By Mark Gutglueck
James Markman’s second run as Upland city attorney may be coming toward an end.
Prior to its open public meeting slated to begin at 7 p.m. on October 14, the Upland City Council is scheduled to take up during a closed session what its agenda states is a “public employee performance evaluation and consideration of public employee dismissal and related actions pursuant to California Government Code Section 54957” relating to the “city attorney.”
Markman was the lead attorney with the law firm of Markman Arczynski Hanson Curley & Slough, which was founded in 1982. That firm is no longer active, and several of its members, including Markman and William Curley, subsequently signed on with the law firm of Richards Watson & Gershon. Markman is now a shareholder in Richards Watson & Gershon, where he specializes in representing municipalities and water agencies.
Markman has served as city attorney for the City of La Mirada since 1980 and City Attorney for the City of Rancho Cucamonga since 1985. He is general counsel to the Beaumont-Cherry Valley Water District and the Antelope Valley East Kern Water Agency. He was the city attorney for the City of Brea for 40 years and is now considered the senior attorney there.
In 1993, Markman accepted an assignment with the City of Upland as its redevelopment attorney, while Don Maroney was Upland city attorney. After Maroney’s retirement in 1996, Markman moved into the city attorney’s position. In 2003, after concerns surfaced about the potential conflict in Markman representing Upland and Rancho Cucamonga, which are contiguous, the City of Upland continued to contract with Richards Watson & Gershon as the city’s counsel, but had Curley take on the designation and duty of city attorney.
In 2010, then-Upland Mayor John Pomierski and the entirety of Upland’s governmental structure were enveloped in scandal, with the FBI and IRS carrying out searches of City Hall, Pomierski’s business offices, Pomierski’s home and the offices and homes of Pomierski’s business associates and affiliates. In 2011 Pomierski resigned from office and then was named in a federal indictment alleging bribe taking and political corruption. In 2012, Pomierski pleaded guilty and his handpicked city manager, Robb Quincey, was charged with three felonies relating to corruption in office. The same year, the Upland City Council, having grown alarmed that the city had paid Richards Watson & Gershon over $8 million since Curley took over as city attorney in June 2003 with $6 million of those legal fees having accrued since 2009, jettisoned Richards Watson & Gershon as the city’s legal counsel. For a duration, the city utilized the services of Chino City Attorney Jimmy Gutierrez as interim city attorney, and then brought in the law firm of Jones Mayer as its legal representative, with Kimberly Hall Barlow and Richard L. Adams II serving as city attorney at different times.
In 2017, the Upland City Council abruptly ended its relationship with Jones Mayer, and brought Markman back as city attorney, as the city council as it was then composed did not have the same misgivings about Markman serving as the city attorney in the City of Gracious Living while he filled that role in neighboring Rancho Cucamonga.
For more than a year-and-a-half thereafter, Markman enabled the Upland City Council in carrying out a number of actions a majority of its members were determined to see through.
One of those involved, in 2017, the City of Upland’s application to the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission to dissolve its 111-year-old municipal fire department and have fire suppression, fire prevention and emergency medical service duties in Upland assumed by the county fire department. A second action taken by the city council under Markman’s guidance was the use of conduit financing in which the city in 2017 lent to San Antonio Regional Hospital its authority pertaining to the issuance of tax exempt bonds, in this case what are called certificates of participation, that were sold to certificate buyers by the hospital so the proceeds from those sales could be used to undertake an expansion of the hospital and its facilities. A third action the council engaged in under Markman’s watch as city attorney was the 2018 sale of 4.631 acres, or 12 percent, of Memorial Park to San Antonio Hospital for that entity to use toward the construction of a multistory parking structure to accommodate the hospital’s growth and influx of patients. In making the sale, the city council agreed to sell the park property to the hospital, the primary campus of which adjoins the 38.5 acre park, at a price of $906,931.55 per acre, deemed to be slightly above the property’s fair market value, according to then-Community Development Director Jeff Zwack, such that the hospital was to pay $4.2 million to acquire the property.
The close-out of the Upland Municipal Fire Department and the effort to reduce the recreational area at Memorial Park proved highly controversial and unpopular with Upland’s residents. In the 2018 election, three of the members of the city council who supported those initiatives – Gino Filippi, Carol Timm and Sid Robinson – were either displaced by the voters or left office in the face of massive resident discontent. The lone member of the council to oppose the shuttering of the fire department and the sale of the parkland – Janice Elliott – was endorsed by the voters, as she ran that year in what was the city’s first by-district election following its 112-year history of at-large elections, when she was chosen to serve as councilwoman in the city’s Second District.
In the meantime, questions emerged about the propriety, ethics, legality, advisability and general wisdom of those actions by the council, as well as the general quality of Markman’s counsel to the council while they were being carried out.
