Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, who is now vying for election to Congress in the recently redrawn California 8th Congressional District, finds himself beset with accusations that he sought to improperly influence the race to succeed him.
The situation was touched off by a report of a backroom deal by which Mitzelfelt allegedly convinced a candidate in many quarters perceived as the frontrunner in the upcoming First District supervisor contest to drop out.
In February, Ken Anderson inexplicably withdrew as a candidate to succeed Mitzelfelt as supervisor, despite having leapt to an impressive advantage over more than a half dozen other hopefuls. Anderson boasted an impressive resumé, including success in the private sector and positions of responsibility and trust within local and state government. He developed and sold at a profit a strip mall, currently owns a hardware store in Phelan and with members of his family at one time operated a string of four other  hardware stores in Apple Valley, Barstow,  Hesperia and  Lancaster.  He had completed stints on the county planning commission and as a board member of the Phelan Piñon Hills Community Services District, was a field representative for state Senator Sharon Runner and a community liaison for Mitzelfelt. He declared his candidacy on January 12 and to all appearances seemed to be making strides toward capturing the office.  In late January and early February he had pulled down the endorsements of Sharon Runner, that of her husband George Runner, who had previously served 12 years in the State Legislature representing portions of the High Desert and is now an elected member of the California State Board of Equalization, as well as that of Steve Knight, Assemblyman for California’s 36th District. Donors and backers of all sorts were signing on in support of his campaign, which was switching into high gear under the guidance of Lovella Sullivan, a professional campaign consultant.
But with his political fortunes racing upward, against the advice of several of his closest associates and his campaign committee, he pulled out of the race, crossing up dozens of supporters who just days and weeks before he had been entreating to assist him in his electoral effort.
At the Spring Valley Lake Country Club on February 28 during a lunch meeting of the Hi-Desert Republicans Women Federated where many had gathered to hear what they anticipated would be a fiery and aggressive campaign speech touching on his vision for the High Desert’s future, Anderson dashed the crowd’s expectations, saying, “I just don’t feel in my heart at this time that I am able to continue.”
He offered no more than that in his explanation of his withdrawal, befuddling and frustrating those who had lined up in support of him and his candidacy. The exact reason for his decision remained a mystery.
This week, on Tuesday April 10, the issue of his withdrawal from the supervisor’s race returned when Mitzelfelt succeeded in getting his colleagues to ratify his hiring of Anderson to serve as his field representative.
Almost immediately, it was widely bruited around the county that Mitzelfelt and Anderson had brokered some order of a backroom deal to have Anderson end his candidacy in exchange for the job Mitzelfelt arranged for him to take this week. There were suggestions that this was calculated to benefit Mitzelfelt’s run for Congress either directly or indirectly by assisting one of the other candidates in the supervisor race with whom Mitzelfelt has political backers in common.
While many cynically found Anderson’s acceptance of the position to be a satisfactory explication of Anderson’s abrupt withdrawal from the race in February, others, including many of his one-time backers, found it both troubling and disappointing.
Many remained baffled at his willingness to surrender a legitimate shot at becoming supervisor in return for a job that promises to be relatively short-lived. Mitzelfelt will remain as First District supervisor only into December, at which time, presumably, his staff will be supplanted by a new one chosen by the incoming supervisor.
The position Anderson was hired into, field representative, provides an annual salary of $64,561 together with benefits of $62,180 per year. One of the benefits is the provision of health benefits for Anderson’s family.
Given Anderson’s financial circumstance, including complete ownership of a hardware store in Phelan and his profitable sale two years ago of a strip mall he developed and owned, observers questioned why Anderson was willing to trade down from the possibility of capturing the supervisor’s post to holding a lesser position that would last no more than seven months.
Questions attained, as well, to the legality of any arrangement that was made in a deal between Mitzelfelt and Anderson pertaining to Anderson’s withdrawal from the supervisor’s race.
Two sections of the California Elections Code, 18205 and 18523, appear to prohibit any type of deal that would dissuade a candidate from running for office.
Elections Code Section 18205 states: “A person shall not directly or through any other person advance, pay, solicit, or receive or cause to be advanced, paid, solicited, or received, any money or other valuable consideration to or for the use of any person in order to induce a person not to become or to withdraw as a candidate for public office. Violation of this section shall be punishable by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code for 16 months or two or three years.”
Elections Code Section 18523 states: “A person shall not directly or through any other person advance or pay, or cause to be paid, any money or other valuable thing to or for the use of any other person, with the intent that it, or any part thereof, shall be used in bribery at any election, or knowingly pay or cause to be paid any money or other valuable thing to any person in discharge or repayment of any money, wholly or in part, expended in bribery at any election. Any person violating this section is punishable by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code for 16 months or two or three years.”
Anderson’s contract to serve as a field representative in the First District was reviewed by deputy county counsel Kenneth Hardy. That review, however did not look into the California Elections Code 18205 and 18523 implications, according to San Bernardino County’s public information officer, David Wert.
“I spoke with Mr. Hardy,” Wert said. “County counsel review of such items is only to ensure that the contract language adheres to legal form. County counsel does not concern itself with the appointing authority’s decision-making process in offering a position to one person as opposed to another.”
Wert did add that “Neither Mr. Hardy nor I are aware of any kind of investigation related to this.”
Anderson told the Sentinel that those seeing or attempting to draw a nexus between his decision to drop out of the race and Mitzelfelt’s decision to hire him “are barking up the wrong tree. I can tell you they are two complete separate things.”
Anderson acknowledged that as a candidate he “had a lot of support from the community,” but stopped short of agreeing to a characterization of himself as the frontrunner, saying such a description was a “compliment.” He said there were reasons why he had departed from the running and that “People saying there was a trade there doesn’t make any sense. I made a personal choice not to run.”
He declined to disclose what his precise rationale was. “I don’t want to say at this time,” he said. “I made a personal decision together with my wife, as I stated at the time. The decision was made a long time before it was announced.”
Anderson said. “This opportunity [going to work as Mitzelfelt’s field representative] came up completely separately.”
Mitzelfelt told the Sentinel there is no substance to the rumors of a backroom deal and that he neither encouraged Anderson to withdraw his candidacy nor offered him any inducement in the way of a position with his office to do so.
“I did not discuss that with him,” Mitzelfelt said.
Mitzelfelt said he hired Anderson “because he has done great work for my office in the past and he was available.”
He said the timing of Anderson’s hiring came about because “My assessment of the work volume in my district office was that I needed an additional field representative. He was available and willing and already a part-time member of my staff. Ken has worked for the First District on a basically volunteer basis for more than a year and has proven to be an amazing asset in assisting constituents and handling issues,” Mitzelfelt said. “As a business owner and an active participant in local government and numerous community groups, Ken brings a depth of knowledge about High Desert issues, along with a can-do attitude and organizational skills that will serve our constituents well.  Ken’s business experience and familiarity with local government makes him uniquely qualified to work on a variety of issues with terrific perspective from both the private and public sector.”
Joseph Fahrlender, with whom Anderson served on the board of directors of the Phelan Piñon Hills Community Services District and who was among his most ardent supporters as a candidate for supervisor, said he too was taken aback when Anderson dropped out of the race.
“I was upset and he heard everything I had to say for a day or two,” Fahrlender said. “There were a bunch of us, and we were saying, ‘Are you nuts? If you stay in this, you’ll win.’ But in the end, he said he found out that he is just not a politician. He would be in a room with all these people who expected something of him or wanted something from him and what he wanted to do was accomplish things and work at it and not just have to sit around all the time. He came to realize that would be what he would be doing on a weekly basis. I know it’s hard to understand in this world where everyone wants to be top dog but that is not what he wanted to do. At first he thought of himself as a politician but after he took a run at it he found out he wasn’t really cut out for it. He figures he can do a better job working for someone else, going out to find the answers and really working instead of shaking everyone’s hand and trying to please everybody by making a bunch of empty promises.”

