities of a patrol officer, homicide detective, sergeant and lieutenant of a gang suppression unit,  Burns in 2007 was the choice of then-Barstow city  manager Hector Rodriguez to replace former police chief Lee Gibson. Rodriguez selected Burns, who also possessed a law degree, within four weeks of Gibson’s May 1, 2007 departure. It took a majority of the city council another month to set aside some of its members’ concerns about having a woman take on a leadership role within the oftentimes machismo-driven ethos of a law enforcement agency, and  achieve a consensus about Burns’ suitability to serve as the commander of the department’s officers.
The department was 11 short of its authorized strength of 38 officers when Burns arrived. It gained five officers over the next 21 months and then went to full staffing in May 2009 when six officers were sworn in. Burns’ tenure as chief suffered a first noticeable blow in November 2007 when Rodriguez, her primary supporter at City Hall, departed Barstow.
Burns worked  through a number of challenges besetting the department, instituting  several of what were hailed as positive changes by the community, including 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. She simultaneously sought to improve the interdepartmental relationship with the sheriff’s station in Barstow and encouraged officers in the department to become actively involved in community programs such as Cops for Kids, Neighborhood Watch,  Cook and Serve for the Homeless, and local neighborhood street fairs. She further sought and obtained $100,000 per year in “Cops’ Grant” money to update equipment, buy new computers, and provide officers with protective vests.
Outside the department, Burns’ efforts did not go unnoticed and the 2009-2010 grand jury in its yearly report took the uncommon step of commending her “for the changes, improvements, and upgrades she has made since becoming chief of police.” The grand jury waxed praiseful in the commendation, stating “It is hoped that the citizens of Barstow and the surrounding area appreciate her fine work.”
Despite those external accolades, internally there were problems brewing as her command of the department was tested by some officers resentful of her leadership who perceived her as an outsider who had vaulted into the top position in the department without working up through the ranks in Barstow. This was exacerbated by what some officers saw as her formalized big city approach, deemed in some quarters as inappropriate for a desert city with a population of less than 23,000. In response, Burns on occasion lashed out at officers in ways some caricatured as hysterical.
In July 2011, Burns went on vacation and did not return at the end of her holiday, which was not anticipated to last for more than two weeks. Shortly after that it was acknowledged that city manager Curt Mitchell had placed her on administrative leave. She remained absent from the department for more than six months while Mitchell and the council conducted a review of an unspecified issue relating to her job performance.
Throughout the ordeal, city officials steadfastly refused to say what was at the basis of Burns’ suspension. Last week, light was shed on what had occurred when word reached the public that the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing responded to a complaint and a request for leave to sue the city filed  on April 25 by councilman Tim Saenz. In that filing, Saenz related that Burns began evincing hostility toward him in June 2011, specifically engaging in “threatening, harassing and discriminating” behavior, which Saenz informed city manager Curt Mitchell about in an email on June 12, 2011. The strained relationship between Saenz and Burns did not subside. During a community event held at Quigley’s Restaurant on June 30, 2011, according to Saenz, Burns made a series of deprecating statements about the councilman to assistant city manager Oliver Chi, using profanity when she referred to Saenz and speaking in a tone and volume that was audible to others.  She said she wanted to initiate an investigation into Saenz related to his “sleeping with every woman in Barstow.”
Saenz sent further emails to Mitchell about Burns that day and again on July 1 and July 2, 2011, the following two days. During a conference with Mitchell and Chi over the matter, Saenz said Chi advised him to avoid Burns because she was out to get him.
Saenz alleged in his filing that Burns’ action had resulted in “anxiety, stress, family issues, professional issues, work related issues, sleepless nights [and] a total change of my and my family’s lives.”
The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing provided Saenz with a right-to-sue notice, stating that Saenz had met the minimum evidentiary threshold of showing that discrimination might have occurred. He had sought the right to sue under the assertion that as a councilmember, he is technically an employee of the city. The Barstow Desert Dispatch reported on the existence of the right to sue letter last week.
