I wore a long dress with boots, and missing was a leather jacket with fringes. Looks like 2020 is the year for leather. It is popping in all sorts of colors and you will see it from head to toe. Meaning shirts, jackets, pants, dresses, and etc.… You can do leather all year long and it’s a fun feel-good material, too. Something about leather adds contour to any outfit. You can really inspire any outfit with a hint of leather. Try a jumpsuit with a leather jacket, a leather suit, or a leather skirt with a plaid blazer. Have fun with whichever leather piece you choose to run with this year. I’ll be looking out for fringes on the street.
“A leather jacket always makes you look cooler, sometimes more chic, and it elevates your look to make you look like you’ve purchased something expensive to set yourself apart.”  -Tan France

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the January 3 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 01-03-20

Two-and-one-half months after state agricultural officials optimistically hailed what they thought might be significant process toward the extirpation of Newcastle disease in Southern California, there has been in the last month-and-a-half a flare-up of the poultry-killing virus.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture has intensified a quarantine on all of Los Angeles County and the roughly westernmost halves of San Bernardino and Riverside counties to head off a repeat of the epidemic that between May 2018 and Summer 2019 necessitated the euthanization of 1.2 million birds, most of them chickens.
The quarantine protocol calls for isolating a chicken that has, or chickens that have, been potentially or actually exposed to the contagious illness, preventing it or them from contact with the rest of a flock. That bird is then killed.
Of the 1.2 million fowl killed as a result of the 2018/2019 outbreak, more than 1.1 million were chickens being raised agriculturally for commercial purposes. Close to 100,000 of the birds killed were pets or show birds.
Newcastle disease is a highly contagious viral bird malady affecting many domestic and wild avian species. While it is transmissible to humans, among whom it manifests in relatively mild forms of conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye, and influenza-like symptoms, it seems to pose no other significant hazard to people.
Newcastle’s effects are most notable among farm-raised chickens due to their high susceptibility and the potential for widespread infestation throughout the poultry industry.
Newcastle typically results in swelling around a bird’s eyes, a purplish swelling of the wattle and comb, a large amount of fluid coming from the beak and nasal areas, a twisting of the neck and head, loss of appetite, green diarrhea, and sudden death. No treatment for Newcastle exists.
Transmission occurs by exposure to fecal and other excretions from infected birds, contact with contaminated food and water, as well as through human interaction as when a person moves infected birds, equipment or feed or by coming into contact with unaffected birds while wearing the same clothing or shoes worn when that person had contact with infected areas.
The 2018/19 epidemic, which included cases in Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, had significantly declined throughout the summer, and by September had been isolated to four known locations. There were no further outbreaks in October. That cessation in the disease spread did not last.
According to a “virulent Newcastle disease update” issued by State Veterinarian Dr. Annette Jones on December 23, “Over the past month, virulent Newcastle disease cases have increased because people have violated the California Department of Food and Agriculture Virulent Newcastle Disease Regional Quarantine by moving infected birds or contaminated equipment and secondary spread to neighboring flocks. We now have 20 new cases under investigation, all linked to the recent Bloomington area outbreak. Most of the cases are in San Bernardino County, with two in Riverside County and one in Los Angeles County. Backyard flocks as well as retail pet/feed stores are involved.”
Jones’ update continued, “Based on phylogenetic analysis and epidemiologic studies, we understand how the disease spreads in Southern California. This highly contagious virus has been spread when people move exposed birds or equipment, or when people carry the virus to their own unfortunate flock on their hands and feet. It moves long distances as people illegally move birds or equipment. When introduced to a new area, it is amplified as the previously uninfected poultry succumb until the environmental virus load is so great, the outbreak spreads from yard to yard. Exposed poultry around a newly infected flock are the ‘virus amplifiers,’ particularly just before they show signs of disease.”
Speaking directly to bird owners, Jones said, “Put simply, your birds can spread the disease before they show symptoms, so the only way to stop it is to not move birds – period – if you are in the  California Department of Food and Agriculture Regional Quarantine Area.”
In San Bernardino County that quarantine area includes the jurisdiction’s western half, and all of the county’s inland valley’s and mountains, including all municipalities except Yucca Valley, Twentynine Palms and Needles.
The somber tone of Jones’ December 23 update was a stark contrast to the more positive missive she had put out on October 22, which read: “The California Department of Food and Agriculture/U.S. Department of Agriculture Virulent Newcastle Disease response team has started the ‘freedom of disease’ phase in which we continue surveillance and testing of birds to detect and quickly eradicate any small pockets of infection (if present). There have been no new positive detections of virulent Newcastle disease since early September, but the regional quarantine is still in place at this time. A sufficient number of negative virulent Newcastle disease tests from the community will help meet international standards to demonstrate freedom from virulent Newcastle disease and allow the regional quarantine to be lifted. This phase will take place over the next few months, bearing in mind that if any positives are found, it would potentially create a setback to this process. We are sincerely grateful for the continued cooperation and support from the community.”
Twenty-four days later, however, Jones on November 15 reported in an update, “There were new detections of virulent Newcastle disease on November 14 at two neighboring residential properties in western San Bernardino County. These are the first detections of virulent Newcastle disease in Southern California since September 4. These cases were identified when a bird owner at one of the properties contacted a veterinarian.”
