By Larry Kinley
This week, the Upland City Council is not only considering making a final selection among a number of applicants to serve our city as city manager, but two of its members are also determining in conjunction with a consultant how much this next city manager is going to be paid in salary, perks, and benefits in addition to the pension he or she is to receive, which in the end is determined by a California Public Employees’ Retirement System formula that takes into account the highest salary paid to that manager throughout his or her career.
Right now is as appropriate of a time as any for me to share my thoughts on the issue of what we are paying our city officials, in particular our city managers. I do not think it is too bold, nor do I think it unreasonable, to state that I do not believe any manager of the 482 cities and incorporated towns in the state should be provided with compensation greater than that which is paid to California’s governor.
Let me explain the reason I feel this way.
The city manager of Upland has nowhere near the span of responsibility as our state’s governor. Upland has a population of 77,754, according to the 2020 Census. California’s population, as counted during the same census, was 39,538,223.
Upland is a wonderful city, and it has many things that recommend it as a great place to live. It has a wonderful hospital, a top-flight school district and a general aviation airport. It is host to the corporate headquarters for Lewis Homes, Cherokee Wood Products and ISDG Security Systems. The San Antonio Water Company and other water companies have joined with the city to provide us with quality water. Upland has some of the nicest residential neighborhoods in San Bernardino County. Euclid Avenue is the city’s showcase. South of Foothill Avenue, it is lined with classic Craftsman-style and Edwardian homes that date from the early part of the 20th Century. North of Foothill, Euclid on its east and west sides is host to increasingly impressive dwellings that evolve into mansions. With its distinctive urban forest median that includes the Madonna of the Trail, Euclid offers a breathtaking vista that terminates at the Foothills below Mount San Antonio. Upland is populated by hardworking and good people.
163,696-square mile-California comprises everything that 15.65-square-mile-Upland does, and much more. California’s geographical size ranking among the 50 states of the Union puts it in third place, exceeded only by Texas and Alaska. It boasts San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento and Redding within its confines. It has 840 miles of coastline, 33.4 million acres of forest and 42 mountains with peaks higher than 10,000 feet. California’s population represents 11.6 percent of that of the United States. Encompassing 58 counties in which there are a total of 3,320,977 businesses, if California were a country it would have the fifth largest economy in the world, behind the United States, China, Japan, and Germany, and ahead of India, Great Britain, France, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Russia, South Korea, Australia, Spain, Mexico, Indonesia, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.
To suggest that the governor of the State of California merits less pay than the city manager of Upland falls outside the scope of rationale thinking. Yet, that is the case. Our governor is provided with a salary, before benefits, of $209,747. Rosemary Hoerning, before she was asked by our city council to leave in March, was being paid $236,900 per year in salary.
This defies common sense. I don’t see how any city can justify paying its city manager more than the State of California is paying its governor, and I challenge any city manager of any city in the state to debate me on that topic.
People should note that the loss to the taxpayers represented by overly generous salaries to city managers does not end with the paychecks they are receiving. Overpaying those serving at the top of a city’s managerial echelon causes inflation at the levels below that. Paying city managers too much money results in runaway salaries for municipal department heads such as the director of development, the finance director and the director of public works. And then those working in those departments are also being overpaid because a city’s pay scale is out of balance.
Paying too much for city personnel in Upland, where the employees have already been reduced to a four-day work week, has resulted in a reprioritization in how municipal money is spent. Cities exist for the provision of municipal services. Cities exist so we have police departments to keep the streets from being overridden with crime, so we have fire departments to put out fires, so our streets are paved regularly to prevent potholes, so we have quality and safe drinking water when we turn on the tap, so our traffic lights work and so our parks are maintained and our streetlights come on at night. City Hall’s priority is no longer the provision of those services but making sure that our city employees are well paid, which means they receive compensation that is well above that paid to workers in the private sector for comparable work. If a city keeps spending money on high salaries, pretty soon the quality and integrity of those services diminish and, eventually, the reason for the city’s existence is defeated.
I would like to see a proposition go before the voters of California asking if they believe that it should be written into law that a city manager cannot be paid a higher salary than the governor. I think that proposition would pass. I don’t have the time, energy or wherewithal to qualify a proposition like that for a statewide ballot, so I think I will instead work at the local level to see if we can put a measure on the ballot just for the voters in Upland to find out if they support putting a cap on the city manager’s salary of no higher than what the governor is paid. After all, I think it is only fair that the residents of Upland, who are the ones paying the salaries of everyone down at City Hall, have a direct say in how much those people get paid. I think that is an understandable concept most residents will agree with.
In the meantime, if the city council is going to consent to paying the city manager a salary of more than $209,747 annually, I think there should be a requirement that the mayor, each member of the city council and the city manager explain to the people of Upland why they think the city manager deserves to make more money than the governor of the State of California.
Larry Kinley was formerly a vice president of the Bank of America. He oversaw for more than 15 years that institution’s problem loan department. He was Upland’s elected treasurer from 2016 to 2020.

Former Upland City Manager Jeannette Vagnozzi, whose promotion to the top spot at Upland City Hall was made with the support of three lame duck members of the city council in their last official act as officeholders after an angry electorate had banished them from office in November 2018, has sued the City of Upland over the way in which she claims she was treated in the months prior to her May 2019 firing.
A group of Upland citizens had appealed to Vagnozzi in the days and hours before the city council hired her on November 26, 2018 to decline the outgoing city council’s elevation of her to the city manager’s post and instead give what was then to be the incoming city council the option of either selecting her to serve in the city’s top administrative post or keep her as assistant city manager. Vagnozzi, saying she could not risk her future on the whim of three new council members she did not know, accepted the appointment as city manager, despite it being tainted by the consideration that three of those who chose her would not be in office upon her assumption of the position. As it would turn out, Vagnozzi’s show of distrust and what was interpreted as a lack of respect for four of the council members under whom she thereafter served as city manager doomed her to an abbreviated tenure in office.