The shuttering of the city’s fire department entailed the annexing of Upland to the county’s neighboring and contiguous West Valley Service Area that included San Antonio Heights, whereupon both San Antonio Heights and Upland were annexed into Fire Protection Service Zone Five, what was at that point a discontiguous fire service district created in 2006 to provide fire safety and emergency medical treatment to the isolated Mojave Desert communities of Helendale and Silverlakes, which lie some 48 miles as the crow flies and 65 miles driving distance from Upland.
The controversial “annexation” of Upland and San Antonio Heights into Fire Protection Service Zone Five entailed the imposition of a $148.68 annual assessment with inflation adjustments into perpetuity. The county and city agreed to the option of tacking on the Fire Protection Service Zone Five service zone tax as part of the agreement to defray the cost of the county fire department providing that service. Upland City officials, with the exception of Elliott, were all for it, as having the county take on the task of operating a fire department on the city’s behalf relieved City Hall of having to pay for fire safety operations. The city’s taxpayers, who throughout the city’s 111-year history had been provided with fire service as a consequence of basic municipal function, took up the financial slack by being consigned to paying the $148.86 assessment. Thereafter, the city committed to turning over 51 percent of its share of property tax collected within the city to the county as part of the deal. Using the never before-imposed assessments paid by the city’s residents, business operators and property owners to offset a substantial portion of the burden of defraying the cost of the city’s fire protection service, the city pocketed the difference it realized from the closure of the fire department, and used the money it netted as it deemed necessary, which in practical terms meant paying down its substantial costs in providing pensions to retired municipal employees.
One small catch attended, however. Under California law, residents have a right to approve whatever newly created tax is to be imposed on them collectively, in some cases by a simple majority vote and in others by a two-thirds majority. Recognizing that there was virtually no possibility that the residents of Upland and San Antonio Heights would approve a $148.68 assessment on themselves to pay for a service they were already receiving, the city, the county and the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) rigged the process so that the voting requirement was met not by a traditional balloting in which those participating cast simple “yes” or “no” or “for” or “against” votes but rather through what is known as a protest procedure. Under that process, notifications of the pending ushering of all property owners into the proposed assessment zone expansion area were sent out. Those who lodged a protest within thirty days were deemed to have voted against the annexation. Those who did not lodge a protest were deemed to have voted for the annexation. While a majority of the residents/land owners in 2.619 square mile, 3,371-population San Antonio Heights, galvanized by what the City of Upland and the county were attempting to do to them, lodged protests, that did not prevent the Local Agency Formation Commission from annexing them into Fire Protection Service Zone Five, as the protest process applied to the entirety of Upland and San Antonio Heights, and fewer than two percent of the voting residents/property owners in 15.66 square mile, 76,000 population Upland went on record as being against the annexation.
A sizable group of San Antonio Heights residents, however, banded together as a collective known as the San Antonio Heights Homeowners Association. Represented by attorney Cory Briggs, the San Antonio Heights Homeowners Association, with the financial backing of a handful of Upland residents, filed suit in the summer of 2017, contesting the annexation. That suit survived three attempts by the city, county and the Local Agency Formation Commission to have it dismissed. In January 2019, Judge David Cohn ruled that the Upland and San Antonio Heights assessments were illegally imposed. In his decision, Judge Cohn held that the Local Agency Formation Commission does not have the authority to annex properties into service zones and that while annexation of the city and San Antonio Heights into the district was valid, the narrower annexation into the service zone within the district was not, averring accordingly that the imposition of the $148.86 annual assessment on property owners as a feature of the fire zone expansion was “improper and must be enjoined,” and that the Local Agency Formation Commission, the county and the city seeking and then approving an annexation that is specifically prohibited by law was a prejudicial abuse of the agency’s discretion. Upland, the county and the Local Agency Formation Commission have appealed Cohn’s ruling.
Because it was anticipated that the sale of the 4.631 acres of Memorial Park would raise the hackles of the community, Markman advised the city council in 2018 to authorize him to file a so-called validation proceeding intended to foreclose any procedural or future legal challenge to the sale. The council authorized him to do so. In its validation action filed with the court, the city invited anyone opposed to the sale to lodge a protest, which would then be heard by a judge rather than being subjected to a vote. The 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. Markman’s calculation 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 Judge David Cohn in San Bernardino. To the chagrin of city officials, Marjorie Mikels, an attorney living in the city, as well as Cory Briggs, who had represented the San Antonio Heights Homeowners Association in its suit against the city relating to the fire service district service zone annexation also heard by Cohn, filed answers to the validation action. Mikels did so on behalf of herself and a few Upland residents. Briggs did so as an attorney retained by other Upland residents.