That was followed by a November 19 update from Jones, which stated, “A new detection of virulent Newcastle disease was identified on November 18, 2019 at a retail feed and pet store in western San Bernardino County. The store is linked to the two recently confirmed positive premises in western San Bernardino County. This new premises is approximately 1 kilometer outside the boundary of the current control area and control area expansion is being reviewed.”
On December 9, Jones put out another update that informed the agricultural community that “In November and December of 2019, the California Department of Food and Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have detected a total of 6 new confirmed cases of virulent Newcastle disease in backyard poultry and at a retail feed store in western San Bernardino County. Information gathered so far indicates that these cases are linked, but we are still working to find additional connections and potentially more cases. As a result of these findings, we have euthanized poultry on confirmed infected and exposed properties in the Bloomington-area and have intensified testing in the neighborhoods surrounding the infected flocks. In an effort to minimize the impact of this new pocket of disease on the entire area, our epidemiologists continue to explore multiple disease response strategies with an eye towards preventing a major outbreak from reoccurring.”
In the December 9 update, Jones said, “All strategies currently under consideration will involve more testing in areas we have already tested at least once, including in Los Angeles and Riverside counties. While these recent cases are in San Bernardino County and our last positive cases in Los Angeles and Riverside counties were in May 2019 and September 2019, significant historical evidence shows that infected birds are moved frequently between these counties, so as long as we have remaining pockets of disease, a substantial risk of spread exists. We are hoping that we can keep moving toward eradication and freedom from disease. Success depends on community efforts. Stay vigilant, report sick birds, and take actions to protect your birds and your community’s birds from disease. Do not move birds and do not allow new poultry on your property.”
Jones was critical of a subset of poultry raisers who are engaging in irresponsible and illegal action that is endangering the region with further contagion.
“While the vast majority of people in affected communities have made the commitment and sacrifice needed to stop this outbreak, some have ignored our quarantine and even encouraged others to ignore the quarantine,” she said. “We all need to work together so we can eliminate this virus entirely from California and return to an environment that supports healthy backyard birds and poultry farms.”
Historically, Southern California has weathered worse Newcastle outbreaks than the one that manifested in 2018 and has persisted now into 2020.
In 2002 and 2003, a Newcastle epidemic resulted in the euthanization of 3.2 million birds. In 1971, a major outbreak occurred among 1,341 commercial poultry flocks in Southern California, necessitating the killing of just under 12 million birds.
The means used to head off the spread of Newcastle disease can be brutal. Public health officials, agricultural inspectors and regulators, as well as farmers have engaged in what are perceived by many members of the public to be ruthless and cruel means when the disease appears to be raging out of control. Flocks of birds, such as egg producing hens in an area where Newcastle has been detected, even if no birds on that particular farm have been confirmed to have the virus, have on occasion been uniformly slaughtered. One of the means of by which this is effectuated involves loading thousands of chickens into an enclosed garbage truck. A hose is then run from the truck’s exhaust pipe into an aperture so the carbon monoxide can be introduced into the enclosure containing the chickens. Those chickens not crushed to death by the weight of the chickens above them succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning.
-Mark Gutglueck

The City of Upland’s recreation manager abruptly departed the city last month, becoming the fourth casualty among Upland’s high-ranking municipal and institutional employees tripped up over what opponents of the city’s effort to reconstitute city parkland into a parking lot for San Antonio Hospital say is an unacceptable and illegally orchestrated disposition of city property.
In addition to those four departures, the parkland-to-parking lot debacle is widely perceived as having been a factor in the 2018 political demise of three of Upland’s former city council members.
Doug Story,  who began with the City of Upland in October 2015 as a development services specialist, remained in that capacity until September 2017, at which point he was provided with a promotion to the position of Upland’s recreation manager commencing in October 2017. A condition of that promotion was that Story had to do the bidding of a number of city higher-ups, which benefited the board of directors and president of the City of Upland’s major private sector entity, San Antonio Hospital. That task entailed a paradoxical giveaway of a portion of the city’s premier recreational amenity – Memorial Park – and the compromising of the function of the municipal division Story had been promoted to lead. Story gamely sought to carry out the assignment he had been given, boldly seeking to obtain an infusion of state money to offset the reduction in parkland the city was sustaining in its effort to provide the hospital with property for parking and future expansion. The hospital needs hundreds of more parking spaces than it currently has to accommodate the influx of patients it is experiencing following the 2017 conclusion of six years of construction on the hospital campus. That construction involved a series of planned expansion stages which increased the number of beds at the institution from 271 to over 400, saw the addition of the $160 million four-story Vineyard Tower at 999 San Bernardino Road, as well as another $30 million, 60,000-square-foot structure at 1100 San Bernardino Road, upped the number of stations in the hospital’s emergency room from 34 to 52, and created and outfitted 12 more intensive care units. Provision for parking was not included in the application/plans approved by the City of Upland for any of these projects as required by law.
