(September 21)  In a rare but permissible move, the county of San Bernardino is advancing the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District over $5 million in property tax that it is calculated the district will be due at a later date.
The Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District straddles portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, consisting of six elementary schools, two junior high schools, one high School, four alternative schools and an adult school.
According to San Bernardino County Auditor-Controller/Treasurer/Tax Collector Larry Walker, his office “received a request from Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District for a temporary transfer of funds, in accordance with the provisions of Article XVI, Section 6 of the California Constitution and Section 42620 of the California Education Code. These provisions require the board of supervisors to order the county treasurer to make a temporary transfer of funds to a school district from any funds of the county not immediately needed to pay claims of the county if the school district has established a need for the funds. The temporary transfer of funds must not exceed 85% of the anticipated property tax revenue that will accrue to the school district, and shall be re-transferred by the auditor controller tax collector to the fund of the county from property tax collections before any other obligation of the school district is paid.”
“The district has requested a temporary transfer of funds for $5,060,000. The auditor/tax collector/controller’s office considered several factors, including the district’s deepest projected cash deficit and the anticipated tax revenue that will accrue to the district in arriving at its recommendation,” Walker continued. “In addition to demonstrating a cash need, the district has established inter-fund borrowing authority for the auditor/tax collector controller’s office to consider in its recommendation to the board of supervisors that a temporary transfer of funds be approved.”
Walker added, “Upon review of the district’s cash needs, the auditor treasurer controller’s office finds that the district has satisfactorily demonstrated a reasonable need for a temporary transfer of funds and recommends a temporary transfer of funds of $5,060,000. This amount represents the lesser of the district’s request; 85% of its anticipated tax revenue, and 125% of its deepest projected cash deficit for 2012-13.”
School District temporary transfers of funds are non-interest bearing and thus reduce the mount of county funds available for county use until repayment is completed, such that county interest earnings will be reduced while the school district utilizes the temporary transfer.
The board’s action establishes a “line-of-credit” in the amount of $5,060,000 for Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District to draw on, as needed, to be repaid by April 29, 2013.

(Sepember 21)  The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department is contributing a full-time clerical worker and overtime compensation for one officer as its part in a multiagency taskforce targeting illicit narcotic distribution activity spanning the border with Riverside County. According to documentation provided to the county board of supervisors by sheriff Rod Hoops and captain Steve Higgins, the Sheriff’s Department will be reimbursed by the federal government up to $47,779.25 for salary and overtime costs related to participation in the Riverside Task Force from September 30, 2012 through September 30, 2013.
The Department has participated in the Riverside Task Force since 1992 as a means of targeting, investigating and prosecuting major drug trafficking organizations in Riverside/San Bernardino Counties.
“The department’s participation in the task force results in better coordination with other agencies involved in major drug trafficking investigations and enhances the prospect of disrupting drug traffic in the area,” Higgins said.
The individual holding the clerical position reimbursed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Administration is provided with a salary of $30,577.00. Overtime costs for one safety position assigned to the task force total $17,202.25. That cost is also picked up by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

(September 14)  Catastrophe was averted this and last week after a Fort Irwin Middle School student came across five grenade simulators and then, with two of his older friends who were students at Silver Valley High School, took four of the devices to the middle school campus, where they left them after unsuccessful attempts to detonate them.
On September 3, a first unexploded training grenade had been found off campus in the wash area of Sandy Basin. On September 5, another grenade – identical to those used in training exercises by soldiers at the National Training Center – was found on the roof of the middle school by a maintenance worker repairing that facility’s air conditioning system. School administrators immediately put the campus on lockdown. A search of the campus turned up two further grenade simulators on Thursday, September 6. The entire area around where the devices were found was cordoned off and explosive ordnance disposal soldiers disarmed and removed them. Bomb sniffing dogs from the Marine Corps Logistics Base were utilized to search for additional grenades. None were immediately found, but on Monday, September 10, another simulator turned up on the campus.
A team of military police took up the case on September 5, eventually determining that the five devices had been in the possession of three teenagers  –  two high school students and a junior high school student, all males. The junior high school student had found them at his home in a handbag. The three then took the grenades to the junior high campus after school hours, where they attempted to activate them by pulling out the ignition pins, but were unable to do so. One of the grenades was lobbed onto the roof of the school.