Those responses took issue with the sale on multiple grounds. Among those was that the city selling off a slice of the park – in particular the one sold by the council on March 26, 2018, which includes a 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.
Having miscalculated in his assumption that no one would come forward to contest the sale in the course of the validation proceeding, Markman was obliged in the face of Briggs’ and Mikels’ filings to make a convincing case to Judge Cohn that the city council, acting on its own authority, was within its rights to sell off city land. Faced with 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 validation action, dismissed the city’s petition for validation. In effect, anyone with standing – meaning essentially any city resident – was yet at liberty to file a lawsuit challenging the sale.
Markman, who together with his law firm had billed the city for its representation of the city with regard to the validation action, made a motion to deny Briggs’ and Mikels’ recovery of their legal fees as the prevailing party in the validation action. Considering that Briggs and Mikels had expended their efforts in preserving city residents’ rights under California law, Markman’s request, which Judge Cohn granted, was seen as an effort to inhibit the ability of Upland’s residents to protect themselves from governmental overreach and the violation of their rights in the future. The city council by that point had undergone a makeover in which three of its members who had authorized the parkland sale were no longer on the panel. At least two of the members of the city council as it is now composed were likewise taken aback by Markman’s action.
By most definitions, San Antonio Hospital is Upland’s most prestigious institution, one that has been in existence in Upland, previously at a different location, since 1907. It is the city’s largest employer, larger than the Upland Unified School District and the City of Upland combined. As the City of Gracious Living’s major non-governmental entity, it is also the city’s single largest provider of services to individuals living outside the city, thus representing a major draw of revenue into the city.
In 2011, upon Harris Koenig becoming San Antonio Community Hospital’s president and chief executive officer, the hospital embarked on a six-year long series of planned expansion stages, Over that span, the number of beds at the facility increased from 271 to over 400. Included in that expansion was the $160 million four-story Vineyard Tower at 999 San Bernardino Road, which upped the number of stations in the hospital’s emergency room from 34 to 52, while creating and outfitting 12 more intensive care units. By 2015, San Antonio had transitioned from a community hospital intended as a care facility for those living in Upland and at its periphery to a regional hospital, and that uprating was reflected in its name.
In 2017, San Antonio Regional Hospital undertook a partnership with the City of Hope, looking to expand even further, entailing the erection of a $30 million, 60,000-square foot structure at 1100 San Bernardino Road to house an ambulatory care center as well as a City of Hope outpatient cancer center on the first floor.
The City of Hope-affiliated facilities entail ones offering chemotherapy, radiation, and surgical services, intended to be of benefit to local cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, as the treatment regimen they are subjected to can greatly weaken and fatigue them. Having the outpatient center in Upland can reduce the traveling distance for many of those patients and their families by as much as 24 miles, the distance between San Antonio Hospital and the City of Hope in Duarte.
The more than five-years of expansion initiated in 2011 had been paid for in no small measure by conduit financing, which was based upon the City of Upland using its authority as a municipality and public agency to issue tax-exempt bonds. In 2011, while Bill Curley was yet city attorney, the Upland City Council as it was then composed authorized the issuance of $125,000,000 in certificates of participation for San Antonio Hospital. Theoretically, in serving as a conduit in such arrangements, the city accrues no risk whatsoever in lending its tax-exempt bonding authority to those entities it deems fit. The city extends this generosity based upon the public benefit offered by those institutions – such as in the instant case San Antonio Hospital or in other cases developers of senior citizen or low to moderate-income housing. Even though the issuance of the bonds or certificates of participation is done through the city, the entities to whom the revenue from the sale of the certificates is passed through to are wholly responsible for the debt service entailed in the 20-to-30 years of bond payments the holders of the certificates are entitled to receive. Because the city’s authority as a public entity is brought to bear in making the issuances, the certificates of participation are marketed as tax-exempt instruments, making them more attractive to potential “participants,” that is, the certificate purchasers. Since the purchasers do not need to pay taxes on the regular repayments they receive as holders of the certificates, San Antonio Hospital did not need to pay them as high of an interest rate return, thus decreasing the hospital’s expansion financing costs.
On December 4, 2017, the Upland City Council voted to authorize another round of issuances of the $125,000,000 in certificates of participation its predecessor council had created in 2011 for the express purpose of creating financing to benefit San Antonio Regional Hospital, thus providing the capital needed to allow the next round of the hospital’s ongoing expansion to proceed. The law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, the city’s bond counsel, prepared and reviewed the documents relevant to the sale with regard to documentation and procedure, as did Markman as the city attorney, to move the transaction forward. San Antonio Hospital agreed to indemnify the city and its officers, agents and employees with respect to the financing and to reimburse the city for its costs incurred in the financing.
