(September 7)  The city of Ontario has reached east, south and west to fill out the last two remaining positions on the board for the Ontario International Airport Authority.
The city, which in cooperation with the county of San Bernardino formed the joint powers authority as part of an effort to wrest back from the city of Los Angeles ownership and control of Ontario Airport, nominated both Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge and Orange County Business Council chief executive officer Lucy Dunn to the five-member Ontario International Airport Authority’s governing board.
Loveridge and Dunn join Ontario councilmen Alan Wapner and Jim Bowman and San Bernrardino County Fourth District Supervisor Gary Ovitt on the panel.
Ontario Airport, which began operations at its current location in 1929, was languishing under the direction of the city of Ontario in the 1960s. After signing on with Los Angeles, its fortunes turned around and the airport advanced and prospered under the management of the city of Los Angeles.
In 1966, just under 200,000 passengers transited through Ontario Airport. In 1967 the city of Ontario transferred management of the airport to the city of Los Angeles and its department of airports, a ploy which allowed the entity that owned and controlled Los Angeles International Airport to use its prestige and greater negotiating leverage to convince airlines to fly into and out of Ontario. Whereas previously, only two carriers had utilized Ontario Airport, Lost Angeles lured, induced or inveigled over a dozen airlines to utilize the Ontario facility and by 1969 ridership their increased dramatically. Under Los Angeles’s direction, over $550 million in improvements were made to the airport and in 1985 the city of Ontario deeded the airport to Los Angeles for no consideration. In 2007, use of the airport peaked, with 7.2 million passenger enplaning or deplaning in Ontario.
But over the last five years, the number of passengers flying into and out of Ontario has dwindled considerably, with 4.2 million passengers in 2011, and further declines are registering this year.
Ontario officials blame Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports, the non-profit entity Los Angeles created to own, maintain, administer and operate its division of airports, for the downturn in passenger traffic through Ontario in recent years. The once-cordial relationship between Ontario and Los Angeles has suffered as Ontario officials maintain that Los Angeles has purposefully increased enplaned passenger costs at Ontario and diminished marketing of the airport as a ploy to increase passenger traffic at Los Angeles International Airport, even as the airline industry in general has been contracting. Led by councilman Alan Wapner, Ontario officials have been pushing ever more aggressively to have Los Angeles relinquish the airport, maintaining that the entirety of the Inland Empire has seen its economy negatively impacted as a result of the loss of passengers transiting through Ontario Airport. That effort, which included videos, and a push to have legislation passed in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. to mandate what is referred to as local control of the airport, has angered Los Angeles World Airport officials, who maintain that the drop in passenger traffic through Ontario is a function of the sputtering economy and the doldrums in the airline industry generally.
Ontario pushed ahead with the formation of the Ontario International Airport Authority, insisting that local control of the aerodrome will serve to overcome policy and managerial decisions formulated in Los Angeles over the last several years that have contributed to the shrinkage of what is considered a key element of the inland region’s economy.
Loveridge was chosen in some measure because of his past support for Ontario’s effort to regain ownership and control of the airport. While Loveridge is not seeking reelection as Riverside mayor in November, indications are that he will remain on the airport board after he leaves elected office.
Reached by the Sentinel, Loveridge said, “I feel honored to be invited to participate as a member of the board. Ontario Airport is important to the region and certainly important to western Riverside County. There is a consensus that there is a need for local control. The current passenger levels at Ontario Airport are unacceptable. My understanding is the levels are down to what they were in 1983. We hope to change the trajectory of what is happening at Ontario and take steps to move in a much better direction.”
The choice of Dunn to some seemed curious, given her commitment to the advancement of Orange County’s economy. John Wayne Airport there has been cited as a major draw away from Ontario Airport and is perceived as a competing entity for passengers in the expansive Southern California metropolitan area.
She could not be reached for comment.
Ontario officials have publicly suggested that Los Angeles should simply deed the airport back to Ontario as a public benefit transfer, maintaining 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 all debt related to financing for improvements that had been made to the airport.
Los Angeles officials have indicated they are not prepared to simply surrender their autonomy over the airport and they believe the aerodrome and its assets to be worth in excess of $450 million.

(September 7)  Stopgap repairs on Barstow’s historic First Street Bridge should be completed by January, city and Caltrans officials have indicated.
