The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered the reestablishment of a major military program at Southern California Logistics Airport.
The airport is the site of the former George Air Force Base, which came into existence in 1941 as the 2,200-acre Victor Army Air Corps Station during the run-up to the United States’ entry into World War II. The air base was renamed in honor of Harold Huston George, an Army Air Corps General killed in a flying mishap during the war, and it was folded into the Air Force when the Army Air Corps was reorganized to become the U.S. Air Force as a result of the National Security Act of 1947. Its four-runway configuration included one which is 15,049 feet long, making it the second-longest runway in the United States and currently the 13th longest runway in the world.
As an Air Force Base it was host to the 27th, 71st, 94th, 327th, 329th and 518th fighter-interceptor squadrons, the 31st, 35th, 413th and 479th tactical fighter wings, the 39th, 561st and 562nd tactical fighter squadrons, the 563rd Tactical Fighter Training Squadron, the 452nd Bombardment Wing; and the 21st, 116th and 131st bomber wings. The Air Force’s pilots at George flew B-26 Invaders, F-51 Mustangs, F-86 Sabres, F-100 Super Sabres, F-102 Delta Daggers, F-104 Starfighters, F-106 Delta Darts, F-105 Thunderchiefs and F-4 Phantoms.
As a military base it was in use during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the 1991 Gulf War. As a military asset during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, there was a nuclear mission at George Air Force Base, with interceptors armed with both atomic and nuclear tipped missiles intended to shoot down enemy bombers as well as incoming ballistic missiles.
As the result of the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1988, George was shuttered in 1992. The City of Victorville, working under the aegis of the Victor Valley Economic Development Authority, a joint powers effort involving Victorville, the County of San Bernardino, the City of Hesperia and the Town of Apple Valley, provided to the Department of Defense a competing alternative to that submitted by the City of Adelanto for taking on ownership of the base property. After Victorville secretly underwrote the legal costs for the Victor Valley Economic Development Authority, known by its acronym VVEDA, and the City of Adelanto burned through more than $20 million in redevelopment agency funds to wage its side of the legal battle, in 1995 the Department of Defense rendered a decision entrusting the civilian use conversion of the base property to VVEDA. In 1997, it was revealed that the Victor Valley Economic Development Agency was essentially a shill for Victorville when VVEDA ceded ownership and the development responsibilities of the air base, at that point referred to as Southern California Logistics Airport, to the City of Victorville. The City of Victorville thereafter, in June 1997, in conjunction with its redevelopment agency, formed the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority, the board for which is the Victorville City Council. The authority runs the airport.
In the years after the city’s takeover of the aerodrome, the Department of Defense continued to carry out military-related operations there. Under Title 49, United States Code, subtitle VII, an airport receiving financial assistance from the United States government is required to make its facility available without charge for use by federal aircraft in common with other aircraft, with the proviso that the federal government will cover what is deemed a reasonable and proportionate share of the operational and maintenance cost of its use of the facilities.
In August 2008, the 163rd Air Reconnaissance Wing, based out of March Air Reserve Base, entered into an airport joint use agreement with the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority as a result of its substantial use of the facility to fly its MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial system craft for the purpose of performing flight training. The agreement defined Southern California Logistic Airport Authority’s maintenance and operational responsibilities, regulated the activities of the 163rd Air Reconnaissance Wing, and provided a means by which the authority was to be compensated for allowing the 163rd Air Reconnaissance Wing to use its aeronautical facilities. Early in 2009, the 452nd Air Mobility Wing expressed interest in conducting nighttime flight training with its C-17 cargo aircraft at the Southern California Logistics Airport for the purpose of training pilots to land without airfield lighting, using only night vision goggles. On May 1, 2009, a follow-on airport joint use agreement was executed that replaced the previous one that covered both the 163rd Air Reconnaissance Wing and the 452nd Air Mobility Wing activities. The second airport joint use agreement expired on April 30, 2014. Starting in the fall of 2013, Southern California Logistics Airport staff approached both the 163rd Air Reconnaissance Wing and the 452nd Air Mobility Wing to initiate discussions intended to ensure the timely execution of a new agreement. Those discussions bogged down over the next eight months when the 452nd Air Mobility Wing expressed its expectation that the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority – meaning the City of Victorville – would fund and construct a new runway specifically dedicated to meeting the C-17 crew training needs. As city staff believed such a request was financially unreasonable and not tenable, city staff proferred multiple compromise solutions that involved what city staff characterized as “reasonable” modifications to one of the existing Southern California Logistics Airport runways to better accommodate the 452nd Air Mobility Wing. Ultimately, the 452nd Air Mobility Wing chose to utilize other airfield accommodations within the purview of the Department of Defense, thus declining to enter another in another airfield use agreement with the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority.
According to C. Eric Ray, the City of Victorville’s airport director, “Concurrent discussions with the 163rd Air Reconnaissance Wing were central to determining the reasonable cost for their proportionate use of the airfield. The 163rd Air Reconnaissance Wing adamantly disputed the cost of operating and maintaining the Southern California Logistics Airport airfield and purported lower aircraft operations counts. Ultimately, successful negotiation produced a new five-year airport joint use agreement that expired on June 30, 2019. Thereafter, the 163rd Air Reconnaissance Wing relocated all operations to March Air Reserve Base and declared the Air Force hangar facilities at Southern California Logistics Airport surplus.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the Russian military was pursuing the development of hypersonic missiles capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional weapon payloads. Capable of reaching roughly seven times the speed of sound or Mach 7, about 5,370 miles per hour, such weapons are very likely capable of overwhelming the anti-missile capability that the United States has pursued and cultivated over the last six decades. The Russians developed several models of the hypersonic missile, including the Avangard hypersonic weapon, which was tested and put into service in 2019, the 3M22 Tsirkon, which can be land launched, air launched or ship launched and is both nuclear and conventional armament capable, and the air-launched Kh-47M2 Kinzhal nuclear-capable missile, known as “the Dagger.”
In July 2021, Russia test launched its most recent hypersonic missile model. This was followed by eleven further tests in October and December, two of which involved submarine launches of what were believed to be Tsirkon missiles and a “salvo” launch of multiple missiles on December 24. Russia has made no secret of its hypersonic missile capability, an open display that showcases the weapons’ speed and in-flight maneuverability, intended to convey to the United States and its allies that Russia continues to possess an assured retaliatory destruction capability that renders use of nuclear weapons against it by any power suicidal.
In the latter part of 2021, Russia began amassing substantial numbers of troops and armament near the Ukrainian border. This was accompanied by calculated statements from Russian officials and Russian media representatives who are presumed to speak with the authority of the Kremlin. One such statement came in December from Russian television host Dmitry Kiselyov, who warned that if the United States interfered with Russian territorial or political actions, it risked being reduced to “radioactive ash.”
Further massing of Russian military forces along the Ukrainian border continued apace, and on February 24, 2022, Russia launched a large-scale military invasion of Ukraine.
Tuesday, March 1, the dormant state of the military-related facilities at Southern California Logistics Airport came to an abrupt end when the Victorville City Council, acting in its capacity as the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority Board of Directors, approved entering into another airport joint use agreement with the federal government, acting by and through the Secretary of the Air Force.
The agreement will generate approximately $291,113 in gross lease revenue over the initial five-year term. In the remainder of the 2021-22 fiscal year ending on June 30, the agreement will provide Victorville with $14,554; $58,223 in Fiscal 2022-23; $58,223 in Fiscal 2023-24; $58,223 in Fiscal 2024-25; $58,223 in Fiscal 2025-26; and $43,667 from July 1, 2026 to April 1, 2027.
According to Victorville City Manager Keith Metzler, the “revenue-generating agreement allows the U.S. Air Force in this case to actually use the air filed and conduct operations … in the facility that was once used by the California National Guard in the pilot training program they had connected to the March Air Base Reserve for the drone aircraft, the Predators and Reapers.” Metzler’s reference was to the Predator drone, also known as the MQ-1, and the Reaper drone, known as the MQ-9.
“This agreement would actually facilitate the payment associated with the use of the airfield,” Metzler said.
Ray said that initially employees for the Asir Force contractor i3, would be involved in the work at the airport.
“This firm is working directly under the Air Force, the Air Force Department of Research and Development,” Ray said. “The ultimate goal of the work that’s going to be conducted here will be for our nation to develop a set of hypersonic missiles, missiles that some other counties already have. We are behind in that technology. So, the goal is to develop that technology, to fly them off these large drones, these MQ9s. Their use of the facility here would be to launch the aircraft, get them ultimately over the ocean and to do testing of these missile systems. So, it’s very important within the agency called DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency], for DARPA’s research work in these weapons systems, to be able to actually get them in the air and test them. Our airport would be used as a place by which to launch those aircraft. They will use the taxiways and the runways on which to take off and to land.”
Ray said that i3’s activities will be contained on an 8-acre portion of the airport reserved for government-leased facilities. The Air Force under its long-term lease arrangements has constructed hangar facilities and ancillary facilities there, he said. The i3 Corporation, under contract to the Air Force, will be using the Air Force’s lease hold facilities, Ray said.
“There is no risk to the local population,” Ray said, indicating the initial tests will use mock-ups that replicate the mass and weight distribution characteristics of missiles, but which will not actually be functioning or armed missiles. “There’s no explosion that’s going to happen here [with] the testing that’s going to happen here … for many months, if not years. They’re going to fly these aircraft with essentially pods on them, something that looks like a missile but is not a missile. They are going to do a lot of the flight characteristic testing on the vehicle with this object hooked to it. So that activity is going to happen. And those are inert. They won’t go ‘Boom.’ They’ll fly those here and they’ll get into the controlled air space, restricted air space that is part of Edwards Air Force Base. So, there’s a large safe area very near to us where they do that. They will only have a live ordnance at very specific, few times, and at that point they will be flying them probably out of Edwards, again in that restricted air space when no one else is around, and take it out to the ocean to do that testing. Nothing like that happens here. Here, it’s about the aircraft operating under different mission criteria.”