Story applied for the maximum amount of money the city could get under Proposition 68, which was passed by the state’s voters in 2018 and reallocated a portion of California’s $7.545 billion in general obligation bonds for expanding and enhancing parks around the state. In his application, Story put together an energetic park makeover plan to utilize the $8.5 million Upland was requesting under Proposition 68 to refurbish or replace Memorial Park’s playground equipment, add a water feature splash pad, an amphitheater and an artificial turf multi-sports competition field, augment the park with walking and exercise trails, a basketball court and an intensified outdoor nature conservancy with trees and plants hospitable toward bees, hummingbirds and the like. In this way, Story hoped, Upland’s citizenry would ignore that accompanying the park enhancements would be the reduction of the 38.5 acre park by 4.631 acres.
Some five months after Story had been promoted to recreation manager, the Upland City Council as it was then composed on March 26, 2018, with 72 hours notice from city staff, was presented with a proposal that had emanated from Story’s immediate boss, then-Development Services Director Jeff Zwack, along with then-City Attorney Jim Markman and then-City Manager Bill Manis. The Zwack/Markman/Manis proposal called for the city selling 4.631 acres of the southwestern portion of Memorial Park, which contains a baseball field that is actively used by the city’s youth sports leagues. The main campus of the hospital immediately adjoins the park, and the hospital wanted to convert the baseball diamond and some of the greenland around it to a parking lot to accommodate the hospital’s burgeoning clientele.
In compliance with the recommendation by Manis, Zwack and Markman, the city council voted 3-to-1 to approve a purchase and sale agreement between the hospital and the city, with San Antonio Hospital committing to paying $906,931.55 per acre, or a total of $4.2 million, to acquire the 4.631 acres. Mayor Debbie Stone and then-council members Gino Filippi and Carol Timm went along with making the sale. Councilwoman Janice Elliott opposed it. Then-Councilman Sid Robinson, who normally voted in lockstep with Stone, Filippi and Timm, was not present at the meeting.
Manis, Zwack, Markman and the three prevailing members of the council, sensitive to San Antonio Hospital’s status as the city’s major institution and largest employer, considered accommodating its needs to be paramount.
In approving the sale, the city council also authorized City Attorney James Markman to undertake a so-called validation proceeding intended to foreclose any procedural or future legal challenge to the sale. In its validation action filed with the court, the city invited anyone opposed to the sale to lodge a protest. A challenge to the validation had to be filed within 60 days. Once the court validated the sale, any future lawsuits contesting the sale would be barred. The calculation by those favoring the sale was that no one would go to the expense of hiring an attorney to make an answer to the validation petition.
The validation procedure was directed to the courtroom of Superior Court Judge David Cohn in San Bernardino. To the chagrin of city and hospital officials, Marjorie Mikels, an attorney living in the city, as well as the Inland Oversight Committee represented by Cory Briggs, an attorney based in both Upland and San Diego, filed answers to the validation action. Those responses took issue with the sale on multiple grounds, among which was that the city selling off a slice of the park – in particular the one sold by the council on March 26, 2018, which included the long extant and actively used baseball field – is tantamount to abandoning public property. Such abandonments, under state law, cannot be effectuated without a vote of the citizens residing in the jurisdiction that owns that property.
Faced with not one but two challenges to the sale he had not anticipated, City Attorney Markman sought to convince Judge Cohn that the city council, acting on its own authority, was within its rights to sell off city land. In response to the argument that a municipality’s abandonment of property it owned and was putting to beneficial public use had to be subjected to a vote, Markman asserted that selling the property did not constitute an abandonment.
Ultimately, some 14 months after the sale of the park property was approved by the city council, on May 29, 2019, Judge Cohn, after hearing the responses to the city’s filing, dismissed its petition for validation. Judge Cohn’s ruling cleared the way for anyone with standing – meaning essentially any city resident – to file a lawsuit challenging the sale.
Penultimately, hospital officials have resigned themselves to the necessity of subjecting the sale of the property to a citywide vote. It earlier appeared that balloting would take place in conjunction with the March 2020 California Primary election. Now, however, it appears that the vote, if it is to take place at all, will not come until the November 2020 general election.
Before 2018 had fully run, the fallout from the move to sell the city park property was settling hard. In June of that year, Zwack abruptly retired as the city’s development services director. In September, Manis resigned as city manager, effective November 1, 2018. Councilman Sid Robinson, whose status in Upland had largely been based upon his involvement in the city’s youth sports leagues, suddenly found his position as a member of the city council whose voting record was virtually indistinguishable from those of Mayor Stone and council members Filippi and Timm untenable, given Stone’s, Filippi’s and Timm’s support of eradicating one of the city’s baseball diamonds. He announced he would not seek election that November. When that election was held, Filippi and Timm, who had become the object of a large number of voters’ wrath in part due to their March 28 vote to sell off 12 percent of Memorial Park, were voted out of office, while Councilwoman Janice Elliott, who had opposed the parkland sale, emerged victorious in her effort to gain election in the city’s newly created Second District, as the city held its first by-district election.
City Attorney Jim Markman, the other architect of the parkland sale, managed to survive the close of 2018. But with Judge Cohn’s ruling in May of last year dismissing the validation action the city had filed to keep the sale of the park property from being challenged, Markman found himself under siege. Not only was his legal expertise and judgment subject to question, it was painfully obvious that his militating on behalf of the hospital in its effort to obtain the park property for a parking lot was out of step with a sizable cross section of the most civically-active residents of the city. In October, as the city council was making preparations to terminate him, he resigned as city attorney.