The devices do not possess the fragmentation capability of combat grenades, but nevertheless are powerful enough to kill or maim. Each possesses roughly two grams of explosives, enough to blow off the hand and part of the arm of someone holding it, blind or deafen someone if it explodes proximate to one’s face, or kill an individual if the device detonates too close to the head or thorax.
Marc Jackson, superintendent of Silver Valley Unified School District, told the Sentinel, “The military police have determined that they were brought to our campus by two high school students and one student at the junior high. They all participated in taking the simulators. They tried to pull out the pins but didn’t have the strength. They threw them over the fences. After the first one was found, the principal called security and the fire department. One of the firefighters took a look at it and immediately said we needed to call the bomb squad, the military’s explosive ordnance disposal team.  The bomb squad came in and we swept the campus and went through our process and procedures in an expeditious manner. We moved the students away from where the devices were found.  The team did its work. We are confident all of the devices were found and we are coming to the end of this chapter.”
Jackson said of the three students responsible for the grenades being brought to the school, “They have been suspended, pending a pre-expulsion hearing. They were picked up and cited with that section of the penal code relating to being in the possession of explosives. They were taken to the Ft. Irwin Police Department today [September 12] and released to their parents this afternoon.”
The superintendent said the three young men “will be held accountable. I think it prudent to say we intend to enforce the consequences of their actions. I believe even good students do stupid things. This was not an intentional criminal act. We don’t think it was their intention to hurt anyone, but they were explosive devices. They were not firecrackers. They are extremely dangerous and we are going to enforce the education code.”
Jackson said, “I was really impressed with how quickly and expeditiously we moved in response to this. It was very well coordinated, with the school, the fire department, the bomb squad, and the military police. Coming when this did, there was concern this might be a terrorist act because of 9-11. We worked with the parents to give them information and keep communication at the forefront. They were legitimately very afraid about what seemed to be happening. I am very pleased with the support we received from [Ft. Irwin garrison commander] Colonel [Kurt] Pinkerton.”
It appears that the student that obtained the grenades did so as a consequence of having a family member stationed at Ft. Irwin, as was stated on the post’s website.  Nevertheless, Jackson said it was fortunate that there were military resources to assist in stabilizing the situation.
“We reacted in full partnership with the installation,” Jackson said. “Having them there was beneficial.”
Despite the trauma, he said there was a silver lining. “I do believe this will make us better responders when these type of things happen again,” he said.

(September 14)  The Twentynine Palms Planning Commission last week set the stage for a prohibition on commercial solar fields both within the city and its sphere of influence.
Though it is a quintessential desert town, influential Twentynine Palms civic leaders and many of its residents have drawn a line in the sand against massive scale power farms, even as national leaders have hailed solar power as the wave of the future and a means of achieving American energy independence and rejuvenating the economy.
On September 4, the commission endorsed a resolution calling for the city’s development code to be amended with the ban. The commission asked the  city council, in the event it does not approve an outright ban, to place exacting standards on any solar fields that are permitted.
While expressing approval of photo-voltaic panels, photo-voltaic film, photo-voltaic laminates and so-called solar panels, all of which can be applied to existing or new homes or industrial or commercial structures, the commission was less accepting of more aggressive solar power projects, i.e., commercial solar fields.
Solar fields are generally large scale facilities that entail variations on a few basic designs, all of which entail a massive array of solar mirrors. One design involves the arrays focusing the sun’s rays on a central vessel containing water. The heat from the redirected sunlight causes the water to boil and the steam is used to drive a turbine, which in turn creates electricity. Another design entails having the mirrors focus the sunlight on a glass tube or series of glass tubes containing Therminol, a synthetic petroleum product.  Therminol, which has various ratings that allow it to absorb temperatures ranging from 700 degrees  to 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, is then pumped to a heat condenser, which is used to boil water and create steam to run turbines and generate electricity. A variation on this design entails pumping the Therminol not to a heat condenser but to a series of Stirling engines, devices which have compression chambers inhabited by gasses of differing densities. By passing the heat across the top of the engines, the pistons are activated. The Stirling engines are then used to run the turbines to generate the electricity.