–Mark Gutglueck

By Mark Gutglueck
This week, on Tuesday March 1, the Ontario City Council sided with one of the most politically well-connected families in San Bernardino County in overriding deep and wide resident opposition to displacing formerly agricultural and currently residentially-zoned property at the city’s south end with warehouses, factories, distribution centers and other industrial development.
The 219.39 acres in question bordered by Eucalyptus Avenue to the north, Merrill Avenue to the south, the future extension of Campus Avenue to the west and Grove Avenue to the east and owned primarily by the heirs to the Pete Borba fortune had previously been zoned to accommodate low- and medium-density residential homes and commercial centers or a large business park. To oblige the Borba family, the city council took a number of controversial steps, which included approving the scope and terms of the project, certifying the environmental impact report prepared for those projects under the aegis of the South Ontario Logistics Center Specific Plan, adopting a statement of overriding considerations, approving the mitigation, monitoring and reporting arrangements for the development of the land, okaying an amendment to the general plan which provided for a change in zoning on the property, modifying the land use element of the policy plan in the city’s general plan, changing the city’s land use map to alter the low-medium density residential (5.1-11 dwelling units per acre) zoning on 157.06 acres and business park zoning on 62.36 acres specifying a maximum a floor area ratio of 0.55 to zoning allowing 184.22 acres of industrial buildings and 35.17 acres of business park with a floor area ratio of 0.6 and ignoring entirely a torrent of calls for reestablishing the abandoned agricultural zoning on the property. In addition, by approving the conversion of 71.58 percent of the 219 acres into what is primarily industrial uses, the city council agreed to intensify the density of residential development elsewhere in the city to make up for the number of units that would have eventually been built on the Borba property if the zone change had not been granted.
The 219.39 acres falls within the Ontario Ranch area, the development standards for which were established after Ontario succeeded in annexing on November 30, 1999 8,200 acres of the 15,200 acres of unincorporated San Bernardino County land previously in the Chino Valley Agricultural Preserve. The vast majority of the properties in the preserve were dairies, functioning under the auspices of the Williamson Act from the 1960s until the late 1990s. Chino laid claim to the other 7,000 acres. The Williamson Act provided landowners with tax breaks as long as the property was used for agricultural purposes.
The decision by the city council on Tuesday night essentially abrogated the land use ideals – calling for the property to be developed residentially – that had been put in place in accordance with the rationale for the annexation.
More tellingly, however, city staff’s report on the proposed general plan alteration, statement of overriding considerations to certify the environmental impact report, zone changes and imposition of a specific plan put forth that the project would result in no fewer than five negative impacts relating to the categories of agricultural resources, air quality extending to greenhouse gas emissions, historical resources, transportation and traffic, in which vehicle miles traveled and impacts related to burdens on intersections were noted.
None of those impacts, the staff report stated, could be fully mitigated to a level of “less than significant.”
Some five weeks previously, at the January 25 Ontario Planning Commission meeting, staff had told the commissioners that there were not five but 16 negative impacts relating to the categories of traffic congestion, noise, global climate change, cultural resources, air quality and agricultural resources that defied being reduced to a less than significant level. There had been, in actuality, no change to the project that eliminated 11 of the impacts. The change was one on paper only, and this raised red flags that alarmed the project’s opponents and city residents alike.
Thus, by its action the city council made a finding that the untoward elements of the transformation of the property into an industrial district were overridden by the benefits of doing so.
The developer identified as the proponent of project that was the subject of Tuesday night’s action is Newport Beach-based Euclid Land Venture. The owners of the property upon which the development is to occur are specified in documents generated by the city in relation to the adoption of the South Ontario Logistics Center Specific Plan. The social and financial status of those owners explicates why the city council, in the face of overwhelming resident opposition, was nevertheless in favor of the sweeping change to the character of the land at the city’s southlying extreme.
There were reports abounding that Euclid Land Venture was an arm of the predominant element of the project property’s landowners, the Borba Family. However, Rudy Zeledon, Ontario’s planning director, told the Sentinel that Euclid Land Ventures and the Borba Family are separate entities and that upon the full filing and recording of the entitlements on the land, the property will be sold by the Borba Family to Euclid Land Ventures.
The property owners include Pocamo, LLC; the George Borba Family Trust; George Borba, Jr., the County of San Bernardino, the Rudy Haringa Trust and Gerben Hettinga. The Borba Family is one of the most prominent, wealthiest and socially/politically influential in San Bernardino County. Pete Borba was a Portuguese immigrant and dairyman who came to the Chino Valley in the 1920s and was the progenitor of the Borba Dynasty. His son, George Borba, was fabulously successful.
As the owner/partner of George Borba & Son Dairy, he was both a director and president of the California Milk Producers Cooperative and the Los Angeles Mutual Dairymen Association, as well as a member of the Challenge Creamery Association. He was president of the California Milk Marketing Agency and an influential member of the Alliance of Western Milk Producers. For 22 years George Borba was a director of the Inland Empire Utilities Agency. He was a founder of Chino Valley Bank, later known as Citizens Business Bank, and he was chairman of the board for both Chino Valley Bank and Citizens Business Bank as well as CVB Financial Corp. for 38 years.
The extended Borba Family included Joan Borba, who was both a San Bernardino County Municipal Court judge and later a Superior Court judge. The George Borba Family Trust numbers as its beneficiaries George Borba’s widow, Dolores; George Borba, Jr. and his wife Jennifer; George Borba’s daughters Kim Borba, Linda Gourdikian, Cynthia Podmajersky and Victoria Rynsburger, whose husband, Andrew Rynsburger, is the scion of a long-established Chino Valley dairy dynasty.
While Ontario’s political leadership denies it, the Borba Family along with roughly four dozen other generous big-money donors to the electioneering funds of the city’s five council members co-own the council. In less than seven months in 2021, members of the Borba family made $12,200 in donations to Mayor Paul Leon and three other members of the Ontario City Council – Councilman Alan Wapner, Councilman Jim Bowman and Councilwoman Deborah Porada. The Borba family avoided making any contributions to a fifth member of the council, Councilman Ruben Valencia, because he is at odds with the council majority.
On January 25, when the Ontario Planning Commission convened to determine whether it should recommend that the city council give go-ahead to the South Ontario Logistics Center project and its specific plan, a litany of high-powered entities went on record as being against the project. Those included Anthony Noriega, the director of District 5, League of United Latin American Citizens of the Inland Empire; Evan Marshall, of Californians United for a Responsible Economy; Irene Chisholm; Sean Silva, a member of Californians United for a Responsible Economy; Raymond Smith; Lois Sicking Dieter, an engineer employed in the analysis of air pollution by the California Air Resources Board; along with representatives of several labor organizations, including Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 398, the District Council of Ironworkers and Teamsters Local 1932. The opposition of the labor unions was significant. Labor unions have a well-established pattern of supporting development projects in Southern California. That the unions had come out against the South Ontario Logistics Center represented a dilemma for the city council There was one exception to the blanket union opposition to the project at the January 25 planning commission hearing. Juan Olmedo, a representative of the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, said he wanted to “speak in support of the South Ontario Logistics Center Specific Plan.”
Olmeda’s presence at the January 25 meeting would later prove to have significance.
To avoid the appearance that the council members were selling their votes to assist the Borba family in obtaining the zone changes and land use standard alterations that matched with their expectations of how they could best profit in the development of their property, the council majority, through City Manager Scott Ochoa, pressured the director of the community development department, Scott Murphy and Ontario’s assistant planner, Alexis Vaughn, to provide the planning commission, which reviewed the project on January 25, with the basis upon which to make a recommendation that the specific plan be given go-ahead. The planning commission serves as a community sounding board and decision-making panel on land use and development issues. In some cases, the planning commission is entrusted with the city’s ultimate land use authority. In others, it is called upon to review project proposals or matters relating to the city’s planning process to make a recommendation to the city council that it can consult or rely upon in making its analysis and the final decision relating to those projects or actions. The seven members of the commission nonetheless are appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the city council. And while the planning commission is often relied upon to work its way through development proposals and make a straightforward evaluation of whether the prospective projects that come before it meet the city’s development and land use standards and whether they will be a positive attribute to the community, in those cases where political considerations apply – in particular where a project proponent or landowner has a favorable relationship with members of the council – it is commonly understood that the planning commission need not strictly apply the development standards normally used if such an analysis would result in a vote by the commission that is detrimental to an entity that is in good standing with city staff’s political masters. In such cases where the planning commission has the final land use authority, it will virtually always vote to approve a project proposed by the city council’s major donors, supporters or associates. In those cases where the planning commission does not have final land use authority, it can be counted upon to tailor its recommendation to provide political cover to the council in approving a project or otherwise taking action favorable to the council members’ benefactors.
The unanimous vote of the planning commission on January 25 to recommend that the city council allow the conversion of the property to industrial and business park use provided just such political cover to the city council this week, allowing it to cite the commission recommendation in making its call in favor of the Borba Family.