What proved out to be Vagnozzi’s misplacement in the role of Upland City Manager played against a backdrop of action and political miscalculation on her part in the months before her promotion to city manager and further miscalculation and action taken in the months after she assumed the city manager role.
In March 2018, the city, led by then-City Manager Bill Manis, Vagnozzi as assistant city manager and Martin Thouvenell who was then the city’s management consultant and advised by then-City Attorney James Markman, quietly moved to sell off 4.631 acres of Memorial Park to San Antonio Hospital for use as as a parking structure, at first giving no clear reference to the property to be sold as parkland while providing the public with a mere 96 hours notice that the sale was to be voted on by the city council. Then-Mayor Debbie Stone and council members Gino Filippi and Carol Timm supported the sale. Councilman Sid Robinson abstained from the vote, not supporting the sale but taking no action to oppose it. Councilwoman Janice Elliott voted against making the 12 percent reduction to the city’s landmark park, the largest in the city.
A firestorm of controversy ensued, as the vast majority of Upland’s citizenry who had any opinion with regard to the parkland sale opposed it.
Robinson’s constituency in the city consisted in large measure of the parents of children participating in youth sports. Those who had been his political supporters were dismayed at Robinson’s unwillingness to stand up against the council majority and the city’s administration to oppose the sale of the parkland, which included a long-existing Little League  diamond. To remain in office, Robinson would need to vie in that year’s election, the first one in Upland history to be held by-district, and compete in the city’s Second District. Elliott had been elected at-large in 2016 and her term in office was set to expire in 2020. In an effort to ensure her incumbency beyond 2020, at which point she would be forced to leave the council because she was not eligible to run in any district other than the Second, she chose to run in the Second District race in 2018. Robinson, who was at a clear disadvantage for not having opposed the parkland sale, opted out of running,
Both Filippi and Timm were due to stand for reelection in 2016, the former in the newly-created Third District and the latter in the newly-created Fourth District. In the November election, both, unable to effectively defend their votes to sell off the parkland, were defeated. In September 2018, City Manager Manis, seeing the city large roiling with discontent toward him, Vagnozzi, Thouvenell, Stone, Filippi, Robinson, Timm and Markman over the sell off of the parkland, announced his resignation as city manager. Vagnozzi and Thouvenell were tapped to fill in for him temporarily.
After the November 2018 election, in which Elliott was victorious and Filippi and Timm were chased from office effective with the first council meeting in December 2018, the council took up the subject of the city’s managerial future. Thouvenell, who had served in the role of acting city manager from the middle of 2016 after the firing of former City Manager Rod Butler and then all of 2017 until Manis’s hiring that became effective on January 2, 2018, saw the e writing on the wall. He resigned as the city’s managerial consultant before his contract came to an end.
At the last council meeting in November 2018, with Timm across the continent in North Carolina visiting her parents for the Thanksgiving holiday, the city council took up an item calling for designating Vagnozzi as city manager and conferring upon her a three-year contract. From North Carolina, Timm phoned in her endorsement of Vagnozzi. Robinson weighed in, saying he believed Vagnozzi to be the right person for the job. Filippi did the same. Mayor Stone, who was facing the prospect of losing her ruling coalition as soon as Robinson, Filippi and Timm exited the following month, noted that she had supported the hiring of Manis as city manager the previous year over Vagnozzi, who had also applied for the job at that time. Stone said she believed she had made a mistake, and that she now believed Vagnozzi deserved to be entrusted with the city manager’s authority. A significant number of residents weighed in against promoting Vagnozzi to city manager. Among those was Ricky Felix, who had been elected earlier that month to replace Filippi. Felix said he believed it would be best to allow the city council members that would need to work with a new city manager over the next two to four years be allowed to determine whether that city manager should be Vagnozzi or someone else. Undeterred, the council voted to make Vagnozzi city manager, with Elliott dissenting.
In January 2019, Bill Velto, then a member of the planning commission, was selected to serve out the two years remaining in Elliott’s term as an at-large member of the council elected in 2016. Thereafter, in February, March and April the city council began to evaluate Vagnozzi’s job performance during the closed sessions of its regularly-scheduled meetings. Closed sessions are portions of the meeting held outside the view or earshot of the public.
The city council also focused on Vagnozzi’s performance during meetings that took place outside the parameters of its normally-scheduled meetings held on the second and fourth Mondays of every month.
At a specially-called meeting on March 4, 2019, the council had a closed door meeting for the purpose of a “public employee performance evaluation” relating to the city manager. There was no action reported to the public after that meeting.
At a specially called meeting on March 17, 2019, the council had a closed door meeting for the purpose of a “public employee performance evaluation” relating to the city manager. There was no action reported to the public after that meeting.
At a specially called meeting on April 29, 2019, the council had a closed door meeting for the purpose of a “public employee performance evaluation” relating to the city manager. There was no action reported to the public after that meeting.
The constant monitoring of her performance and the disclosure that such a dialogue about her performance was taking place during both regularly scheduled and specially-called council meetings riled and concerned Vagnozzi. She retained the Woodland-Hills-based law firm of Goldberg & Gage, which specializes in representing public employees against public agencies.
