The Rancho Cucamonga City Council last week voted unanimously to employ a Chino Hills-based firm to carry out an environmental impact report relating to the proposed WalMart Supercenter Project on Foothill Boulevard between Milliken and Rochester.
City officials reportedly utilized $348,762 provided to them by the WalMart Corporation to defray the cost of the environmental impact report to be completed by Applied Planning, Inc. of Chino Hills.
The eventual placement of the 185,000 square foot supercenter on the north side of Foothill just east of Mayten Avenue will result in the closure of the existing Walmart located about a mile away on Foothill Boulevard, east of the 15 Freeway.
Despite opposition to the project on the part of some residents and a pattern of environmental lawsuits against proposed WalMart supercenters elsewhere in Southern California and San Bernardino County, the contract with Applied Planning for the report was placed on the city council’s June 6 consent calendar and voted upon collectively with other items of city business. Consent calendar items are normally designated routine and non-controversial.
The project, which is to cover 29 acres, would entail a large-scale retail store including a grocery component. There has been opposition to WalMart supercenters in the past by labor organizations because WalMarts, like many department stores, do not employ unionized retail clerks. Most grocery stores employees are  unionized.
WalMart Supercenters have generated controversy in other ways, in some measure as a result of lawsuits filed against them on environmental grounds by an Upland-based attorney, Cory Briggs. In Ontario, Briggs represented a group, known as the Ontario Mountain Village Association, which materialized to oppose a Supercenter WalMart planned for the northwest corner of Mountain Avenue and Fifth Street. Briggs brought court action against the city regarding that project, raising thirteen separate environmental issues. While the court rejected most of the arguments that the city had not made adequate mitigation of the project’s impacts, it did find merit in Briggs’ contention that the Ontario WalMart Supercenter involved problems with regard to truck circulation and excessive sound that needed to be redressed. The legal action against that project delayed it for more than four years.
Briggs acknowledged he is monitoring the proposed WalMart Supercenter project in Rancho Cucamonga.
While Rancho Cucamonga city officials were enthusiastic about the sales tax revenue generating potential the supercenter represents, opponents of the project point out that the expanded store will not generate a substantially greater amount of sales tax than the existing store at 12549 Foothill Boulevard, since the bulk of the increased square footage will be devoted to the sale of food. Most food items are not taxable under California law.
There is also concern that the closure of the existing WalMart will leave a vacuum at the shopping center, leading to blight and the exodus of other retailers there.
Jim Banks, who was formerly a member of the Rancho Cucamonga Advisory Committee and has been credited with having contributed to the framing and maintenance of the urban planning ideals which many believe distinguish Rancho Cucamonga from other San Bernardino County cities, said he believes city officials are taking a misstep by embracing the supercenter.
“Traffic is a huge issue,” said Banks. “Within a very short distance you have Lowes and Home Depot. Further to the east and west you have Victoria Gardens and the Terra Vista shopping centers. Cars are already stacked up there during certain hours and this will only make it worse.”
More than creating gridlock on the streets, Banks said, the city may be shooting itself in the foot financially by greedily biting off more than it can chew.  “A consideration that is equally serious or perhaps even more important is what I call commercial oversaturation,” Banks said. “We already have more retail than is needed and the idea that we can enhance our sales tax base by building more stores is illusory. They will drive out as much as they will bring in. What used to be Mervyns is now a hobby shop. The Kmart now houses a Goodwill outlet. The Longs Drugs at Baseline and Haven is still empty after several years. This supercenter will have a grocery component and that could lead to the closure of two or three grocery stores. By what they are doing they are going to create these mini-ghost towns all around Rancho Cucamonga.”
Banks said the city may end up regretting having put the matter on the consent calendar if a legal challenge against the project is made. “That was sneaky,” he said. “They prevented public input and opinion on many points relating to the project by doing that.”
The city arranged for WalMart to cover the cost of the environmental impact report but not pay Applied Planning directly. By having the city collect the money from WalMart and then having the city retain Applied Planning, officials sought to ensure that the environmental impact report would remain a neutral document that did not favor the project applicant
The WalMart Supercenter will be open to the public 24 hours a day with the major vehicular traffic access from Foothill Boulevard.  The store will receive about 88 truck deliveries each week. There will be a commercial drive approach from Mayten Avenue providing access to six loading docks at the rear of the building.  North of the project site are 19.25 acres of vacant land zoned medium high residential which will ultimately be developed as a multi-family residential project. To the east is a commercial development and to the west across Mayten Avenue are senior apartments.