A month before Markman’s forced departure, San Antonio Hospital CEO and President Harris Koenig had been fired by the San Antonio Hospital Board of Directors. Koening had been named the president and CEO of San Antonio Hospital in June 2011 and, using financing that consisted in large measure of $125,000,000 in certificates of participation issued using the City of Upland’s bonding authority, immediately thereafter embarked on the earlier-described six-year-long series of planned expansion stages intended to transform San Antonio into a regional hospital.  Among the board’s concerns that had brought about Koenig’s termination was the hospital’s continuing lack of profitability two years after the expansion had been completed in 2017.
The hospital’s parking lot is no longer able to accommodate the number of people seeking care who check in to the hospital, either on an in-patient or out-patient basis, to say nothing of those accompanying or visiting the hospital’s patients. Consequently, some individuals who have been treated at the hospital over the last several years, reluctant to have to deal with the torturous effort to find a place to park, are now going elsewhere in search of medical care. With adequate parking being the one element of the hospital’s expansion that had been overlooked by Koenig and others, the situation had grown acute by the spring of 2018, resulting in city officials undertaking the park property sale in an effort to mitigate the hospital’s problem.
After Judge Cohn’s ruling in May 2019, those yet hoping that the city might be prevailed upon to let go of some of the park acreage so the parking structure could be built turned to Story in a last ditch effort to formulate some way to have the city’s residents hold still for a reduction in the footprint of Memorial Park. That is when Story threw together the application for the Proposition 68 grant money.
The hope was that the community, aware of how Memorial Park for more than a decade had been neglected in its upkeep because of dwindling municipal financial resources, would be enthusiastic about the upgrades Story’s Proposition 68 application would provide – the playground equipment, the amphitheater, the splash pad, the artificial turf multi-sports competition field, the walking and exercise trails, the basketball court and the outdoor nature conservancy. The calculation was that the enthusiasm to be created by the upgrades would be so great that a critical majority of city’s residents would be willing to accept the loss of the 4.631 acres.
Some residents, astutely, questioned how it was that Story could be so confident that the city was going to receive any grant money at all based on Upland proving the Memorial Park environs was an “economically disadvantaged” area and other competitive criteria, let alone the entirety of the $8.5 million that had been applied for to ensure the Memorial Park makeover was to take place as he said it would. Story would brook no suggestion that the state would turn the city’s supplication for the grant down, and he was equally dismissive of suggestions that the city might get less than $8.5 million, which was the maximum amount a municipality could receive. He indicated that he had been assured by state officials the city would be informed of the grant reception by last month.
Word has now come that Story has left the city. Unbeknownst to Upland’s citizenry, some time ago he had applied for a position with the City of Beaumont. Beaumont’s human services director, Kari Mendoza, this week confirmed to the Sentinel that Story will begin as an employee with Beaumont on January 6.
According to a source the Sentinel deems reliable, Upland city officials were informed last month that Upland will not receive any of the Proposition 68 grant money it applied for. The Sentinel is told that an Upland resident upon review of the city’s submitted grant application determined that some of the data forwarded to the state by the city as part of the application process had been falsified and notified Proposition 68 application review staff. Furthermore, several residents over multiple council meetings asked interim City Manager Rosemary Hoerning to officially disclose this misinformation in the application to the state. It is not clear whether the city accordingly amended its application.
Specifically, according to this account of events, two criteria are applied by the state in releasing Proposition 68 money. One test pertains to an applicant demonstrating that it has a “deficit” of parkland throughout its jurisdiction such that its park area is less than three acres per 1,000 people in the city overall. A second test relates not to the entire city but to the specific park for which a grant is being sought. That test uses a factor of determination in which the park is considered as providing recreational opportunities for a specific “service area” within the city, county or jurisdictional entity making the application. If those living within that service area can be demonstrated as having an average per-household annual income of less than $51,000, the state considers that park to be eligible for improvements a Proposition 68 grant could provide, the Sentinel was told. Apparently what occurred was that the Upland resident who had access to both the grant application and city demographic data provided that data to the state to either demonstrate or convincingly allege that the city has park acreage or public recreational amenities in excess of three acres per 1,000 population and that in the neighborhood surrounding Memorial Park the average gross annual household income exceeds $51,000. Accordingly, the Sentinel is told, the state denied Upland’s grant application.
Lois Sicking-Dieter, who has been among the forefront of a contingent of city residents resisting the city’s sale of the park property to the hospital, told the Sentinel that Upland city officials’ faith that the Proposition 68 grant money would become available was an example of unjustifiable overconfidence. “Throughout California there is a lot of competition for that grant money,” she said. “For Doug Story to think the city would get any money, let alone $8.5 million, was very ambitious on his part.”
Sicking-Dieter said it was at least possible that the failure of the city to get the grant money “is the reason he [Story] no longer works for the city. Rumor is we are getting no Proposition 68 money and now, he’s off to Beaumont. He was gaining momentum in support of the changes to the park and then it all fell apart. It started to become clear, I think, when [James] Markman, who crafted a lot of the park sale, left before he got fired.”