Bret Henry, the  current president of the San Bernardino County Professional Firefighters, is one of seven candidates vying to become the next First District Supervisor.
Henry is casting himself as a reform candidate, maintaining “I want to get in there and work with people to change the stigma of the county.  Corruption is out of control. We have good people fighting it, but there is no way of just changing it overnight.  I am basically fed up with the false stories and lies and the twisting of the truth. I want to work with the good, honorable business people of the county for a change.”
In addition, Henry said, “I am a public safety advocate. Public safety has been neglected for too long. Right now, everyone is blaming nurses, cops, firefighters and teachers for all the problems going on. But with all of the billions and billions in subsidies and bailouts, those groups have been served up as being part of the problem, and they are seen as getting too much in salary and pensions. That is far from the truth and what is needed is someone with my skill set who can get in there and redress those issues.”
Henry said it is the fat cats in government – the top level administrators – who are exploiting not only the taxpayers but the rank-and-file governmental employees. The public has unfairly blurred the distinction between the bad guys and the good guys, he said, and the line workers deserve their pay and benefits and the sycophants at the top of the totem pole do not. He said pension reform needed to be calibrated accordingly.
“The whole issue is incredibly complex but at the end of the day there is a problem with the pension system structure. The benefits do not have to be taken away but they do need to be funded correctly. The senior management is the problem. We have a recently retired division chief who was making  $136,000 in salary his last year on the job, yet takes home $211,000 as a pension. That is wrong. It is the big guys who are making more than they should.”
In making his point about the issue, Henry reflexively referenced the firefighters he represents as a union president in making his point. “In reforming the pension system,  we should not hurt the  guy who shows up at the front door when you have a heart attack or a fire. We should not do away with pensions. If you have a good car with a flat tire, you don’t throw the car away. You fix the flat tire. The flat tire in the pension system is the too-generous pensions received by senior management.  The little guy gets blamed for the problems.”
Henry dismissed suggestions that as a union official and public labor advocate he was in some fashion out of step with the predominate Republican population of the First District.
“Ronald Reagan himself was a labor leader,” Henry said. “Ronald Reagan said we often focus on the problems of labor organizations. However, we are a representative form of government and there is a correlation between the decrease of labor unions and the growing gap between the rich and poor.  So said Ronald Reagan. There are thousands of collective bargaining agreements that go on without a hitch every day and they represent the betterment of the middle class, the blue collar population.”
As a public employee and a public employee union official, Henry said he has acquired valuable insight on how government works that will redound to the betterment of the community if he is entrusted with a leadership role.
“I bring a particular skill set to the game,” Henry said with regard to what he sees as the major challenge facing both the county as a whole and the First District. “We have to get jobs. There is a chicken or the egg first question. What do you need first? Jobs or public safety? People have to feel safe in the stores where they shop and on the road and in their homes. We need to hire highly trained and well paid first responders – police, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs [emergency medical technicians] so people can work and live. If we don’t have that, the jobs won’t come. We have to build collaterally together. There is a synergy between jobs and safety. Jobs will not come without public safety. Safety cannot be paid for without jobs.  Once everything is here, people have to feel safe.”
With regard to the First District’s needs as distinguished from those of the rest of the county, Henry said that the High Desert needs more than anything else “infrastructure. That is a huge thing in the First District. The First District is uniquely qualified to host jobs. We have the space. We have a trained work force, many of   who go to work down the hill. We need to build infrastructure, roads to get people up and down the hill and improve the infrastructure here to support more factories and warehouses. The area around Southern California Logistics Airport is a perfect example of an area that can produce jobs. We could make it an inland port. With investment, that alone could produce thousands of jobs”.
Henry said he is just what the First District and the county needs on the board of supervisors. He said two of his opponents in the race – Michael Orme and Robert Smith – are linked to the disgraced political leadership of the past, including former First District supervisor Bill Postmus, who has pleaded guilty to perjury, soliciting and receiving bribes and using methamphetamine while in public office, and Postmus’s former chief-of-staff, Brad Mitzelfelt, who covered for Postmus while he was engaged in those depredations and was then rewarded by becoming Postmus’ hand-picked successor as supervisor. Smith and Orme both worked as field representatives for Postmus. “One of the key things in this race is many of the other candidates  have long term ties to individuals with a host of problems. If people want the same old business as usual, I am not the one to vote for. I have thirty years of honor and integrity in the Marines and the fire service, solving problems. I believe what is needed is a personality such as mine to fight for the First District. I love the First District. There were some uphill battles I engaged in when I was in the Marine Corps. There have been uphill battles when I was with the US Forest Service and County Fire. I will fight for the First District.”
Henry weighed in on  a countywide voter initiative on the ballot in November which calls for reducing the supervisors to part-time status and trimming their individual combined pay and benefits package from $270,000 per year to $60,000 per year.
“Looking at a budget the size of San Bernardino County’s, the issue isn’t full or part time. It is pay,” he said.
If the measure passes Henry suggested it will be difficult for  the county to attract supervisorial candidates of the  quality he said he embodies.
“If you are paying $60,000 a year, some people are not going to want to serve. I am still a working class guy. You want someone in that position who fits the job and is creative and smart. If you reduce the pay, people are not going to tend to want to accept that. You would create a situation like what you have with city councils where you have the city manager running the show. If you do not pay a decent salary and provide good benefits, you are not going to attract the same caliber of people. You will get people who see it as something to do part time. I would say for sure that in the desert we would have a better system if our city council members were there full time. If this initiative passes, you are going to cut down on your applicant pool. But if that is what the people decide they want, then they are entitled to that.”
A resident of Hesperia, Henry, 49, grew up in Reseda and later earned an emergency medical technician certificate from Victor Valley Community College. He was in the Marine Corps from 1981 to 1990. He worked as a paid call and full time firefighter with the United States Forest Service for almost seven years and then went to work for the San Bernardino County Fire Department, where he has been for more than 14 years. He is presently a fire captain overseeing operations in Fontana. He has long been active in fire employee union activities and has acceded to the position of union president. In that capacity, Henry earned public pension investment management certificates from Stanford Law School and the Hass Business School at the University of California at Berkeley. He also earned certificates in trustee studies and institutional investing from Harvard Law School and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is not currently married but has children.