The Inland Valley Development Agency and the San Bernardino International Airport Authority have made some progress in their legal battle with the state of California, securing $22 million of the $432 million they say they were deprived of in a miscarriage of the state’s authority.
Known by their acronyms, IVDA and SBIAA, the Inland Valley Development Agency, consisting of the county of San Bernardino and the cities of San Bernardino Loma Linda and Colton, and the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, consisting of the county and the cities of San Bernardino, Colton, Loma Linda and Highland, are joint powers authorities formed to facilitate the transition of the former Norton Air Force Base into a civilian airport. IVDA exists to build up the property around the airport and SBIAA exists to develop the airport itself.
Last year, at Governor Jerry Brown’s prompting, the state legislature passed two laws, AB X1 26 and AB X1 27, which shuttered county and municipal redevelopment agencies up and down the state. Those redevelopment agencies had used a variety of funding mechanisms, including bond financing and state and federal tax pass-throughs to develop or improve infrastructure, spur development and eliminate blight. Assembly Bills X1 26 and X1 27 ended redevelopment programs and routed much of the money to law enforcement, education and other programs.
IVDA and SBIAA officials maintain that their agencies are not traditional redevelopment agencies in that both were formed to facilitate the civilian reuse of what was formerly federal property and that as such they are exempt from SB X1 26 and SB X1 27.
The state contends differently, however. A provision of SB X1 26 and SB X1 27 is that any challenges pertaining to them must be heard in Sacramento Superior Court.
In addition to a number of bureaucratic filings pertaining to the matter they have lodged in Sacramento, IVDA and SBIAA have filed suit against the state, asserting those two entities should not have been classified as traditional redevelopment agencies and shuttered under SB X1 26 and SB X1 27. They maintain that they are entitled to $432 million in tax increment revenue from property taxes around the airport over the next decade to pay for airport construction, on- and off-site improvements and infrastructure and to cover cash incentives to commercial airlines to convince them to fly into and out of the airport.
While IVDA and SBIAA are pressing on with their lawsuit and claims, they are stepping up their efforts to use other means of dialoging with the California Department of Finance in an effort to show they are entitled to the money. There was an indication of a crack in the state’s position when the Department of Finance’s response made no claim that IVDA and SBIAA were not entitled to the $432 million but rather that they  had no existing contracts to utilize the money.
During a meeting between the San Bernardino County auditor-controller and officials with the state Department of Finance, state officials agreed to set the tax revenue IVDA and SBIAA are claiming aside in a sequestered account and that the money could be disbursed for any “approved,” i.e., contracted for, obligations the agency can demonstrate. Simultaneously, the Department of Finance reconsidered its blanket denial of the $432 million claim, finding that $22 million in tax revenue for road improvements near San Bernardino International Airport, including improvements to San Bernardino’s Mountain View Avenue Bridge, would be made available to IVDA. The state continues to deny the validity of the agencies’ claims to the remaining $410 million. IVDA and SBIAA are redoubling their appeal of that portion of the decision.
While both IVDA and SBIAA have enough money in terms of membership dues paid by their constituent members to continue to operate over the next several months, eventually obtaining the $410 million the state is denying them would be crucial to the survival of the airport development effort.
If the state’s Department of Finance relents and passes the remaining $410 through to SBIAA and IVDA, the lawsuit will be dropped. If not, the case in Sacramento Superior Court will proceed.

CHINO–Matthew Ballantyne, Chino’s city manager designee, convinced the city council to hire him by actively campaigning for the post, simply out-hustling 70 other applicants for the job.
Ballantyne, 38, six years ago landed what for many in the city managing profession might consider a plum assignment: city manager in San Marino. He was brought into that position after eight years as a city staff member.

Matthew Ballantyne

San Marino was once considered the most affluent city in the world, where its residents had a medium income higher than any other municipality on earth. It is home to the Huntington Library, and remains an exclusive bastion. The median list price of a single family home in San Marino was $1,987,500, as of July 2010.
Incorporated in 1913, the Los Angeles County city’s founders envisioned it as exclusively residential, with picturesque  properties intersticed with well-manicured gardens and parkways, paseos, vistas and wide streets.  Nearly a century later, it maintains its hauteur.
But at just 3.77 square miles in land area and 13,147 population, the city reached build out long ago, with more than 97 percent of its current housing stock having been put in place between 1920 and 1950.
For Ballantyne, running San Marino has been fulfilling at the same time that it has been frustrating.
With master’s degrees in both public administration and urban and regional planning, Ballantyne has longed to utilize his refined level of expertise in the professional setting he finds himself in. There have been no major development projects in San Marino during his tenure there.