While opposition to the project by many of the council’s constituents was anticipated, a major concern for the council was that heavy union opposition to the project might make its passage untenable. Emissaries between the council and the unions went to work in the weeklong run-up to Tuesday’s meeting. Also placed on the agenda for Tuesday was an item for the council’s consideration relating to a significant amendment of the city’s general plan, referred to as the Ontario Plan. The item called for an updating of the Ontario Plan incorporating the State of California’s mandates to construct more housing in the city in accordance with the sixth cycle of the Regional Housing Needs Allocation formulated by the Southern California Association of Governments, which in Ontario’s case would involve at least 24,478 dwelling units. The adoption of the update and amendment further entailed the approval of an addendum to the environmental impact report for the Ontario Plan. By design, the vote on the general plan amendment was placed on the agenda immediately before the council’s consideration of the South Ontario Logistics Center project. The council’s action in approving the alteration to the Ontario Plan would clear the way for an intensification of the employment prospects for those in the construction industry. A sizeable contingent of the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters headed by that union’s career connections outreach specialist, Jeffery Scott, was present in the Ontario Council Chamber to encourage the council to update the Ontario Plan as proposed. In his interaction with Scott and other members of the carpenters’ union as they spoke as part of the public comment process, Mayor Paul Leon would signal to the significant number of union members, most of whom were clad in orange shirts, that they should stand up. That exercise, which was repeated several times, had an immense psychological effect, making all present in the council chamber acutely conscious of the dominant presence of the union contingent.
After the council passed the Ontario Plan update, it moved on to the consideration of the South Ontario Logistics Center project. Community Development Director Scott Murphy gave an overview of the project. Buried in his presentation was an acknowledgment that “After revisions to the environmental impact report and incorporation of mitigation measures … five impacts remain significant and unavoidable.” Those were, Murphy said, to “agricultural resources” such that “project and cumulative impacts to agricultural resources will remain significant and unavoidable… air quality impacts related to a net increase will remain significant and unavoidable… the potential for project greenhouse gas emissions to result in a significant impact on the environment is conservatively considered to be significant and unavoidable… the proposed project would demolish significant historical resources on site… [and] would remain significant and unavoidable…” With regard to “transportation and traffic,” Murphy said, “vehicle miles traveled impacts related to intersections are projected to be cumulatively significant and unavoidable.”
Before the public input phase of the hearing was opened, City Attorney Ruben Duran interjected himself into the proceedings, suggesting that Leon, as the presiding officer, reduce the three-minute speaking limit to two minutes. Leon did so.
It was noted that the Law Office of Abigail Smith had sent the city a letter relating to a number of environmental issues the project entailed. The public was not given access to the letter. Duran said he would analyze it.
It was further noted that there had been 1,147 written comments or letters sent to the city relating to the project, the vast majority of which advocated against its approval.
The Sentinel made transcriptions of the statements provided by those participating in the public hearing. The city did not cooperate in providing the correct or actual spellings of the names of those who spoke. The spellings provided are the Sentinel’s best phonetic estimation based upon what was audible at the hearing.
Randy Leckenham stated that eight of the parcels included in the 219.39 acres to be developed consisted of about 75 acres purchased by the County of San Bernardino with Proposition 70 money. Leckenham said the property had been purchased “in the interest of the public and held in public trust. He noted that the county did not put conservation easements on those parcels. “So, they have been in violation of the public trust to this day,” Leckenham said. “There’s no rationale for those parcels to be in the environmental impact report [and therefore included in the project] because [the] people of California own that land, and so easements should be on those parcels. We urge you to table this agenda item until those issues can be addressed.”
Oscar Aguilar, a unionized carpenter, said he wanted to work locally. He called upon the council to approve the project.
As members of the carpenters’ union spoke, their fellow union members stood up in accordance with Leon’s instructions that they should “rise.”
Jimmy Elrod, of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners of America, estimated that of the union’s 60,000 members, a thousand of them lived in Ontario.
“I stand before you, urging you to pass this project,” Elrod said. “The amount of good-paying jobs created would benefit the membership, the workforce and the community as a whole.”
Susan Phillips decried the elimination of agriculturally-zoned property in Ontario. “The people who want to farm are not currently landowners,” she said. “So, by paving this land, you’re cheating the next generation out of the possibility of doing that.”
Though many of the dairyman who were formerly utilizing the land agriculturally are no longer in Ontario, she said, “Believe me, there is a whole new generation of people, some of whom are in this room, who would love to farm, and they would love to do it in Ontario. You’re one of the luckiest cities in Southern California. You have more prime farmland than anywhere.”
She cautioned that approving the project to give temporary jobs to the construction workers was shortsighted and did not properly prepare for Ontario’s and the region’s future in terms of maintaining a locally sourced food supply. Phillips said southwestern San Bernardino County was saturated with 25 square miles of pure warehouses. “That is not a balanced community,” she said.
At one point City Attorney Ruben Duran sought to discourage those from speaking from contradicting city staff or seeking to either correct staff, in particular Scott Murphy, or provide alternative data to what he had provided.
Tracy Walters, an urban agriculture advocate, said the pandemic had demonstrated how important it was to “transform our food system to become more local and sustainable. I’m here to ask this council and plead with you all to conserve our remaining farmland for our next generations.”
Lila Solokai Zovich said that “Ontario has been harmed by pollution from warehouses built in the area.” She urged the council to not approve the project.
Samuel Maron called upon the council to not change the agricultural zoning of the area and maintain the property as farmland.
Angela Miramontes opposed the rezoning from agricultural and lamented that “warehouses border our homes and our schools. We currently have 110 million square feet of warehouse space. In the last year, we’ve only planted 600 trees. We are facing an ever-growing threat that is climate change, yet we are doing nothing to mitigate this fact. Instead, we are building more and more warehouses that contribute to greenhouse emissions that pollute the air around our homes and schools, that affects our children and their future. I know I am going to hear that these warehouses create jobs, which is true for a short period of time.” The jobs at those warehouses, however, Miramontes said, “do not pay a living wage, do not provide enough for a resident to purchase a home here in their own city. We are not demanding enough of our elected officials, and our elected officials are failing our communities. Before we build more warehouses, we need to demand that these corporations pay their fair share in taxes, pay a living wage for California, pay for health insurance, plant regionally-native plants to provide some habitat restoration, provide incentives for residents to purchase electric vehicles and solar panels and … transition to an all-electric fleet. We, and you, need to think about more than money.”
Upon Miramontes suggesting that members of the city council were being paid off, City Attorney Ruben Duran leapt into the breach, insisting that Miramontes be cut off.
Arthur Levine told the council, “No more warehouses. Keep prime farmland in Ontario for sustainable agriculture and community benefits. Build climate resilience, food security and green jobs. Protect Ontario’s richest resource, the soil. I would like to urge the council to vote no on this proposal. Ontario communities don’t need any more warehouses. The proposal to use prime farmland for industrial use is irresponsible. Warehousing promotes wasteful and polluting land uses that harm families with bad air quality and congested streets full of large trucks.”
Jeff Johnston, who heads Euclid Land Venture, said the project adhered to “the vision that you all have been looking for, for developing the southwest corner of Ontario.”
Johnson said, “Our project will contribute about $144 million toward the infrastructure that will be the first miles of infrastructure that will help serve the housing that’s on the north side of Eucalyptus [Avenue]. With our project, we’re going to build nine-and-a-half miles of water lines to a nine-million-gallon reservoir that’s ultimately going to serve all of southwest Ontario Ranch. We’re building four-and-a-half miles of storm drain lines that are going to serve 1,800 acres to the north of us. We’re building 3.3 miles of sewer lines which also serve all the properties to the north of us. In addition, we’ll be building 2.8 miles of streets and street signals and we’re going to build two miles of recycled water lines that will serve that area. This is the opportunity to open up the housing element that the city is looking for.”
Wyatt Stiles, a member of Plumbers and Steamfitters Union Local 398, read a text that had been prepared for him.
“Ontario must be ready for the wave of development that is unfolding now, ready for industrial and logistical projects that have been flowing into the Inland Empire the last two years,” read Stiles. “These projects will generate once-in-a-lifetime economic community benefits for us in Ontario.”
Luis Lopez, business agent for the Local 433 Ironworkers Workforce Development Board said the proposal was one of many “responsible projects” that will pay ironworkers good wages.
Frankie Jiménez, president of Ironworkers 416, said the project would provide work in Ontario that would reduce the commuting distance for ironworkers living in Ontario.
Caterino Diaz, who is on the council for the Local 433 Ironworkers, told the council, “I’m speaking to make it loud and clear we’re in support of this project.” He said the project would keep local ironworkers employed near their homes.
Pastor Zach with Care California, whose either first or last name was not given, said he and his organization support the project because it would put Ontario residents, who have an unemployment rate of 6.9 percent compared to the national unemployment rate in California of 6 percent, to work.
Moises Cisneros congratulated the city on its plan to develop the property but said that it should consider that “This land is more valuable either as being regenerated or used for sustainable agriculture than it is being developed. There is a formula for that. There is a formula attached to leaving this land as is for the benefit and health of all of our communities.”
Callie O’Neal touted utilizing the property for agrivoltaics, which she described as “an agricultural concept where you combine solar voltaic panels with agriculture.” She called it a “high efficient land use where you have solar panels about eight-to-ten feet high at 25-degree angles and crops under it. It creates incredibly water-efficient use of crops and incredibly efficient solar panels because it creates a micro-climate within that interacts. It’s land efficient. It’s highly profitable and it does incorporate agriculture in a way as well as creating food security.”
Andrea Galvan said “I’m here today, like many of my neighbors, to voice opposition to taking away farmland to allocate more land for warehouse industrial use. We live somewhere very special, and you would give that up for short term tax revenue.” She said that warehouse proponents were making “empty promises” of “good-paying jobs” that will “never appear. Our young people desire an opportunity to earn wages that pay for their housing. That can’t and won’t happen until we think strategically about our land use.”
Stephanie, whose last name was not given, said, “We do not need any more warehouses.”
Jason Byez, a member of Laborers International Union of North America, said, “I fully support this project.” He said he had previously worked “under the table,” and received insufficient remuneration to support his family. He said the project under consideration would provide work for unionized workers with wages “to open the door for me to be able to sufficiently provide for my family, a living wage with benefits.”
