Less than a week after what appeared to be a key change in the leadership of the West Valley Water District’s board of directors that may or may not signal a substantive shift in the governance of the district, the lion’s share of the department heads in the politically embattled district banded together in a petition seeking the ouster of West Valley’s general manager, Clarence Mansell.
At press time, no action had been taken by the board, and Mansell was yet in charge of the district, which operates five treatment plants, 385 miles of pipeline, 25 reservoirs and 17 wells in the Chino, Bunker Hill, Lytle Creek, North Riverside and Rialto-Colton water basins to serve more than 80,000 residents in Rialto, Fontana, Bloomington and north Riverside County through more than 24,000 service connections.
Following the June 2015 departure of Butch Araiza, who had served as the district’s general manager for three decades, the district went through a series of general managers who lasted only a short time. In 2018, at the suggestion of Board Member Michael Taylor, the district hired Clarence Mansell to oversee the district. At the time of Mansell’s recruitment, there was a spirit of bonhomie on the district board, which was then headed by Dr. Clifford Young as president. The board included Dr. Young, Dr. Taylor, Kyle Crowther and Greg Young, who is no blood relation to Dr. Clifford Young, all of whom are Republicans. The lone Democrat on the board was Don Olinger. Though the board posts are technically non-partisan ones, party affiliation is nevertheless a major factor in the board’s governance of the district. In the latter half of 2018, an internecine Republican rivalry broke out between Dr. Young and Dr. Taylor, at which point a factional divide formed with Taylor, Crowther and Olinger on one side and Dr. Young and Greg Young on the other. Clifford Young was deposed as board president and Dr. Michael Taylor was installed in that position.
While most staff members at the district attempted to steer clear of politics, the factionalism on the board was reflected to some degree at the staff level. Mansell, the district’s general counsel, Robert Tafoya, and the district’s human resources and risk manager, Deborah Martinez, hewed to Taylor’s side of the divide. The district’s chief financial officer, Naisha Davis, and the district’s assistant board secretary, Patricia Romero, aligned with Clifford Young.
With the transition from 2018 to 2019, tension within the district deepened and the relationship between Young and Young, on one side, and Taylor, Crowther and Olinger, on the other, worsened. In February, Clifford Young, Davis and Romero filed a qui tam lawsuit alleging widespread wrongdoing within the district, including kickbacks provided to Taylor and Crowther from Tafoya and Martinez, as well as from other attorneys and consultants employed by the district. The lawsuit, which was filed as a gesture on behalf of the district and its ratepayers with Dr. Young, Davis and Romero as plaintiffs, was allowed to proceed because of the nature of the suit which contested the legitimacy of district expenditures, despite the consideration that Clifford Young did not have aligned with him a controlling majority on the district board and that a clear majority of the board – Taylor, Crowther and Olinger – did not support the filing of the suit.
The West Valley Water District holds its elections in odd-numbered years. With Crowther, Olinger and Greg Young up for reelection, the political control of the district was at stake in the November balloting. In an effort to ensure the continued dominance of his faction, Taylor worked assiduously during the campaign in support of Olinger and Crowther and against Greg Young.
Taylor provided Crowther with $6,192.50 provided directly from his campaign fund to assist Crowther in his reelective effort against challengers Betty Gosney and Linda Gonzalez in the district’s newly-formed Division 1, consisting primarily of eastern Fontana.
In the district’s Division 5, covering virtually all of Bloomington, Greg Young was in a contest against Angel Ramirez and Jackie Cox. Taylor put up $19,128.04 to help Ramirez, using money from his own campaign fund that went either directly to Ramirez’s campaign or which was spent to pay for pro-Ramirez materials provided by a third party or an independent expenditure committee.
Olinger, competing in the district’s Division 4 which is contained within Rialto, found himself up against another Democrat, Channing Hawkins. In support of the effort to keep Hawkins from replacing Olinger, Taylor utilized $22,620.48 from his own campaign war chest to help the incumbent by either transferring funds from his account to Olinger’s campaign fund or purchasing electioneering materials in the form of ads or mailers for Olinger.