The county of San Bernardino last week concluded a settlement with the federal government and three environmental groups over road access to remote areas in the Mojave National Preserve.
In 2006, the county filed a “quiet title” suit against the federal government to preserve access over what were then 14 county-maintained roads within the preserve. The federal government had moved to take over authority of the roads and the county claimed that the roads maintained by the county which are adjacent to the Mojave National Preserve are permanent and protected rights-of-way under Revised Statute 2477, part of the Mining Act of 1866, which allowed construction of roads across public lands. Revised Statute 2477 was repealed in 1976 and replaced with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which subjects the county to extensive environmental review and regulatory costs when it is invoked on county roads not established or authorized under Revised Statute 2477 before it was repealed. The county had not secured official acknowledgment or documentation of the Revised Statute 2477 rights from the Department of Interior, despite efforts to do so. Consequently, it filed suit to force the issue.
At the heart of the dispute was whether the public would continue to be able to reach land where many endangered or sensitive forms of wildlife existed.
The National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity joined the suit in support of the federal government, as part of an effort to prevent the county from creating a situation in which wildlife would be harmed.
Proposals and counterproposals from both sides failed for nearly six years to reach an acceptable middle ground. Last week, the federal government agreed to maintain at a cost of $53,000 annually all of the existing roads in the preserve under a rubric worked out between the county and the environmental groups that calls for the county to maintain ownership of two roads on public lands bordering the preserve that were used for travel before 1976 along with eight other roads within the preserve. The county agreed to the closure of four other roads in the preserve which encroach on areas where the environmental groups say species such as Joshua trees and desert tortoises are threatened.
The county entered into the settlement over the protest of supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, in whose First District the preserve is located. Mitzelfelt indicated he did not believe the National Park Service would adequately fund the road maintenance program. “Based on my own conversations with the Park Service, I have little confidence that they will be appropriated enough funding to properly maintain and improve those roads,” Mitzelfelt said.  “As far as a process to prevent arbitrary closure of roads, such a provision exists in the settlement.  But I fear the Park Service will simply go through the public process and consultations with the county and attempt to close roads anyway based on lack of funds.”

The University of Redlands Board of Trustees  selected Ralph Kuncl, the university provost at the University of Rochester in New York, as the 11th president of the university.

Ralph Kuncl

The university’s search committee, chaired by former Redlands Mayor and university trustee Carole Beswick, considered more than 115 candidates to replace current president, James R. Appleton, who will leave in August after more than 20 years in the post.
Kuncl is an MD and medical researcher who a decade ago was intimately involved in the discovery of the glutamate transporter defect in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, carried out at Johns Hopkins. That discovery was considered a breakthrough that led to the first effective treatment for the disease. In 2001, Kuncl was named Hopkins’ first vice provost for undergraduate education.
Kuncl has a combined Ph.D. and M.D. from the University of Chicago.
At the University of Rochester in New York, Kuncl is currently provost, executive vice president, and professor of brain and cognitive sciences and neurology. He was raised in Southern California, having attended high school in Eagle Rock.
At each level of the search committee’s winnowing of candidates, from the original 110 to 15 and then seven, Kuncl was at the top of the heap. He outdistanced the other six finalists during his oral interview.

The San Bernardino City Unified School District Board of Trustees choice of Dale Marsden to serve as superintendent will fill a gap in the 54,000-student district in the county seat that has existed since Arturo Delgado departed there to become the superintendent of Los Angeles County Schools a year ago. At the same time, Marsden’s departure from the Victor Elementary School District in the High Desert leaves that district in the lurch.