Bill Quisenberry of the Laborers International Union of North America said he supported the South Ontario Logistics Project.
“This project is going to create a lot of jobs in the local community,” Quisenberry said. “It is going to create for the construction workers in our union a well-paying job that includes fringe benefits like full family medical, defined benefit pension and even a vacation check.”
Richard Lucerio of the Laborers International Union of North America said he had worked on the dairies that once stood on the property to be developed and he and his fellow union members looked forward to working on the South Ontario Logistics Project.
Ralph Bellador of the Laborers International Union of North America said he and his brother and sister union members supported the project because “This developer before you is dedicated to building to the highest standards and using the very best craftsmen in the industry. This project will allow our members who live right here in the community the ability to work close to home and spend quality time with their families.”
Elizabeth Sena referenced the 1,147 letters, the overwhelming number of which were in opposition to the project. She suggested that because of the nature of the project and the existing oversaturation of warehousing in the area, the City of Ontario was running the risk of triggering legal action by the California Attorney General, as had occurred in Fontana over that city’s approval of a warehouse in a warehouse-oversaturated zone, despite there having been only 50 letters of opposition against the project there. “I’m happy to see the union members here advocating for their jobs,” Sena said. “But what I don’t see is anyone standing in solidarity with the warehouse workers, ensuring their wages are livable and their benefits are equitable too.”
Sena then made an oblique reference to the union members’ continual assertions that the project should be given approval because it would improve the dynamics of their family lives by providing them with decent-paying work close to home, reducing the distance of their commutes and allowing them more time with their families. “There is so much to say and so little time because you were encouraged to limit to two minutes, but what I do want to say is I have children too and I want to take them to their softball practices and I want them to be able to breathe clean air,” Sena said. “Please oppose this project.”
Anna Gonzalez, the interim executive director for the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, said, “We’re poisoning the families of Ontario and all the local cities that are surrounding the Inland Valley region. The inland Valley region has become a dumping ground for logistics projects, resulting in blatant disregard of community impacts and the asthma and cancer clusters it has created, also known as diesel death zones. That is violence to your community members.”
The decent-paying jobs created by the project would prove temporary, Gonzalez said.
“Warehouse workers don’t come here to support these type of projects because they are always exploited,” Gonzalez said. “This project is disturbingly concerning, not only for the massive size of it, but for many other factors. These include extinction of prime farmland, which our region so desperately needs. We find many conflicts with the South Coast Air Quality Management District Plan. It will bring unsafe traffic conditions, posing a threat to some of the families that are in vicinity to this project. The rezoning concerns are a major factor. It is also concerning that the environmental impact report is based on a report that was made in 2010. Clean air is a human right. You need to put people over profits, period.”
Joaquin Castellano with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice said the major influx of warehousing was “affecting our health. It’s affecting the future of our communities. It’s affecting the children and public health in general. As a community in Ontario, we deserve more. We deserve to have better uses for our land. This is prime agriculture land that is rare now in this area. This could be used for many more projects that could be beneficial to our community. Ten years from now – we already know we are in a severe climate crisis – people are going to be looking for green areas. They are going to be looking for agricultural spaces to take their families to mitigate these climate issues. However. we’re turning them into warehouses and warehouses that are not going to bring any benefits to the community. I know that I see a lot of union members here, and I support the unions and unions do build America, but are these warehouses America? Do they represent the values of the American people? The American people deserve more, jobs that benefit the community in total, jobs that bring us together. I worked in a warehouse before. These jobs are not fun. They are not community building. They are temporary and not high-quality jobs. It is easy to bounce around from warehouse to warehouse, because that’s just how these jobs are. Bringing these jobs to Ontario where there’s already so many warehouses is just a blow to the community that is already facing so many effects from these warehouses. I ask the city council to please oppose this warehouse.”
Gina Gibson-Williams, the community development director with the neighboring City of Eastvale in Riverside County, was the last speaker to address the council. In January 2021 the City of Eastvale submitted a letter in response to the primary stages of the preparation of the environmental impact report for the South Ontario Logistics Project. Just before Tuesday’s meeting, the City of Eastvale submitted another letter, expressing concerns about the final form of the environmental impact report.
Gibson-Williams said the city she represents found fault with the traffic analysis in the environmental impact report for the project, prompting that day’s follow-up letter, which she sought, in the two minutes allocated her, to encapsulate.
“It analyzes about 75 intersections,” she said of the environmental impact report. “Nine of those intersections are in the City of Eastvale. There are two areas in which the traffic analysis deals with deficient intersections and also about improvements that should be made to those intersections. As of now, the document assumes a level of ‘D’ being acceptable to the City of Eastvale. It’s actually ‘C.’ It’s written that way. It’s actually documented in your environmental analysis. So, the tables, specifically Exhibit 1-3 and Table 1-2 in the appendices, need to be revised to reflect that. The intersections are Archibald and Kimball, Archibald and Limonite, Harrison and Limonite, Sumner and Limonite, Scholar and Limonite, Hamner and Ontario Ranch/Cantu Galleano, Hamner and Limonite, I-15 Ramp South and Cantu, Galleano and I-15 South Ramp and Limonite. So, we’re asking that the actual environmental document have a mitigation measure added. And the mitigation measure should say, ‘Prior to issuance of grading permits, the developer shall construct the improvements or pay the fair share cost of improvements or pay the City of Eastvale’s transportation impact fees.”
Not among the public speakers at the council meeting were several people who had advocated against the project at the planning commission meeting on January 25, including members of the Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 398, Teamsters Local 1932 and a member of the District Council of Ironworkers. Of note was that on Tuesday this week, other members of the ironworkers’ union had shown up to support the project, as had members of other unions, in particular the carpenters’ union.
Nevertheless, having driven home their objections, taken together with Gibson-Williams’ assertion of a flaw in the environmental impact report and Murphy’s admission that there were five substantially untoward environmental impacts of the project that remained unmitigated and unavoidable, several of the project opponents remained hopeful and even confident the council would deny the project approval or, at the very least, delay its decision while certain elements, such as the errors in the environmental impact report pointed out by Gibson-Williams, were corrected.
In the council’s relatively brief discussion that ensued, however, the council members came across as intent on finding a shortcoming in the arguments presented against the project. Mayor Leon pointed out that nitrate contamination of the soil compromised its quality such that the topsoil in the area would need to be removed or substantially redressed before it could sustain the cultivation of crops, rendering the characterization of preserve property as “prime” agricultural land inapplicable. Councilmen Alan Wapner, Jim Bowman and Ruben Valencia and then Leon seized upon Leckenham’s, Phillips’, Walters’, Cisneros’s and Castellano’s statements relating to maintaining the property for agricultural use, interpreting – indeed purposefully misinterpreting – them as demands that either the Borbas and the other landowners be prohibited from selling the property or that the city purchase property and utilize it as farmland.
“Certainly, you can’t expect the City of Ontario to pay taxpayers’ money – hundreds of millions of dollars – to buy a piece of land to grow crops,” Wapner said. “If folks are interested in a certain type of land use, then they have the opportunity to come forward and buy the land for the land use that they want.”
“If you want to continue on that property with agriculture, you certainly can,” said Bowman, “but I’m really a proponent of the rights of owners to sell their property, and government should have a very small part in controlling that activity,” said Bowman.
Valencia said he believed in upholding property owners’ rights, implying that it was incumbent upon the city to alter zoning on properties to comply with the wishes of the landowners.
Leon replicated his council colleagues’ deflection and misrepresentation of the project opponents’ arguments by suggesting, falsely, that the project opponents were calling for the city to buy the Borbas’ property. Alluding to city programs that allow Ontario residents to cultivate gardens and grow food on city property at various parks in the city, Leon said, “We do as much as we can with what we have that we own. As Alan said, we don’t own these properties. The people who purchased those properties believed that, according to the zoning of the past, they could do particular projects. And then for us to pull the rug out from underneath them after they’ve already purchased it, that’s just not right.” Reinforcing, once more falsely that those opposed to the project were uniformly calling upon the city to purchase the Borbas’ land, Leon said, “If you want to do this, get a group together, get some money, buy some of that property. We’d be happy to support you to keep it as farmland.”
Without making any adjustments to the project proposal, such as correcting the errors in the environmental impact report Gibson-Williams had flagged, the council voted 5-to-0 on a motion by Councilwoman Debra Porada and seconded by Bowman to approve the project. Even before the vote was taken, shouts of protest were heard.
Many project opponents, already disappointed at the direction the council was moving in, were shocked by Valencia joining in with the council majority in support of the project approval. The Borbas have sided with Leon in this year’s upcoming mayoral race in which it is anticipated Valencia will challenge Leon.
Chaos ensued as large numbers of the audience began chanting in unison, “Shut it down! Shut it down!”
Leon, at Duran’s suggestion, recessed the meeting.
In the aftermath of the meeting there were widespread accusations that the outcome of the meeting was foreordained and that the entirety of the Ontario City Council, which was already known to function in a pay-to-play environment, is on the take.
On Thursday, Leon told the Sentinel that at least as far as he is concerned and for most of the rest of the city council, none of that is true.
“Those statements make for a taller mountain than Bandini could ever take credit for,” Leon said.
While Leon acknowledged that “Mary Borba has been supporting me” and “She gives me about $1,000 per year” [toward his campaign fund], he insisted, “That has nothing to do with this project.”
Leon claimed, somewhat improbably, that he did not know that the Borba Family owned much or most of the property upon which the South Ontario Logistics Center project is to be built.
“I honestly did not put it together,” he said. “I was friends with George Borba. He was the most generous man I ever knew.”
Despite that, the mayor said, he had not been influenced one way or the other by money coming into his campaign war chest.
If the Sentinel or others are intent on finding corruption of the political process in south Ontario or on current or former dairy properties there, Leon said, such evidence does exist.