While Goldberg & Gage had moved to the conclusion that Vagnozzi had been or was in the process of being terminated, that was not the case. She remained as city manager, and there was, as of that time, no clear consensus that she should be fired. She yet enjoyed the unequivocal support of Stone. Moreover, Velto believed it would be nonproductive to jettison Vagnozzi, and he remained committed to working with her. Felix, likewise was unwilling to fire Vagnozzi without some clear indication or evidence that she had been remiss in her duty. Elliott, who had an unpleasant experience during Thouvenell’s tenure as acting city manager in 2017 when she had been ostracized by Stone, Robinson, Filippi and Timm and ultimately censured, and Rudy Zuniga, who had replaced Timm, were somewhat less favorably inclined toward Vagnozzi, but still not entirely sold on cashiering her.
On May 2, 2019, Goldberg & Gage filed with the State of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing a discrimination complaint on Vagnozzi’s behalf. In a rapid turnaround, the State of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing on the same day sent to Vagnozzi, in care of the Goldberg & Gage firm, a document known as a notice of case closure and right to sue. That letter stated that because Vagnozzi, through Terry Goldberg, had requested an immediate right to sue, the State of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing would not itself pursue an investigation of the alleged discrimination but rather had cleared Vagnozzi to pursue a lawsuit against the city in a California court of competent jurisdiction. The letter stated that Vagnozzi had one year to file such a civil action from the date of the letter. Moreover, according to the letter, if Vagnozzi intended to pursue a case against the city for discrimination in federal court, she would need to seek a federal right to sue letter within 30 days of receiving the May 2 letter or within 300 days of the alleged discriminatory act, whichever came earlier.
On May 7, 2019 Upland City Clerk Keri Johnson was notified by a letter from the Goldberg & Gage firm dated May 6 that Vagnozzi had obtained a right to sue letter from the State of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
Vagnozzi’s already delicate situation escalated to the next level with the council’s discovery that Vagnozzi was on the brink of suing the city. If Vagnozzi had any hope of getting fully on track as city manager, she needed the trust of the city council. Putting herself in a circumstance where the council was flinching at the prospect of being sued made that nearly impossible. It only grew worse from there.
Vagnozzi subsequently acknowledged that Goldberg had “overstated” her beef with the city. Stated more directly, Goldberg outright misrepresented circumstances that made any sort of rapprochement between his client and the Upland City Council unachievable. In the document he filed on Vagnozzi’s behalf with the California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, Goldberg maintained “on or about April 29, 2019,” the City of Upland, meaning some individuals employed by it, acting on its behalf or otherwise associated with it, “harassed” Vagnozzi.
Vagnozzi was the victim of intolerance vectored her way, Goldberg propounded, based on her “religious creed, dress and grooming practices, sex/gender, medical condition (cancer or genetic characteristic), age (40 and over), marital status,” and other issues associated with her being a “member of a protected class.”
Goldman suggested Vagnozzi was the object of the harassment and derision because of prejudice. He reiterated that Vagnozzi “was discriminated against because of complainant’s religious creed” which he said “includes dress and grooming practices, sex/gender, medical condition (cancer or genetic characteristic), age (40 and over), marital status, association with a member of a protected class and as a result of the discrimination was terminated, asked impermissible non-job-related questions, denied a work environment free of discrimination and/or retaliation, denied any employment benefit or privilege.”
Vagnozzi was also mistreated because she did not go along with the attitude she encountered, Goldberg said.
“Complainant experienced retaliation because complainant reported or resisted any form of discrimination or harassment and as a result was terminated, asked impermissible non-job-related questions, denied a work environment free of discrimination and/or retaliation, denied any employment benefit or privilege.”
Additionally, according to Goldberg, Vagnozzi “has suffered discrimination, retaliation, and harassment based on her protected characteristics/activities.”
In addition to Goldberg’s complaint erroneously asserting that Vagnozzi had been terminated, it also inaccurately stated that Vagnozzi resided in Woodland Hills. In fact, Vagnozzi was a resident of Rancho Cucamonga.
All five members of the council, including Mayor Stone, who had previously been firmly in Vagnozzi’s corner, were taken aback by Goldberg’s assertions. For them, Vagnozzi’s religious practices had never been an issue. Four, in fact, did not know what Vagnozzi’s religion was. Nor had they any feelings one way or another about her sexual orientation or in-depth knowledge of her personal life. Goldberg had implied that Vagnozzi was a lesbian. This hit a discordant note with the entirety of the council, none of whom had ever discussed or mentioned or even contemplated her sexuality. Felix in particular, a Mormon with three daughters, felt blindsided by Vagnozzi’s injection of the topic of her sexuality into the workplace. Unaware of her preferences and equally unaware of any discrimination that had been leveled against Vagnozzi as a result of that preference, Felix strongly resented her making an issue of her sexuality at all.
Word spread quickly through Upland that Vagnozzi was accusing the city council of discriminating against her because she was sexually active with other women.
At its regularly scheduled May 13 meeting, the city council was set again to take up the subject of the city manager’s performance. The agenda for that item differs from the three previous scheduled discussions in that it calls for a “performance evaluation and consideration of public employee dismissal” relating to the city manager. The previous council agendas pertaining to the evaluation of the city manager’s job performance had not mentioned termination. The change was a sign that the entire council, including Stone, was entertaining Vagnozzi’s dismissal.
At that point, Vagnozzi seemed to recognize she and her legal team had made a serious miscalculation. She attempted to walk back what Goldberg had done on her behalf. In the three days before the council meeting, she sought to minimize the significance of the filings Goldberg had made on her behalf, suggesting that she was only taking prudent legal precautions and was not necessarily going to sue the city. “I have a right to representation, and I have retained a lawyer to make sure I am represented,” she told the Sentinel.
She acknowledged there were some inaccuracies in the way in which Goldberg had characterized her claims against the city, and she indicated that there had been poor communication between her and Goldberg.