John Chapman, who has succeeded Koenig as CEO and president of San Antonio Regional Hospital, is making the same mistake as his predecessor, Sicking-Dieter said. “At the hospital, they still believe the parkland sale is going through,” she said. “A group of us met with John Chapman, who was thinking he would convince us the hospital needs all 4.6 acres of the park property. Then, Chapman admitted that he was hoping that park supporters like us would be satisfied with the possibility of the hospital taking a smaller portion of the property instead of the original 4.631 acres. When one of our members told him that we would not give up one square inch of the park, he told us that the hospital was not going to abandon its plans to purchase some portion of Memorial Park and until our position changed future discussions would need to involve other items.”
Councilwoman Janice Elliott yesterday, January 2, indicated that it was yet the city’s official position that the Proposition 68 grant may come through. “I asked [interim City Manager] Rosemary [Hoerning] on Monday about this grant and she told me that we have not yet been informed about the grant but we should hear about it soon,” Elliott said.
Thus, the assumption that the city will not obtain the grant is premature, Elliott suggested, and attributing Story’s departure to the city’s failure to obtain the money he was seeking to wrest from the state to carry out the promised improvements at Memorial Park was not based in fact.
“Doug was offered a new position in Beaumont that he accepted,” she said. “He told me it was a significant promotion.”
-Mark Gutglueck

Dawn Rowe, the former Yucca Valley Town Councilwoman and staff member to Congressman Paul Cook who vaulted into the position of Third District San Bernardino County supervisor in December 2018 when she was chosen by her current board colleagues to replace James Ramos, is being challenged by four candidates in California’s upcoming March 3, 2020 Primary Election.
In county office elections, such as that for supervisor, a candidate can be elected outright in the primary election by capturing at least fifty percent plus one vote, bypassing the need for a run-off in the November general election. In simple head-to-head contests in which only two candidates for county office vie against one another, one candidate or the other in San Bernardino County has emerged victorious as no ties have ever occurred in such races historically. When more than two candidates are involved, the possibility that no single candidate will pull down a majority of votes exists. In situations where no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the two top vote-getters go toe-to-toe in the November election.
Technically, though Rowe is an incumbent, she is not seeking reelection, as she was not voted into office by the Third District’s voters. The board appointed her after Ramos, who had originally been elected as Third District supervisor in 2012 and was reelected in 2016, ran successfully for the California Assembly in the 40th District in 2018, and was then obliged to resign as supervisor with two years remaining on his supervisorial term.
Of note is that Ramos is a Democrat and Rowe a Republican. Upon his election to the Assembly, Ramos had suggested that his erstwhile board colleagues appoint his deputy chief of staff in the supervisorial office, Chris Carrillo, another Democrat, to replace him. Three of the board’s members – Robert Lovingood, Janice Rutherford and Curt Hagman – are, however, Republicans. They rejected elevating Carrillo to the supervisor’s position, even as the lone Democrat on the board, Josie Gonzales, advocated on Carrillo’s behalf. Though county elected positions are considered to be nonpartisan, party politics plays a major role in the election process at virtually every level of government in San Bernardino County, including races for Congress, the state legislature, county office and at the municipal level.
Upon assuming office, Rowe hired as her staff members three individuals – Suzette Swallow, Dillon Lesovsky and Matt Knox – who had been heavily involved in electioneering efforts for Republican candidates in the past. Word spread that Knox, as Rowe’s chief of staff, Lesovsky, as Rowe’s policy advisor, and Swallow, as Rowe’s communications director, were actually in place to ensure her election in 2020, as well as to work on behalf of other Republican candidates in the same election cycle.
In early 2019 it was widely assumed, and indeed Carrillo indicated, that he would challenge Rowe in this year’s election. In June, however, Carrillo reversed course, announcing he would not run for supervisor. It was bruited about the county that Carrillo, an attorney and board member of the East Valley Water District whose wife works as a prosecutor in the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, was in some fashion being blackmailed by the Swallow/Lesovsky/Knox political operations team functioning out of the Third District supervisorial office based upon information they were able to obtain using the agency-to-agency privilege at their disposal through their status as government officials.
All four of Rowe’s opponents in March are Democrats. One of them is Redlands City Councilman Eddie Tejeda. Another is Kaisar Ahmed, who previously ran for Redlands City Council in 2016 and for Congress in the 31st Congressional District in 2018. Also vying is Karen Ickes, a human services manager. Latron Lester, a minister from Barstow, rounds out the field.
Going into the election, Rowe enjoys a sizable fundraising advantage over all of her opponents, with more than 33 times as much money to spend on her campaign than all of the others combined. At present, she has $190,492.69 in her electioneering fund.  Available documentation shows that Ickes has $1,000 at her disposal for her supervisorial run. Ahmed’s campaign filings give no indication of how much money his campaign has on hand. Similarly, Lester’s filings give no indication of any money in his campaign account. Tejada, as of December 31, had $4,750 in his political war chest.
–Mark Gutglueck

Seven days after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a finding that the construction of the massive-scale Eastgate Air Cargo Facility on the northeast portion of what was formerly Norton Air Force Base will have no significant impact on the environment that can not in some fashion be mitigated, the San Bernardino International Airport Authority on Monday December 30 approved a 35-year ground lease with master developer Hillwood Enterprises for roughly 100 acres of land at the aerodrome to move that project toward reality.