The parents union that was turned back last month in its effort to utilize the Parent Empowerment Act to take over operations of Desert Trails Elementary School filed a lawsuit on April 5 against the Adelanto School District and its board of trustees.
The Desert Trails Parents Union does not appear to be funding the legal action on its own and is being assisted by the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Parent Revolution and that group’s law firm, Kirkland & Ellis.
On January 12,  the parent union submitted what its members believed were a sufficient number of signatures on petitions to force the district to undertake a set of what the parents union believes will be reforms at the severely underperforming Desert Trails Elementary School, which ranks last out of the ten elementary schools in the Adelanto School District and in the bottom ten percent of all elementary schools statewide in terms of academics, such that out of the graduating sixth grade class 72 percent of students are not proficient with the English language and 70 percent are not proficient in math.
Those petitions called upon the district to sack the school’s principal, David Mobley,  and surrender to the school’s parents authority in hiring his successor, infuse in the new principal hiring authority for the school’s faculty, reduce class sizes and increase the number of school days and instructional hours, and include more science, history and art in the curriculum.
The Parent Empowerment Act, authored by former state senator Gloria Romero and passed by the legislature in 2010, enables a majority of parents at a school at which students test out as low-performers on state academic tests to force a district to implement significant reforms, ranging from replacing the principal and up to half the staff to reopening the school as a charter academy. That process is known by the colloquialism “parent trigger.”
A group of parents opposed to the parent takeover of the school formed and went to  work obtaining rescissions of many of the signatures on the petitions.
In February, the school district, to whom the parent trigger petitions had been entrusted, announced that it had validated the signatures of only 317 of the 466 signatures on the petitions. The Desert Trails Parent Union, through one of Kirkland & Ellis’s attorney’s, Mark Holscher, demanded a recount and reconsideration of that invalidation of the petition effort and after the district did so, the board, on March 28,  voted unanimously to give a final rejection to the reconsideration of  the parent trigger petition, finding that it fell 20 signatures short of the  321 signatures needed.
Holscher and Kirkland & Ellis on April 5 filed on behalf of five of the members of the parents union – Doreen Diaz, Kathy Duncan, Teresa Rogers, Olivia Zamarripa and Bartola Del Villar – a petition for a writ of mandate and a complaint in Victorville Superior Court seeking a court order that the district verify the signatures and allow the Parent Trigger process to advance, as well as asking for the  recognition of  the educational rights of students at Desert Trails.
According to Holscher’s filing, “On January 12, 2012 70% of the Desert Trails parents petitioned the district to transform the failed school into a parent-led, community-based independent charter school. The parents’ petition was explicitly authorized by the parent trigger statute that allows parents to file such a petition for a failed school, and requires a school district to implement any petition signed by 50% of the parents.”
But the district cheated those parents in the course of its signature verification process, according to Holscher, and his writ of mandate calls upon the court to reestablish the petition as valid.
“The district ‘counted’ the parents’ votes,” Holscher said. “While nearly all vote counting for petitions and voting in California is done by disinterested third parties and with processes to ensure impartiality, the district vote counters here opposed the petition to remove the district from running the failed school. The district, however, faced an insurmountable problem: 466 parents had signed the petition, and the district had no discretion to reject the petition so long as there were 333 proper signatures. The district, unfortunately, engaged in a systematic effort to invalidate the petitions. First, despite the clear legal mandate that the district must accept every parent’s petition absent proof that a petition was not valid, and the courts’ repeated instructions that any attempt to reject a citizen’s First Amendment protected right to petition must withstand the most ‘exacting scrutiny,’ the district refused to accept 25 parents’ petitions because the district could not find a signature in its files to compare to the petition signature. The parents’ first requested relief is for this court to reverse the improper rejection of these 25 petitions. Once these 25 petitions are restored, as these presumptive valid votes must be, the petition is over 50 percent and cannot be blocked by the district. Second, the district’s teachers as well as teachers from outside the district engaged in a campaign to coerce parents to ‘rescind’ their petitions, and the district then used 97 of these purported ‘rescissions’ to block the January 12th petition.  The parent trigger statute and its regulations do not allow for any ‘rescissions’ after a petition is filed.”
Holscher’s filing  continues, “The parents’ second request for relief is for this court to rule that the district improperly rejected 97 petitions by rescinding the votes through this unauthorized ‘rescission’ process.   Moreover, not only are rescissions not permitted, the parents have uncovered smoking-gun proof that individuals who obtained the rescissions doctored and falsified rescission forms and engaged in a coercive campaign to block the petition.  Even if the parent trigger statute called for ‘rescissions’ after a vote, which it does not, the fraudulent rescission process here could not possibly survive the ‘exacting scrutiny’ that this court must apply to this rejection of the petition.  Third, the parents here request that the court grant a writ requiring the district to approve the March 6, 2012 resubmission of the petition by the parents.”
Holscher maintains that prior to the board’s March 28 vote, Adelanto School District Superintendent Darrin Brawley acknowledged the parents had garnered sufficient valid signatures to qualify for the parent trigger takeover of the school.
“The parents met with the superintendent of the district on March 6, 2012, to go over the petitions and reach agreement on the valid petitions,” according to the court filing. “At the March 6th meeting, the superintendent and the parents went through all the disputed petitions. After reviewing the petitions the superintendent specifically represented to plaintiff Doreen Diaz and another person at the meeting that ‘You are definitely over 50% at this time.’  The parents made it clear that they would only resubmit at that time and not get even more signatures if the district agreed they were over 50%. When the parents asked again and told the superintendent that they wanted to advise the school board publicly that night of the superintendent’s findings, the superintendent said it would be fine for the parents to tell that to the board.  The board then rejected the resubmitted petition by falsely claiming that the petition was again under 50%, even with the ‘corrections’ requested by the district. The parents request that the court rule that the district is estopped from rejecting the petition because the district superintendent specifically represented to the parents that the petition was over 50% knowing full well that the parents would resubmit on that basis.”
In an exclusive interview with the Sentinel, Brawley disputed Holscher and Diaz’s assertions.
“I disagree with that adamantly,” Brawley said. “I told them we still needed to go through the verification process. What they claim was said is an accurate description of their statements to me but certainly not mine to them. I handed over a stack of information and informed them they would need to go through the verification process. I never told them we were over the threshold. That would not be known without going through the verification process.”
The court papers state, “In its findings, the district purported to return the petition for being under 50 percent, again relying on rescission forms that it knew were tainted by forgery and fraud. The district relied on 70 questionable rescission forms that would be deducted from the total, even though the parent trigger statute did not even include a rescission option.  Aside from relying on fraudulent documents, the district’s own math did not add up with its prior rejection of the petition on February 21. Inexplicably, 15 students from the board’s February 21 findings were unaccounted for in the board’s March 28 findings. The missing 15 students, not surprisingly in the district’s favor, remain a mystery.”
According to Holscher, “The district acted in bad faith throughout the petition process. The district has no compelling reason that would justify the burdensome and onerous verification procedure they have crafted which has and continues to chill the protected speech of the plaintiffs.”
Brawley said that the district is “still examining the writ.” He said he and the district would defer comment until the analysis of the filing is complete and that given the legal issues involved it would most likely be lawyers doing the talking.
“That is something that will be responded to by our legal team,” Brawley said.