“[Ruben] Valencia is given money – $40,000 – from dairy farmers, who are paying him so they can keep parking trucks on their land,” Leon said. “That is more important than the collective [Leon, Wapner, Bowman and Porada] getting $12,200. I don’t sell my soul for 1,000 bucks to anyone. I tell anyone who gives me money that they are supporting the way I think and act as mayor. They are not paying for me to support them.”
Leon insisted, “I am still a poor man. I don’t have money. I don’t make money. I don’t have a lavish lifestyle. Everything I have I worked for. It is pure crassness for people to say I would sell my vote for $1,000. It is not true at all.”
Those suggesting he is being bribed are deluding themselves, the mayor said. “They are drawing up a scenario, with whole ideas that are just wrong,” Leon said. “They cannot begin to prove what they are saying.”
Leon said he has dedicated himself to the best interests of the residents of Ontario.
“I look at every issue on its face value,” he said.
He said putting in a swath of industrial development along the electrical line paralleling Edison Avenue is a responsible move, despite earlier zoning commitments toward residential development that were made when the city initially annexed the agricultural preserve.
The change in the city’s land use policies and the reformation of its zoning and land use maps is not something he and the council are driving, Leon said. Rather, those changes are being proposed by urban planning professionals in the city’s community development department and planning division, as well as by experts in the field the city has hired as consultants. He and the city council are involved in examining and ratifying those changes where they seem justified, Leon said.
“I agree that it [an industrially-zoned district] makes sense for the overall development for the 13 square miles [of land formerly in the agricultural preserve annexed by the City of Ontario],” he said. “The zoning got changed because it was a better place for that, when you take into consideration the Edison [electrical] lines. It made better sense to move the industrial uses there and housing elsewhere. After all these years, there has been a change in the permitting process. Nothing stays the same. We put that, the transition of the agricultural properties in the preserve to houses, out there 23 years ago. Of course, we hoped we had it right and that it would remain, and, of course, you want it to be the same, but things change. We still have 50,000 homes coming into the city in the future.”
The city is going about its planning processes responsibly, Leon said, making sure that incompatible land uses do not encroach upon one another.
“If you look at the plan, we are making the adjustments to extend the buffer,” he said. “You see it [the newly created industrial district in south Ontario] is not impacting homes like it would have.”
Leon said the city is abiding by sensible and long-extant planning principles even as it is facing mandates from the State of California to build large numbers of residential units to head off a housing crisis in the Golden State.
“If we are going to have high density, do it right,” he said. “Instead of houses on a quarter acre or half acre of land, the state legislature is directing us to build at a much higher density, with a dozen or two dozen dwelling units per acre. We have to move the pieces around to make it work. We don’t want this to be haphazard because we did not plan correctly.”
Leon dismissed reports that the city council had dictated to city staff and the planning commission to come up with recommendations favoring the South Ontario Logistics Project so that he along with Wapner, Bowman and Porada could please the Borba Family.
“Our planning commission is as independent of a body as you are going to find anywhere, and I know because I went out of my way, far out of my way, to make it as independent as I could,” he said. “I did it by eliminating people who were responding to council direction. I am confident that there is no one on that commission who will take direction from the city council – which would be not only improper but illegal – to vote on any items in a certain way. Though I have been taken to task over the years for removing people from the planning commission, I have done just that to make sure we are getting as honest and straightforward of an analysis as we can get on planning issues.”
Neither was there any hanky-panky involving the city’s community development or planning division, Leon said.
“Scott Murphy is a man of the utmost integrity,” Leon said. “That man will not be pushed around. He argues hard when there is anything, any planning item that is not in the interest of the city. For them [the project opponents] to make such an accusation shows you that some people are of the philosophy that if you throw stones you are going to hit someone. In this case, they can throw stones all they want, but there is no one to hit. There are no dogs barking. This is something that is completely made up. Until the people who are in opposition to this project brought these things up, this was just a mundane deal in the evolution of plans in Ontario. If they had not started arguing and screaming, it would just be another deal in the City of Ontario.”
Leon stood by the effort to discredit the opposition to the South Ontario Logistics Project by suggesting they want the city to buy the property from the Borba Family and have the taxpayers subsidize it as agricultural enterprises that may or may not be profitable.
“They wanted to stop a project in play for years,” Leon said. “They wanted us to take that property and turn it into a farm. They have the option of buying the property from the developer and making a farm, but no one has any money to do that. They came in at the 11th hour and 58th minute, saying it has to be a farm, but they are not willing to put up the money to do that. This is America and that is not how it works.”

The four-member ruling coalition on the Big Bear Lake City Council is on the verge of officially issuing a reprimand to their one colleague who has fallen outside of the panel’s mainstream over the course of the nearly 15 months he has been in office.
Mayor Rick Herrick and council members Randall Putz, Bynette Mote and Penni Melnick on February 25 voted to use the reprimand process as an officially recorded signal of displeasure with Councilman Alan Lee. The February 25 meeting was specially called, and was intended, according to its agenda, to allow the council to “engage in discussion about the current city council group dynamic and individual council member conduct, and will consider the need for and substance of any desired amendments to the city council rules of order.”
Encoded within that language was the discontent Lee’s council colleagues have with him.
Lee did not show up at the February 25 meeting, which thereupon turned into a diatribe on Lee’s public comportment, personality, all-around demeanor and attitude.
Councilman Putz encapsulated the beef with Lee. He said that Lee’s failure to show up for the meeting illustrated Lee’s unwillingness to work cooperatively with his council colleagues. “I am disappointed that he’s not here,” said Putz. “I would welcome to be able to have a frank conversation with him, but I think this is just another indication that he doesn’t want to work with us, he doesn’t want to solve problems and that he is not prioritizing the effective operation of our city.”
Putz said that at an annual League of California Cities conference when he greeted Lee and attempted to shake his hand, Lee demurred and chided Putz for seeking “to play nice,” to which Putz remarked that he was simply trying to greet him. This prompted Lee, Putz said, to remark that he would greet Putz upon their return to Big Bear, which Putz interpreted as a threat.
Putz said he believed he and the majority of the council were intent on “quietly” working toward the betterment and maintenance of the city, its infrastructure, services and assets, through the application of governance, which he said amounted to oversight. “I am not here to manage, which is different from governance,” Putz asserted. “I am not here to organize a union. I am not here to enact my personal agenda. I am not here to inflate my importance. I am not here to refer to my office or hire an assistant. I am not here to feed my ego. I am not here to demonstrate how great I think I am or to punish others who might disagree. I’m not here to seek revenge. I’m not here to dismantle the very organization that I was elected to support. And I am not here to make a mess for other people to clean up.” Putz implied that Lee had engaged in all of the behaviors that he said he had himself avoided.
Putz recounted comportment on Lee’s part he and others observed, and which he said was “visible and documented in public meetings, in emails, in newsletters and videos. Despite our best efforts to conduct city business in a constructive and efficient way, we have been subject to this behavior.”
Putz complained of Lee’s “bullying,” saying “We’ve been subject to intimidation tactics, threats, belittling others, tearing people down instead of building them up, cross examining city staff, setting them up for ‘gotchas,’ threatening citizens’ initiatives. If you don’t do what he says, if you don’t eliminate vacation rentals, if you don’t double the transitory occupancy tax, if you don’t dissolve the Department of Water and Power, there’s going to be a citizens’ initiative. We’ve witnessed him attacking private citizens who disagree, and then like a good bully, playing the victim when you’re caught.”
Putz then referenced what he characterized as Lee’s “grandstanding. We’ve seen shameless self-promotion, self-aggrandizing like playing Santa Claus, excessive time-consuming comments that run out the clock and keep others from participating, using up all the oxygen in the room and using the public forum, public resources to promote campaign events that are disguised as city activities.”
Putz then broke into seeming praise of Lee’s panoply of skills as a politician, charging him with “dishonesty. We’ve seen skillful blatant misrepresentation, outright lies, transferring his own behavior onto others, gaslighting. I’ve lost count of the comments I’ve gotten from citizens who are incensed by his hypocrisy. We’ve seen him create communications and events designed to mimic city communication and events. We’ve heard him say he has the best attendance at Department of Water and Power [board meetings], when in reality it was the worst. We’ve seen him say that we gave a secret city manager bonus when it was done publicly and appropriately.”
Continuing, Putz said, “We’ve witnessed a lack of self-control, the constant need to respond to criticisms, having the last word, saying he will be brief and then taking five minutes. We’ve seen interruptions. We’ve seen outbursts. And we’ve seen unsettling, threatening public tantrums.”
Putz accused Lee of “exploitation. We’ve seen him seek to gain leverage, push up to and past the line, disregard norms and civility. We’ve seen him rely on us to be polite and civil and then using it against us. We’ve seen him make others look bad so he can look good. We’ve witnessed him harvesting emails of local agencies and sending political newsletters. We’ve seen him co-opt people, using their names and participation unbeknownst to them to imply support. We’ve seen him exploit people’s pain. We’ve seen him send graphic images that are designed to shock and inflame, and we’ve seen him sow division and create an us-versus-them environment. We’ve seen his savior complex. He’s the expert. He knows better. He constantly challenges and disagrees with our professional civil servants, people who have been successfully doing their jobs for decades. He knows the law better than the city attorney. He knows policies and procedures better than the city clerk. He knows accounting practices better than our finance director. He knows how to run the city better than the city manager. He’s the only one fighting corruption and waste. He suggests he’s like Martin Luther King and Jesus Christ. He’s the only one who can save us.”
Putz said, “I don’t think any well-run organization tolerates the kind of behavior I’ve described.” In summary, and acknowledging he was being “crass” in doing so, Putz said that Lee was “a dick.”