The state agency provided the right to sue notice despite an eventual finding by Mitchell that Burns had not violated the city’s policy on harassment. That determination was made just before Burns returned to work on February 27. Mitchell, to whom the police chief is answerable within the city’s chain of command, did determine after an unprecedented six month suspension of the police chief that Burns had made negative remarks about Saenz in public, though Mitchell turned up no evidence to show she had actually initiated the investigation of  Saenz as she had threatened in her June 30, 2011 remarks to Chi.  Saenz told the Desert Dispatch he does not intend to sue the city but felt he had to obtain the  right-to-sue notice to protect himself from retaliation by Burns after she was reinstated as police chief.
Just prior to Burns’ return from her extended leave, after Mitchell had signaled that she was about to resume command of the department, the Barstow Police Officers Association, representing 30 officers, corporals and detectives, and the Barstow Police Management Association, representing six sergeants and lieutenants, provided on February 24 a vote of “no confidence” in Burns’ ability to continue to lead the department. The groups then sent a letter to Mitchell referencing the votes and excoriating Burns for “poor performance” and “extreme favoritism,” as well as a “hostile work environment” that the unions said were the product of her oversight of the department.  The letter upbraided Mitchell for “failing to adequately address all concerns” the department’s officers had expressed about Burns. “She has demonstrated a lack of leadership and she has displayed severe instability in her emotions while in an official capacity,” the letter stated.
Despite the insurrection, Mitchell restored Burns to her position, mindful that her contract was up on July 2 and that she would be due for another review before it would be renewed on July 2, if indeed it was to be renewed.
Mitchell had not yet completed his review nor arrived at a decision about whether he would recommend to the city council that Burns be retained when she tendered her resignation.

(October 5)  The Fontana Unified School District has committed to using an extremely expensive method of financing several ongoing and upcoming construction projects that will entail interest payments roughly eight times the principal of the loan it will take out.
Next week, the district will sell $108 million in capital appreciation bonds the school board recently voted to issue. To pay off that bonded indebtedness in full, the district will make payments of close to $840 million over the next 40 years.
Normally, public agency bonds are structured to provide interest payments on the face value of the bond  over a 20-year, 25-year or 30-year period, at which time the bonds reach their date of maturity, and the issuer repays the principal, which is equal to the original amount of the investment. Typical interest payments on bonds run from 3.5 percent per year to six percent per year, such that a bondholder normally receives a total of 180 percent to 220 percent of the investment back over the life of the bonds.
The $108 million in improvement bonds most recently authorized for issuance by the Fontana Unified School District’s board, however, are not typical bonds but rather capital appreciation bonds, ones that carry a longer term of financing – 40 years – and are structured to provide a far greater overall return to their buyers. That rate of return will be 707 percent.
There has been considerable focus on capital appreciation bonds lately, with articles and reports in the New York Times and by the public interest group CalWatch, which have pointed out the exorbitant long term cost of that form of financing.
Fontana Unified issued the capital appreciation bonds to cover the principal and interest on a short-term “bridge” loan the district took out in 2009 to undertake several construction projects, including Jurupa Hills High School and Citrus High School.
San Bernardino County Treasurer/Tax Collector Larry Walker said the bonding arrangement the district entered into will push repayment on the loans well into the 21st Century, encumbering future district officials and taxpayers with debt they will have had no part in creating. Walker said the district’s reliance on capital appreciation bonds “represents a generational transfer of debt created by a financing mistake, and is clearly not in the interest of the taxpayers.”
District officials asserted that their financial affairs have declined to such a state that there was no realistic alternative to relying on the controversial instruments.

(October 5)  NEEDLES—The Needles City Council has waived a host of the restrictions it normally applies to selling city-owned property in listing for sale more than 280 acres of what it now considers surplus municipal land.
In recent months, the city proceeded with the sale of five parcels totaling 1.81 acres, including a one acre parcel near the rodeo grounds, netting $40,510.05 for those combined properties. The council on September 11 resolved to put a significant amount of the land it owns on the market. In doing so, the council approved waiving requirements it has traditionally adhered to in selling property. Those included obtaining a real estate appraisal prior to the sale, prohibiting the sale of property smaller than an acre and requiring a developer agreement and master plan on larger properties prior to the sale.
The city will now allow the properties to be sold on the basis of a broker’s opinion of the value instead of a real estate appraisal.
Georgia Breault, a member of the city’s property sale committee, and council member Terry Campbell said that maintaining the prior requirements for the sales would likely discourage buyers from purchasing the properties. Breault said the sales would have a short and medium term benefit to the city in the form of revenue from the sales and property tax income.