The inference that some had drawn that she was claiming she had been ostracized because of her sexual orientation, her manner of dress or her religion was inaccurate, she said. Still, she acknowledged, the documents Goldberg had lodged with the State of California suggested that was the case. “Perhaps he [Goldberg] confused me with another client,” Vagnozzi said. “I am not homosexual and do not actively have any sign of cancer though I do receive treatment from an oncologist. I attend a Catholic church. I have not been terminated at this time but have had numerous closed session ‘evaluations.’”
She said she had only recently retained Goldberg. “I am not sure where the responsibility for the miscommunication lies,” she said.
She acknowledged that there was a significant distinction between the evaluations of her performance the council had scheduled at the previously specially-called meetings and the then-upcoming May 13, 2019 regular meeting. “The previous closed sessions didn’t go beyond my performance review,” she said. The inclusion of the terminology “termination” in the agenda for the executive session discussion on Monday, May 13, 2019, she said, was an indication “They are giving themselves that option.”
Indeed, after the city council met in closed session on May 13, 2019, its members returned to the council dais in the council chamber, at which point Markman announced that Vagnozzi had been terminated on a 4-to-1 vote, with Mayor Stone in opposition. No cause was cited in making the termination, which was to be effective one month hence, on June 13, 2019. Nevertheless, Vagnozzi was relieved of her duties and capacity as city manager immediately.
Curiously, Goldberg and Gage waited more than two years, until August 4, 2021 to file an employment-related lawsuit on Vagnozzi’s behalf. The suit does not allege wrongful termination but instead cites discrimination, harassment, failure to accommodate, retaliation and failure to take corrective action.
Given the way in which Goldberg had botched the filing with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which led to Vagnozzi’s actual termination in 2019, Bradley Gage of Goldberg & Gage will be handling Vagnozzi’s case from here on out.
The lawsuit does not dwell on Vagnozzi’s sexuality, emphasizing rather that she was a woman, unmarried, had eclipsed the age of 40 and was a breast cancer survivor. The suit maintains she was subjected to harassment by other city employees and had to endure a hostile work environment.
According to the lawsuit, Vagnozzi, who was the assistant city manager, city clerk, director of administrative services, human resources manager and risk manager before she was promoted to city manager, was not treated as an equal within the city’s senior management division. She was originally hired in 2015 to serve as assistant city manager under then-City Manager Rod Butler. She served as acting city manager for five days after Butler was terminated in July 2016, but was thereafter replaced as acting city manager by Thouvenell. When Thouvenell departed as acting city manager on January 1, 2018, the city did not replace him with Vagnozzi but instead brought in Bill Manis, who had been the city manager of Rosemead, to serve as city manager. She was cut off from the flow of information and prevented from exercising the authority her managerial position normally entailed, the suit claims.
The case has been assigned to Judge John Tomberlin. The suit seeks unspecified amounts of economic compensation due to loss of future earnings, lost pension wages plus monetary compensation for emotional distress.
-Mark Gutglueck

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the August 27 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 08-27-21

Seven years after it was rushed to completion, the High Desert Detention Center project remains as a source of unanticipated cost escalation for the county’s taxpayers. What were interminable cost overruns on the 1,576,000-square foot complex continue.
This week, the board of supervisors agreed to up the amount of money the Barkley Andross Corporation will receive for the replacement of the primary generator at the sheriff’s department’s largest and main jail in the desert portion of 20,105-square mile San Bernardino County.
Originally, on December 8, 2020, the county board of supervisors agreed that the county would pay the Barkley Andross Corporation $1,272,308 to replace the generator at the High Desert Detention Center.
This week, the board consented to two upward cost adjustments on the generator replacement project totaling $186,196, one in the form of an amendment to the contract and the other a change order.
The amendment involves $155,300.70 worth of rewiring on the equipment and its connections to the jail’s various electrical systems. The $30,895.30 change order calls for an adjustment in the work previously contracted for to ensure the generator is covered to prevent it from serving as, essentially, a latter which would allow inmates to escape the jail’s confines.
According to a report to the board of supervisors from Terry Thompson, the director of the county’s real estate division, dated August 24 but completed prior to that, “Amendment No. 1 to the contract will compensate Barkley Andross Corporation for the additional scope of work required to provide new conduit pathways at the automatic transfer switch. During the course of construction, the contractor encountered… unforeseen conditions, including the need to provide new conduit pathways at the automatic transfer switch, as… intercepts reflected in the record drawings were incorrect [and] the conduit intercepts reflected in the plans could not be located. A new conduit pathway is required due to differing site conditions. Amendment No. 1 will extend the contract time for an additional 80 calendar days, from 270 calendar days to 350 calendar days, with a corresponding increase of $155,301 to the contract amount, to allow for completion of the additional scope of work. Change Order No. 1 will compensate Barkley Andross due to differing site conditions and [a] resulting additional scope of work required to (1) incorporate modifications related to procuring and installing three new metal shrouds to encase exposed conduits in order to address a potential safety concern (the possibility that an inmate resident could utilize the exposed conduits to scale the roof and sides of the building); (2) provide for needed temporary power to include door work, x-ray and concrete masonry unit coring (the proposed above-ceiling route to the electrical room was discovered to have existing utility obstructions, requiring a new route); and (3) install additional generator circuits as the 70 AMP sub-feed was found to be insufficient.”
The cost on the change order is $30,895.30.
The High Desert Detention Center, originally referred to as the Adelanto Detention Center, encountered $29 million in construction cost overruns from the time work on the project began in late 2010 until its final phase in 2014. The facility, located at 9438 Commerce Way in Adelanto, was formerly privately owned and run as a 706-inmate capacity institution known as Maranatha Prison. It was sold by its owner, the Moreland Family Trust, to the county in April 2005 for $31.2 million. The transition of the private prison facility into a publicly-run one, which was originally slated to cost $90,951,937 beyond the $31.2 million acquisition cost, added 1,392 new beds to the existing capacity of the jail. After making a finding that the construction bids received from S.J. Amorosa Construction Co., Inc. of Costa Mesa and Flintco of Folsom were non-responsive, the county in December 2010 awarded a $90,951,937 contract to Bellevue, Washington-based Lydig Construction as the low bidder.