Dale Marsden

Depending on your perspective, Marsden was either groomed to become the leader of  Victor Elementary School District or he was merely ticket punching during his tenure there.
After serving in the U.S. Air Force for four years and securing his bachelor’s degree, Marsden briefly taught at the experimental Orange County Department of Outdoor Science School and then taught school for six years, going to school at night to earn his doctorate in education from Pepperdine University. He used that degree to move into a temporary teacher-in- charge position, meaning he filled in as principal during the actual principal’s absences.
He departed from classroom teaching assignments permanently when he hired on with the Victor Elementary School District as director of quality and development. In 2007 he was promoted to the position of deputy superintendent and was hired as superintendent the following year.
Marsden was well thought of in that school district and the community at large. He was credited with improvements in student test scores on state administered academic tests despite more than 70 percent of the households in the district qualifying as economically challenged by federal standards. He transformed one of the district’s campuses into a leadership academy that maintained its emphasis on math and reading while simultaneously imparting business and governmental leadership skills to its pupils.
Marsden held a leadership role among the Victor Valley’s superintendents in the county’s Alliance for Education, which is a division of the county schools’ higher education and workforce development program. And he was a member in good standing of the Victorville Chamber of Commerce, having been elected vice president of that organization. He had been chosen to be president of the chamber of commerce in the upcoming year, but had not assumed that position when he was selected by San Bernardino City Unified as the new superintendent.
To many in the Victor Valley and especially within the Victor Elementary School District, Marsden was seen as something of a High Desert institution. Almost universally, it was perceived that the district had invested in him and the advancement of his educational administrative career in the anticipation that he would remain with the district for at least another decade and a half to guide it through the challenges it continues to face.
While no one expressed doubts about his capabilities, many in the High Desert and the Victor Elementary District, which now must undertake a search and recruiting drive for a new superintendent,  consider Marsden’s departure from the 18-school Victor Elementary District to the  44 elementary school, ten middle school, seven high school and three special education school San Bernardino City Unified School District to be a betrayal.

YUCAIPA—The San Bernardino Community College District board of trustees has chosen Cheryl Marshall to serve as interim president of Crafton Hills College.

Cheryl Marshall

Marshall was elevated from the position of vice president of instruction. She has been at Crafton Hills since 2007 and is credited with managing the college’s comeback from the most serious challenge in its history when it was put on probation by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges in 2009.
Marshall was designated the college’s accreditation liaison and worked with college staff to implement the commission’s recommendations, achieving Crafton’s return to full accreditation in February 2011.
Marshall will temporarily replace president Gloria Macias Harrison, who is set to retire on July 2.
Marshall, who has worked in the private sector and taught business at Cal Poly Pomona, Claremont Graduate School and Azusa Pacific, acceded to the position of associate dean of business and director of the Center of Excellence at Mt. San Antonio College before coming to Crafton where she oversaw three academic divisions and helped formulate the college’s educational master plan.
“I have a deep respect for my colleagues at Crafton Hills and have enjoyed working with them for the past five years,” Marshall said in a news release. “I look forward to a new adventure and to continuing the great progress we’ve made as an educational institution.”

The last vestiges of the Bill Postmus Political  Machine were  vanquished in the June 5 primary election, with voters soundly rejecting five of his protégés who had sought office.

Bill Postmus

Postmus, who had taken the county by storm when at the age of 29 he was elected First District county supervisor in 2000 and then went on to bestride San Bernardino County as a political colossus as both the chairman of the board of supervisors and chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee before moving on to become county assessor, ultimately crashed and burned in a haze of drug use and political corruption. In January 2009,  district attorney’s office investigators found methamphetamine and the hallucinogen ecstasy at his residence during the  serving of a search warrant seeking evidence of his political exploitation of the assessor’s position. He resigned from office roughly a month later and in 2010 he was indicted on bribery and conspiracy charges relating to having sold his vote in 2006 to approve, in exchange for $100,000 in political contributions, a $102 million payout to a developer suing the county. The following year he pleaded guilty to 14 criminal charges contained in that indictment, including conspiracy, perjury, soliciting and accepting bribes, conflict of interest and acceding to extortion.