Once the dust settled after the November 5 election, Crowther had prevailed with 282 votes or 53.41 percent; Greg Young had held off his two challengers by capturing 340 votes or 52.63 percent; and Hawkins had trounced Olinger by capturing 623 votes or 64.83 percent.
Quietly, behind the scenes, Clifford Young had supported Hawkins. With Taylor having worked to keep Hawkins out of office, it appeared that Taylor’s political hold on the West Valley Water District was about to elapse.
At the December 5 board meeting at which the victors in the November election were sworn into office and the board took up the selection of board officers for the coming year, Dr. Taylor utilized his hold on the board president’s gavel to make a political maneuver that would, if not maintain him as the dominant player on the board, at least prevent Dr. Young from again taking control of the district. In a slick use of parliamentary procedure, Taylor in the last minutes of his tenure as board president used his authority in presiding over the meeting to immediately nominate the newly elected Hawkins to succeed him as board president. Hawkins, who appeared to have been in on the maneuver, made a lightning-fast second of his own nomination. A vote was taken before a competing nomination could be made. With Dr. Young abstaining, the board voted 4-to-1 to elevate Hawkins to the chairmanship of the board. By his action, Taylor appeared to have made significant amends with Hawkins. With the maneuver, Taylor caught Clifford Young flatfooted. In the immediacy of what was occurring, and dismayed at the chairmanship of the board having eluded him even before he could get a grip on the gavel, Dr. Young made the mistake of abstaining on the vote to make Hawkins president, undercutting any further progress toward an alliance between himself and Hawkins that might have been heretofore taking shape.
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the election, to district staff it had initially appeared that Taylor’s ruling coalition was about to dissolve, and with it Mansell’s continuing viability as general manager. What was not widely known outside the confines of the district’s offices was the degree to which a significant portion of the district’s staff was chaffing under Mansell’s direction. Many of the district’s employees believed that with Hawkins’ election and the anticipated changing of the guard that would follow, Hawkins would line up with Dr. Young and Greg Young to take control of the board. Thereafter, it was anticipated, those members of the district staff seen as being Taylor’s associates – Mansel, Tafoya and Martinez – would be sacked, perhaps as early as this month, but in no case any later than January or February. Taylor’s assistance in establishing Hawkins as board president, however, put those assumptions on hold or may have made them inoperative altogether. Accordingly, early on December 12, just less than a week after Hawkins’ acceptance of the board presidency, a letter from all but two of the district’s eighteen department managers was delivered to Hawkins and the remainder of the board, pressing them to relieve Mansell of his position as general manager.
“Morale has never been lower at West Valley Water District,” the letter states. “General Manager Mansell has alienated employees by removing responsibilities from specific individuals to those who will do his bidding. We bring this to your attention because of our commitment to our customers and employees. We the undersigned, management and supervisory staff of the West Valley Water District, are bringing to you, the board of directors, our extreme concerns with regards to the executive management and overall unsatisfactory performance of General Manager Clarence Mansell, Jr. Our water district is at a crossroads and we felt compelled to take this action because it is our fundamental belief that without a change in leadership, our once proud West Valley Water District will continue to decline and water services will be at risk to our customers. Unfortunately, after continued lack of transparency, communication, honesty, professionalism and respect for employees of West Valley Water District, we have come to the firm conclusion that the only way to save our water district is to change the leadership of the West Valley Water District.”
The letter alleges that Mansell has engaged in favoritism in the hiring process for the district, saddling it with employees who cannot perform adequately.
“Hiring practices are more flawed than before,” the letter states. “Job description vacancies within our departments are molded to fit specific individuals our general manager desires, most of whom have a personal relationship with him. Often, these employees lack the qualifications and experience required to perform basic tasks and begin at an inappropriately high pay step, creating tension among long term employees of the district.”