COLTON – Arrowhead Regional Medical Center Medical Director Dr. Dev GnanaDev has announced that he will not ask for his medical director contract to be renewed when it expires at the end of June.
Dr. GnanaDev, who will continue to serve as chairman of the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center (ARMC) Department of Surgery, has served as medical director since 2000.
Arrowhead Regional is the main campus of the San Bernardino County Hospital.
In announcing GnanaDev’s exodus as medical director, the county referred to the post he is vacating as  “a part-time position.” The press release announcing GnanaDev’s leaving said the “reasons for his decision” were based upon a “mutually agreed upon decision between Dr. GnanaDev and the county of San Bernardino Board of Supervisors to expand the medical director position to a full-time job” and that as a consequence GnanaDev had a “desire to continue devoting more time to his surgical practice.”
Chairman of the board of supervisors Josie Gonzales said, “We face unprecedented challenges in health care, particularly because of health reform and the rapid pace of change in the industry. In light of this, we feel that expanding the medical director position at ARMC to full-time status will help position our Medical Center to meet these challenges.”
Gonzales indicated that the board will begin a nationwide search soon for a full-time medical director, with input from ARMC Director Patrick Petre and Dr. GnanaDev. The medical director oversees programs of medical students, interns, residents, physicians, surgeons and other medical personnel in accordance with standards established by various federal, state and local accrediting agencies. In addition, the medical director along with the ARMC director plans the hospital’s medical programs and determines what facilities and personnel are required to carry out those programs.
During Dr. GnanaDev’s tenure as medical director, ARMC has enjoyed vast growth in the area of patient services, clinical training programs for physicians and other personnel. He helped to establish or expand ARMC’s level II trauma center, the busiest for adult trauma care in the county, ten residency training programs, a level I primary stroke center, palliative care program, and consistent, high quality care.
But there has been rocky sledding at ARMC under GnanaDev’s watch and charges of conflicts of interest involving GnanaDev as well as lapses in medical care. One issue in this regard is GnanaDev’s role as medical director while he was simultaneously the head of the surgical company that is contracted to perform all manner of surgeries at the hospital. Moreover, there have been persistent reports that under GnanaDev, the hospital’s normal triage protocols were bypassed to provide preferential treatment including surgeries and diagnoses, and the provision of treatment, drugs, pain medication and other medical services to individuals of stature and power within the county’s governmental structure. According to sources close to the hospital’s operations, there were binders designated “Do Not Bill” and further documentation showing that a host of county VIPs, including Gonzales, were given expedited treatment at the hospital which went uncharted on the hospital’s standard data recording system.
On November 4, 2010, the FBI, accompanied by district attorney’s office investigators, served search warrants at the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. Investigators working on behalf of the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles seized more than a score of boxes full of documentation relating to both operations and billing practices at the county hospital. No charges have been forthcoming in the more than 17 months since that raid, although there have been rumors of GnanaDev’s imminent departure ever since.
Neither the county nor GnanaDev, who in December was appointed to the Medical Board of California by Governor Jerry Brown, made mention of the allegations of conflict of interest, favoritism to elite county officials or the FBI investigation in announcing his departure.
“My heart will always be at ARMC,” Dr. GnanaDev said. “But the reality is that I simply can’t devote all of my time and energy as a full-time medical director because of the challenges my surgery group is facing, my desire to continue practicing as a surgeon and additional time commitment with other projects, such as the California Medical Board and EMS Commission.”
County spokesman David Wert said  Gnana-Dev  “has played an important role in helping to establish the Medical Center as a premier, full-service hospital.”