Councilwoman Melnick said of Lee, “I’ve dealt with difficult people in my career. I’ve negotiated giant deals. I’ve dealt with challenging people on the other side. I will say, never personally or professionally have I dealt with somebody like him. The innuendo, inferences and attacks if we don’t vote the way he wants us to vote that we are somehow anti the community or in the pocket of businesses is offensive and hurtful.”
Councilwoman Mote, who was voted into office in November 2020 at the same time as Lee, said Lee had only made eye contact with her twice in all the time they have been seated across from each other at the city’s U-shaped council dais, and one of those was to stare her down.
The perspective on Lee external from City Hall is less clear cut. In the Big Bear Community, the assessment of Lee is mixed. Beyond Big Bear, little attention has been paid to him.
Some city residents likewise have a low estimation of Lee. At the November 11, 2021 council meeting, Alaine Uthus presented a public records request for text messages sent and received by Lee during the October 18, 2021 City Council meeting. She implied that either Lee’s use of his cell phone during the meeting or the city’s unwillingness to disclose what those cell phone texts consisted of was a violation of the Brown Act.
At the February 25 meeting, City of Big Bear Lake Department of Water General Manager Reginald “Reggie” Lamson addressed the city council, disputing that Lee’s assertion that Lamson was one of the highest paid water department managers in the state. “I am not one of the highest paid bureaucrats in California or San Bernardino County, and the DWP is not one of the smallest water departments,” Lamson said.
There are, nonetheless, constituents of all five of the Big Bear Lake council members who consider Lee to be a more conscientious and faithful councilor than his four colleagues combined, and that it is not Lee who is poorly cast in the role of councilman but that the others are shirking their duty.
While Councilman Putz maintains, and there is strong indication that Herrick, Mote and Melnick agree, that Lee is petty and thin-skinned, there is evidence to suggest that his council colleagues have been equally intolerant of criticism that he has leveled at them.
A major issue that has roiled the community during Lee’s tenure on the city council was the controversy over the ability of national or regional commercial outlets to sustain themselves in the City of Big Bear Lake and the surrounding community. The City of Big Bear Lake had a population of 5,231 as of the 2020 Census. The nearby unincorporated community on the east side of Big Bear Lake, with the confusing name of Big Bear City, in 2020 had a population of 13,463. This puts roughly 18,694 people within the greater Big Bear trade area. Big Bear City has what is called the Community Market, which sells groceries. Big Bear Lake has within its confines a Stater Bros. market, a Vons market and the smaller Triangle Market, which sells groceries. After Big Bear’s only major department store, Kmart, closed in early 2021, Tectonics Design Group/Main & Main Capital Group LLC approached the city with a proposal to bring a Grocery Outlet, which sells groceries at prices generally below those of Vons and Stater Bros., to Big Bear at 42175 Big Bear Boulevard in Big Bear Lake, a site not too distant from the Stater Bros. and Vons. Some hailed the competition and choice the Grocery Outlet represented as good for the city and its residents. A number of residents, however, opposed the Grocery Outlet on multiple grounds, including that an oversaturation of grocery stores in a community with as limited of a population as Big Bear might render each them unviable and result in all of them closing; that the city should instead prioritize finding a commercial entity selling taxable items as opposed to untaxed food to enhance the city’s revenue stream; and that the site for the Grocery Outlet was unsafe from a traffic access standpoint. City officials ignored a resident petition asking that the Grocery Outlet not be approved. On April 21, 2021, the Big Bear Lake Planning Commission gave approval of the proposed Grocery Outlet. On July 19, 2021, the council, which was only at four-fifths strength at that point due to the resignation of then-mayor David Caretto, deadlocked 2-to-2 with Lee and Mote in opposition on a motion to deny the appeal and uphold the planning commission decision. The council returned to the matter on August 2, at which point Melnick had been appointed to replace Caretto. The council voted 3-to-2, with Lee and Mote dissenting, to deny the appeal and uphold the planning commission decision. Those opposed to the project on September 9, 2021 filed a lawsuit challenging the Grocery Outlet’s approval. In late November, Tectonics Design Group/Main & Main Capital Group settled the lawsuit, in so doing agreeing to withdraw the application for the project and forego its development. The city council on December 6, during a closed session, approved the same settlement agreement, and rescinded the project approval.
Lee was active in opposing the Grocery Outlet project and he supported the group that filed suit against the city over its approval. This has been represented by city officials as an indication that Lee is not a team player. Others see it differently, and maintain that Lee was simply willing to stand up for city residents in their dispute with the city. They see Lee as principled and courageous, someone who is unwilling to go along with the majority controlling local government simply because it is the majority. Moreover, they say, Lee was right and three of his council colleagues – Herrick, Putz and Melnick – were wrong on the Grocery Outlet issue.
The real truth is, some Big Bear residents say, Lee is willing to confront the corporate interests that have other members of the city council in their back pocket.
Lee has consistently questioned city staff about items contained or not contained in staff reports relating to items presented to the city council for approval. On occasion, he has put city staff members through their paces and belabored issues when he did not receive what he considered to be adequate responses. The other members of the council have been far more deferential to, and far less questioning of, city staff. They consider Lee’s displays of curiosity with regard to what they consider to be routine items to be poor form, meanspirited and an indication that Lee has not prepared himself for meetings by not satisfying himself with regard to the issues he focuses on prior to the meetings and outside of a public forum where he imposes upon and sometimes embarrasses city staff.
Some residents of Big Bear Lake, however, consider Lee’s trait in this regard to be an admirable display of his willingness to engage in the due diligence, scrutiny and oversight that are part of an elected officials’ duty. They maintain that this is not a reflection upon Lee, but rather an illustration of the indolence of the other members of the council who are far too accommodating of city employees.
On Monday, March 7, the Big Bear City Council is set to vote on a resolution of censure against Lee which delineates complaints by Big Bear Lake citizens, city employees and his council colleagues that hold Lee “has demonstrated a pattern of disregard for the rules and policies that apply to and govern council members and city business” and in so doing he “has caused a hostile environment among council members and staff at City Hall to the detriment of the city. Council Member Alan Lee has demonstrated open hostility, yelling, bullying, disrespect, and confrontational behavior in and following council meetings that has resulted in disrupting the peace and deliberative function of the council, has disrupted the conduct of city staff by causing extraordinary and often unnecessary extra work assignments to accommodate his asserted but unsupported needs, has delayed and unnecessarily extended city council meetings by repetitive statements and referring to matters which could instead easily have been addressed to or with city staff in advance of council meetings, and has made unsupported or deceptive personal attacks on and misrepresentations about the mayor, fellow council members, and the city manager in communications at council meetings.”
In addition, the resolution of reprimand states, “Council Member Alan Lee has excessively and impermissibly directed the city manager and city staff to initiate projects and reports, significant in scope and nature, and to gather information without approval of the city council, including requests for information unrelated to the business at-hand. His requests have had a significant impact on the workload of the city manager and city staff, at significant cost to the city.”
The resolution further relates that “Council Member Alan Lee has inappropriately blocked and deleted features on his social media platforms and posted commentary in a manner that may cause harm to the city’s interests and expose the city to legal liability. Council Member Alan Lee has failed to reasonably use his city email account for his city-related business, resulting in a significant inability for city staff to access all his city-related emails for purposes of responding to Public Records Act requests. Council Member Alan Lee’s newsletters have incorrectly or misleadingly labeled themselves as reports from City Hall, using stock photography of City Hall with the city’s seal or logo.”
The resolution understates that “the city council does not condone this type of behavior.”
Despite all of the indications, including public statements made by the city council members at the February 25 meeting and elsewhere within the resolution, that Lee is a strong-willed and noxious personality who is heavy-handed and intemperate in his comportment and reaction to criticism, the resolution expresses the rather wishful hope that Lee will make a comprehensive examination of the rebuke he is being given by his colleagues, peer deep into his own soul, make an assessment of his shortcomings, come to terms with them and bear what is being heaped upon him with equanimity without responding in kind and reform his comportment to become a better councilman and more perfect human being, such that no further corrective action need be taken.
“[T]he City Council desires to use this reprimand as a means to avoid future consideration of censure of Council Member Alan Lee,” the resolution states.
–Mark Gutglueck

Former Upland City Councilman and yet-serving San Antonio Water Company Board Member and West End Consolidated Water Company Board Member Tom Thomas on February 26 succumbed to extensive injuries he had suffered in bicycling accident he sustained on February 24.
Thomas’s political life and his death were both marked with irony.
An independent insurance agent, Thomas served on the Upland City Council for 20 years, from 1990 to 2010. During his tenure, he served on multiple regional and local boards and committees, including the Upland Library Board, the Upland Police Foundation Board, the Upland Sister City Association, the Upland Police and Fire Committee, the Upland Public Works Committee, the Upland Finance Committee, the Upland Community Redevelopment Agency Board, the Upland Traffic Safety Advisory Committee, the San Antonio Water Company Board, the Six Basins Water Master Board, the Pomona Valley Protective Association Board, the Water Facilities Authority Board, the West End Water Company Board and the Upland Community Foundation Board. He was instrumental in the creation of the Gibson Senior Citizens Center, the Estes Senior Citizen Apartments and the revival of the Grove Theater. He was involved in the development of McCarthy Park, the Upland Skate Park, the Upland Animal Shelter, Fire Station Number 164 and the restoration of Upland’s historic fire station. More than any of the other councilors during his tenure as an elected official he familiarized himself and concentrated on water-related issues and devoted himself to improving water system infrastructure and the quality and availability of water to the city and its residents.
Of the more than 250 regularly scheduled and specially-called council meetings during his two decades on the city council, Thomas failed to attend three of those, an attendance percentage of better than 98.8 percent, exceeding those of virtually every other elected official in the county.