Mansell has recruited and hired employees without adequate screening or consultation with department managers, and has bypassed interviewing candidates as well, according to the letter. “Mr. Mansell has justified all of his actions by stating that the board is aware of and in support,” the letter states. “We believe this to be an untrue statement as his actions are oftentimes in direct contradiction to your statements on the dais.”
The sheer number of high level district employees signing what amounts to a letter of no-confidence was noteworthy. Sixteen signatures were affixed to the bottom of the two-and-a-half page missive, which bore the water district’s letterhead, which includes Mansell’s name and title, along with those of several other district officials, including the board members to whom the letter was sent. Those signing the letter were Public Affairs Manager Naseem Faroqi, General Services Manager Jon Stephenson, Acting Human Resources Manager Paul Becker, Operations Manager Joanne Chan, Engineering Services Manager Linda Jadeski, Business Systems Manager Albert Clinger, Accounting Manager Jose Velasquez, Geographic Information Systems Manager Telat Yalcin, Purchasing Supervisor Al Robles, Production Supervisor Joe Schaak, Water Quality Supervisor Anthony Budicin, Customer Service Supervisor Alberto Yulo, Chief Treatment Plant Operator Ernie Montelongo and Chief Treatment Plant Operator Sergio Granda.
According to the district’s employees, this is the first time staff has en masse sought the resignation of the district’s top administrator. Questioning of the district’s leadership has intensified in recent years and months, as audits of the district by the California Controller’s Office and a firm hired by the district are underway.
Hawkins, who had campaigned on a reform platform and had pledged to make needed changes to ensure the district was focused on its relatively limited charter of delivering water to its ratepayers, appeared to be paralyzed by the letter and its call for Mansell’s removal. Given Mansell’s connection to Taylor and that Hawkins is in the early stages of acclimating himself to the intricacies of the district and the treacherous, conflicting and shifting alliances on the board, the call for him to jettison Taylor’s designated manager before the terms of his own relationship with Taylor and the other members of the board are fully settled was a challenge Hawkins clearly did not wish to deal with at this juncture. At press time, he was seeking to maintain a low profile and not engage with the public to avoid having to make a statement that would create a contretemps that had the potential of careening out of control.
Mansell could not be reached by press time. The district, did, however, offer a terse statement that appeared to have emanated from Mansell. “The leadership at West Valley Water District has received a letter expressing items by our employees,” it said. “I can say we are very concerned and will be reviewing the matter. President Hawkins and the board of directors are committed to maintaining the confidence of our employees and ratepayers.”
–Mark Gutglueck

Upholding the county’s planning commission and over the objections of a contingent of local residents, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday granted San Francisco-based Clearway Energy Group license to proceed with a massive, 3,500-acre solar-generating facility near the Barstow-Daggett Airport.
On September 19, 2019, the county’s planning commission gave approval to the project involving six conditional permits that collectively provided for the construction and operation of a 650-megawatt photovoltaic solar power generating facility, including 450 megawatts of of battery storage, to be built in phases over the 3,500-acre project site. Clearway made the application under the veil of a limited liability company known as Daggett Solar Power Facility 1. The commission made findings and imposed conditions of approval that included major variances to exceed the allowed height limits and allow transmission structures and lines up to a maximum of 159 feet with findings that their placement was needed and justified. The commission approved a tentative parcel map to consolidate the 51 existing parcels into 15 parcels, made findings and gave certification of a final environmental impact report. The commission also provided statements of overriding consideration, and signed off on a mitigation monitoring reporting program, including approval of a water supply assessment.
On September 30, 2019, the Newberry Community Services District filed with the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors an appeal of the San Bernardino County Planning Commission’s approval of the Daggett Solar Power Facility.
The Newberry Community Services District is the closest approximation of a local government authority in the area, providing fire protection, parks and recreation and street lighting services to residents in Daggett and Newberry Springs.