The city had waived those requirements in  selling the five parcels totaling 1.81 acres.
The properties being listed inclued 3.54 acres at 3509 Needles Highway; 0.37 acres on Route 66 near the wrecking yard; 20.39 acres off Bailey; 24.88 acres at the intersection of Lillyhill and Parkway; 6.01 landlocked acres accessible via Casa Luna; 1.22 acres off east Broadway, across from Harris Motors; 37.14 of wilderness acreage 5,000 feet from Peru and Lillyhill; 5 acres on Bailey near the senior citizens center and the hospital; 17 acres on Lillyhill behind the senior citizens center and the hospital; 20 acres at the southwest corner of Lillyhill and Parkway; 16.97 acres at the end of J Street; 37.33 acres on Eagle Pass Road past the San Bernardino County flood control property; 39.9 acres on Needles Highway outside the city limits; 20 acres at the end of Crestview below the Travelers Inn; 0.68 acres at 511 W. Broadway; 8.42 acres at 228 Safari Drive; 2.53 acres on the north side of the intersection of Clary and San Clemente, across from the water tank; and 22.87 acres at the end of J Street.
In the previous sales, the city used two of the four brokers based in Needles, and will seek to involve all four brokers in future sales.

(October 5)  The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office last week dismissed all charges against Sam Clauder, the former spokesman and finance chair for the San Bernardino County Democratic Central Committee,  more than three years after he was charged with felony child pornography possession.
The district attorney’s move came just three days before Clauder’s trial on those charges was set to commence and raises questions with regard to the motivation of the prosecutor’s office in having initiated the case against Clauder.
The case was initiated with a complaint filed by the district attorney’s office on February 25, 2009, and an arrest warrant was issued shortly afterward on March 3.
From the outset, the case against Clauder appeared marginal, at best. It was based wholly on  offending images that were alleged to have been downloaded on a computer in the control and possession of Clauder’s former wife until the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department took possession of it.
Moreover, there have been accusations all along that the prosecution was politically motivated, given Clauder’s standing within the Democratic Party and the consideration that despite county voter registration numbers by which Democrats have eclipsed Republicans, the GOP still dominates San Bernardino County politically in terms of the numbers of elected officials at the municipal, special district, county, state and federal level.
Clauder’s function within the party was key to marshaling resources to invigorate voters and encourage them to show up at the polls and vote. His arrest and prosecution dealt a significant blow to the party, which now boasts more registered voters in the county than the Republicans but continues to lag behind its rival in voter turnout at the polls.
The case against Clauder was based upon allegations made against him arising out of the break-up of his marriage, in particular that his son had found an image “depicting a minor engaging in sexual conduct” on a personal computer to which all members of the household had access during the time they lived together in the community of Crestline in the San Bernardino Mountains.
Clauder contends his wife and son provided the computer to the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Office in Twin Peaks on July 7, 2008. On January 8, 2009, both his wife and son submitted to a polygraph examination regarding their discovery of the images on the computer and failed that test.  According to Clauder, Deputy Brian Swann wrote regarding the polygraph tests “inconsistent … but we believe them anyway” in his report.
Despite the district attorney’s office’s contention that evidence implicated Clauder in the matter, no evidence was ever produced that Clauder had in fact downloaded the image in question onto the computer.
At the September 28, 2012 hearing three-and-a-half years after the charges were filed, San Bernardino County deputy district attorney Maryanne Jung Won Choi told the judge, “At this time the people wish to dismiss the case.”  Choi cited information that her office had received in July, indicating her office did not want to proceed any further. She called for the charges to be dismissed “in the interest of justice.”
A press release issued by Clauder just before the September 28 hearing claimed, “Clauder’s computer consultant has presented undeniable evidence to prove all of the alleged child pornography found on the Clauder family’s computer is traced to his son, while none of it is traced to Clauder.”
At the time Clauder was charged, he was a staffer for local Congressman Joe Baca.  Clauder was released from that position when the charges became known.
Clauder alleges that in addition to the domestic issues involving his former wife and son, members of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Twin Peaks Station had motivation to wish him harm and those two forces joining together resulted in the filing of false charges.
Clauder related that while working for the Alpenhorn News as a sports writer he reported and investigated allegations of sexual assault made against a star football player at Rim of the World High School by a fellow female student.  Clauder objected to a press release issued by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department announcing the arrest of the football player at the high school.