Built in 1930, the bridge is a key route of ingress to and egress from Barstow’s Railyard, the largest in the world. Connections from the railyard to the major roads and highways in the area have been hampered since 2010, when the city and Caltrans instituted weight limits on vehicles using the bridge, with the maximum load for a four-axle vehicle being 15 tons, well under the normal legal weight limit for most bridges of 40 tons.
Problems with the bridge, precipitated by an earthquake or trucks bearing excessive loads over the structure, were first recognized in 2003, triggering a directive from Caltrans that refurbishing and shoring up of the bridge be immediately undertaken. No repairs were ever made, however, and in 2010, Caltrans imposed the current weight restrictions. The Barstow City Council at that point approved repairs to a column and bracing other supports at a cost of $190,000. In 2011, an  inspection uncovered further damage to support beams.
In essence, traffic across the bridge is restricted to non-commercial vehicles such as cars, pickups, and SUVs, and small load commercial vehicles such as four-wheel stakebeds and the like. Larger vehicles such as 18-wheel tractor-trailers cannot use the bridge. Moreover, large public transportation vehicles including busses and public safety vehicles like fire engines must route themselves around the bridge. In the case of fire emergencies in north Barstow, this represents a potential safety hazard, as fire battalions are delayed in their responses.
The city has completed plans for repairs that will allow the weight bearing capacity of the bridge to be returned to the traditional 40 tons. Upon review and approval by Caltrans, the work will be initiated and completed within three months.
Meanwhile, the city has applied for federal assistance in undertaking a future total reconstruction of the bridge, which is estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $45 million. That project will not begin, at the earliest, until 2015.

(September 7)  wo lawsuits challenging a groundwater extraction project in the East Mojave Desert were filed last week, one on August 31 in San Bernardino Superior Court and the other on August 30 in U.S. District Court in Riverside. 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 state court, naming both the county of  San Bernardino and the Santa Margarita Water District. Another group, 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 a Cadiz, Inc. corporate offshoot, the FennerValley Mutual Water Company, as real parties in interest.
An issue explored in both lawsuits is San Bernardino County’s ceding of lead agency authority for the environmental certification of the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project, which would pump 16 billion gallons of groundwater per year from ancient aquifers lying beneath the Cadiz Valley and the adjacent Fenner Valley.
Cadiz, Inc., which operates an organic grape, melon, tomato, citrus, and asparagus farm on 500 acres in the Cadiz Valley utilizing roughly 4,000 acre feet of water per year, intends to up its drafting of water to as much as 150,000 acre-feet per year and maintain an average draft of 50,000 acre feet a year for the next century and convey that water in an aqueduct to Riverside, Orange, and Los Angeles counties. In addition to serving as the lead agency on the project, the Santa Margarita Water District, which lies some 217 miles from the Cadiz Valley, has also entered into a water purchasing agreement with Cadiz, Inc. to utilize a major portion of the water to be removed from the desert.
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 assert 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 commandeer lead agency status and calls into question as well the water district’s approval of the environmental impact report.
The environmental groups maintain the county violated its own groundwater management ordinance by not setting an acceptable rate of decline for the aquifer or danger levels that would trigger alerts of harm prior to the environmental impact report’s approval.
The water district ratified the environmental impact report on July 31. The environmental groups raced to file a challenge of that approval in state court within the statutory one month period.
The Colorado River branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association, led by Ruth Musser-Lopez, 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 county is named because in transferring the authority for environmental certification of the project to the Santa Margarita Water District, it failed, according to the plaintiff, to live up to its obligation to comply with federal law in reviewing the impact a permitted project might have on federal public resources and thereby trigger the necessary federal procedural review prior to the issuing of permits.