Some hailed the securing of Hillwood’s commitment to proceed with the Eastgate project as the most significant stride the Inland Community has made toward a practical adaptation of the long dormant property at the base, the closure of which a quarter of a century ago represented a financial blow to the region which sent the City of San Bernardino and its environs into an economic tailspin from which it has yet to recover. Others, however, see the project as one that is fraught with potential and real environmental havoc, while offering in the long term only marginal employment for local residents in the logistics and warehouse industry.
The Eastgate project was brought forth by Hillwood Enterprises, LP, of which Ross Perot, Jr. is the chairman. Hillwood in January 2017 obtained from the San Bernardino International Airport Authority’s board of directors an exclusive right to negotiate for a ground lease on a 2 million square foot expanse located on the airport property for the creation a cargo logistics center. The keystone to the project is the 35-year ground-lease agreement with the San Bernardino International Airport Authority which was achieved this week. Based upon Hillwood’s representations, the center is to be subleased to an as-yet unnamed eventual tenant/operator.
The undertaking entails the creation of a new hub at San Bernardino International Airport which will mean a substantial increase in cargo flights out of the facility.
The San Bernardino International Airport Authority Board vote ratifying the lease and its terms followed by four months a public vetting and hearing process culminating in August which involved an extended environmental review of the project’s implication. That review entailed standards embodied in the California Environmental Quality Act and the National Environmental Protection Act, along with the input of local jurisdictions, the Federal Aviation Administration, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, other governmental entities and consulting environmental specialists.
According to the environmental impact report on the project, “San Bernardino International Airport Authority proposes to develop the Eastgate Air Cargo Facility to accommodate the demand for air cargo logistics operations” and the project will involve “construction of taxilanes and an aircraft parking apron to accommodate up to 14 aircraft, a 658,500-square-foot distribution center with connecting aircraft ramps, two 25,000-square-foot maintenance buildings, and automobile parking with approximately 2,000 parking stalls.” The upshot of the environmental impact report, which was paid for by Hillwood, was that the environmental review of the project was comprehensive, and measures built into the conditions of approval for the project will ensure mitigation of air and noise pollution and increased truck traffic.
Project opponents contend the environmental review was less than exhaustive and that the impacts from the project will have a deleterious affect on the environment and quality of life of those in close proximity to the project. Opponents of the project said the impact on the air quality over San Bernardino, Highland, Loma Linda, Redlands, Grand Terrace, Colton and as far away as Yucaipa and Mentone would prove onerous, and efforts to mitigate or offset that impact had not been adequate. Environmentalists said the project would wreak untold havoc on critical habitat for the spotted owl, a near-threatened species.
The decision-making body overseeing operations at the airport is the San Bernardino International Airport Authority. Currently, the San Bernardino International Airport Authority’s board consists of San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia, San Bernardino Councilman Theodore Sanchez, Loma Linda Councilman Ovidiu Popescu, Highland Councilwoman Penny Lilburn, Colton Mayor Frank Navarro and Third District San Bernardino County Supervisor Dawn Rowe.  As a panel, the board functions under the specter of past boards, which for more than two decades tolerated a circumstance in which the authority signed off on the expenditure of hundreds of millions of tax dollars redirected from the participating jurisdictional entities to run the airport and make improvements there while very little was accomplished in terms of making the air facility and its accompanying structures and facilities viable operations.
Before the base closure, in accordance with federal requests, the governmental entities surrounding Norton formed two separate joint powers authorities intended to facilitate the civilian use conversion of the property. One of those was the Inland Valley Development Authority, known by the acronym IVDA, which was chartered to deal with zoning, land use and planning prerogatives to include the creation of light and heavy industrial, office/professional, commercial and residential development on approximately 600 acres on the former base property and roughly 14,000 acres surrounding it. The San Bernardino International Airport Authority was formed to convert the airbase and its airfield and runways into an international airport.
Initially, the County of San Bernardino and the cities of San Bernardino, Colton, Grand Terrace, Loma Linda and Redlands participated in both the agency and the authority, with the county and the City of San Bernardino most heavily involved and invested in the two joint powers authorities.
An infusion of substantial amounts of money into the authority and agency to fund their operations was made by the rerouting of property tax away from the county and the cities, primarily Highland and San Bernardino, and to a lesser extent Redlands and Loma Linda. Despite that, the former air base and its surrounding property languished in a holding pattern, essentially for the next two decades. A series of individuals were brought in to act as the authority’s and the agency’s executive directors, several of whom were political appointments and/or former elected officials provided with six figure salaries. Token efforts toward transforming the base into an airport were made, but no real progress in that direction was achieved.
Specifically, the authority board conferred executive directorships, which existed as sinecures paying in excess of $200,000 per year in total compensation, on a series of their various political associates, without any accountability with regard to performance. Moreover, a past board in 2007, without any competitive bidding, brought in Scot Spencer to serve as the contract developer and manager of the airport. Spencer had served a four-year prison term from 1995 until 1999 as a result of his fraud conviction relating to his having, in conjunction with financier Jeffrey Chodorow, absconded with $14 million of company and investor funds by hiding payments to a shell company they created after they swooped in to create Dallas-based Braniff International Airlines, Inc. after Braniff Airways, which had been in operation since 1928, had faltered and fell into bankruptcy in 1982.