Tom Thomas’s tenure on the council was marred by its coinciding, during its last ten years, with the mayoralty of John Pomierski. Ironically, one of Thomas’s most dynamic and daring political forays, which ended in defeat, would have, if it had proven successful, prevented Pomierski’s assumption of the mayor’s post.
First elected in 1990, Thomas was reelected in 1994 and again in 1998. In 2000, Mayor Robert Nolan opted out of seeking reelection. This threw the race for mayor wide open. Thomas and another council incumbent, Sue Sundell, declared their candidacies for mayor. For Sundell, the mayor’s race was do or die, as she had last been reelected to the council in 1996, such that in running for mayor she had to forsake running for reelection to the city council. If she failed to capture the mayor’s post, she would be off the council entirely. Thomas had the luxury of yet being a council member if he lost the mayoral contest. Competing with Thomas and Sundell in the race was John Pomierski, an Upland Housing Authority board member and licensed contractor. Pomierski was heavily supported by developmental interests, which pumped nearly fourteen times the amount of money into his campaign war chest than Sundell and Thomas combined expended in their electoral efforts. Ultimately, Pomierski, garnering 10,555 votes or 45.2 percent, prevailed over Sundell, who polled 7,801 votes or 33.4 percent, and Thomas, who captured 4,970 votes or 21.3 percent.
The 2000 Upland mayoral election ended Sundell’s career. Thomas, however, yet had two years remaining on the council term to which he had been elected in 1998. He remained on the dais when Pomierski was sworn in on December 11, 2000.
At that point, Thomas made a fateful decision. Despite having run against Pomierski and at that point representing the single strongest potential political alternative to the mayor in Upland, Thomas calculated that if you can’t beat your electoral opponent, you should join him. With tact, grace and humility, he congratulated Pomierski and committed to a continuity, peaceableness and decorum of governance in Upland that would follow the departure of Nolan as mayor. Thomas was not out of the mainstream in coming to that conclusion; like councilmen Mike Libutti and Ray Musser, who had been elected in 1998, and Councilman Ken Willis, who had first successfully run for the council in 2000 while supporting Sundell in the mayor’s race, Thomas closed ranks behind Pomierski, a 1972 graduate of Upland High School who promised a business-friendly environment in Upland that would bring about what he said was economic rejuvenation. Pomierski bought his four council colleagues Upland High School letterman jackets to match his own, forming “Team Upland,” what was, at least temporarily, a unanimous ruling coalition on the council.
In short order, the beguiling and manipulative Pomierski, who had been backed by deep-pocketed developmental interests, came to dominate the city council, forging an alliance with all of the council’s members, including Thomas, despite having bested him in the just-concluded race, and Willis, whose political ally Sundell had been consigned to political retirement by Pomierski. In his initial years in office, Pomierski also formed a bond with Ray Musser and Michael Libutti.
Early on, Pomierski was shaking down those with interests in the decision-making process at City Hall, and pocketing bribes. Despite widespread whispering about what was going on, Pomierski held his unanimous political coalition together. In May 2002, Libutti, a prosecutor with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, was elevated by Governor Gray Davis to the bench as a replacement for retiring Judge Lou Glazier. Thereafter, the support network around Pomierski promoted another attorney, Brendan Brandt, who was the son of Barry Brandt, another establishment attorney from Upland, to replace Libutti.
Developmental interests had united behind Pomierski because of his readiness and ability to force, cajole or simply invite the other members of the Upland City Council, who collectively held the city’s ultimate land use authority, to accommodate those developers’ designs with regard to obtaining building entitlements. Pomierski served as a conduit of political donations originating with those developmental interests to other politicians. This formed the basis of and strengthened the bonds of Pomierski’s coalition.
That Pomierski counted among the members of his coalition a deputy district attorney who would subsequently become a judge and another accomplished lawyer lent the political machine that the mayor had constructed around himself an air of invincibility, enabling him in his ability to demand payments, payoffs, kickbacks, quid pro quos and bribes from those dependent upon arrangements being made at City Hall to get their contracts, franchises or projects approved.
By 2004, Ray Musser, who had been reelected in 2002 with support from Pomierski’s fundraising team, had come to fully understand the ethos that Pomierski embodied, and he broke with the mayor, challenging him for reelection that year. Musser put on a spirited contest, making issue of the depredations Pomierski was engaged in, the pay-for-play nature of his politics and his bribetaking in exchange for votes. Musser’s campaign appealed to a significant cross section of the Upland electorate, and he had the solid support of members of the community who recognized what Pomierski was doing. Musser came relatively close to unseating Pomierski, capturing 46.08 percent of the vote. But Pomierski’s substantial fundraising superiority allowed him to run an energetic campaign, which gave him 53.72 percent of the votes cast, with 0.2 percent going to write-in candidates.
Willis, on the strength of his incumbency and aided by the campaign funding and other assistance provided by Pomierski and those with an interest in keeping the mayor’s machine intact, was reelected in 2004 as well.
After the 2004 election, Musser found himself persona non grata on the council, as Pomierski had grown to become the uncontested regent of Upland. Thomas, Brandt and Willis adhered to whatever line Pomierski dictated, and the quartet worked in consonance to render Musser into a political irrelevancy. For anyone paying attention, it was hard to not notice what was actually going on, particularly when March 2005 rolled around, and then-City Manager Mike Milhiser was prevailed upon to leave before Pomierski had to line up the votes to fire him. Instead, Pomierski sealed Milhiser’s lips with a $200,000 severance package. Two weeks later, then-Police Chief Marty Thouvenell, reading the writing on the wall, retired. Pomierski brought in Robb Quincey as his handpicked city manager to replace Milhiser. At Pomierski’s behest, Quincey made an in-house promotion of Captain Steve Adams to replace Thouvenell as police chief, at which point Upland declined into an unbridled graftfest. Pomierski arranged for Quincey, who was hired with a $250,000 salary and modest benefits, to be eligible to receive a percentagewise salary and benefit increase commensurate with any increase granted to members of the police department, including both line officers and management. Contract negotiations with the police officers’ union and the police management union were entrusted to Quincey. Thereafter, Quincey granted both the police officers and their superiors – sergeants, lieutenants and captains – as well as himself a combined eight pay raises in less than five years. This corrupt arrangement bought the police department’s silence and inaction with regard to Pomerski’s bribetaking while Quincey’s total annual compensation by January 2011 climbed to $460,625, consisting of a base salary and add-ons of $368,529 with benefits of $92,096, making him the third highest paid city manager in the state, despite the consideration that Upland was California’s 108th largest city population-wise.
At that point, the only conceivable check on Pomierski was the contrarian and politically-outmuscled Musser. Willis, Thomas and Brandt deeply resented Musser over his incurable habit of speaking openly about Pomierski’s dishonesty and the pay-for-play atmosphere the mayor was subjecting the city to, recognizing that such utterances made the community look bad and themselves look worse, since Pomierski was instrumental in helping them raise campaign funds or simply transferred money out of his own campaign war chest to theirs. Pomierski employed Willis as his pit bull to hold Musser in line. While Willis had no hesitancy of verbally confronting Musser in public and chastising him for refusing to follow Pomierski’s orders, Thomas and Brandt tended not to verbalize their disapproval of Musser’s defiance, simply expressing themselves by silently glowering at him or shaking their heads whenever he voted against the majority or sought to float a proposal that had not previously met with Pomierski’s approval.
Thomas, Musser and Brandt were due to stand for election in 2006, and all three did. Pomierski expended money from his political war chest to assist Thomas and Brandt and finance hit pieces intended to dissuade the city’s voters from supporting Musser. In a field of seven candidates, Musser finished in first place with 10,331 votes or 23.87 percent, which demonstrated that a minority but still significant segment of the population stood with him in the recognition of the depravity of the Pomierski regime. Brandt finished second with 9,718 votes or 22.45 percent, followed by Thomas with 9,467 votes or 21.87 percent. All three remained on the council.
In 2008, Musser again made a quixotic challenge of Pomierski. With only a fraction of the money Pomierski possessed, Musser was not able to mount as effective of a campaign against the mayor as he had four years previously. Pomierski was simultaneously able to count on the support and endorsement of other local politicians such as the mayors and council members of nearby Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana and Montclair, along with the county district attorney and sheriff, not to mention Thomas, Brandt and Willis. Pomierski won the 2008 election even more convincingly than the 2004 contest, with 15,971 votes or 57.4 percent to Musser’s 11,853 votes or 42.6 percent.
His 2008 victory emboldened Pomierski further, and he involved himself in violations of the public trust beyond what he had heretofore dared. Just a month after his reelection, he cozened the Upland Planning Commission into allowing Old Mark’s Church on 18th Street between Euclid and San Antonio to be set up as a private imbibing station where he could indulge himself in multiple nightcaps before driving, unmolested by the Upland Police Department, the roughly seven blocks to his home on West Westridge Court. When asked about the arrangement, Thomas, unwilling to be publicly heard or seen engaging in anything critical of the mayor, said he saw no problem in someone having a celebratory glass of wine now and again.
It was never clear whether Thomas understood that Pomierski was engaged in violations of the public trust or whether he was simply constitutionally incapable of recognizing that someone who had achieved the status of mayor and whose function as a public official was inextricably bound up with his own position as an honored member of the community could be involved in the despoliation that was Pomierski’s stock-in-trade.
Pomierski generated so much money through payoffs, kickbacks and bribes that he was able to channel a good deal of that revenue to his associates and confederates and still have enough left over that he could essentially discontinue most of his actual legitimate function as a builder, instead using his company, JP Construction, to launder the ill-gotten proceeds he was receiving. With Quincey covering for him at City Hall, the Upland Police Department bought off and his political alliance with San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos, Pomierski seemingly had nothing to worry about.