“Significant federal cultural resources, potentially eligible for the National Register of Historic Places are in the way of harm along the 42-mile railroad right-of-way corridor that would be used for the water conveyance pipeline, all without due process or public participation in determining whether water mining is even an activity that should be allowed on federal land in the Bureau of Land Management’s California Desert,” Musser-Lopez said.  “If the court finds that Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act is applicable, this is one of the keys to unlock the door for federal review of the entire project.  The Archaeological Heritage Association submitted the idea that an archaeological site often straddles political boundaries and that the impact on the half of the property within the railroad right-of-way is an impact upon the archaeological site as a whole.   The association argues that even if the court finds that the area within the right-of-way is exempt from federal review, the federal archaeological sites in the area of potential impact of the project on the right-of-way would not be exempt.  The federal agency, the Bureau of Land Management, may not cede its review to a state agency; it is the Bureau of Land Management’s responsibility to consult with the State Historic Preservation Office and the Advisory Council. They may not turn that responsibility over to a state agency or the project proponent’s contracted environmental firm.  It would have been a relatively simple, routine procedure for the federal government to simply submit the archaeological or cultural resource findings to the Advisory Board on Historic Preservation and allow them the opportunity to review as required by Section 106.  However, had the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land Management, the county of San Bernardino, or the lead agency, the Santa Margarita Water District, admitted that such consultation is necessary, it would have also been an admission that a federal review is necessary.”
When the Santa Margarita Water District moved to claim lead agency status on the project, county officials contemplated appealing the assumption of that authority by the Orange County-based entity to the California Office of Planning and Research but elected against doing so, instead entering into a memorandum of understanding with Cadiz, Inc., the Santa Margarita Water District and the Fenner Valley Mutual Water District to review a groundwater monitoring, mitigation and managing plan for the project. The county is slated to review Santa Margarita’s approval of the environmental impact report on October 1.
The lawsuits filed on August 31 were the third and fourth legal actions challenging the project. Delaware Tetra Technologies Inc., which operates a brine mining operation at two dry lakes near Cadiz’s property, previously filed suit questioning the legitimacy of Santa Margarita acting as the lead agency. A group of Orange County residents calling themselves 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.

(August 31)  In what might be interpreted as a trend toward apathy, in four of San Bernardino County’s cities holding municipal elections in November, the races  for city council or mayor or both will be uncontested.  In Yucca Valley, Needles and Chino, the number of candidates running for city council matches the number of seats up for election, rendering the opinion of those cities’ electorates moot. In Needles and Barstow, there is only one candidate for mayor.
Moreover, in Rialto, Redlands, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, and Colton, the races for city clerk or treasure or both are uncontested.
In Yucca Valley, the only candidates for city council are incumbents George Huntington and Robert Lombardo.
In Yuciapa, six candidates are running for three council positions..
Victorville this year holds the distinction of having the most populated electoral field, with 14 candidates vying for three council positions.
In Upland three candidates are vying for mayor and five others are running for a single council seat.
In Twentynine Palms, three are running for two city council positions.
In Rialto there are six candidates trying for two council openings. Also in Rialto, incumbent Barbara McGee is unopposed for city clerk and treasurer Ed Carrillo likewise will not need to face any competition.
In Redlands, seven candidates are running for two council posts. Appointed incumbent Sam Irwin is unopposed for city clerk.
In Rancho Cucamonga, six candidates are running for two open council positions. Longtime treasurer Jim Frost is unopposed in this year’s race, as is incumbent city clerk Janice Reynolds.
In Ontario, nine candidates are seeking election to two council position. Incumbent treasurer James Mlhiser is unopposed.
In Needles, Tom Darcy, Tony Frazier and Jim Lopez are the only candidates running for three council positions. Mayor Ed Paget is unopposed in his effort to remain in office.
In Montclair, four candidates are running for two council seats.
In Hesperia, 11 candidates are in the running for two council positions.
In Grand Terrace four candidates, all of whom are women, are running for three open council positions.
In Fontana, five candidates are seeking two available council berths.
In Colton, which uses the ward system to fill out its seven member council, three candidates are running in District 6; three are running in District 5  and two are running in District 3. Colton’s incumbent treasurer Aurelio De La Torre has no opponent.
In Chino Hills, five candidates are competing for two council positions.
In Chino, two have thrown their hats in the ring for mayor but no one is opposing city council incumbents Glenn Duncan and Tom Haughey.
In Big Bear Lake, three  are running for two council seats.
In Barstow, the city council race for two openings has attracted six candidates, but in the mayor’s race, only councilwoman Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre is running.  And both Michael Lewis, who is running for treasurer, and incumbent city clerk JoJo Cousino will have a cakewalk.
In the town of Apple Valley, nine are running for two council positions.
In Adelanto, six are seeking election to two posts.
Two of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities, San Bernardino and Loma Linda, have not consolidated their municipal elections with the presidential and gubernatorial general elections.