The planning commission collectively held that commercial solar fields are incompatible with the city, its character and its land use policy. The reasons given for excluding them ran to the fields not employing many workers; the potential that they would represent a loss of property tax revenue to the city; the visual blight and obstruction they would entail; the harm they would do to the local tourism industry; the deleterious impact on adjoining property uses and values; impacts on the quality of life for surrounding residents; as well as ecological harm in the way of damage to indigenous flora and fauna and archeological artifacts.
The commission also called for solar fields to be restricted to the southeast quadrant of the city and its sphere of influence if the city council, in its wisdom, at some future date allows such projects to be undertaken.

(September 14)  The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board has taken action against two San Bernardino County entities – a public agency and a private development company – for actions that compromised local water supplies or waterways.  In Victorville, the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority was hit with a $700,000 fine for a series of sewage spills that took place at its wastewater treatment plant two years ago.
Lahontan has also  ordered the Arimol Group to take immediate restoration steps at its Meadowbrook Road development site in Lake Arrowhead, preparatory to the levying of fines related to violations there.
As of press time this week, a settlement agreement between the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority had been forged, whereby the authority acknowledged that it had improperly discharged nearly 43 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Mojave River over a 15-day span from late December 2010 into January 2011 after the agency’s main pipeline in the riverbed failed during a storm; that the plant discharged another 110,700 gallons of partially treated wastewater from August 22, 2010 through August 28, 2010 because of operator neglect; and that 230 gallons of partially treated wastewater from its Victorville plant were discharged into the river on June 18, 2010 as the consequence of a power outage.
The Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority (VVWRA), which is still using a temporary bypass through the Mojave Narrows, is undertaking a $11.1 million project to move the pipeline out of the riverbed. It has also installed overflow basins.
At press time, it was anticipated that Lahontan would put its final imprimatur on the settlement, which has already been accepted by the VVWRA board. VVWRA will put $377,394 of that amount up in the form of a cash endowment from its reserves to the State Water Resources Control Board’s cleanup and abatement account. The balance –  $322,606 – will eventually be provided to construct desalter plants in the region.
In the San Bernardino Mountains, Lahontan has ordered Arimol Group and its president, Bill Moller, to initiate a trio of restoration steps at the Meadowbrook subdivision located at Meadowbrook Road and Cedar Court. The property, which is slightly larger than an acre, is adjacent to Moller’s Serenity Conference and Retreat Center. Lahontan wants channel alignments, widths and grades surveyed; a 30-inch corrugated metal pipe culvert and concrete headwall removed so to restore two creek beds to their historical flow paths; and drain rock, to prevent concentrated flows and sheet flows, placed around the perimeter of the concrete slab recently constructed on 995 Meadowbrook Road.
In general, the water board wants the Arimol group to take steps to prevent erosion and the disturbance of soil on the site.
The board first issued a notice of violation to Arimol on June 20. Arimol responded with a mitigation plan on July 20 that Lahontan considers inadequate.
Lahontan is in the initial stages of assessing administrative civil liability penalties against Arimol that will be adjudicated by the Lahontan board. Those penalties exist in the form of fines of $1,000 per day to $10,000 per day for each alleged violation.

(September 14)  The union representing San Bernardino County’s sheriff’s deputies and district attorney’s investigators has voted to approve a new contract that institutes a set of concessions on benefits and salary levels enjoyed by the officers.
The vote brings to a close a more-than-yearlong effort initiated by county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux to rein in public safety employee costs  as part of a strategy to limit current and future deficit spending by the county.  It is projected that by 2016, the county will sustain an “institutional” annual deficit of $130 million, meaning that contractual commitments to employee unions for salary and benefits will create a circumstance by which the county will take in $130 million less per year in revenues than is required to operate county government. The concessions made by the union, while substantive, were less far-reaching than Devereaux had previously sought. The reduced projected cost to the county under the deal eliminates for the time being the threat that Devereaux would impose on sheriff Rod Hoops a mandate to lay off a significant number of his deputies.