Clauder’s position on the press release was that the announcement  tainted the case in that if the suspect was innocent, it would ruin his life,  and that if the case was valid, the victim would be exposed to peer pressure and possible retaliation, lowering the chances of her testifying in the case.  Clauder believes the sheriffs’ press release caused a sexual perpetrator to get away with a crime because the victim and three additional victims who came forward decided not to testify in the matter.
Clauder claims he became motivated to lobby the state legislature on the issue and as a result of his actions the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Twin Peaks Station came under scrutiny.
Clauder alleges that led to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Twin Peaks Station to cover up a beating that he sustained in October 2006 from several youths. Deputies falsely claimed he sustained his injuries as a result of stumbling due to inebriation at the San Bernardino County Central Detention Center, he said.
In September 2007, Clauder worked for three months as an associate editor and primary crime reporter at the Mountain News and primary crime reporter.  In that position, Clauder asserts he was able to gain additional information regarding corruption in the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department Twin Peaks Station.
Clauder spoke of spending 50 days in the San Bernardino County Central Detention Center as a result of the criminal charges and of being made “homeless” when he moved out of his family home and again when he lost his job with Congressman Joe Baca.
At the September 28 hearing, Clauder inquired of the court, “Where do I get my life back?”  Judge Glenn Yabuno responded, “I don’t have an answer.”
After the court hearing, Clauder’s attorney Raj Maline told the Sentinel, “There was conclusive proof that it was all done after he (Clauder) left the house.”  Maline further explained that at the preliminary hearing the defense was given a folder of photographs, in which there were ten photographs that could be considered child porn. “It was Trey’s (Clauder’s son’s) account on the front.”  Maline said. He asked, “How did they miss that?”
Two years ago, in discussions with Maline, Choi offered Clauder two years in the state penitentiary as part of a plea bargain.
“Friday morning she wouldn’t look me in the eye,” Clauder said.
Contacted by the Sentinel, Choi declined to comment.

(September 28)  LOS ANGELES—The findings in a long-awaited report from the Los Angeles city administrative officer further the possibility that the City of Angels will relinquish ownership and control of  Ontario International Airport, though the report indicates the aerodrome’s selling price will be far higher than Ontario officials were hoping. And while Los Angeles City Manager Miguel Santana’s report recommends that his city begin a dialogue on negotiations for the possible transfer of the airport back to Ontario, he has also called for exploring the possibility of selling the airport to the highest bidder, which might prove to be any of  ten private sector domestic and international companies that last year expressed an interest in owning and running the facility.
This week, four days after the report was released, the Los Angeles City Council’s Trade Commerce and Tourism Subcommittee endorsed Santana’s report and recommended to the full city council that it direct Santana to begin discussions for transferring control of the airport.
Los Angeles took over management of the airport in 1967 as part of a strategy to increase flights out of the aerodrome. That ploy worked, as Los Angeles was able to use its control of gate positions and other considerations at Los Angeles International Airport to induce airlines to fly into and out of Ontario. Just under 200,000 passengers enplaned at Ontario Airport in 1966. Under Los Angeles’s management, over $550 million in improvements were made to the facility. In 1985, Ontario deeded the airport to Los Angeles for no consideration. In 2007, usage of the airport peaked, with 7.2 million passengers moving through the airport’s gates.
Since that time, passenger traffic through Ontario International has dropped dramatically, with 4.2 million passengers using the airport in 2011, and further declines registering this year.
Ontario city officials have repeatedly asserted that Los Angeles World Airports, the non-profit entity Los Angeles created to manage the four airports it owns,  is purposefully mismanaging Ontario Airport’s operations to increase passenger traffic at Los Angeles International Airport, which has undergone significant renovations in recent years.
Los Angeles World Airport (LAWA) officials reject those assertions, maintaining that the drop in passenger traffic through Ontario is a function of the sputtering economy and the doldrums in the airline industry generally.
Ontario officials have pushed ever more strenuously – including seeking legislation in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. and conducting an intense public relations campaign – to have Los Angeles return ownership and management of the airport to Ontario.