During the more than three years of construction on the project, the board of supervisors approved a total of 29 change orders and amendments to the contract, and the price zoomed to $120,419,790. Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, Incorporated, based in Culver City, was the architect on the project. Los Angeles-based Jacobs Engineering was the project engineer, a subcontractor to Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum. The total price tag on the project, including site acquisition, engineering, architectural, licensing and inspection costs, reached $176,651,910, which was $25.45 million more than the $151.1 million projected to be the project’s overall price including a ten percent cost overrun contingency when it was approved in 2010. The county rushed things, as it needed to complete the expansion by January 31, 2014 or face losing $100 million in state funding.
In many cases, that haste created circumstances that led to the cost overruns.
There long were suspicions that persist about kickbacks that may or may not have been provided to county officials by the firms that did the architectural and engineering work on project, as many of the change orders and amendments appeared to be redundant, and outside scrutiny of the project was virtually impossible.
-Mark Gutglueck

County officials have begun to crack down on the owners/operators of short term rental units that have been proliferating in the county’s unincorporated mountain and desert communities, and are enforcing regulations on the guests at those concerns.
The opportunity short term rentals represented to homeowners, particularly in areas which attract tourists, has long existed. Few exploited that opportunity until relatively recently. It was less than fifteen years ago when Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Bebbia boldly explored putting an air mattress onto their living room floor and transforming their San Francisco residence into a temporary bed and breakfast inn, giving birth to the the concept of the “Air BNB” [air mattress bed and breakfast]. The trio transformed the formula into a $10.49 billion asset company traded on NASDAQ. Simultaneously, many people around the country who owned second, investment or vacation homes adapted the idea, learning along the way that in many cases vacationers were ready to pay the equivalent of a monthly rent or more to have access to a house and all of its amenities – a kitchen, dining room, living room, separate bedrooms, a yard and garage – for a week or even a weekend if the abode was advantageously located. Those with second homes in the desert or cabins in the mountains were soon tapping into the short-term rental trend. Their guests were given more spacious accommodations than a 300-square foot hotel room, one that put them close to the desert or mountain destination they were visiting. The rise of the internet made coordinating such arrangements easy. Those tourists who were who unable to book a hotel in an area where there were no motel or hotel vacancies made for plenty of willing tenants. This transformed what were previously in many cases dormant properties into revenue producers. With such a ready clientele who remained in place for a limited time, homeowners did not need to hire professional property management services or much in the way of professional assistance other than cleaning services. With the guests paying up front, collections or late payments were not an issue.
While renting their properties out for a short span was advantageous for those homeowners or investors, the influx of temporary residents into the mountain and desert districts created nuisances for those living near such leased properties. In many cases, homes or cabins were simply converted into temporary accommodations without regard to local ordinances or regulations, and there was not government oversight or regulation of the operations.
Residents were put at the disadvantage of having, for a short time, neighbors they did not know and who in some cases had no regard for others they would not be likely to ever see again.
On occasion, those guests would prove to be poor neighbors, creating disturbances, inviting dozens, scores or even hundreds of others to parties on the leased or rented premises, creating parking and traffic problems. On occasions, such parties proved out to be raves, with highly intoxicated participants. Excessive noise was an issue in some cases. Bonfires were a staple of such gatherings. In some isolated cases, those lodging at the rental properties or their guests grew aggressive or confrontational with nearby residents.
Owners of the short term rental properties skipped out on paying lodging taxes, referred to as transitory occupancy or bed taxes.
Over the years, at first irregularly and infrequently, complaints began to drift in. In time, that discontent grew. Because the mountain communities hosted numerous hotels and traditional inns and the like, the county formulated a set of regulations tailored specifically for and applicable only in the mountains, specifically Mt. Baldy, Wrightwood, Crestline, Cedarpines Park, Lake Gregory, Lake Arrowhead, Blue Jay, Valley of Enchantment, Cedar Glen, Sky Forest, Twin Peaks, Arrow Bear, Big Bear, Angeles Oaks, Running Springs, Green Valley Lake, Cienega Creek, Sugarloaf, Seven Oaks and Barton Flats.
By 2019, the county moved to take up the issue directly and generally, not just in the mountains, but in the desert communities, in particular those near, in and around Joshua Tree National Park, which included Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, and Twentynine Palms, as well as along the Colorado River. By November of that year, the county had approved a set of rules that were to apply to residential units rented for 30 or fewer days. Those included a permitting process for homes to be used as short-term rentals, ones that had to be renewed every two years. Owners were further required to provide onsite parking to accommodate all visitors to the rentals, maintain the rental unit’s exterior and interior, document who the renters were and post evacuation maps on all doors within the unit.
The regulations imposed a fine of $100 on the rental unit’s owner for a first offense, a $200 fine for a second offense and a $500 fine for a third.
Recurrent complaints by residents living near short term rental units persisted even in the aftermath of the county ordinance, and earlier this year the county considered making punishment for not keeping within the regulations more draconian.
At the board of supervisors’ June 22 meeting County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez and the county’s director of land use services, Terri Rahhal, delivered a report and recommendation that the supervisors pass an urgency ordinance and companion regular ordinance that increased the penalties for short-term rental code violations.