Brad Mitzelfelt

Despite his political fall, several of those who had launched their own political careers while serving in some capacity within Postmus’ political machine had carried on. Brad Mitzelfelt, who had been Postmus’ chief of staff when he was supervisor, was handpicked by Postmus to succeed him when he went on to become assessor. Mitzelfelt served five years as assessor before opting to run for Congress this year. In a field of 13 candidates in Tuesday’s primary, Mitzelfelt placed fifth, garnering  8,197 votes, or 11.56 percent of the total. He was well outdistanced by Paul Cook and Greg Imus, who captured  11,450 and 10,784 votes, or 16.15 percent and 15.21 percent, respectively. They will face each other in a runoff in November.
Also vying for Congress in the same 8th Congressional District primary on Tuesday was Anthony Adams, who was once one of Postmus’ field representatives when he was supervisor and who, with Postmus’ assistance, in 2006 was elected to the state Assembly, serving two terms in Sacramento before he opted not to run for reelection in 2010 following controversy that dogged him when in 2009 he voted to support then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2009-10 budget that raised taxes by $14 billion. On Tuesday, Adams ran a dismal ninth in the field of 13, garnering, 2,438 votes, or 3.44 percent.
Three other one-time Postmus team members – Robert Smith, Russ Blewett and  Michael Orme – on Tuesday sought election to the First District supervisor’s post Postmus once held and which Mitzelfelt currently occupies.  Smith, a former sheriff’s deputy who worked as a narcotics detective before retiring to take up staff positions working for Postmus when he was both supervisor and assessor, garnered 4,995 votes or 14.42 percent in the seven man race. Blewett, a longtime Postmus and Mitzelfelt supporter who is currently Hesperia’s mayor, managed to pull down 4,922 votes or 14.21 percent.  Orme, who was a field representative to both Postmus and Mitzelfelt, garnered 2,821 votes or 8.14 percent.
All three were commandingly defeated by top vote-getters Robert Lovingood, who captured 7,377  votes or 21.3 percent and Rick Roelle, who polled 6,765 votes or 19.53 percent, as well as being surpassed by Bret Henry,  who brought in 5,106 votes or 14.74 percent. Lovingood and Roelle will meet in a runoff in November.
Around the county in other significant state and federal match-ups in this year’s races featuring open primaries in which voters were allowed to cross party lines to vote their preferences, Joe Baca polled 11,866 votes or 46.78 percent to Gloria Negrete-McLeod’s 8,643 votes or 34.07 percent in the 35th congressional district, setting up a November runoff between the two Democrats;  Gary Miller and Bob Dutton, Republicans both, captured first and second in the 31st Congressional District with 16,035 votes or 26.85 percent  and 14,987 votes or 25.1 percent, respectively;  Bill Emmerson outright defeated  Melissa Ruth O’Donnell  42,461 votes or 64.26 percent to 23,614 or 35.74 percent in State Senatorial District 23;  in State Assembly District 55 Curt Hagman trounced Gregg Fritchle 5,699 votes or  73.64 percent to 2,040 or 26.36 percent; Mike Morrell comfortably edged Russ Warner in State Assembly District 40 with 25,183 votes or 58.38 percent to 17,950 votes or 41.62 percent; incumbent Steve Knight shot past Star Moffatt in State Senate District 21 with 19,673 votes or 69.64 percent to 8,577 votes or 30.36 percent;  in State Assembly District 33 Tim Donnelly narrowly avoided a runoff in November, capturing 23,908 votes or 52.13 percent to John Coffey’s 13,119 or 28.6 percent; in State Assembly District 47 Joe Baca, Jr. captured 10,189 or 41.91 percent and Cheryl Brown had 7,024 or  28.89 percent; Ken Coble outpolled Norma J Torres in State Assembly District 52 with 7,285 votes or   42.12 percent to 6,400 votes or 37 percent.
In all those races where a single candidate did not capture a simple majority of the vote or more, there will be a runoff in November between the two top finishers.
In the three-candidate contest for Third District supervisor, the incumbent Neil Derry was significantly outpolled by challenger James Ramos, setting up a November runoff. Derry captured 15,764 votes or 32.95 percent to Ramos’s 22,479 votes or 46.99 percent.  Jim Bagley received 9,593 votes or 20.05 percent.
In the Fifth District county supervisor’s race, incumbent Josie Gonzales won outright with 12,747 votes or 62.93 percent to the 4,948 votes or 24.43 percent tallied by John Taack and 2,561 votes or 12.64 percent registered for Silvia Marroquin.
Results herein are the semi-official results provided by the registrar of voters as of noon June 7.