(August 31)  Now that the law firm of Jones & Mayer is assuming the role of Upland’s city attorney, knowledgeable insiders are turning their attention to a single question: Will the new firm acquiesce in having one of the city’s leaders – lame duck councilman Ken Willis – subjected to questioning under oath?
An agreement to do just that could save city taxpayers an estimated $25 million plus close to another million dollars in legal fees. To date, however, under the guidance of previous city attorneys, the city has balked at allowing the county to take Willis’s deposition. One of the first orders of business for Jones & Mayer and the attorney with that firm, Kim Barlow, who has been designated to serve as Upland city attorney, is to decide whether to let Willis answer the questions the county wants to ask.
The Jones & Mayer firm was hired as Upland city attorney at least in part because the firm that formerly served in that capacity, Richards Watson and Gershon, was running up legal bills city officials considered excessive. A significant case being handled by Richards Watson & Gershon for the city is a lawsuit brought by the county of San Bernardino against the city, the state Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the county’s transportation agency, San Bernardino Associated Governments, known as SANBAG. That lawsuit relates to Upland’s approval of the Colonies at San Antonio residential and Colonies Crossroads commercial developments and the $102 million settlement cost the county sustained when the developer, the Colonies Partners, sued the county over flood control issues after the county built the 20th Street storm drain at Upland’s behest in conjunction with Caltrans’ extension of the 210 Freeway across property owned by the Colonies Partners. More than four years ago, the county offered to settle the case with Upland for $2 million. Richards, Watson & Gershon, on behalf of the city, declined that offer. The city has paid $4.9 million in legal fees to Richards Watson & Gershon to defend it against the suit, nearly two-and-a-half times the amount of the settlement offer.
The city has potential liability in the scores of millions of dollars because it had requested that the county flood control district build the 20th Street storm drain. Further, it was the city of Upland that had given approval to the Colonies projects, which were built on property once owned by the San Antonio Water Company and which were criss-crossed with flood control easements recorded in the 1930s. It was the county’s action in constructing the terminus of the 20th Street storm drain so that it vectored water into a flood control basin covered by one of those easements which led to the Colonies Partners’ suit against the county. At issue in the county’s suit against Upland is the city’s negligence in approving the Colonies projects without clearly demarking responsibility for the provision of infrastructure, such as flood control basins and channels, to accommodate the project.
The Colonies Settlement case must go to trial by October. In addition to the $2 million settlement offer made by the county, there have been intensive backroom negotiations between the city, its emissaries and county officials and representatives aimed at forming a settlement short of trial. According to reliable sources, an accommodation that would have brought an end to the litigation without any monetary burden on Upland has been forged by intermediaries and tentatively endorsed by both of the county supervisors whose districts cover Upland – Second District Supervisor Janice Rutherford and Fourth District Supervisor Gary Ovitt – as well as county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux. The terms of that settlement would have required that Upland consent to some of its officials – most importantly city councilman Ken Willis – submit to an intensive round of questioning, including being subjected to a deposition, that is, questioning under oath. Willis was part of the city council that endorsed the Colonies projects, as well as the 20th Street Storm Drain undertaking. He was also a political ally of former Upland mayor John Pomierski. The Colonies Partners were major Pomierski backers, having made considerable monetary donations to his electioneering fund. Pomierski in return was highly supportive of the Colonies at San Antonio and Colonies Crossroads projects. In 2011 Pomierski was indicted by a federal grand jury on bribery, extortion and conspiracy charges. He pleaded guilty to bribery earlier this year and was sentenced in August to two years in federal prison.  Like Pomierski, Willis received hefty campaign contributions from the  Colonies Partners. In 2010, former county supervisor Bill Postmus was indicted by a specially-impaneled state/county grand jury on bribery and extortion charges related to his vote in 2006 to approve the county’s $102 million settlement with the Colonies Partners. In 2011 he pleaded guilty to those charges. Subsequently, Jeff Burum, one of the managing principals in the Colonies Partners, and former county supervisor Paul Biane, who voted with Postmus in 2006 to approve the $102 million settlement, were indicted by another specially-impaneled criminal grand jury and charged with involvement in the same bribery, extortion and conspiracy scheme that involved Postmus. That indictment alleged that $100,000 donations made by Burum to political action committees formed or controlled by Postmus and Biane were actually bribes made to reward them for their votes to approve the $102 million settlement. For more than two years beginning in 2004, Bill Postmus was the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. In 2007, he was succeeded by Biane as chairman of the GOP in San Bernardino County. Biane was succeeded, eventually, by Willis as chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. Burum was a major contributor to the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. Both Burum and Biane have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them contained in the indictment.