A vestige of what was once a way of life in not only San Bernardino County but much of Southern California will survive another half century as work began this week on the city of Redlands’ effort to replant the trees in the 10-acre citrus grove on Fifth Street between Ford Street and Wabash Avenue.
The city is using labor provided by the Larry Jacinto Farming Co., which has an exclusive four-year $821,585 contract to farm all of Redlands’ groves, to remove existing trees at the grove and replace them with 1,000 navel orange trees the city purchased using a $25,000 South Coast Air Quality Management District grant and another 500 trees donated by Modesto-based Duarte Nursery.
The current trees in the Fifth Street grove, most of which were planted 80 years ago, produce fruit of diminished size and inferior color and texture, brought about by  the aging of the trees and a condition affecting citrus called puff and crease.
Redlands is located in the midst of what was once the premier citrus growing region in the world. Over the last 50 years, however, California’s position as an agricultural powerhouse has diminished considerably. In no sector has this decline been more noteworthy than the wholesale uprooting of citrus groves and vineyards in Orange County and the Inland Empire to make way for the development of that land, in large measure as huge residential subdivisions.
As the viability of maintaining the land for agricultural purposes has ended and Florida has taken over from California as the leading producer of citrus, the city of Redlands remains one of the last entities in Southern California intent on preserving the orange, lemon and grapefruit groves that once predominated the local landscape. Beginning in the 1980s, the city embarked on an effort to purchase and preserve existing citrus groves, and at present owns and operates 200 acres of aging but still producing trees spread over 16 groves.
For a time, the city was able to break even on those operations or even realize a minimal profit, but after cost-saving cutbacks were made which diminished the  cultivation, irrigation and condition of the groves, they ceased being productive and became even more of a burden on the city. Maintaining the groves entailed borrowing $200,000 from the general fund last year. Since 2008-09, the groves have cost Redlands taxpayers more than $400,000.
While there has been criticism of the city for engaging in an arena better left to the private sector, city officials remain committed to maintaining the groves as part of the city’s heritage and are hoping that the current arrangement with Jacinto will return the operation to profitability.  The replacement trees will begin to produce fruit of marketable quality within the next six to eight years and will remain productive at that level, if cared for properly, for up to half of a century.
The city’s Citrus Preservation Commission was responsible for determining which of the city’s groves would be replanted first.

The county of San Bernardino is on the verge of becoming the largest recipient of garbage generated by the city of Los Angeles.
Within the next several weeks, it is anticipated San Bernardino County will close a deal that will allow the city of Los Angeles Sanitation Department to dispose of up to 600 tons of garbage a day at San Bernardino County landfills and pay less than the tipping fee paid by local cities and trash haulers.
County public works director Gerry Newcombe, who oversees the county’s solid waste management division, this week sought and obtained a directive from the board of supervisors authorizing county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux or Devereaux’s designee to submit a proposal responding to a request for proposal from the city of Los Angeles for processing/disposal services for residual municipal solid waste originating in the city of Los Angeles, at a  charge of between $15 to $30 per ton.
According to Newcombe, “The city of Los Angeles is soliciting proposals for processing and/or disposal services for 300 tons per day (minimum) up to 600 tons per day (maximum) of residual municipal solid waste. The term of the agreement requested by the city will be for five years, with one five-year renewal option. The county currently allows waste to be imported into the Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill through its operations contract with Burrtec Waste Industries at a price of $27.47 per ton and through an agreement with the city of Claremont at a price of $26.75 per ton. Those agreements differ in length of term and volume of waste from the agreement expected to result from this proposal. As a comparison, the various cities within the county that have 15 year waste disposal agreements pay $36.92 per ton.”
Despite widespread concern in communities worldwide about diminishing landfill capacity, Newcombe indicated that was not an issue in San Bernardino County, at 22,000 square miles the largest county in the United States outside of Alaska. Newcombe suggested that San Bernardino County could use its spaciousness and its multiplicity of landfills to generate money.
“The solid waste management division has determined that there is existing and future capacity at Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill due to the decrease in the volume of the waste stream being delivered to the county’s solid waste disposal system as a result of the current economic downturn,” Newcombe said. “The Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill currently has enough additional capacity to accept 2,500 tons per day of additional imported waste. The city’s proposal to import a minimum of 300 tons per day to a maximum of 600 tons per day will generate additional needed revenue.”
Newcombe said the county’s negotiator with Los Angeles should be authorized to accept the  service fee range of $15 to $30 per ton offered by Los Angeles.
“Should the solid waste management division be selected for importation of solid waste, the solid waste management division will return to the board of supervisors for approval of the revenue contract and request any necessary budget adjustments. The revenue amount will be determined based on the number of tons per day and the negotiated cost per ton,” Newcombe said.

Victorville’s deteriorating relationship with the county of San Bernardino worsened this week when the city council refused to overturn two previous planning commission decisions to disallow the probation department permission to open a day reporting center for probationers near City Hall.
Not to be outdone, the county’s chief probation officer in the aftermath of the council’s decision indicated her department will  process an increased number of released prisoners out of its existing facility which lies a stone’s throw from the civic center.
The issue in contention is a conditional use permit by Heide Hart to allow her property located at 15456 West Sage Street to be used as a day reporting center where from 145 to a maximum of 175 released convicted offenders would report on weekdays and where roughly 75 county employees would work.
On January 12, 2012, the city of Victorville’s planning commission heard that matter and voted 5-0, based upon planning staff’s recommendation and input heard at the meeting, to deny the conditional use permit. According to a staff report, the proposed reporting center as proposed failed to meet standards specified in the Victorville Municipal Code.
Hart and the county probation department appealed the matter to the city council, which directed that the planning commission reconsider the matter. The planning commission did so on March 14, 2012 and again declined to issue the conditional use permit.
A petition for reconsideration was submitted to the city and this week, on Tuesday April 3, the city council heard the matter.
With councilman Jim Kennedy absent, the council voted 3-1 to uphold the planning commission’s original and follow-up denials of the conditional use permit.  Councilwoman Angela Valles cast the dissenting vote.

Michelle Scray

County officials, including  chief probation officer Michele Scray, along with attorneys Diana Carloni-Nourse and James Bruce Minton, who represented Hart, asserted that as many as 100 probationers already report to an existing smaller probation office that is proximate to City Hall. They maintained that denial of Hart’s and the county probation department’s application would not prevent convicted probationers from saturating the area, which is also host to the Victorville Courthouse, where large numbers of both criminal defendants and convicted criminals congregate. The larger facility was needed, probation officials insisted, to keep pace with the number of probationers already being seen as well as the increasing number of post-release prisoners from the state penal system placed into the community under county supervision, a consequence of Assembly Bill 109, the state’s prison realignment plan. County probation officials intended to shutter the current office on Civic Center Drive in favor of the more spacious facility on West Sage Street.
The county presented to the city letters from 41 business owners in the environs of City Hall who said they had not experienced problems as a consequence of the significant number of probationers massing in the area and that they did not believe the placement of the expanded office onto West Sage Street would endanger public safety or hamper the business climate.
Nevertheless, the city council voted against permitting the use.