At one point, Ontario city officials, led by councilman Alan Wapner, were suggesting that Los Angeles should simply deed the airport back to Ontario as a public benefit transfer, propounding that the airport had no value as marketable real estate. Quietly, however, the city of Ontario made a confidential offer to purchase the airport for $50 million and an assumption of $71 million in bond debt related to financing for improvements that had been made to the airport and another $125 million to repay Los Angeles for passenger facilities charges collected at Los Angeles International Airport that were used to make improvements at Ontario Airport.
On September 21, Santana, who in March was directed by the Los Angeles City Council’s Trade, Commerce and Tourism Committee to examine the feasibility of transferring Ontario Airport to local control, released his 100-page analysis calling for Los Angeles to “respectfully” decline Ontario’s $246 million offer.  Rather, Santana suggested, the two cities carry out discussions relating to viable options for Ontario’s purchase and Los Angeles’s sale of the airport along with the shared ownership and management of ONT between officials from Los Angeles World Airports, the owner and operator of the airport, and Ontario and San Bernardino County, who have members that make up the majority of the Ontario International Airport Authority board.
That crucible of negotiations would lead to a determination of the airport’s a fair market value, which Santana indicated was well above what Ontario had offered.
Santana was assisted in compiling the report by New Jersey-based Acacia Financial Group.
“Ontario Airport, despite the economic downturn affecting both the national and local economies with its corresponding effect on airline service levels and passenger volume, is an important regional transportation asset,” the report states. “With a focused and innovative approach in creating a new business model for the airport, Ontario Airport could become a stronger driver of economic growth in the Los Angeles region.”
In calling for the rejection of the $246 million offer, Santana still signaled that the offer represented a beginning point for negotiations. “While the conceptual proposal by the city of Ontario has limitations, it does provide a vehicle in which to open a dialogue between the city and Ontario and pursue commonalities between the parties,” he stated.
Santana suggested the airport is a far more valuable commodity than the city of Ontario has suggested.
“With the proper mix of innovative management and operational models and efficiencies, Ontario Airport could become a strong contender for the busiest regional medium-hub airport in the Los Angeles Basin,” Santana wrote.
Santana said Ontario’s offer was problematic for technical legal reasons, as well. “The $50 million transaction payment to the city of Los Angeles’ general fund is meant by Ontario to be a reimbursement of the city’s costs for transferring the airport; however, such a payment appears to be viewed by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] as a potential revenue diversion under federal aviation law. The FAA regulations define airport revenue as any revenue that the sponsor (owner) derives from the use or sale of airport property. Likewise, federal airport grants like those received by LAWA require that the airport revenue be used solely for capital and operating costs of the airport, the local airport system or other local facilities substantially related to the air transportation of passengers or property. As a consequence, the city attorney is of the opinion that payment to the city’s general fund would likely violate the FAA revenue use diversion rules.”
Santana said the city of Los Anglees had four basic options, consisting of maintaining ownership of the airport and the status  quo; marketing the airport to the highest bidder; negotiating a selling price and acceptable legal terms with Ontario and transferring ownership and operations to Ontario; or entering into an agreement with Ontario and the Ontario International Airport Authority for operation of the airport.
Last year Los Angeles floated the idea of privatizing the airport and selling it and its assets to an investor or firm specializing in airport operations. The city sought parties interested in just such an arrangement, eliciting responses from ten  domestic and international entities, including American Airports Corporation, a California-based airport operator; Airport Property Ventures, a California-based airport operator; AMP Capital Investors, an Australian infrastructure fund manager; Aviation Facilities Company, a Virginia-based airport manager and developer; Carlyle Group, a Washington DC-based private equity firm; Fraport, a German airport investor, owner and manager; GMR Airports, an Indian airport operator; Goldman Sachs Infrastructure Partners, a New York-based infrastructure fund; Incheon International Airport Corporation, a Korea-based airport operator; and Munich Airport Consulting, a German airport operator.
The transfer of the airport to a private sector operator could happen in relatively short order, according to Santana.
“The estimated time needed to structure and execute a management  services contract could take as little as six months,” Santana wrote.
Los Angeles World Airports recently hired the firm of Leigh Fisher to make a calculation of the airport’s fair market value. Leigh Fisher pegged the airport as being worth at least $243 million and as much as $605 million. The calculations were based on cash flow expectations over the next half century.
According to Santana, “The final value will be determined through negotiations between the parties but should not be less than the fair and reasonable recovery of LAWA’s investment.”  Given that total investment by Los Angeles over the years has reached $550 million, the asking price would appear to be $550 million.