Spencer used his position as airport manager at San Bernardino International to provide businesses he owned favorable leasing arrangements while obstructing other aviation-related companies from operating. As the contract developer of the airport, Spencer was paid to oversee what was supposed to be a $38 million renovation of the airport’s passenger terminal and a $7 million development of its concourse. Spencer undertook that assignment amid confident predictions that upon completion of those projects, the airport would attract at least one and perhaps as many as a half dozen commercial passenger carriers.  In carrying out that project, Spencer used two corporations he owned, Norton Development Company, LLC and SBD Properties, LLC. The cost of the passenger terminal and the concourse escalated to $142 million. While that effort did deliver a first class terminal, that facility has for nearly a decade sat fallow and virtually unused, as the airport has yet to host any commercial airlines, although corporate jets and other private pilots did land at the Million Air corporate aviation facility, for which Spencer was the franchisee, from 2010 until 2012.  Another $210 million was invested in airport facilities, which have gone largely unused over the last decade.
In March 2013, Spencer was arrested by the FBI and charged with engaging in a conspiracy to steal $1.75 million in public funds, a gambit which ultimately netted him $1.03 million, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Attending the arrest were suggestions that Spencer had kicked back payments to various San Bernardino International Airport Authority officials. No arrests of any local officials were made, however, and no charges were filed against them. In March 2018, Spencer pleaded guilty to a tax evasion charge, and the remainder of the case against him was dismissed.
Some minor progress at the airport over the years has been achieved. Beginning in 2016, UPS began operating four weekly flights at the airport during the run-up to Christmas and in the years since that UPS Airlines has expanded its operation at the aerodrome. In July 2018 San Bernardino International Airport Authority and FedEx Express have agreed to begin regularly-scheduled air cargo flights into San Bernardino International Airport
Given the airport’s poor track record, San Bernardino International Airport Authority officials, including the board and current Executive Director Mike Burrows, are anxious to achieve milestones in converting the airport into a regional economic engine.
Hillwood’s Eastgate project, variously referred to as the Eastgate Logistics Center and the Eastgate Air Cargo Facility, which is to occupy 101 acres west of Victoria Avenue and south of Third Street, represents that first major milestone, airport officials insist.
Those with an interest in the project coming to fruition have banded together under a consortium dubbed AllianceCalifornia. According to the consortium, “AllianceCalifornia is committed to finding a tenant for Eastgate that offers [its employees] robust benefits, including medical, dental, vision, paid leave, and other financial assistance.”
The statement referenced one of the controversial aspects of the project, which consists of Hillwood’s reluctance to identify the tenant, or tenants, that will occupy the cargo center. There has been significant speculation the tenant is Amazon, the on-line marketing giant, but there has been no confirmation of that. According to AllianceCalifornia, “The average wage of the jobs created at Eastgate is projected at $26 per hour and will include new aviation-specific occupations.”
At the December 30 special session of the San Bernardino International Airport Authority Board held at the Norton Regional Event Center to consider the approval of the final and binding draft of the ground lease agreement as the sole item on the board’s agenda that day, an overflow crowd was on hand. The vast majority of those in the audience seemed to be strongly in favor of the arrangement between the San Bernardino International Airport Authority and Hillwood Enterprises. In addition to Hillwood personnel, financiers and investors with a stake in the outcome and public officials, there were significant numbers of construction union members who stand to benefit from the short term employment opportunities the project will result in. The Highland Chamber of Commerce also had a contingent of its members present who were vocal in their support of the project.
Hillwood Senior Vice President John Magness said Eastgate will link San Bernardino with commerce centers across the globe.
“This facility will see freight and people and commerce coming from around the world,” Magness told commissioners. “It’s an exciting time to see that come to the region.”
Not everyone was as enthusiastic about the prospect of the project, and during the more than two-hour hearing/meeting many clamored to offer their perspectives. Because several of those present perceived that they were not going to be allowed to weigh in with regard to the project before the vote took place, several of those in the audience attempted to speak over the citizens who had signed up for public comment. Airport officials chided them for doing so, and threatened to clear the room if order was not maintained.
Members of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice expressed opposition to the project, stating the economic benefits of the project were slim at best, given the low wages in the warehouse and logistics industries, such that the financial trade-off in terms of financial gain vs. environmental damage was a decidedly negative one. There were others who conceded that the project did offer some progress forward in terms of jobs creation, but they suggested the authority was not being exacting enough in terms of forcing Hillwood and its eventual tenant(s) to incorporate more favorable elements into the project. Some called upon the authority to include a “community benefits agreement” into the project approval that would require Hillwood or its tenants to provide funding and support to educational and social programs in the community.
Tom Dolan, executive director of Inland Congregations United for Change, said the citizens he represents are not seeking to block the project and have reconciled themselves to the reality that large numbers of warehouses are being built in the Inland Empire. At the same time, he said, it was incumbent upon public officials such as those on the airport authority board to impose conditions on the development of that warehousing to offset its impacts. “As residents of San Bernardino, we’re seeing and feeling the impact on our health and on our families,  and every year it gets worse and worse,” Dolan said. “We have to fight, and demand our public leaders represent the community.”
Dolan characterized as “disgraceful” that the region’s elected leadership “won’t attempt to work for community benefits. They are walking away from their responsibilities as elected leaders when they sell out in the face of this.”