Ryan McEachron

“It’s not compatible with the zoning in that area,” said mayor Ryan McEachron, speaking for the three-person majority.
One telling advocate against allowing the project approval was former Victorville mayor and councilmember Terry Caldwell, whose law office is located in the area. Caldwell called the probation reporting office in that section of town a “non-correctly permitted use” at the March 14 planning commission meeting.
Victorville continues to cooperate with the county on several levels, including contracting with the sheriff’s department for law enforcement service, and participates in a number of joint powers authorities and collectives with the county, such as San Bernardino Associated Governments (SANBAG), which serves as the county’s transportation agency, and the Victor Valley Economic Development Authority (VVEDA), which is overseeing the civilian conversion of the former George Air Force Base. Nevertheless, Victorville has been smarting ever since the county in 2008 elected to construct its major High Desert regional government center in Hesperia near Hesperia City Hall rather on property proximate to Victorville City Hall.
Scray indicated her department would not accept that Victorville could use its power to withhold conditional use permits to restrict probation operations and that the post-release community supervision program would simply function out of the existing smaller quarters.
“Irrespective of the decision by the Victorville City Council, the probation department is committed to public safety and will operate a day reporting center in the current Civic Drive location,” Scray said in a written statement.

In Adelanto, the seventh smallest of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities, a crucial test of an obscure provision of the state of California’s Educational Code is playing out, thrusting the mostly blue collar desert community of 31,765 into the national limelight.
A group of parents at Desert Trails Elementary School, backed and perhaps even prompted by a controversial organization advocating parental primacy over professional teachers in California’s public education system, is seeking to employ the Parent Empowerment Act, also known by the colloquialism parent trigger, in a bid to make a host of what they insist are necessary reforms, including sacking the school’s principal and a major portion of the faculty in favor of a parent-run charter school.
Adelanto, which is not a hotbed of intellectualism nor known for being on the cutting-edge of societal innovation, is an unlikely venue for the drama being played out. But a combination of factors, including disparate and even contradictory influences, is driving the effort to employ the parent trigger. Meanwhile, many parents in the district are opposing a parent takeover every bit as vigorously as others are encouraging it.
Under the state’s 2010 Parent Empowerment Act, authored by former state senator Gloria Romero, a majority of parents at a school at which students test out as low-performers on state academic tests can force a district to implement significant reforms, ranging from replacing the principal and up to half the staff to reopening the school as a charter academy.
In the Adelanto Unified School District, the “parent trigger” movement manifested at 642-student Desert Trails Elementary, located on Bellflower Street north of Palmdale Road, where pupils there have consistently scored among the bottom 10 percent of students statewide in California’s standardized testing program for the last eight years. The school has been on the federal Program Improvement watch list for failing schools since 2005.
Parent Revolution, a nonprofit promoting parental control of schools in the Greater Los Angeles area, last year undertook to use the Parent Empowerment Act to effectuate a parent takeover at low performing McKinley Elementary in Compton, but that undertaking ultimately failed in a tangle of bureaucratic, legal and political resistance from the Compton School District. As early as last summer, Parent Revolution organizers approached parents in Adelanto in an effort to interest them in the concept of utilizing the parent trigger.
In November, a handful of Desert Trails parents signed onto the effort and by January, the movement had become something of a juggernaut. Ultimately, petition gatherers for the group succeeded in gathering 464 parent signatures, putatively representing nearly 69 percent of the students at Desert Trails. Those petitions, which were turned over to the district on January 12, called upon the district to relieve David Mobley as Desert Trails principal and surrender to the school’s parents authority in hiring his successor, infuse in the new principal hiring authority for the school’s faculty, reduce class sizes and increase the number of school days and instructional hours, and include more science, history and art in the curriculum. If those demands were met, parents were amenable to keeping the school under the authority of the school district. If the demands were not met, they called for Desert Trails Elementary to be converted to a community charter academy operated under the aegis of the Desert Trails Kids First nonprofit.
Yet even as the group was experiencing success in its push for the so-called reforms, it suffered setbacks. As the movement progressed, it garnered attention from local media and the community at large. Some of the parents openly advocating for a parent takeover made statements at a variance with those made by other parent trigger advocates. Some publicly revealed they had withdrawn their children from the school, invalidating their participation as petitioners. It was soon revealed that the Parent Trigger movement in Adelanto was a less-than-indigenous one, with activists from the Parent Revolution organization having used donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to rent a house in Adelanto to serve as the parent union headquarters.
A counter-parental trigger group formed, initially consisting of parents from Desert Trails Elementary who questioned whether the parents of poor-performing students in the district had the education, understanding, intelligence level, expertise or sophistication to take on the function, individually or collectively, of school administrators. In time, though, that group would find its independence questioned, when it was demonstrated that it was being assisted by the California Teachers Association.
In February, the school district, to whom the parent trigger petitions had been entrusted, announced that it had validated the signatures of only 317 of the 666 signatures on the petitions.