The district, on behalf of the Daggett and Newberry Springs populace, decried inadequacies in the environmental documents compiled by Clearway’s consultants which were filed in keeping with the California Environmental Quality Act.
Clearway’s filing of the application for the project predated the board of supervisors’ approval of a policy last February which prohibits utility-scale renewable energy development in rural zones and most of the county’s unincorporated districts. That policy restricted development of something along the lines of Clearway’s project to areas already in agricultural or mining use and the remote outlying areas of Amboy, El Mirage, Hinkley, Kramer Junction and Trona. Because the Newberry/Daggett project proposal was already being processed by the land use services division, those restrictions did not apply, although the county made use of them in its analysis.
The ban carried with it a loophole allowing solar or wind power project proponents to seek a general plan amendment, or a boundary change, to allow such a project to proceed if a proponent has a site that otherwise meets the county’s criteria for a renewable energy project but is within a prohibited zone. The supervisors have discretion to grant such an exception.
County Land Use Services Director Terri Rahhal said that the sole snag in the application under the new standards the county is applying is that a portion of the project’s footprint involves some parcels zoned for rural neighborhoods. Otherwise, she said, the project meets the requirements that the land was previously used for agricultural purposes, and it is proximate to other energy facilities and transmission lines.
According to a document entitled “Consistency Assessment with General Plan Policies and Objectives”  generated by the county’s land use services division, “The project is compatible and harmonious with surrounding properties and land uses. The project provides an important source of clean and renewable energy. The project is properly sited adjacent to existing energy infrastructure and is compatible with surrounding land uses.”
One of the objections the appellants had raised was the project’s untoward impact on air quality. As was stated in the appeal, “The health hazards and the damage to homes, property and property values from airborne dust are major concerns of local residents.”
The county’s land use services division responded, “Currently over 60 percent of the project site is disturbed, mostly by agricultural and other uses that contribute to blowing sand and dust. In compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act, the final environmental impact report provides extensive information and analysis describing the air basin in which the project is located and the project’s potential air quality impacts.”
The document did not say, however, that the described impacts were mitigated.
Another objection was the concentration of energy at the site. The appellants said this constituted a “hazard. The amount of energy that Clearway proposes to store on-site in lithium-ion battery storage systems is staggering. At full power, the recently decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station had the capacity to generate 2,150 million watts of electrical energy. Clearway proposes to store 450 million watts of electrical energy in lithium-ion batteries. This is almost one-quarter as much energy as the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station produced.”
The county’s land use services division responded, “Clearway’s battery storage system will have a number of advanced safety features not present at the battery storage project referenced in the appeal to ensure a higher level of safety and protection for the Daggett energy storage systems. Clearway will use small cabinets about the size of a household refrigerator designed and tested to isolate and extinguish an internal battery fire prior to it spreading to any nearby batteries, thus isolating the fire event to much less than 1 percent of the total energy storage system facility.”
The turnout for the board hearing Tuesday included a large number of Daggett and Newberry Springs residents opposed to the project. Clearway sought to counter that with the presence of Clearway’s senior director of development, James Kelly, and a number of blue-collar construction workers and union members who spoke in favor of the project because of the employment it would provide them. Those who commented on the project during the public input portion of the hearing were Sheri Buchanan, David Buchanan, Robert Shaw, Robert Kasner, Carl Pugh, Jesse Wright, Thomas Ruiz, Margie Roberts, Justin Dillman, Brian Fisher, Donna Alvord, Adam Kington, Linda Parker, Ted Stimpfel, Fred Stearn, Glen Van Dam, Andron Harter, Sean L. Swoboda, Tim Rohm, Jay Lindberg, Bill Perez, Paul Smith, Steve Bardwell and Constance Walsh.
Kelly acknowledged there were “seven or eight” homes in close proximity to the project’s later phases, with one that will be less than a football field away, at roughly 185 feet.