According to Hernandez and Rahhal, earlier this year the board had “acknowledged community concerns and calls for a moratorium on approval of additional short-term residential rental unit permits. The recent increase in permitting and occupancy of short-term residential rental units in mountain and desert communities during the COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to increasing complaints from full-time residents of these communities. The complaints are not limited to occasional nuisance noise or inconvenience to residents. The proliferation of short-term residential rental units has impacted the ability of local residents and workers to find housing. The increased number of short-term residential rental units, combined with the increased popularity of private home rentals, has fundamentally impacted multiple neighborhoods to the point that residents feel overwhelmed.”
On June 8, 2021, the board approved the 2021-22 budget, which allocated $10.4 million to address community code enforcement concerns. Many of the issues under scrutiny were unrelated to problems growing out of the increase in the number of short-term rental units. A major area of concern in that regard is the rise in the number of unlicensed marijuana farms, primarily in the desert and to a lesser degree in the mountains. To hash out how the county’s financial and physical resources should be allocated and its manpower utilized with regard to the county’s code enforcement efforts, the county administrative echelon, headed by Hernandez, has established a multi-disciplinary task force consisting of the sheriff’s department, the district attorney’s office, the office of county counsel, the division of agriculture/weights & measures, environmental health services, land use services and the county code enforcement division. Furthermore, the county temporarily placed its code enforcement function under the direction of the county’s newly-formed implementation division.
This latter move, Hernandez and Rahhal told the board in their June 22 report, would “leverage available resources and… redesign the way [the] code enforcement [division] engages with the communities to address concerns. This approach will include additional staffing, increased direct community engagement, staff working evenings and weekends, and higher level coordination with local law enforcement agencies to continue a proactive and responsive approach. The objective of this effort is to identify as many avenues as possible to deterring illegal and nuisance activity. The added code enforcement presence in the communities will allow staff to observe neighborhood conditions first-hand and consider the changing environment in our review of short-term residential rental unit permit applications; both new applications and renewals. The current adverse conditions reported in mountain and desert neighborhoods warrant a full review of the short-term residential rental unit regulations in the County Code, including occupancy limits, short-term residential rental unit permit standards and the criteria for issuing short-term residential rental unit permits. These conditions also justify immediate action on an urgency basis. The adverse conditions in mountain and desert neighborhoods necessitate an immediate change in the enforcement tools available to remedy violations of short-term residential rental unit regulations.”
Noting the $100, $200 and $500 maximum fines that were then in place, Hernandez and Rahhal said those were insufficient to deter the proliferation of nuisances and dangerous activity at the short-term rental sites. They said the urgency ordinance and permanent ordinance they were proposing would drastically increase the city’s ability to fine violators.
“Operating short-term residential rental units is a lucrative business that can absorb the current fines with no impetus to change,” according to the report. “The proposed urgency ordinance would increase these penalties.” They laid out criminal and administrative penalties of $1,000 for the first offense, $2,000 for the second offense and $5,000 for the third offense falling within a 12-month period. The report added, “Subsequent offenses would be subject to suspension or revocation of the short-term residential rental unit permit.”
Operating a short-term rental unit without a permit, Hernandez and Rahhall proposed, would be prosecuted as a misdemeanor and would be subject to the same $1,000, $2,000 and $5,000 fines per violation per day.
Two months on, county officials have not said if the ten-fold increase in fines has resolved the short term rental nuisance issue.
Officials said that the permit process involves providing the short-term rental unit operators with information on how they can operate such businesses with minimal impact on surrounding properties, along with a way that provides a safe environment for those living in the units as well as the surrounding neighborhood.
Meanwhile, this week, on Tuesday, August 24, the Twentynine Palms City Council voted not to impose a moratorium on new vacation home rentals within that 59.14-square mile, 25,500 population desert city.

With COVID-19 resurgent in its Delta variant form, hospitals in San Bernardino County along with the rest of California may be in for a challenge as the state government’s September 30 deadline for all healthcare workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus looms.
A majority of health workers have evinced faith in the medical field that employs them, and a majority have consented to receiving the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson, Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.
As of last month, however, nearly one quarter of the state’s healthcare employees, ranging from janitors to clerical staff to orderlies to candy-stripers to licensed vocational nurses, to registered nurses to nurse practitioners to physician practitioners to doctors of osteopathic medicine to medical doctors have balked at getting vaccinated.
From the outset of the coronavirus crisis in the United States, California and San Bernardino County, there was resistance by some to what were at first suggested precautions and then mandates intended to slow or preclude the spread of the disease, consisting of social distancing, masking, isolation and quarantining and ultimately vaccination.
In the late fall and early winter of 2020, the original form of the malady peaked locally, shortly after which a not-fully-tested vaccine became available.
By and large, a significant portion of the population went along with being vaccinated, and, as the immunity this gave against COVID-19 took hold, it seemed as if one of the most challenging health threats of the Third Millennium was behind humankind. On June 1, 2021, California averaged just two new COVID-19 cases for every 100,000 people.
According to health experts, that was a chimera. The Delta variant of COVID-19 – a fast mutating from of the disease first detected in India in December 2020 – had made its way to California by early March. With some 50 percent of the state’s population at that time unvaccinated, the Delta variant spread at first slowly and then more quickly throughout the population and progressed on a parallel but still different pathway, overpowering much in its way. Those who were unvaccinated and those who had not previously contracted COVID-19 were particularly vulnerable. With the mutation came increased infectability, such that even those who were presumed to be relatively immune – those vaccinated and those who had survived a go-round with the original COVID-19 virus – were contracting the Delta variant, in some cases at an alarming rate.
By July 24, the previous month’s average of just two new cases for every 100,000 people in the Golden State had escalated to 15.2 new cases per 100,000 people.
On July 26, Governor Gavin Newsom issued a mandate that all state workers and workers in the healthcare profession and any situation where there are concentrations of people either show proof of full vaccination or be tested once per week for infection with the virus.