HESPERIA—The city of Hesperia, which has long courted controversy and the enmity of many of its residents because of its aggressive code enforcement tactics, recently made an ignominious retreat and has now agreed to shell out a $200,000 settlement to a family it formerly had cited and had tried to strong-arm for $129,000 in fines.
Hesperia officials had long lived by the credo “You can’t fight City Hall” in seeking to transform the 72 square mile desert town where many of the streets are unpaved into an urban setting similar to those in greater metropolitan Los Angeles. Shortly after incorporation in 1988, the charter city council hired Rancho Cucamonga deputy city manager Robert Rizzo as city manager in an effort to apply urban land use standards similar to those in the county’s more developed and affluent areas. But trying to conform the rustic desert landscape and a community where many properties were zoned for both residential and agricultural use proved problematic.
Citing its own authority as a municipal corporation, the city would obtain inspection warrants for non-government properties and buildings, for  non-business and non-employee housing, non-state housing, non-rental family dwellings, and private domiciles without affidavits, seeking evidence of public nuisances in what it defined as “administrative” i.e., code enforcement cases.  On occasion, those cited claimed these actions were inconsistent with state law and constitutional protections. Moreover, the city’s code enforcement protocol consisted of having code enforcement officers issue citations which would then be adjudicated not in court but before an individual hired by the city and deemed to be an administrative hearing officer. This constituted a biased forum, many of those cited alleged. And until relatively recently, at least, the city was employing Wayne Overstreet as what it called an administrative hearing officer to adjudicate the code enforcement citations. As early as June 2007, however, assistant city attorney Douglas Haubert acknowledged that Overstreet lacked the credentials to serve in the capacity of administrative hearing officer.  According to the California State Bar, Overstreet is not licensed to practice as an attorney. Haubert in 2007 said that the term administrative law judge that had been applied to Overstreet was inaccurate. The city, nevertheless, did not desist in using Overstreet in that capacity.
Indeed, city officials pressed on with what were often officious methods to convince residents to shed the more casual cultural aesthetics of the Old West and hew to the more rigid aesthetic standards of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. On the theory that few, if any, of the city’s residents who were cited had the financial wherewithal to challenge the city’s policies, the city created a code enforcement citation and adjudication protocol that skirted the constitutional rights of its citizens.
For years the city’s calculation succeeded, and despite occasional challenges by residents who sensed they were being given the bureaucratic bum’s rush, few were willing to spend the $40,000 to $70,000 necessary to truly stand up against the city by filing suit and seeing the matter through to the final stages of litigation.
In January 2010, the Hesperia code enforcement division took up a case that to all appearances was indistinguishable from the thousands of others in which the municipality used its  authority, bankroll and control of the process to  overwhelm its citizens and obtain an inevitable adjudication in the city’s favor.
The division’s focus in this case was a property on Redwood Avenue owned by Esther Duran which her daughter, Janet, was using as a temporary rescue shelter for horses that would otherwise have been sent to slaughterhouses for euthanization or processing for the dog food or glue industries.
Janet Duran, an ambulance driver, in 2004 took up the cause of doomed horses, including wild mustangs run to ground by cowboys in Nevada and Arizona and ones being sold by their owners at auction, ostensibly to buyers interested in using them for horsemeat for as little as $5, $10, or $15 a head.
The Redwood property prior to city incorporation was zoned for agricultural use. The post-incorporation zoning was agricultural residential and the Durans were permitted under the city’s code to have up to six horses on the property per its acreage.
On January 13, 2010, a team of city employees that included two code enforcement officers, four armed sheriff’s department deputies in flak jackets and two animal control officers  descended on the Duran’s property. One of the code enforcement officers served Esther Duran with papers and the team then seized three horses and five dogs, one of which was a stray whose owner the Durans were seeking to locate. Both Esther and Janet were cited and slapped with a total of $129,000 in fees, which upon the city’s processing protocol were ratcheted up into liens against the property. Those liens resulted in Esther Duran’s mortgage increasing from $1,400 to $4,700 per month.
Unwilling to take the city’s action lying down, the Durans hired attorney Louis G. Fazzi, whose office is located in Upland, a city with aesthetic standards Hesperia so wishes to emulate. Fazzi brought several principles to bear which the city had in the past routinely overlooked in its enforcement efforts, including compliance with the city’s own codes, which actually allowed for the presence of up to three more horses than the Durans had on the property on January 12, 2010 and up to five dogs, as well as the right to due process. The city’s response was to seek a series of delays, which had the effect of increasing the Durans’ legal costs while the underlying issue – the return of their animals – remained unresolved.
Despite the cost, the Durans did not simply duck out of the fight. Fazzi persisted on their behalf, successfully removing the matter to federal court. Still, the city told the court the Durans were maintaining a substandard property and that the animals for that reason should not be returned to them. Fazzi maintained that the property was up to code and in compliance in all regards. In March, a court-appointed independent inspector went over the Redwood property with a fine-tooth comb, concluding the property was indeed up to code.
In April, U.S. District Court Judge John E. McDermott ruled that the city’s action against the Durans was improper and that their animals would have to be returned to them. Fazzi immediately brought a motion to have McDermott consider whether the entire process the Durans had been subjected to was unconstitutional.
While McDermott’s ruling was pending, the city offered the Durans a $200,000 settlement. The tendering of that offer, and the Durans’ acceptance of it, put the matter to rest, preventing a potentially precedent-setting ruling that would prohibit the city from continuing to employ the same tactics against other city residents. To back the city off in other code enforcement cases, those contesting the action will need to follow the same procedure, and foot the bill for and put up with the same series of delays, the Durans did.
Fazzi has suggested that other municipal entities beyond Hesperia would have had something to lose had the case gone to trial. Other cities have used draconian tactics against their residents similar to those applied by Hesperia. A ruling at trial in favor of the Durans could have put other cities up and down the state who have assessed similar fines at jeopardy.
City councilman Paul Bosacki indicated he was uncomfortable discussing the matter.
“What code enforcement was doing and how they were conducting business was not necessarily done with the blessing of the council,” Bosacki said. “I know I don’t get involved in the day-to-day inner workings of the city. That’s up to [city manager] Mike Podegracz and his people.”
Bosacki said he could not comment on the specifics that led up to the $200,000 settlement with the Durans. “I don’t know the details,” he said. “I can tell you that there has always been litigation against the city. Some of it has merit. Some of it doesn’t.”