Mike Burrows, speaking as the San Bernardino International Airport Authority’s executive director, insisted that the authority was legally precluded from imposing a community benefits agreement on any entity engaging in development of the former Air Force base.
The meeting was not without its political import.
Dawn Rowe is on the airport authority board as a consequence of her role as Third District San Bernardino County supervisor. The airport lies within the county’s Third District. Rowe was not elected to the board, but rather appointed in 2018 after former Third District Supervisor James Ramos resigned the position with two years left on his term after being elected to the California Assembly. As a supporter of the project, Rowe drew the verbal fire of two of the candidates who are running against her in the upcoming March 3 election.
One of those, Karen Ickes, said she was opposed to the project. Another candidate in the Third District race,  Redlands City Councilman Eddie Tejeda, said information crucial to the public’s understanding of the deal that was cut with Hillwood was being withheld. “There is a lot of missing information” from the lease documents that were being voted upon, Tejada said.
The San Bernardino International Airport Authority Board, swayed by Hillwood Senior Vice President John Magness’s assertion that “Sustainability and job creation are at the core of Hillwood’s values,” and that the Eastgate project embodied “the economic potential for environmentally responsible air cargo facilities at AllianceCalifornia,” voted unanimously to approve the ground lease project.
-Mark Gutglueck

At the end of the year, Josie Gonzales, the senior member of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors who has represented the county’s Fifth Supervisorial District since 2004, will leave office, being obliged to do so as a consequence of the three term limit that was placed on the board as a consequence of the 2006 passage of Measure P, which raised the annual salaries of the members of the board of supervisors from $99,000 to $151,000 but reduced the time they could remain in the capacity of county supervisor from that point going forward. As the first term to which Gonzales was elected, running from 2004 to 2008, did not fall under the Measure P restriction, she was eligible to be reelected in 2008, 2012 and 2016. She was successful in remaining in office with each of those election cycles.
Gonzales is now looking to turn the Fifth District’s reins over to her chief of staff, Dan Flores. Like Gonzales, Flores is a Democrat.
Though county offices are considered nonpartisan ones, in San Bernardino County party affiliation is a major factor in the determination of who will hold public office. For some 40 years beginning in the mid-to-late-1960s, San Bernardino County was a Republican Party stronghold, with the number of registered Republicans outnumbering registered Democrats. The lone area of the county where the Republican command was attenuated was in the county’s heavily blue collar Fifth District. Even so, the Republicans often asserted themselves there, where Republican Bob Hammock was the Fifth District supervisor from 1976 until 1992. In 2009, the number of Republicans in San Bernardino County were eclipsed by the number of Democrats. Nevertheless, the number of Republican officeholders continues to outrun the number of Democrat Party-affiliated elected leaders overall in San Bernardino County, largely on the basis of much stronger voter turnout among Republicans than Democrats.
At present, the Fifth District is overwhelmingly Democratic, with 49.7 percent, or 91,248 of its 183,646 voters registered as members of the Democratic Party and 33,607 voters or 18.3 percent registered as Republicans. At present, the Fifth District is the only district in the county with a Democrat serving as supervisor. Although in all of the county’s districts registered Democrats outnumber Republicans, nowhere is that disparity as pronounced as it is in the Fifth District.
Another Democrat, Joe Baca, Jr. is also running for supervisor in the Fifth District. Baca, a Rialto City Councilman, is the son of former California Assemblyman, State Senator and Congressman Joe Baca. As such, young Baca enjoys somewhat better name recognition than Flores, who in addition to being Gonzales’s top staffer, is also a member of the Colton Joint Unified School District’s Board of Trustees. Three factors, however, offset Baca’s name recognition advantage with regard to Flores. First, Flores has Gonzales’s endorsement. Second, he has a substantial fundraising lead over the rest of the field, including Baca, with $231,100 in his campaign war chest. Third, Gonzales has $691,237.10 in her electioneering kitty, and she is free to expend that money in support or other candidates, including Flores.
Baca currently has $25,290 in his campaign coffer.
Another candidate in the race is Nadia Renner, a businesswoman, who until recently served as a bilingual radio host for Entravision Communications and was a regular interviewer on a local talk show covering county issues. Available records show she has $4,700 in her supervisorial campaign fund. Renner has no party affiliation.
Fontana City Councilman Jesse Armendarez, a Republican, is also running. He outmaneuvered another Republican, Dr. Clifford Young, for the endorsement of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee earlier this year. Young was the appointed Fifth District supervisor in 2003 and 2004 before Gonzales was elected to that position. Young was contemplating again seeking the Fifth District supervisorial post, but ended his preparations to run when Armendarez captured the GOP endorsement.
Armendarez, who is a member of the ruling coalition on the Fontana City Council headed by Mayor Acquanetta Warren, has also obtained Warren’s endorsement for the supervisorial position.
Armendarez currently has $44,636.49 in his political account.
While any Republican vying for supervisor in the Fifth District is considered to be a long shot given the voter registration numbers therein which so heavily favor the Democrats, Republican strategists hold out hope that the Democratic vote in the March 3 contest will be split between Baca and Flores in such a way that Armendarez can capture first or second place in that race. Thereafter, the Republicans hope to concentrate their firepower on Armendarez’s November opponent, whoever that proves to be, in a way that will give Armendarez a chance to win.
-Mark Gutglueck