At present, Richards Watson & Gershon remains Upland’s legal representative with regard to the Colonies Settlement lawsuit, as the city is reluctant to bring in another firm, given the investment the city made in having lawyers with that firm familiarize themselves with the issues involved in the litigation.
Richards Watson & Gershon, which rejected the county’s $2 million settlement offer on the Colonies Settlement litigation more than four years ago, again rejected the more recent informal county offer to settle the suit conditional upon an agreement to have Willis subjected to questioning. Instead, the law firm made a motion to prevent a deposition of Willis from proceeding.
With the October trial date approaching and the potential for an outcome that would include a substantial judgment against the city, there is an incentive for Jones & Mayer to intervene and bring the matter to a conclusion short of trial. Willis, who has chosen not to seek reelection and whose current term will end in December, no longer possesses the leverage he once did, and the imperative to protect him at all costs that was followed by Richards Watson & Gershon and the interim city attorney that followed that firm, Jimmy Gutierrez, may not remain operative for Jones & Mayer. Instead, the new firm – represented in Upland by Kim Barlow, will have to decide whether to seek to protect the city’s taxpayers or instead accede to the wishes of the city’s elected leadership and shield one of its outgoing but still serving leaders from a round of hard-edged, embarrassing and even painful questioning.
Barlow’s secretary at Jones & Mayer this week told the Sentinel she was not available for comment.

(August 31)  Jennifer  McBain has been appointed by the county board of supervisors to fill a two-and-a-half year running vacancy on the Twentynine Palms Public Cemetery District board. McBain participated in her first meeting of the board last night. McBain replaced Joseph Crites, who completed the term of office for his late son, Adam Crites and did not seek reappointment.

(August 31)  As was anticipated, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on August 28 approved joining with the city of Ontario in the formation of a joint powers authority intended to take on control, management and eventual ownership of Ontario International Airport.
A week previously, on August 21, the Ontario City Council voted to enter into a joint powers arrangement with the county pertaining to the airport and involve other local governments. At that time, Ontario appointed councilmen Alan Wapner and Jim Bowman to serve as the city’s representatives on the airport joint powers authority board. This week, in acceding to the cooperative effort, the board of supervisors designated supervisor Gary Ovitt, a former mayor of Ontario in whose Fourth Supervisorial District the airport is located, as the county representative on the JPA board. That board will consist of five members.
The unstated but clear intention of the newly created agency is to wrest ownership and control over the airport back from the city of Los Angeles and its adjunct, Los Angeles World Airports, which oversees the Los Angeles Department of Airports.
In 1967 the city of Ontario transferred management of the airport to the city of Los Angeles and its airport division, a ploy which allowed the entity that owned and controlled Los Angeles International Airport to use its prestige and greater negotiating leverage to convince airlines to fly into and out of Ontario. In 1985, Ontario deeded the airport to the megalopolis for no consideration. Under Los Angeles’s direction, over $550 million in improvements were made to the airport, and passenger traffic there increased dramatically from just under 200,000 in 1966 to 7.2 million in 2007. But over the last five years, the numbers of those flying in and out of Ontario have diminished considerably, with 4.2 million passengers in 2011, and further declines are registering this year.
Ontario officials blame Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports, the non-profit entity Los Angeles created to own, maintain, administer and operate Los Angeles International Airport, Van Nuys Airport, Burbank Airport, Palmdale Airport and Ontario International, for the downturn in passenger traffic through Ontario in recent years. The once-cordial relationship between Ontario and Los Angeles has suffered as Ontario officials maintain that Los Angeles through Los Angeles World Airports is purposefully mismanaging Ontario International as part of an effort to bolster the Los Angeles economy, and that the effort includes having increased enplaned passenger costs at Ontario and diminished marketing of the airport as a ploy to increase passenger traffic at Los Angeles International Airport, even as the airline industry in general has been contracting. Led by councilman Alan Wapner, Ontario officials have been pushing ever more aggressively to have Los Angeles relinquish the airport, maintaining that the entirety of the Inland Empire has seen its economy negatively impacted as a result of the loss of passengers transiting through Ontario Airport.