Kelly’s statement that Daggett Solar Power Facility 1 will comply with the board’s wish that the solar field be placed somewhat further away from the existing nearby homes and that his company would endeavor to monitor and control dust and deal with air quality issues at the site convinced the supervisors, on a motion by Supervisor Robert Lovingood seconded by Supervisor Janice Rutherford, to unanimously uphold the planning commission’s approval of the undertaking, with an amendment that the developer address the project setback requirement to lessen the impact on nearby homes.
-Mark Gutglueck

An intensified search for a lost hiker on Mt. Baldy had entered its fourth day today, with no sign of his whereabouts in the unforgiving terrain of the treacherous mountain that has claimed the lives of dozens of those who have braved it during the inclemency of winter over the years.
Though the official onset of winter will not come until the December 22 solstice, severe winter conditions enshroud the San Gabriel Mountains, with most high-altitude trails covered with waist-deep snow or slick ice.
Sreenivas Mokkapati, 52 of Irvine, said to be an experienced hiker, embarked with three colleagues on Sunday, December 8 from 4,324‬-foot elevation Bear Flats, determined to follow a steep trail that would take the party to the 10,064-foot summit of Mt. Baldy, involving an ascent of 5,740 feet in six miles, a challenging hike.
The Bear Canyon Trail does not involve the more popular and less grueling route from Manker Flats to the Baldy Ski Hut and then across the highly dangerous Devil’s Backbone, but it does entail a continuously angled route that is exposed for much of its distance, together with occasional sheer drop-offs on either side that are as terrifying as those on the Devil’s Backbone.
Mokkapati was said to have been well-equipped, with an extra pair of shoes and woolen socks in his backpack. He was wearing warm clothing, including a gray jacket and cargo pants. At some point he became separated from his companions.
On Tuesday, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Search and Rescue Team was in the area, having plucked two stranded hikers off of the Devil’s Backbone. It was at that point that the search for Mokkapati began in earnest.
Conditions on the mountain are brutal, with high winds gusting to more than 40 miles an hour, daytime temperatures in the 40s and 50s, with nighttime temperatures dropping into the 30s and 20s, with the windchill factor lowering that to near zero degrees Fahrenheit.
By press time today, Mokkapati had not been located. An even more intensive search is scheduled to begin tomorrow morning, involving more than 100, with volunteer searchers and Alpine teams from Los Angeles, Riverside and Kern counties joining with their counterparts from San Bernardino County.

John Abad maintains his candidacy for 7th Ward Councilman is driven by his perception that the incumbent has been indolent in redressing the ward’s and the city’s obvious problems.
Abad, along with David Mlynarski, Damon Alexander, and Esmeralda Negrete are challenging Jim Mulvihill, who has been the 7th Ward councilman since 2013, when he was chosen in a special election to replace Wendy McCammack, who had been displaced in a recall election. Mulvihill, who is a retired urban planner and college professor, was reelected in 2015, when he defeated developer Scott Beard.
Mulvihill’s term in office began after the city’s 2012 bankruptcy filing. The city continued to function under bankruptcy protection until mid 2017, and all of his tenure in office has been marked by the fiscal constraints the city has been functioning under.
Abad, who in 2013 ran unsuccessfully for city council against Virginia Marquez in the city’s 1st Ward when he lived there, said he believes Mulvihill and the rest of the council have been less than fully engaged and energetic in coming to terms with the city’s myriad challenges.
“These things have been a major issue for quite a long time,” Abad said. “I don’t see too much progress in San Bernardino and the 7th Ward.”  Other cities that had filed for bankruptcy protection had bounced back by “vastly increasing their tax base, improving housing and development,” Abad said. “That’s not what I see here. It is stagnant.”
Other than “some federal funds for freeways and the state’s involvement through Caltrans,” Abad said, “There is no federal funding that we should be getting coming through. San Bernardino needs to have an army of grant writers put into place. We should be going after federal funds to build a homeless veterans home. I think we need to work hard to get federal and state funds to improve San Bernardino.”