A salt mining company in the Cadiz Valley has lodged a lawsuit against the county of San Bernardino over the proposed Cadiz Water Project, maintaining a memorandum of understanding the county entered into with the project’s proponents bypasses crucial components of the environmental certification process.
Referred to by its proponents as the Cadiz Valley Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project, the undertaking is an $878 million proposal by Los Angeles-based Cadiz, Inc. to sink 34 wells into the desert and construct a 44-mile pipeline along a railroad right-of-way until it meets up with the aqueduct that carries Colorado River water to the Los Angeles and Orange County metropolitan areas. That system will be used to draw an average of 50,000 acre-feet of water annually from the Cadiz Aquifer for use by  the Santa Margarita Water District, the second largest water agency in Orange County; the Three Valleys Water District, which provides water to the Pomona Valley, Walnut Valley, and Eastern San Gabriel Valley; the Golden State Water Company, which serves several communities in Southern California, including Claremont; Suburban Water Systems, which serves Covina, West Covina and La Mirada; and the Jurupa Community Services District, which serves Mira Loma in Riverside County.
Cadiz has arranged for the Santa Margarita Water District, which lies 217 miles from the Cadiz Valley and will be the recipient of the lion’s share of the water to be obtained under the plan, to serve as the lead agency in the environmental certification of the project. Reportedly, county officials considered petitioning the California Office of Planning and Research to regain oversight of the project but rejected that option  and on May 1 entered into a memorandum of understanding with Cadiz, Inc., the Santa Margarita Water District and the Fenner  Valley Mutual Water Company,  a corporate entity created by and wholly owned by  Cadiz, Inc., which ceded to the Santa Margarita Water District lead agency status for the consideration of the project and its environmental review.
On May 25, the law firm of Rutan & Tucker filed on behalf of Tetra Technologies a petition for a writ of mandate and a complaint for injunctive relief against the county of San Bernardino and its board of supervisors that named Cadiz, Inc., the Santa Margarita Water District and the Fenner  Valley Mutual Water Company as real parties in interest.
The Cadiz Valley lies just south of the Marble Mountains and northeast of the Sheep Hole Mountains near the National Trails Highway. Cadiz is home to a former railroad stop along the Santa Fe line, 17 miles east of Amboy and 70 miles from Needles
Tetra’s mining operations in the Cadiz Valley consist of the use of surface collection pits into which underground brines percolate as well as the pumping of underground brines into evaporation ponds.
According to Rutan & Tucker, “By ceding lead agency status to the Santa Margarita Water District (SMWD), the county violated its Desert Groundwater Management Ordinance and turned the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) on its head. The ordinance provides that an applicant who wishes to construct a groundwater well in the desert area must either get a permit from the county, after complying with CEQA, or be “excluded” from the ordinance. Rather than comply with the California Environmental Quality Act and seek permits from the county to construct its wells, Cadiz and SMWD seek to exclude themselves from the ordinance. The ordinance expressly contemplates that an applicant seeking to exclude itself from the ordinance must follow a particular order: First, a  groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan must be adopted which adheres to the ordinance’s ‘groundwater safe yield’ limitations. Thereafter, the applicant must execute a memorandum of understanding or other binding agreement with the county which, among other things, ensures that the measures identified in the county approved groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan are fully implemented and enforced. By approving the memorandum of understanding  before the groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan was prepared and approved, the county flipped this prescribed order.”
The writ continues, “The Santa Margarita Water District and Cadiz, Inc. were complicit in this inversion of the sequence prescribed in the ordinance, which inversion allowed the county and SMWD to evade meaningful compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act. Specifically, the Santa Margarita Water District has proposed to construct up to 35 wells on Cadiz’s land and to pump a massive amount of groundwater from the underlying aquifer. Whereas Cadiz had been using only approximately 1,500 acre feet per year for its agricultural operations in recent years, the Cadiz Project proposes to pump 50 times that amount (75,000 acre feet per year) for over 33 years or 33.3 times that amount (50,000 acre feet per year) for 50 years.”