Los Angeles World Airports, known by the acronym LAWA, charges the airlines at Ontario International $14.50 per enplaned passenger, which is substantially more than the $11, $9.93, $5.34, $4.07 and $2.10 charged at Los Angeles International, John Wayne, Long Beach, Palm Springs and Burbank airports, respectively. Currently at Ontario, airlines are paying $144.11 per square foot for terminal space. That is up from the $134.39 they were charged in 2011, but less than the $154.63 charged in 2010.
Earlier this month, LAWA’s Jess Romo, who serves as the Ontario Airport manager, unveiled an incentive plan including the lowering of rental rates at Ontario Airport to encourage airlines to increase flight operations there. Romo said the rental discounts being offered to the airlines currently operating there or ones contemplating coming in to the aerodrome were significant, making Ontario competitive with all of the airports in the region. Ontario officials were not placated by that proposal, however, and pushed forward with the creation of the joint powers authority.
Current county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux, who was Ontario city manager when Ovitt was Ontario mayor, told the board of supervisors in a report dated August 28 that the formation of the joint powers agreement with Ontario would “provide overall direction in the maintenance, management, development, and marketing of Ontario International Airport for the benefit of the citizens of San Bernardino County, and the economic development of the Inland Empire Region.
“The Ontario International Airport (ONT) is a vital economic asset to the county of San Bernardino, the city of Ontario, the Inland Empire, and the regional air transportation system that serves Southern California,” Devereaux continued. “The successful operation of ONT results in positive economic impacts to area manufacturers, logistics companies, and creates employment for area residents and enhanced business opportunities for entities engaged in or dependent upon aviation-oriented activities. The Ontario International Airport Authority will be governed by a five-member commission consisting of elected officials and community and business leaders from the airport’s vast air service region. Two members will be from the Ontario City Council, one member will be the county supervisor representing the supervisorial district in which ONT is located, and two will be prominent community members residing within ONT’s air service market which includes seven million residents in a four-county region, including Los Angeles.”

(August 31)  The county board of supervisors has postponed utilizing eminent domain to force a property owner to sell a strip of land in Fontana to facilitate the construction of a raised median curb along Cherry Avenue.
In Fontana, the county, the county transportation agency and the city of Fontana are cooperating on the Interstate 10 at Cherry Avenue Interchange Reconstruction Project. The county has been authorized to serve as lead agency with regard to right-of-way acquisition for the undertaking, which is to include the elimination of traffic congestion and safety hazards along Cherry Avenue.
Prior to the August 28 board of supervisors meeting, county counsel Jean-Rene Basle told the board, “As the lead agency for the project, the county seeks to acquire, through eminent domain, a small portion of property from an approximate 15.75 acre parcel located at the northwest quadrant of Cherry Avenue and the San Bernardino Freeway (I-10) in Fontana. The subject property is owned by Leader Enterprises Co., LTD (Leader). A portion of the subject property is used by and for a truck stop business known as ‘Truck Town.’ Currently, the main route for truckers to access the subject property is to exit off I-10 at Cherry Avenue, travel a short distance, and then make a left-turn onto the property. Due to traffic congestion and safety concerns, a raised median curb will be constructed along Cherry Avenue as part of the improvement project. Leader is claiming that the proposed construction constitutes a substantial impairment of access, and will result in significant severance damages and loss of goodwill. The county disputes this claim. As the parties have not resolved this issue, this matter is proceeding to trial.”
Basle requested that the board authorize the hiring of the law firm of Meyers Nave, in an amount not to exceed $100,000, for the provision of legal services in connection with the eminent domain proceeding entitled County of San Bernardino v. Texman Properties, LTD, et al.
Upon considering the matter, the board upon a motion by supervisor Neil Derry that was seconded by supervisor Gary Ovit, unanimously voted to move the item off calendar.

(August 31)  John Hennes, the contractor who aided and abetted disgraced former Upland mayor John Pomierski in schemes to extort bribes from businessmen and others with permit and project applications pending at City Hall, was sentenced on August 27 to  a split year-long sentence consisting of  six months in prison and six months under house arrest.