Abad said the city is locked in a vicious cycle whereby neglect has begotten deterioration leading to a variety of social ills and outward blight, creating a situation in which the remaining middle class residents are electing to take flight, leading to further deterioration and an accompanying unwillingness to invest in improvements and maintenance, causing further neglect.
“Because we have crime, things are bad and getting worse,” Abad said. “We need to improve the streets and the blighted areas. We need jobs to put more people to work and create a vital economy. There are so few jobs in this area, most people drive 20 or 30 miles out of San Bernardino to their work, which takes them outside of the area and they shop out of the area. We need to bring back the middle class and better housing, better condominiums and homes and businesses. We are not doing that.”
Abad said, “We need a better tax base to improve San Bernardino. Go up any street from Baseline to Highland. Follow Del Rosa up toward the foothills, then take another street back to the freeway and you will see the same thing. It is not improving. Over the years the city did a little eminent domain to where the city owns over 100 properties. They should sell those to anyone who is ready to develop them or use them. No one wants to build homes. The city is not going to attract developers without some incentive. We have to engage in quality building to make it more like Redlands and Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana. They [the council and city management] are not doing that.”
The city is failing to put its best foot forward, Abad said, by having its subsidized housing, much of which is in poor repair, in the center of the city, which is warding off any potential investors or developers.
“They need to put those Section 8 type of homes and apartment complexes somewhere else,” he said. “They are right there where it makes the city look bad. We need to give those people who live in the central core some self esteem. If we keep them there, it says to the world this is a lower economic area. That’s counterproductive.”
Mulvihill, despite his expertise in urban planning and other experience, is oblivious to the reality on the streets, Abad said. “He is a little older than I am and he has city planning degrees, but I think he is a little antiquated and being happy with the way San Bernardardino is,” Abad said of Mulvihill. “I don’t think he should be happy with the way San Bernardino is. I don’t think he goes to 7-11 in the morning for coffee and encounters homeless and the indigent people who are there begging for money. There are homeless all over the city. There are homeless and people living in transitional housing everywhere.  You can see them in morning sleeping on the sidewalk or in abandoned buildings. Many are mentally incapacitated. They are on the roads where children are walking to school. You get worried about your children having to deal with them. The same thing happens up on 30th Street around the schools there. You have children who are afraid to go into 7-11 in the morning. Every morning on Highland you see the same thing, the homeless are in front of Circle K and 7-11 and the doughnut shops. You see the police encouraging them to move on. There presence is so disturbing, people will avoid shopping at the stores where they are.”
The city needs to migrate toward a higher standard than the one that has settled over it, Abad said.
“We have too many stores like the 99 Cent Store that appeal to that lower income bracket,” Abad said. “They are there for the 67 percent of the city that are in that lower income group, and they need those type of stores that sell what they can afford, but you have to bring in some quality shopping and attract some middle class people to the city. We need to be able to offer housing to people who work in Grand Terrace and Loma Linda at the hospital there and in Redllands, teachers from the districts around the area who have decent incomes.”
Abad moved to San Bernardino as a child with his family in the 1950s, and he attended San Bernardino schools and has lived in San Bernardino for 30 years of his adult life. As an adult he moved to Redlands for a time but returned to San Bernardino.
He says he is intimately familiar with the city, having lived in many of its districts. He says the city offers a number of features and amenities that make it a great place, but that neglect and mismanagement have created a circumstance in which the vast majority of the city’s residents do not avail themselves of them. An example, he said, are the sports competitions that are held at the various high school venues. Having participated in sports when he was a student himself, Abad said he is drawn to these.