Sworn members of the sheriff’s department up to the rank of lieutenant and investigators with the district attorney’s office are represented by the San Bernardino County Safety Employees Benefit Association, known by the acronym SEBA. In a 681-91 vote of the rank and file, a proposal to have the union’s members accept five concessions was approved.  Those concessions included having the officers accept paying 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 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; 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.
In accepting those terms, SEBA members sidestepped the imposition of the “last, best, and final offer” approved by the county board of supervisors in June, which called for a 4 percent pay cut and the elimination of compensation time.
The union members did wring from the county one additional perquisite, namely having each member’s annual leave increased from 40 to 60 hours.

(September 14)  NEEDLES—Bank of America will be making an exodus from the county’s smallest city, which lies on the extreme end of San Bernardino County on California’s  east coast at the banks of the Colorado River along the border with Arizona.
The closure of the bank will further force Needles, which boasts a population of 4,830, into the commercial and financial trade area within Arizona known as the “Miracle Mile” which actually extends 20 miles along Arizona’s Highway 95 and includes Bermuda Valley, Mohave Valley, the Mesa, Willow Valley, Fort Mohave and Bullhead City.
Bank of America’s closure in Needles is being precipitated by the ending of its lease for the building space it occupies at 1001 W. Broadway on February 28, 2013.
Notices to Bank of America customers in Needles will be sent out in middle to late November.
Contributing to the closure decision was a substantial decline in banking at the Needles institution, bank officials said. Bank of America indicated it would keep a full service ATM in operation to provide existing customers with deposit, withdrawal, transfer and account monitoring services.
After Bank of America leaves, the closest thing left to a bank remaining in Needles will be the local Desert Communities Federal Credit Union.
Needles City Manager David Brownlee told the Sentinel, “We are saddened and disappointed with the news that the bank is vacating this market. It is yet another indication that small communities are of little consequence to large money-center banks. Small banks cannot compete with them and credit unions are hamstrung by not being able to perform commercial lending. They have done everything in their power to create a market monopoly in Needles that shuts down smaller competitors and then they perpetrate the final indignity of vacating this market.”
Brownlee said that key city officials pleaded with Bank of America to reconsider its decision to no avail. “The director of finance and staff had a conference call with Patrick Kamachi, vice president and treasury solution officer with Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Los Angeles,” Brownlee said. “He said that the decision to vacate is irrevocable.”
Brownlee said that decision will be an inconvenience to some local residents and a hardship on others. “The real disservice that Bank of America will visit on the community is that it will financially strand those low income and senior citizen customers who do not have an automobile or are so infirm that they cannot drive the 32-mile round trip to Ft. Mohave, Arizona to bank at the in-store Bank of America branch within Smith’s Supermarket.  There is no public transportation from Needles to Ft. Mohave.”
Bank of America has branches in Lake Havasu City and Bullhead City. Chase Bank has a branch in Mohave Valley.
The city of Needles currently uses Bank of America to do its banking. The closure of the Needles branch will impose complications for the city, as well.

(September 14)  The main contractor on the county’s Adelanto Detention Center project this week was provided with change orders and contract amendments that will increase the overall contract amount to $99,316,987.
On December 14, 2010, the county board of supervisors awarded a construction contract to Lydig Construction of Bellevue, Washington for the construction of the Adelanto Detention Center at 9438 Commerce Way in Adelanto.
The original contract amount was for $90,951,937. Six previous change orders and contract amendments increased that contract to $97,856,518. Carl Alban, the county’s director of architecture and engineering, this week asked the board of supervisors to approve a contract amendment in the amount  of $557,668 to have Lydig install a stainless steel well casing for a new well and put in state fire marshal-required additional seismic upgrades to the fire protection lines.
Alban said he was asking Lydig to “upgrade the water well casing to address water quality issues discovered during the course of drilling for the new water well. The water quality test data indicated high arsenic concentrations approximately 3 times the allowable Title 22 Water Quality Limit and corrosive properties.”