U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips imposed the sentence, which included a $5,000 fine and two years of post incarceration supervision, nearly nine months after Hennes entered sealed guilty pleas last December to two of the four charges against him, conspiracy to commit bribery and making false statements to federal agents. From that point on and for the next four months, he was secretly cooperating with federal authorities in constructing the criminal case against the former mayor.
Pomierski, who had been Upland mayor since 2000, began shaking down local business owners and operators and others with projects pending at City Hall and before the Upland City Council as early as 2004. Utilizing a business he owned, JP Construction, as well as a construction business owned by Hennes, Pomierski worked with two others, Jason Crebs and Anthony  Sanchez, in perpetrating extortion and pay-off schemes. Those abuses of Pomierski’s authority  targeted applicants for business, operating or construction permits in Upland who would be approached and informed that by securing the consulting services of Hennes, Crebs or Sanchez, approval of those applications could be guaranteed. Hennes was Pomierski’s appointee to the Upland Housing Appeals Board.
Upland City Hall along with the homes of Pomierski and Hennes and the Rancho Cucamonga office of Sanchez’s business were the sites of a raid by search warrant-bearing FBI and IRS agents in June 2010. In January 2011, Crebs and Sanchez were indicted by a federal grand jury for their involvement in a bribery scheme. The last week of February 2011 Pomierski resigned as Upland mayor. On March 2, 2011, Pomierski and Hennes were indicted by a federal grand jury on 11 separate counts including bribery, extortion and conspiracy.
The overt acts described in that indictment included extortion and bribery efforts relating to two businesses in Upland, the Chronic Cantina and H3 Holistic.
On April 18, 2011, Crebs entered a guilty plea to a single count of furthering a bribery conspiracy related to the Chronic Cantina as part of a revamped plea agreement by which he agreed to testify against Pomierski.
Sanchez fled to Costa Rica but returned to Los Angeles in January of this year and was arrested. He subsequently entered a guilty plea.   On April 26 of this year, Pomierski entered a guilty plea to a single count of bribery pertaining to his interaction with the owners of the Chronic Cantina between August 2009 and October 2009 carried out by Sanchez and Crebs, who acted as intermediaries.
On August 6, Phillips sentenced Pomierski to two years in federal prison, including six to eight months of alcohol dependency rehabilitation, as was arranged by Pomierski’s criminal lawyer, H. Dean Steward.
In a statement before Phillips, Hennes acknowledged having broken the law.
Sanchez and Crebs are due to be sentenced on September 10 and on October 1, respectively.

(August 31)  In November, Yucca Valley’s voters will be asked to approve a one percent municipal sales tax to provide town officials with funding to pay for a host of improvement projects, foremost of which is a sewer system being mandated on the town by the state of California.
Officially referred to as a transaction and use tax, the funding strategy must ultimately be approved by the town’s residents to be put into effect. The town council officially made the request of the county registrar of voters for the initiative, now designated as Measure U, to be put on the November general election ballot.
Ostensibly, the tax’s backers are maintaining that the proceeds will be utilized for financing the construction of the new sewer system, along with road improvements and augmentations to public safety, as well as a number of other projects  to be apprved by the town council.
As proposed, the tax will need only a simple majority – fifty percent plus one vote – to pass. It is one of the peculiarities of California law that taxes intended for a specific use must pass by a supermajority,  i.e., two thirds approval, to be levied.
The primary motivating factor behind the requested tax is the need for the Yucca Valley community to develop a sewer system.
The citified amenity of a wastewater treatment system has long eluded Yucca Valley as the entire town and its outlying area have utilized septic systems for decades. After the town incorporated as a municipality in 1991, no effort to construct a wastewater system was undertaken. Monitoring carried out by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board and the United States Geological survey demonstrated that residues left in the ground that seep into the aquifer had risen to levels that presaged health threats if the matter was not addressed. Those contaminants included nitrates and other pollutants, including pharmaceuticals and salts.
By 2000, with the population having increased to 16,865, the need to transition the community from the traditional septic systems to a sewer system was growing, although residents and some officials maintained that the water level in the aquifer was deep enough to delay the need for a wastewater treatment system.