Having a full complement of hospital workers at the state’s and San Bernardino County’s various medical centers and hospitals is now as critical as ever.
Last fall, virtually every available bed in San Bernardino’s hospitals was occupied by patients with normal or routine conditions as well as with the symptoms of COVID-19. It is anticipated that after summer shifts to fall this year, hospitalizations will again increase. Indeed that number may be increasing exponentially already. On June 15, 2021, there were 1,156 COVID-19 patients hospitalized throughout California. The last week of July, that number had climbed to 3,947. The number this week is believed to have exceeded 5,200.
With somewhere between one fifth and one-fourth of the state’s healthcare workers unvaccinated, a crisis is likely to descend upon most hospitals throughout the state. With so many trained and ready workers unable to report to work, those hospitals will be called upon to run short-staffed or fill the gap with vaccinated but most probably unskilled or poorly-trained replacements.
In some of the most prestigious hospitals in Southern California and San Bernardino County, a surprisingly large number of the health professionals employed there are unvaccinated. As of July 24 at Redlands Community Hospital, 41 percent of workers were not vaccinated. At the Mountains Community Hospital in Lake Arrowhead, precise vaccination rates among staff there are not available. One employee there who has so far refused to be vaccinated maintained that approaching 30 percent of the workers at that facility are not fully vaccinated.
Among a substantial cross section of health professionals, there is acceptance of the safety, or relative safety, of the various COVID-19 vaccines. Still the same, some health professionals – even some who have submitted to being vaccinated – say they believe the vaccine carries with it some risk.
Recently, there have been reports of myocarditis after vaccination with mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines in people in their late teens, twenties and thirties. Out of 300 million doses of the vaccine being administered, 1,226 total cases of myocarditis – that is, inflammation and damage to the heart muscle – have been tracked. This, advocates of vaccinating point out, is an infinitesimal .00000408666 risk.
Others have objected to the presence of thimerosal – a mercury-based preservative – in the vaccines. Defenders of vaccines point out that the amount of mercury in a single shot of COVID-19 vaccine falls well below the average amount of mercury contained in a five-ounce can of tuna fish. Moreover, they point out, the mercury in the COVID-19 vaccine is in the form of ethylmercury, which is rapidly passed through the body and will not accumulate in tissues as does methylmercury.
It has been established that use of the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine increases the risk of an extremely rare and serious blood clotting disorder. Virtually all of those impacted by this condition are women ages 18 to 49, with the occurrence running at a ratio of 7 for every 1 million of those inoculated.
Pfizer has acknowledged that 21 cases of anaphylaxis [a severe allergic reaction] were detected after the administration of 1,893,360 first doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, equal to 11.1 cases per million inoculations.
Those reluctant to be vaccinated point out that an insufficient amount of time has passed since the vaccinations have become available to make conclusions about their safety, and that negative consequences from being vaccinated may take years to manifest.
Health professionals point out that medicine inherently involves the balancing of risks and benefits, and that for the vast majority of the human population, the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination greatly exceed the risks.
Some healthcare professionals have objected to vaccinations on moral or ethical grounds, pointing out that the vaccines were derived from a process dependent upon fetal cell lines incubated and cloned in laboratories over the last four to five decades from aborted fetal cells.
Some healthcare professionals who have resisted being vaccinated say they are refusing the inoculations simply on the grounds that they object to the mandates, which they say are an infringement on their constitutional rights.
Within the scope of the debate over the need for healthcare workers to be vaccinated, the risk to the healthcare professionals is not the only calculation or consideration, as the vaccine is intended to reduce the vaccinated party’s contagiosity as part of an effort to protect the patients those professionals come into contact with.
Legal challenges to the mandates have not fared well, at least in some of the cases that have been tested out so far.
Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas was among the first healthcare provider in the country to require its workers to receive COVID-19 vaccinations. When several workers there refused to comply and sued, they did so using the assertion that the hospital was, essentially, demanding that they submit to an experimental process to see if the vaccine worked and if it was safe. They lodged that lawsuit in federal court. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes threw the suit out in June, ruling that what the hospital was engaged in “is not coercion. Houston Methodist is trying to do their business of saving lives without giving them the COVID-19 virus. It is a choice made to keep staff, patients, and their families safer.”
Already, more than a month before Governor Newsom’s September 30 deadline, some of San Bernardino County’s hospitals have drawn the line, moving to terminate hospital workers who have made clear they will not be vaccinated.
At least two such workers at Mountains Community Hospital have been fired, the Sentinel is reliably informed, with preparations under way to fire more, which action will be staved off only if those employees knuckle under and consent to be vaccinated.
The Sentinel is informed that workers who have yet to be vaccinated at other hospitals around the county are being counseled by hospital administrators to seriously rethink their intransigence.
-Mark Gutglueck

It was learned today that a Rancho Cucamonga native was one of the thirteen members of the U.S. military who were slain in a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 26.

Dylan Merola

Highly reliable sources told the Sentinel that Marine Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga was among the mortally wounded on Thursday when a sneak attack was made by what was believed to be a member of ISIS – the Islamic State In Syria – who had assumed a position in a crowd of refugees who had come to the airport in an effort to gain transit out of the war-torn country. That attack consisted of a massive explosion from a bodyworn bomb carried by a single individual who came out of the crowd toward Marines who were assisting in maintaining the security around Hamid Karzai International Airport’s Abbey Gate. Gunfire immediately after the explosion augmented the attack.
From Abbey Gate, passengers were loading into arriving planes that would shortly thereafter depart to bring American citizens and native Afghans, whose cooperation with the American occupation of Afghanistan over the last two decades put them in danger, to safe locations outside Afghanistan.