In June 2010, however, the FBI showed up at City Hall with search warrants and for nearly a day, eight FBI agents, three IRS agents and two federal forensic computer analysts occupied the city’s offices, seizing documents and downloading data off of computer hard drives. Simultaneously, the FBI agents raided Pomierski’s home, the office of JP Construction and the homes and offices of his business associates Jason Crebs and Anthony Orlando Sanchez, the owners of Venture West Capital. Venture West Capital had dealings with JP Construction. The FBI also served search warrants upon John Edward Hennes, one of Pomierski’s appointees to the Upland Building Appeals Board, at Hennes’ home and office. Over the next seven months a progression toward the eventual federal indictments of Pomierski on political corruption and bribery charges and of Sanchez, Crebs and Hennes for abetting Pomierski in demanding, receiving and concealing bribes played out. Eventually, in 2012, Quincey would be charged by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office with felony engaging in a conflict of interest through fraud by a public official, felony misappropriation of public funds and perjury. Ultimately Pomierski, Crebs, Sanchez and Hennes were convicted of the federal charges and Quincey was convicted on state charges pursuant to a plea arrangement worked out by his attorney.
A little less than five months after the 2010 FBI raid on Upland City Hall, Thomas, Brandt and Musser were due to stand for reelection to the city council. All three ran in race that attracted five candidates. Musser cruised to a comfortable first place finish with 10,878 votes or 25.09 percent, aided by the adverse publicity attending Pomierski in the aftermath of the FBI activity and the widespread knowledge that Musser had been the lone personage standing up to the corrupt mayor. Brandt managed to hang on to his council seat, capturing third place with 9,259 votes or 21.35 percent. Both Brandt and Thomas were outdistanced by newcomer Gino Filippi, who gathered 9,398 votes or 21.67 percent. Thomas, after 20 years in office, was out, having been undone by his association with Pomierski.
When Pomierski was obliged to resign just a few days ahead of his 2011 indictment, it was Musser who was appointed to replace him as mayor. Belatedly, Musser was rewarded for having courageously stood against Pomierski for more than seven years and having run against him in uphill battles that could not be won given the amount of money – both illegal in terms of bribes and kickbacks and legal though ethically and morally questionable in terms of campaign contributions from the development community – that Pomierski took in to fuel his electioneering machine in 2004 and 2008. Neither Thomas, who had run for mayor in 2000 but had fallen short, nor Brandt, who coveted the mayoral title but did not have the courage to stand up to Pomierski though he most assuredly knew what he was up to, would ever lay claim to the Upland mayor’s gavel. Brandt opted out of seeking reelection to the council in 2014.
Even though he had been voted off the city council in 2010, Thomas managed to hold onto two vestiges of the prestige, power and position that came with his being a councilman. While on the council, he volunteered to serve as the city’s representative on the San Antonio Water Company Board as well as the West End Consolidated Water Company Board. His council colleagues acceded to his willingness and bestowed those appointments on him. Thomas brought himself up to speed with regard to water issues generally and intimately familiarized himself with the city’s water operations, which involve nine city-owned wells, as well as the function of both the San Antonio Water Company and the West End Consolidated Water Company.
The San Antonio Water Company provides water to San Antonio Heights, the unincorporated county area just north of Upland, and it also provides water to the City of Upland, which is a 70.66 percent owner of the San Antonio Water Company. The San Antonio Water Company obtains water by means of diversions from above-ground streams in San Antonio Canyon and seven wells, utilizing two booster pump stations that send water through 21 miles of pipeline to three reservoirs.
The West End Consolidated Water Company, of which the City of Upland is a 91.18 percent owner, also supplies water to the City of Upland. The West End Consolidated Water Company has four active wells and two currently inactive wells.
Despite the way in which Thomas had aligned himself with Pomierski during the ten years the two were on the council and the fashion in which Thomas had consistently sided with Pomierski over Musser whenever differences arose between them, Musser, upon becoming mayor did not hold a grudge against Thomas, and allowed him to remain as a member of the San Antonio Company Water Board and the West End Consolidated Water Board, even though Musser did have the authority to remove him had he chosen to do so. Musser was elected mayor by the city’s voters in his own right in 2012 and opted to not seek reelection in 2016. Debbie Stone, who succeeded Musser as mayor, likewise allowed Thomas to remain as a board member with both water companies. Bill Velto, who defeated Stone in the 2020 election, did not remove Thomas from those positions either. He was yet a board member of both when he died.
There are some who see in Thomas’s passing further “proof” of a so-called Pomierski curse. In January 2021, just shy of the ten-year anniversary of Pomierski’s federal indictment, Willis, then 75, died. In August 2021, Brandt, 56, who had gone to Ventura to run in the Beachfront Half Marathon, intending to use it as a tune-up for the Boston Marathon, had reached the roughly the four-and-a-half-mile point on the 13-mile course when he collapsed. A physician who was running near him immediately began chest compressions. Paramedics who arrived shortly thereafter continued similar ministrations as the former councilman was transferred to a hospital. Brandt, who had suffered a massive heart attack, was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Others dismiss suggestions that a Pomierski curse exists, pointing out that all three of the councilmen who enabled the disgraced former mayor for so long lived full and intense lives that were, in one way or another, fraught with hazard.
Willis was a Vietnam War veteran.
Brandt literally ran until he dropped.
Thomas, 68, an avid cyclist, typically rode a bicycle between 60 and 100 miles a week, covering somewhere in the neighborhood of an estimated 141,440 miles in the last 34 years.
The athletic Thomas gravitated to cycling in his mid-30s after his playing days on the gridiron in high school and college had come to an end more than a decade previously and after his knees began to rebel against his dedication to running.
His passion for the sport, which kept him in excellent physical condition, was a dangerous one that in the end proved his undoing. Thomas was conscious of that danger, which was impressed upon him just two weeks after he was elected to the city council in 1990. On that occasion, he collided with a vehicle driven by an operator who miscalculated Thomas’s downhill speed of more than 30 miles per hour and turned in front of him, resulting in his suffering a cracked vertebra, dislocated hip and broken ankle, necessitating that he be sworn into office while he was yet in a cast and motivating on crutches. As a councilman, Thomas sought to make biking safer, at least within the neck of the woods where he had sway and authority. His advocacy for bike lanes in the City of Gracious Living put it at the forefront of what then became a trend elsewhere in San Bernardino County. Moreover, he was a prime mover in the effort to establish what became the Pacific Electric Trail, the 21-mile bike route now running from Rialto to near the Claremont/La Verne border. The trail is an eco-friendly pathway on the footprint of the original Pacific Electric Railway easement used primarily for walking, running, bird watching, and biking. The Upland span of the trail was the first portion of the major regional recreational amenity that was opened. Thomas was also a founder of the Tour de Foothills, an annual biking event in Upland first begun in 2005.
Thomas brushed aside observations and warnings about the danger of biking and statements to the effect that the more miles and time on the road that a bicyclist puts in, the more likely that his number would come up. To assertions by motorcyclists and others that many vehicle operators simply do not see the bicycles and motorcycles they share roads with and that bicycles lack the acceleration capability that will allow a rider to maneuver quickly out of harm’s way, Thomas responded that he took adequate precautions, always wearing a helmet and a bright neon reflective jersey, and that he had outfitted his bike with lights and reflectors visible from both the front and the back.
As it turned out, Thomas’s demise ironically came when, as he was at a near standstill on Monte Vista Avenue in the left turn lane waiting to turn east on Richton Street near the Montclair Transit Center, he was blitzed by a motorcyclist who did not see him.
“Tom left a huge footprint in the history of Upland and he will be deeply missed,” his brother, Jim Thomas, said.
“I’m saddened by Tom Thomas’s passing,” said councilwoman Janice Elliott. “I had several opportunities to work with Tom, and his wisdom, kindness, knowledge, his respectfulness always impressed me.”
Mayor Bill Velto said, “Tom was a husband, a father and a grandfather, a leader in this community, a steadfast friend to many and a trustworthy business owner. Our community is better and in a better place because of Tom’s contributions. We thank him for those.”
Thomas graduated from Culver City High School in 1971. After achieving his bachelor’s degree in business administration at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1976, he continued employment he had already begun as a loss control representative at the Industrial Indemnity Corporation. In 1978, he began working with CNA Insurance as a loss control representative. In 1980, he signed on with Tokio Marine Management, again as a loss control representative. In January 1983, he began as a broker and agent with Insurance Incorporated of Southern California, selling commercial insurance. In June 1983, he became president of that company, remaining so for 38 years and eight months.
He was an elder in the Presbyterian Church.
He is survived by his wife, Ann Shriner Thomas, and three daughters.
-Mark Gutglueck

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously voted to end the state of emergency it had originally declared March 10, 2020 pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic, have the county’s chief executive officer determine how to allocate $423.5 million the county has received in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding intended to cover the financial burden of dealing with the coronavirus crisis and simultaneously made a finding that that there is an urgent need to proclaim a local emergency within San Bernardino County and its urgent medical services response system resulting from the impact of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
That action was taken in three successive items – 32, 33 and 34 – on the board’s March 1 meeting agenda. The staff reports for all three items were written by County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez.
In the staff report for Item 32 Agenda, Hernandez wrote he was asking the board to authorize the chief executive officer [i.e., himself] to execute the American Rescue Plan Act contract template with subrecipients in accordance with the board of supervisors-approved Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Fund Spending Plan.
In the staff report for Agenda Item 33, Hernandez wrote that he, in his capacity “as the director of emergency services, has determined that emergency conditions no longer exist and therefore continuation of the emergency proclamation pertaining to and for the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) is no longer needed.”
On the staff report for Item 34, Hernandez called upon the board to “proclaim a local emergency within San Bernardino County” impacting the emergency medical services system.
Hernandez wrote that the system was under “strain,” and extended to paramedic staffing and the ability to purchase both new and more ambulances as the result of delayed training programs and supply chain disruptions.