Alban further asked the board to approve a $902,801 change order for the addition of detention ceilings at six 32-bed dorms, modifications to center core casework, guardrails and exhaust systems and other utility modifications and enhancements.
“This will compensate Lydig for the addition of detention ceilings to conceal piping in the 32-bed dorm areas in each of the six housing units; modifications to the casework, guard rails and exhaust system within each of the six center core areas; the application of an epoxy coating to provide for ease of cleanliness for all spoke, center core and columns within the six housing units; and various modifications to the security electronics, electrical and plumbing systems to provide security and safety enhancements,” Alban said.

(September 7)  Molycorp has intensified its effort to have the United States reassert itself as a major producer of rare earth minerals, based primarily on its mining operations in a remote area of San Bernardino County.
In recent decades, China has become the predominant supplier of rare earth metals.  Molycorps is making strides in challenging the Chinese rare earth production primacy.
Rare earth minerals, also known as rare earth metals, are a set of seventeen chemical elements, specifically scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium,  gadolinium,  europium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, and ytterbium. They have a number of critical industrial and technical uses and applications, including serving as components in mercury-vapor lamps. high-temperature superconductors, lasers, microwave filters, high refractive index glass, hybrid electrical vehicles, flint products, battery-electrodes, camera lenses, carbon arc lighting, didymium glass used in welding goggles, polishing powder,  ceramic capacitors, nuclear batteries, rare-earth magnets, memory chips, red and blue phosphors, green phosphors, fluorescent lamps, vanadium steel, x-ray machines and infrared lasers. Rare earth elements also facilitate hydrogen storage, fluid catalytic cracking, creating violet and yellow colors in glass or ceramics, catalyzing the refining of petroleum, oxidizing chemicals, neutron capture, and contrasting magnetic resonance images.
Because of their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found in concentrated and economically exploitable forms.
Until 1948, most of the world’s rare earths were mined in India and Brazil. In the 1950s, South Africa became the leading supplier of rare earth metals.
In 1949, the Mountain Pass Mine, which lies in the extreme northeast portion of San Bernardino County roughly 15 miles from the California-Nevada state line, was discovered by a uranium prospector.  The Molybdenum Corporation of America bought the mining claims, and small-scale production began in 1952. Production expanded greatly in the 1960s, with the Mountain Pass facility becoming the world’s dominant producer of rare earth elements. From 1965 until 1995 it was an almost exclusive supplier of europium, which is used in color television screens. The Molybdenum Corporation of America changed its name to Molycorp in 1974 and was acquired by Union Oil in 1977.
In the 1980s, the company began piping wastewater from the mining operation 14 miles to evaporation ponds at Ivanpah Dry Lake. Ruptures in the pipeline resulted in radioactive thorium and radium leaking into the desert floor, according to federal investigators, at least 60 times between 1984 and 1998, at which point the pipeline was shut down and chemical processing at the mine ceased.   Unocal was served with a cleanup order and sued by  San Bernardino County’s district attorney’s office in a civil lawsuit. The company paid more than $1.4 million in fines and settlements. The mine was shut down in 2002, by which time China eclipsed the United States as the leading supplier of rare earth metals. After Unocal in 2004 obtained a new operating permit for the mine, it was acquired the following year by the Chevron Corporation.
By 2005, 96 percent of the world’s rare earth elements were mined in China. In 2007, China restricted exports of rare earth elements and imposed export tariffs. In 2008, Chevron sold the Mountain Pass Mine to privately held Molycorp Minerals LLC, based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, a company formed to revive the Mountain Pass mine. On July 29, 2010, Molycorp, Inc. became a publicly-traded firm by selling 28,125,000 shares at $14 in its IPO. On September 22, 2010 China quietly enacted a ban on exports of rare earths to Japan. Later that fall, Congress passed legislation to subsidize the revival of the American rare earths industry, including the reopening of the Mountain Pass mine.
Initially, Molycorp lost money. But by the second quarter of 2011, the company was showing a profit. Molycorp acquired processing facilities in Arizona and Estonia. In March 2012, Molycorp Inc. acquired Neo Material Technologies Inc., a Canadian rare earth processing company, for $1.3 billion.