Eleven Marines and a Navy corpsman were killed nearly instantly in the blast and 19 other Americans were injured. A twelfth Marine died subsequently, bringing the total number of American serviceman killed in the attack to 13.
Merola was a 2019 graduate of Los Osos High School. Prior to being dispatched to Afghanistan, he was recently stationed at Camp Pendleton, a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and was selected as a part of a crisis response team sent to Kabul to assist and stabilize the evacuation effort.

It is unclear why the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office have not taken action to jail, imprison or otherwise institutionalize a psychotic and sociopathic repeat offender who is simultaneously stalking women he knows to be vulnerable.
Jason Michael Tagle, who was last known to be living on the west side of Cucamonga and is also known to frequent a specific neighborhood in east Upland, has been arrested 30 times in San Bernardino County since March of 2016.
He nevertheless has managed to avoid being locked up for long.
As an adult, the now-41-year-old Tagle has 32 recorded convictions against him in San Bernardino County since 1999. His adult criminal record in San Bernardino County alone since the time he reached the age of majority in 1998 includes at least 39 arrests.
Tagle’s juvenile criminal record is not available.
While the lion’s share of the charges and convictions against Tagle pertain to drug offenses, no fewer than eight of his convictions pertain to acts of violence, stalking or firearms charges. At least eleven of his convictions were recorded as felonies.
In recent years, he has shown a propensity to stalk women he has purposefully sought out on the basis of their being alone or living alone.
This stalking has an undeniable sexual element, including incidents of indecent exposure which have been caught on video.
In 1999 he pleaded guilty to a charge of battery upon a spouse or domestic partner filed against him in 1998, when he was 18 years old.
In 1999 Tagle was charged with and pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary while armed,
In 1999 Tagle was charged with being a convict in possession of a firearm, but that case was dismissed.
In 2004 he was convicted of being drunk in public on a case originally filed against him in 2001.
In 2004 he was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm filed against him earlier that year.
In 2005 he was charged with battery and fighting. The battery charge was dismissed later that year, and he was convicted of fighting.
In 2010 he was charged with making criminal threats, being a felon in possession of a firearm, carrying a concealed firearm and exhibiting a firearm in making a criminal threat of violence. In 2011 he was convicted of the carrying a concealed weapon and making criminal threat counts.
In 2011 Tagle pleaded no contest to driving under the influence in 2010.
In 2016 he was charged with and convicted of threatening a victim with death or great bodily injury.
In 2016 he was arrested for and convicted of being under the influence of narcotics.
During 2017, in May, August, September and twice in October, Tagle was charged with using or being under the influence of a controlled substance. He pleaded guilty or no contest to four of those charges.
In 2017 he was twice charged with and admitted to being in violation of his parole.
In 2017 he was charged with obstructing an officer and trespassing. He was adjudged guilty of both in 2018.
Twice in 2018 he was charged with and convicted of felony parole violations.
In 2018 he was was twice charged and convicted of being in possession of dangerous drugs, and twice charged and convicted of being in possession of paraphernalia.
In 2019 Tagle was charged with criminal contempt and willful disobedience of process an a court order.
In 2019 he was charged with and convicted of being under the influence of drugs and being in possession of paraphernalia.
In 2019 he was charged twice with and admitted being in felony violation of his parole.
In 2020 he was charged with and convicted of being in violation of his parole.
In 2020 Tagle was twice arrested for, charged with and convicted of being under the influence of a controlled substance.
In 2020 he was charged with and in 2021 convicted of being under the influence of a controlled substances
In 2020 he was charged with and admitted to being in violation of his parole.
In 2020 he was charged with and in 2021 admitted to being in violation of his parole.
In 2020 he was charged with making repeated harassing and annoying phone calls.
In 2021 he was charged with and convicted of being in possession of a dangerous drug/controlled substance
On July 20, 2021, Tagle was charged with a count of being in possession of a controlled substance and one count of being under the influence of a controlled substance, stemming from a January 11, 2021 incident.
On June 4 and August 18, 2021, Tagle was arrested for being under the influence of a controlled substance.
On July 22, 2021, he was arrested for trespassing on private property.
On August 6, 2021, Tagle was arrested for stalking.
A week ago, on August 20, two days after he was previously arrested on a similar charge, Tagle was arrested for being under the influence of a controlled substance while near St. Joseph’s Catholic Elementary School on Campus Avenue north of 11th Street in Upland.
According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s on-line inmate locator, Tagle is not currently in custody.
A recently recorded Ring video provided to the Sentinel shows Tagle having relations with himself on the front doorstep of the residence of a single woman who lives alone in Rancho Cucamonga.
The woman, armed with the video evidence, approached the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which provides law enforcement services under contract to the City of Rancho Cucamonga, serving, essentially as the Rancho Cucamonga Police Department. Detectives with the department told the woman she should seek a restraining order against Tagle.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department was unable to explain how a civil restraining order or even a criminal protective order against someone such as Tagle, with his propensity for disobeying the law, would serve to protect the victim from Tagle.
According to the woman, two other Rancho Cucamonga women have obtained restraining orders against Tagle. The Sentinel could not find any record of the issuance of those orders.
Tagle has an abiding affinity for methamphetamine, which leaves him in a lethargic and nearly catatonic state when he is not juiced up, and highly volatile when he is amped up or spun out.
At five foot six inches tall and 220 pounds, he is known by the nicknames Li’l Speedy and Speedy.
Tagle’s most recently known address is 7740 Vineyard Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga. He was previously domiciled at 581 East 13th Street in Upland.
Neither the sheriff’s department nor the district attorney’s office chose to engage with the Sentinel on why enforcement and prosecutorial efforts against Tagle have not been initiated in an effort to effectuate his removal from polite society.
-Mark Gutglueck