Darrin Brawley

Thus, district superintendent Darin Brawley, maintained, the petition drive had failed.
According to Brawley, 252 of the invalidated signatures either did not match the signatures for the parents on file, or the attached information was plagued by wrong or missing grade levels, names and addresses. The district also invalidated petitions in English that were signed by the parents of children who had previously requested that the district provide them with communications in Spanish.
In addition, at least 97 parents rescinded their signatures, amid the accusations on both sides that harassment and intimidation tactics were used in the effort to have parents affix their signatures to or withdraw their signatures from the petition.
Overall, the district maintained, the percentage of parents endorsing the parent-led reform package dropped from the 69 percent initially claimed by the Desert Trail Kids First organization to 47.6 percent, less than the 50 percent plus one threshold required.
The district’s action at once prompted a virulent reaction. Kirkland & Ellis LLP, a multinational law firm with offices in Chicago, Hong Kong, London, Munich, New York, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Shanghai, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles that represented Compton parents when they had sought to utilize the parent trigger law to force the overhaul of McKinley Elementary School last year, leapt into the breach.  Mark Holscher, a Kirkland & Ellis attorney, charged that the counter-reform parents group had been assisted by the California Teachers Association and had engaged in fraud and misrepresentations in inducing parents who had signed the petition to rescind their endorsements.
“I write to demand, on behalf of the parents and their children, that the Adelanto School District Board of Trustees immediately reverse its February 21, 2012 board findings and action with respect to the petition, which unlawfully returned the petition to the parents claiming it included signatures representing less than 50% of the students actively enrolled at Desert Trails,” Holscher wrote in a letter dated February 27. “Among other things, the board improperly discounted valid petition signatures from parents representing 97 students based on alleged ‘revocations,’ which are not authorized under the parent trigger law. Even more disturbing, we have uncovered improper conduct based on ample evidence that these improper ‘revocations’ were secured through harassment, false statements, and intimidation. Finally, and most alarmingly, we have also discovered compelling evidence of potential criminal conduct, that the revocations submitted here were falsified or forged. The petition submitted to the board on January 12, 2012 met all of the requirements set forth under the parent trigger law and regulations, including all disclosure obligations to ensure that parents were provided adequate and accurate information about the reforms sought.”
In his letter, Holscher charged that Brawley “and the board of trustees have failed to uphold the parents’ right to petition by your unlawful action. Among other things, the board discounted signatures representing 97 students whose parents signed and submitted valid petitions. Its basis for doing, relying on so-called ‘revocations,’ was improper. The Election Code forbids voters from withdrawing their signature from a petition once it is filed with election officials.  School districts are expressly instructed to determine the number of signatures based on the date of submission of the petition. There is no basis to discount signatures based on purported misunderstandings, particularly where the petition was already submitted to the district and complied with all disclosure obligations.”
Holscher said a review of the revocations received from the district showed they were “flatly inadequate. Here, the ‘revocations’ consist of nothing more than a check-list form providing a number of purported reasons for revoking a signature and a line for a parent to sign and identify his or her child. This form does not identify who created it, does not disclose the identity of the person or entity circulating it, and doesn’t provide any of the detailed information required for petitions themselves under the Parent Trigger law. All of the supposed ‘reasons’ listed on the form are nothing more than conclusory, boiler-plate, pre-printed statements, such as claiming the signor was ‘misinformed,’ ‘did not understand’ or was ‘given false statements or false promises.’ While the form provides parents’ space to ‘explain’ certain answers, almost none of the parents supposedly signing these forms provided any explanation. It is also obvious that the district made no effort to investigate the validity of these forms, nor did it purport to contact any of the parents who supposedly signed these forms. In several cases, the parent signing the revocation form was not even the parent who signed the petition form (in which case it would be absurd for that non-signing parent to make claims in connection with a petition he or she did not sign). Several of these revocation forms are not even signed. In sum, it is clear that the forms themselves are insufficient to justify discounting valid petition signatures, and the district compounded its improper conduct by failing to make any effort to investigate or authenticate the information or signatures supposedly provided in these forms.”
Holscher said his law firm had documented proof of “two examples where revocation forms submitted on behalf of two parents appear to have been fraudulently altered. In one version of the form, no boxes listing reasons for rescinding the petition are checked, and another version includes one or more boxes checked. The only plausible explanation is that some person or organization with access to these revocation forms filled in these boxes after the parent signed the form without checking any boxes. Both parents have signed sworn declarations stating that they did not check any boxes on the revocation form.”  According to Holscher, the parents also claimed they did not understand that they were revoking their earlier endorsement of the parent trigger plan.
District officials maintain that if any alterations of the rescission documents were made, they occurred before the documents were provided to the district.
Holscher said the district and those involved in the counter-trigger group engaged in “an improper campaign of harassment, false statements, and intimidation. Among other things, there are reports that parents were told blatant lies about the goals of the petition in order to secure signatures on these revocation forms. Some parents were told that their children would not be able to attend Desert Trails if it was converted to a charter school, despite a requirement under the regulations that any school transformed under the parent trigger law must continue to serve ‘all pupils.’  In other cases, parents were falsely told that if the petition succeeded, the school would be closed down, or that all of the teachers would be fired.”
Holscher warned Brawley and the board, “We are contacting the local district attorney to request that he investigate these falsifications. On behalf of the parents, we demand that the board reverse its findings to reject those signatures, and proceed with approving the petition.”
In response to Holscher’s letter, the district has agreed to reinstate as valid two of the revoked signatures.  Still the same, on March 28, the Adelanto School District’s board of trustees voted 5-0 to reject the Desert Trails Parent Union’s petition to transform Desert Trails Elementary into a charter campus, based upon its finding that the parent’s union failed to win the support of parents representing at least half of the school’s 642 students.
Parents on both sides of the issue maintain those on the opposing end have used deception, harassment and unacceptable intimidation in pursuing their ends. The California Teachers Association acknowledges it was opposed to the parent trigger bill when it was being considered by the legislature and that it had provided information and assistance in the way of advice and references to the law to anti-Trigger parents in Adelanto, but that the actual gathering of the rescission petitions was left to parents.
Holscher vowed his firm will proceed with a writ in San Bernardino Superior Court for an order for the district to comply with the parents’ request under the Parent Empowerment Act.  Thus, the matter appears yet to be resolved.
Some consider the bid to have Adelanto achieve notoriety as the locality where parent empowerment was first activated as a tribute to the community and the commitment and tenacity of its citizens as legislation similar to the California Parent Trigger Law is being considered in at least 18 other states. Others see the drama in the Adelanto School District as an unseemly spectacle, with agitators in the parent trigger movement seeking to exploit large numbers of parents at Desert Trail Elementary School whose own educational shortcomings, including a lack of facility in the English language, has contributed to the poor academic performance of their own children.