On August 27, Molycorp initiated Project Phoenix at the Mountain Pass Mine, a production run that is facilitated by the addition of an on-site combined heat and power plant, which is now providing  low-cost, high-efficiency electrical power and steam for the company’s extraction of heavy rare earth concentrate ore which is then processed into high-purity, custom-engineered  rare earth products at Molycorp’s production facilities.
According to Mark A. Smith, Molycorp’s president and chief executive officer, the addition of new equipment at the Mountain Pass Mine, together with processing capability provided by the facilities obtained in the Neo Material Technologies acquisition, has created “the most technologically advanced, vertically integrated rare earth mining and production operation in the world.”
Within short order it is anticipated that the mine will be the major source of the world’s bastnäsite, calcite, barite, dolomite, Cerium, Lanthanum, Neodymium and Europium.
Molycorp’s stock rose more than 11 percent during the first week of the Project Phoenix operation.

(September 7)  VICTORVILLE—Dr.  Kali Chaudhuri and his Riverside-based company drew closer to a final purchase of  Victor Valley Community Hospital following the California Attorney General’s approval of the sale on August 31.
Riverside-based KPC Group, which in 2011 tendered a $37 million offer for Victor Valley Community that was accepted but fell through when Chaudhuri and his partners were unable to line up the financing, this time has agreed to purchase the now bankrupt Victorville hospital for $33.8 million. Chaudhuri and KPC have until September 30 to close the deal.
Chaudhuri and KPC have committed to making $25 million in facility, equipment and service upgrades and improvements, as basic capital investment at the institution has been neglected for some time.
Victor Valley Community, which was founded as and remains a non-profit institution, has been in eclipse for nearly a decade. In September 2010, staggering under more than $20 million in debt, the 101-bed hospital filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and was put on the auction block. That attracted a $37 million offer from KPC Global Care, one of KPC Group’s entities, and a $3 million offer from Dr. Prem Reddy and his company, Prime Healthcare.  But after KPC failed to finalize the acquisition and bowed out in May 2011, a federal bankruptcy court judge approved an agreement allowing the non-profit arm of Reddy’s for-profit venture, known as Prime Healthcare Service Foundation, to purchase the hospital for $35 million. But after Reddy’s  offer was accepted by the bankruptcy court, the state attorney general’s office on September 20, 2011 intervened, blocking Reddy’s plan. A major consideration was that Victor Valley Community was founded and set up as a non-profit institution.  The attorney general’s office had moved to ensure that the High Desert preserve at least one non-profit hospital in an area with a multiplicity of for-profit medical centers, including one already owned by Reddy, Desert Valley Hospital.
Nevertheless, with Victor Valley Community teetering on the brink of financial collapse, Reddy on October 14, 2011 proffered capital in the form of loans and a consulting arrangement to prevent the hospital from having to close its doors. That assistance was codified in the form of what was called a “post-petition revolving credit and security agreement between Victor Valley Community Hospital as borrower and Prime Healthcare Management, Inc. as lender.” That agreement took the form of a $6 million financing and consulting arrangement. The California Attorney General’s office redoubled its effort to prevent that agreement from being actuated, though Victor Valley Community was sustained in the short term by an infusion of Reddy’s funding. In November, KPC Global reasserted its interest in acquiring Victor Valley Community, filing legal and financial documents to create an entity known as Victor Valley Hospital Acquisition Inc., and indicating it stood ready to put up $31.1 million toward that end. Victor Valley Community Hospital officials were somewhat resistant to the KPC Global offer at that point, and were seemingly more favorably disposed to working with Prime Healthcare.
In January, St. Joseph/St. Mary made a $35 million bid on Victor Valley Community Hospital but did not follow through with an arrangement on financing.
At present, KPC has commitments to cover the full $33.8 million purchase price of Victor Valley Community.  In providing her office’s approval, California Attorney General Kamala Harris required that KPC must hold $3 million in an interest-bearing account for emergency operating or capital needs for the next five years unless VVCH begins operating on a positive cash flow basis before then.
A portion of the purchase price will go toward recompensing Reddy and Prime Healthcare for the capital provided to keep the hospital running over the last year.