“It is sad to see very few people at those sporting events,” he said. “I have encountered some people who are members of school spirit clubs who go to athletic competitions. Like me, they want to cheer on San Bernardino or the team of the school they attended, and they do. But there aren’t too many of us. We have plenty of population here to support those teams, but if you ask most people why they’re not willing to go, they’ll say, ‘It’s too dark over there. San Bernardino has too many vagrants, vandals and homeless. They’re around the school at night.’ That’s why they won’t go and watch a basketball game or a football game. I am not afraid to walk around the city. I’m a hometown boy. I’m not leaving, and if I want to watch a game or a wrestling match or a track meet, I’m staying right here in town to do it.”
As that school spirit has diminished, so has pride in San Bernardino, Abad said. “We used to be better than Riverside,” he said. “People don’t say they love San Bernardino anymore. We have got to get it back to being a respectable place, what it was in the past. I want to build the city up and give it some respectability.”
Abad said, “I’d like to at least try to donate something back to the community. Before, I was teaching high school students to be citizens, teaching history and economics, and then they’d go out on their own and come to their real life. Young people are going out onto the streets of San Bernardino and they see how life works. It can be really discouraging, when you see the reality, see how it really is, what the reality is in San Bernardino. Secombe Park used to be a very nice place. I’ll bet you half the people who live here now would never go there. They won’t go to the other run-down areas. The high school graduates, the young adults, if they have ambition, they don’t see any chance of fulfilling it here. They say there is no future here in the engineering field or the medical profession of getting on the police force. They want to get into a respectable place with a job that will pay enough to protect their future. San Bernardino Valley is a good college but they’d rather go to Chaffey or Riverside City or Crafton. I say ‘Why not San Bernardino?’ But for them, it is just that they see the surrounding community day after day and want to go to a newer community college. I want to see improvement that will convince them differently.”
Abad says he has engaged with Councilman Henry Nickel from time to time and a few of the other members of the council, but that he finds his exchanges with Mulvihill to be a frustrating dead-end.
“I was talking to him about trees,” Abad said. “There was a neighborhood where the city took them out. They never replanted them. I happened to run into Jim [Mulvihill] on the street and said I was interested in planting some palm trees to take their place. He said, ‘Palm trees are prone to disease.’ I asked what the alternative is. He said I should call the city about getting trees they have which would go in. I did that, or I tried. I had to get permission, and then it was nothing but a constant run around. My thinking is that Jim Mulvihill knows what the problem is but he is overwhelmed. He’ll consider something long enough to give a speech, and then he just turns the corner and forgets about it. With him, it’s out of sight, out of mind. That’s why I think he has competition right now. There are some good candidates running against him.”
Abad said, “I worked at the Stater Bros. warehouse and I was a high school teacher for 30 years. I know what it is to work hard. I know what it is to teach children.”
A Pacific High School graduate, Abad went to San Bernardino Valley College where he earned an A.A. degree in sociology before moving on to UCLA and earning a bachelor’s degree in sociology with a minor in kinesiology. He subsequently obtained a master’s degree in education and counseling from Cal State San Bernardino. He began his teaching career at Shandin Hills Middle School and then worked for the Colton Unified School District teaching at Bloomington High and subsequently moved to the Fontana School District, teaching at A.B. Miller High School, including a stint as a special education teacher.
He is remarried after the death of his first wife. He has two grown children, one who is an adjunct college professor and the other a supervisor of laboratory technicians with Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco.
-Mark Gutglueck

In the November 15 edition of the Sentinel in the history column about Amasa Lyman, the Sentinel stated that one of Lyman’s wives, Carolyn Partridge, was living with him in San Bernardino. While Luther Ingersoll’s Century Annals of San Bernardino County, which was published in 1904 and is considered an authoritative account of early San Bernardino County history, places Carolyn Partridge in San Bernardino in the 1850s, records in Utah indicated that Carolyn Partridge did not accompany her husband to California in the 1850s, and in fact remained in Utah.
In the Sentinel’s December 5 edition, it was reported that the City of Upland has two water wells. In fact, the city owns nine currently active wells.

To download a PDF of the December 6 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel, click on the blue portal below.

Sentinel 12-06-19