Los Angeles officials have privately told the Sentinel that if Ontario were to make an offer of $450 million, it would be accepted.
Ontario city councilman Alan Wapner, who is leading his city’s efforts to wrest Ontario Airport back from Los Angeles, resisted making any commitment with regard to the dollar figure Ontario will be willing to pay to purchase the airport, and he quibbled with the use of the term purchase.
“FAA regulations dictate that an airport, as a public benefit property cannot be sold,” Wapner said. “It was never Ontario’s intent to buy the airport from Los Angeles. The $50 million we offered was money to be paid to Los Angeles in consideration for dissolving the joint powers agreement.”
Pressed about the language in Santana’s report stating that the amount to be paid to Los Angeles for relinquishment of ownership and operation of the airport “should not be less than the fair and reasonable recovery of Los Angeles World Airports’ investment,” Wapner said that the amount Ontario would be prepared to pay under that formula was $0. “That one is easy,” Wapner said. “Zero. Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports have never invested any money in Ontario Airport outside of $58,000 in legal fees they accrued when they got the airport in 1985. If you can show me documentation that Los Angeles or Los Angeles World Airports invested any money beside that, I’d love to see it.”
When quoted the $550 million asking price and $450 million minimum expectation prices,  Wapner said, “Any negotiating on the price will be done at the negotiating table and not publicly in the media.”

(September 28) San Bernardino County Chief Executive Officer Greg Devereaux on September 25 nailed down a key plank in the fiscal reform platform he has been charged with effecting to reverse the “institutional deficit” the county is projected to face by the middle of this decade.
At its meeting on Tuesday, the board of supervisors approved a four-year contract with the Safety Employees Benefit Association (SEBA), the union representing sheriff’s deputies and district attorney’s office investigators.
The terms of that contract, worked out between Devereaux and the union’s president, Laren Leichliter, included a curtailment of benefits previously enjoyed by the union’s members. The union accepted, and supervisors on Tuesday ratified, having the officers pay into their own retirement plans a sum equal to 4.72 percent of their yearly pay, which until now was being defrayed by the county; reducing previously granted 5 percent raises to promoted employees to 2.5 percent; giving back one percent of what the county pays into their medical retirement trusts; a reduction from 100 hours to 50 hours the compensation time union members can cash out annually; no cost-of-living salary increases; reducing the salary for entry level deputies by five percent;  and having all new hired union employees accept a retirement plan that grants them the right to retire at the age of 50 and receive two percent of their highest yearly salary times the number of years they have worked with the county. The acceptance of the latter provision will create two classes of employees, since current union members are eligible to retire at 50 and receive three percent of their highest salary times the number of years they have worked with the county.   The county will register an immediate $5.3 million per year savings as a consequence of the contract, a significant step toward closing a $33.2 million budget gap that Devereaux has identified.
Simultaneously, Devereaux is continuing to seek concessions and/or contract terms with other county employee unions to ensure that what was previously foreseen as a “locked-in” annual deficit by 2016 can be avoided. Had the terms of the contracts with county employee unions signed in recent years  been perpetuated across the board, those contractual commitments with regard to salary and benefits would have resulted in the county expending  $130 million more annually to operate county government than it woud take in per year in revenues. Devereaux is seeking to negotiate with the San Bernardino Public Employees Association, which is the largest bargaining unit representing county employees, modest pension and medical benefit  reductions for current employees and more substantial reductions for employees to be hired in the future. He is also in discussions with the unions representing county nurses, attorneys and probation officers.
Devereaux committed to press as hard in wringing concessions from those unions as well as the one representing emergency service employees, saying that if those units “do not agree to reduce or eliminate the items of compensation or benefits [conceded by the sheriff’s deputies and district attorney’s investigators], then those items of compensation and benefits shall be restored retroactively to members of the safety unit.”
A major consideration in the effort to rein in county costs consists of skyrocketing pension commitments, as life expectancies lengthen and the sheer numbers of county retirees increase. In this respect, the concession obtained from the Safety Employees Benefit Association with respect to reducing the retirement benefits of future hires was seen as a major breakthrough and accomplishment, and a feather in Devereaux’s cap.
Nevertheless, others made a more sober assessment of the accomplishment, pointing out that the impact from that reform will not manifest for at least two decades.