With the water table declining through the increase in population and limited rainfall, an effort to reverse the aquifer’s depletion was made, consisting of the construction of the Morongo Basin Pipeline and the importation of state aqueduct water into Yucca Valley. Whereas previously, the groundwater level had been dropping faster than the nitrates from septic systems seeped downward, with the completion of the Morongo Basin Pipeline project and the accompanying completion and activation of recharge basins in Yucca Valley, the Hi-Desert Water District began to percolate water into the aquifer and the water table began to rise. That water came in contact with the high levels of nitrates left over from decades of septic discharge and the nitrates found their way into some of the Hi-Desert Water District’s wells. This triggered a scaling back of the Hi-Desert Water District’s recharge efforts, and the goal of reestablishing the Yucca Valley water table to the natural level present in the 1940s has not been achieved. Moreover, Yucca Valley’s water supply coming into contact with the contaminants in the soil resulted in the animation of federal and state monitoring and regulatory agencies concerned with the drinkability of water.
The United States Geological Survey determined that nitrates accumulating beneath Yucca Valley are present in ever increasing concentrations and at depths that pose a threat to the groundwater, including a calculation that 880 acre-feet of septic discharge currently reaches the groundwater every year.
In 2007, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state agency responsible for protecting water quality, adopted a resolution identifying the town of Yucca Valley as one of 66 communities throughout the state with groundwater threatened by the continuing overuse of septic systems. The board further declared Yucca Valley as a top priority for eliminating the use of septic systems, meaning Yucca Valley’s is one of the five most seriously threatened water supplies in the state.
With the writing on the wall and state regulators inching toward ever more prohibitive action, in 2011 the town of Yucca Valley, where the population had increased to 20,700 the previous year, forged a memorandum of agreement with the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Hi-Desert Water District to allow interim permits for new septic systems while proceeding with planning for a wastewater system. Under that memorandum’s terms, state-imposed septic discharge prohibitions are due to be triggered as of May 19, 2016. Under that mandate, phase 1 of a wastewater system must be completed or significantly on its way to completion by that date or the state will initiate enforcement action. The first phase of the project is to cover the downtown area of Yucca Valley, the area most proximate to the heart of the groundwater basin.  Similarly, phase 2 must be completed or nearly completed by May 19, 2019 and phase 3 must be completed by May 19, 2022.
If those systems are not in place by the stipulated dates, Yucca Valley property owners will receive cease and desist orders with the potential of daily fines for non-compliance. They will be ordered to discontinue the discharge from their septic systems, seal them off and pump them regularly. If they do not, the fines to be levied against them can reach $5,000 per day.
To defray the cost of constructing the sewer system, which is to consist of over 400,000 linear feet of collection pipe as well as a treatment plant and other facilities, the Hi-Desert Water District made a previous rough estimate that  each Yucca Valley parcel’s share in the debt burden will run to around $16,700, likely entailing monthly assessments on homeowners of somewhere between $20 and $40 per month. Officials  now say  that estimate is  stale.
According to town officials, upon approval, the one cent municipal sales tax will bring in at least $100 million to the town and as much as $160 million over the next 25 years to help pay for the sewer system. This would lessen, but not eliminate, officials said, the assessments to be borne by property owners. “Our analysis conservatively estimates that the contribution by the town will reduce costs by at least 35%. This amounts to approximately $20 per month of cost per equivalent dwelling unit covered by the annual contribution of the town,” said town manager Mark Nuaimi.
Anticipating passage of the measure, Hi-Desert Water District and town officials have drafted a lease agreement to provide for town subsidization of the sewer project, which will be undertaken by the district as the lead agency. The agreement provides for the water district, as the owner of the pipes, collection system and treatment facilities, to lease them to the town for $2.8 million per year beginning in 2017. The town will in turn lease the sewer system back to the water district for $1 per year. The agreement calls for the service to be rendered to the jurisdiction of the town as a whole, and is a standard arrangement between public agencies with a common interest, officials maintain. The agreement will contain a termination clause the town can unilaterally trigger at will.
In its official proposal of the transaction and use tax, the town emphasizes that proceeds from the increased sales tax will be utilized for more than just paying for the sewer system and will deliver revenue to the city that will not only reduce the wastewater treatment system assessments levied on property owners but also pay for street and road improvements and enhance police and fire service.
While some town residents decried the tax proposal as a further layer of burden placed upon citizens by government, others, including  the chamber of commerce,  hailed it as an innovative step toward reducing for town residents the cost of building the sewer system, since town businesses cater to a clientele composed of roughly  50 percent non-residents.