Furthermore, according to the writ, “Instead of applying to the county for a groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan to exclude itself from the ordinance, a scenario under which the county would have been the lead agency in processing an environmental impact report for the groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan, the Santa Margarita Water District usurped the role of lead agency and went forward with the preparation of its own environmental impact report without procuring either a permit or a groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan from the county. In preparing its environmental impact report, however, the Santa Margarita Water District engaged in sleight of hand. It attached a ‘Groundwater Management, Monitoring, and Mitigation Plan’ as an appendix to its draft environmental impact report, and made that document the linchpin of the entire environmental analysis, as if the groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan had already been approved by the county. Indeed, this ‘phantom groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan’ was even dated (November 29, 2011), suggesting it had been approved then, and was referred to throughout the draft environmental impact report as having already been developed, even though the document had never been approved by the county or subjected to environmental review of any kind. Specifically, the Santa Margarita Water District’s draft environmental impact report relied on the phantom 2011 Groundwater Management, Monitoring and Mitigation Plan for certain project design features and mitigation measures even though the 2011 Groundwater Management Monitoring and Mitigation Plan had never been adopted by the county. Thus, the draft environmental impact report’s conclusion that those project design features and mitigation measures would reduce the project’s hydrology impacts to ‘less than significant’ is specious, as an environmental impact report cannot base such a conclusion on an  unenforceable, unadopted document within the jurisdiction of another public agency. In short, the entire California Environmental Quality Act process was reduced to a sham exercise that significantly misled  the public.”
According to the writ, “By forcing the county into the role of a mere responsible agency, the Santa Margarita Water District also has circumscribed the discretionary power of the county, and by accepting that role, the county has shirked its responsibilities under the California Environmental Quality Act.”
According to Rutan & Tucker, “the Cadiz Project would result in overdraft, and thus exceed the ‘safe yield’ of affected aquifers … because the project  proposes to extract an average of 50,000 acre feet per year of groundwater for 50 years (and up to  75,000 acre feet per year for over 33 years), while the maximum assumed recharge is only 32,000 acre feet per year.”
And, according to the writ, the county in drafting the memorandum of understanding cut Cadiz, Inc. an unlawful break by altering the time standard for considering a state of overdraft  from gauging whether more water is extracted in a given year than is replenished by that year’s rainfall to considering the average of this difference over a period of ten years, such that a determination of whether such an overdraft exists cannot be made for a decade after the project is initiated.
“The identification, evaluation, and mitigation of potentially significant effects of the project have been unlawfully deferred to a future date, without specific performance standards that must be met and without assurance that any potential mitigation measures will be effective or enforceable,” the writ states. “Moreover, by approving the memorandum of understanding, which contractually binds the county to various obligations, including the preparation of the real groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan, the county took another step in the process of approving the Cadiz Project, giving impetus to the project without the benefit of environmental evaluation or meaningful public input.”
David Wert, the official spokesman for the county said, “The county doesn’t have any response to the writ of mandate at this point and will reserve any comment until it has the opportunity to make a response in court. I can tell you the county  disagrees with the contention made by the plaintiffs that the county violated the county’s ordinance and CEQA and will be prepared to argue those points.”
Cadiz, Inc. spokesperson Courtney Degener offered her company’s reaction to Tetra Technologies’ legal filing.
“Cadiz, Inc. is developing a sustainable project on its property that will safely capture groundwater that is lost to evaporation and provide a new municipal water supply in Southern California,” Degener said. “Project deliveries of approximately 50,000 acre-feet per year would consist of natural recharge and temporary surplus and not result in overdraft. For many years, Tetra Technologies, an oil and gas enterprise, has operated a salt mining operation at the nearby Cadiz and Bristol Dry Lakes at the low point of the surrounding watershed. This operation removes the surface crust of the dry lakes to expose and evaporate saline water below so that the residual salts can be mined and sold.  This process demonstrates that substantial quantities of hyper-saline groundwater exist beneath the dry lakes and underscores the goal of the project to prevent the degradation of fresh water.  Tetra’s operations would continue throughout the life of the project and, under the proposed management plan, mitigation measures will be enforced to ensure there are no adverse impacts to third parties, including Tetra.
“We believe,” Degener continued, “this lawsuit has no merit but cannot comment any further on the specifics of this pending litigation.”