After twice succeeding at the county planning and governmental level with its application to establish a mosque in an unincorporated pocket of county land between Ontario and the Los Angeles County line on the east and west and between the Chino and Montclair city limits on the south and north, the Al-Nur Islamic Center will now have to sustain the expense of defending its effort to build a temple in court.
A group of homeowners living near the proposed project site on a 1.54-acre parcel at 4797 W. Phillips Boulevard approximately 330 feet east of Yorba Avenue have filed a lawsuit to block or delay the construction of the mosque, asserting it will harm the environment and overwhelm the rural character of their neighborhood with excessive traffic.
Rashid Ahmed, chairman of the Al-Nur Islamic Center, applied on March 12, 2010 for a permit that would provide for the establishment of a 16,763 square foot structure that was to include a variety of ancillary uses such as a caretaker’s unit, a multipurpose hall, senior citizen activity center, senior citizen library, kitchen, health clinic, and nine classrooms. Ultimately, the scope of the project was scaled back and the county planning commission by a 4-1 vote on December 8, 2011 granted a conditional use permit for the 7,512-square religious center, which is to have a maximum occupancy of 262 people.
Nearby residents, however, led by Jim Weedell, appealed the county planning commission’s approval to the county board of supervisors. On February 28, the board heard that appeal and voted 4-1, with supervisor Gary Ovitt dissenting, to follow county land use director Christine Kelly’s recommendation to deny the appeal and uphold the project approval. That approval of the project included conditions for the inclusion of 88 parking spaces at the site, limitations on motorists entering and exiting the project site such that they could do so by means of right turns only,  the requirement of a minimum 10-foot wide landscaped setback in conjunction with a maximum six-foot high decorative block wall to provide buffering between the mosque and the existing residences, which is intended to shield the adjacent properties from any headlights from cars exiting or entering the site. There was also an apparent requirement that the property be annexed to the city of Chino so the property could hook into that city’s sewer system.
Despite those conditions,  a local homeowners group calling itself “Save Our Uniquely Rural Community Environment” hired an attorney, Torrance-based attorney Victor Otten, who  filed a lawsuit last week on the group’s behalf in San Bernardino Superior Court.
Citing the California Environmental Quality Act, the suit alleges the approved plans for the mosque do not adequately mitigate negative effects on residents’ views, traffic, wastewater system and water runoff.
“This proposed project changes the quiet rural character of the neighborhood with an unwanted increase of vehicular traffic and parking,” the suit states. “It will also result in environmental impacts related to aesthetics, landscape, views, construction, sewage and runoff impacts from the project.”
The suit requests that the court cancel the county’s approval of the mosque and require the completion of an environmental impact report that must be incorporated into a future application for reapproval.

After nearly a year of vituperation and criticism from a portion of the community, Upland fire chief Michael Antonucci has departed the city for good.

Michael Antonucci

Antonucci was forced into retirement in September, but was given a $78,163 six-month contract to remain as chief while his successor was sought.
Beginning last April, a campaign aimed at convincing the Upland City Council to terminate Antonucci was waged by a coterie of residents and former and current department employees. Many of the attacks on the chief manifested in the form of anonymous emails posted to the city council.
Antonucci was taken to task on a number of points, including allegations he had disciplined, fired or punished some department employees unjustifiably, promoted or kept in place unqualified personnel, and squandered money made available to the city from both the federal government and Lewis Operating Company on equipment that has been deployed in a way that endangers rather than enhances citizen safety.
One issue Antonucci was chastised for was the decision to purchase two vehicles for the department: a ladder truck and a Type IV engine.
The $1.5 million ladder truck was purchased with development fees paid to the city by Lewis Operating Company, the corporate parent to Lewis Homes, one of the city’s largest corporations and also one of the major builders of residential and commercial property in town.
The ladder truck is the capital engine at Fire Station 164, the city’s newest fire station, located at 1825 N. Campus Avenue. The ladder truck, which allows firefighters to access and exit from heights up to four stories, carries no fire suppression equipment, i.e., no water pump and no water tank. This use of the $1.5 million vehicle was questioned because as the primary first response piece of equipment run out of Station #164, which services the northeast portion of Upland, critics maintained, immediate fire suppression in that section of the city would be delayed because no pump truck is stationed at Station #164.
The $170,000 Type IV engine was purchased with a combination of redevelopment funds, Community Development Block grants and federal stimulus and recovery money. The engine had gone unmanned at Station 162, on San Antonio Ave., in the northern area of the city. The placement of the truck into that area has been criticized because Community Development Block grant funding of a project carries with it a requirement that the program benefit an area deemed a so-called CDBG fund area.  The area served by Station 162 is not designated as a CDBG fund area.
While Antonucci, at the insistence of  Upland’s city attorney Bill Curley, remained silent in the face of those attacks, other Upland municipal officials downplayed the charges, insisting that Antonucci was apportioning the city’s firefighting resources as sensibly as the limitations in equipment, facilities and manpower allowed.
Upland city manager Stephen Dunn pointed out that the ladder truck carries 500 gallons of foam and 60 gallons of water to make up to 1,200 gallons of air injected foam, which in the fire department’s estimation was more than enough for initial response, and the truck had the capability of tapping into the fire hydrants in most areas of the city and all of the fire hydrants in the Station 164 area, which Dunn said would buy sufficient time for a second response truck to arrive. Dunn defended the acquisition and use of the ladder truck, saying having a panoply of equipment and vehicles in a modern municipal circumstance enhanced public safety and did not harm it.
“In Upland there are not a whole lot but there are some buildings where a ladder truck would be advantageous and a better option than other trucks, which are advantageous in other scenarios,” Dunn said.
Antonucci was also criticized for having spent money extravagantly in outfitting Station #164 with granite counter-tops and full granite back-splashes and stainless steel appliances, and he came under attack for having the department purchase a command vehicle that could not be justified in terms of the austere budgetary climate and the simple mission of ensuring public safety.
In the spring of last year, even as the attacks against him were reaching a crescendo, Antonucci applied for the position of county fire chief but was ultimately passed over in favor of Mark Hartwig, an assistant chief then employed by the Rancho Cucamonga Fire Department.
Ultimately, Dunn resolved to winnow the city of much of its executive staff, including Antonucci, who was being paid a base salary and add-ons of $170,698, plus benefits of $71,692 for a total of $242,390 yearly. But no new fire chief was hired to replace him and before Antonucci left in September, he was permitted to write his own ticket as a consultant at $13,027.16 per month while the city sought to recruit his replacement. This led to stepped up criticism of the city.
It was announced this week that police chief Jeff Mendenhall will serve as interim fire chief in the aftermath of Antonucci’s departure.
Dunn’s move to place the police chief into that position broaches the possibility of the city eliminating the position of fire chief altogether and consolidating the police and fire chief positions into the single post of public safety manager, which was a system used in the city of Arcadia until 1936 and currently in Grants Pass, Oregon.
There is some precedent for this arrangement in Upland. In the 1990s, then-police chief Martin Thouvenell served as both police  and fire chief for almost six years.