While San Antonio Hospital indeed saw growth in its earnings over the eight-year period that its aggressive expansion effort has been ongoing, that income increase was outrun substantially by the costs of engaging in the expansion. Though the hospital had reserves as well as the ability to seek bridge loans and make other arrangements to remain solvent, by late this spring the reserves were exhausted and red ink was hemorrhaging from the institution’s books. This situation had alarmed San Antonio’s board of directors.
According to a report from moodys.com dated May 8, 2019 obtained by the Sentinel, Moody’s Investors Services downgraded San Antonio Regional Hospital’s bond revenue rating from Baa3 to Baa2. Simultaneously, the hospital’s fiscal outlook was revised from stable to negative. That particular action immediately impacted $1.42 million of rated debt issued by the City of Upland.
Indications were that San Antonio Hospital’s reach had substantially exceeded its grasp in undertaking the expansion. According to Moody’s, the hospital was suffering from poor operating performance and its debt service coverage was out of balance. It had a marked decline in its liquidity and was facing increasing competitive pressures just as its affiliation with the City of Hope was diluting its income stream, according to Moody’s.
According to Moody’s, the hospital had operating revenues in Fiscal Year 2017 of $323 million, but is carrying the liability of certificates of participation issued in 2017 and issued in 2011 which are secured by a gross receivable pledge of the hospital. Meanwhile, the hospital has no debt service reserve fund. Covenants impacting the hospital include an ongoing debt service coverage test of 1.1 times, and additional indebtedness tests.
Last month, on September 10, the San Antonio Hospital board terminated Koenig as the hospital’s president and chief executive officer.
That development garnered the attention of a wide cross section of the Upland community and sparked an examination of the cavalier approach the city had taken in lending its authority to orchestrate tax-exempt financing for the hospital, and by extension, the concept of conduit financing altogether.
Given the value they saw in promoting the hospital which unquestionably represents a public benefit to Upland and its residents, previous city councils were willing to assist the hospital where they could, and utilized the city’s authority as a governmental entity to make tax-exempt bond issuances to finance the institution’s growth. Quite plainly, however, those council members collectively had at best an imperfect understanding of the processes and implication of conduit financing. This made the council highly dependent on the far more worldly and sophisticated Markman, a graduate of Cornell Law School who has been practicing law for a half century after having been admitted as a member of the California Bar in 1969, and who is a stockholder in a major Southern California law firm.
A full examination of Markman’s role in advising the city with regard to conduit financing has turned up some troubling issues. The conduit financing for San Antonio Hospital was not the only such arrangement entered into by the City of Upland in 2017 under Markman’s watch.  On June 26, 2017, the Upland City Council approved a promissory note and loan agreement for refinancing the Sunset Ridge Apartments. According to the staff report accompanying that item, Markman’s firm, Richards Watson & Gershon, was appointed as bond council with regard to the issuance. Exactly one month later, on July 26, 2017, there was a $14,865,000 issuance of a 2017 bond series in the form of a multifamily housing revenue note for the Sunset Ridge Apartments and Village Apartments.
Typically, bond counsel is provided with .25 to .5 percent of the entire issuance as a fee for services rendered with regard to the attendant legalities involved in preparing and making such issuances. Thus, it would appear that Richards Watson & Gershon netted at least $37,162.50 in connection with the issuance of the ‬$14.865 million Sunset Ridge Apartments and Village Apartments revenue note. The precise percentage of the bond amount Markman’s firm was paid in the Sunset Ridge/Village issuance, which existed in the form of certificates of participation, is not shown in any of the documentation of the issuance put out by the city at the time.
Markman in this way churned legal fees for his law firm based on counsel he was providing the city council when he advised its members it was okay for the city to proceed with assisting the owners of the Sunset Ridge Apartments and the Village Apartments through the June 2017 conduit financing involving the promissory note and loan agreement. As a shareholder in Richard Watson & Gershon, Markman is entitled to a percentage of the profits the law firm realizes in its operations and representations of clients. According to a California Attorney General’s opinion provided in 2016, California Government Code section 1090 prohibits public officials, such as city employees, from being financially interested in contracts made by them in their official capacities, including an attorney contracting with a city to perform city attorney legal services acting as bond counsel for the same city and being paid a percentage of the bond issuance for providing such services.
Three of the current members of the council were not on the 2017 council that approved the issuance of the $14.865 million Sunset Ridge Apartments and Village Apartments revenue note. There has been no public statement issued from the council or any of its members with regard to whether the council collectively or any of its members individually believe the conflict inherent in Markman advising the city as to whether it should engage in conduit financing arrangements and the income he has personally derived as a consequence of his firm’s involvement in the resultant bond/certificate issuances has compromised his ability to render unbiased  service to the city. That the council has scheduled Monday’s performance evaluation and consideration of  dismissal is a sign, the Sentinel was informed, that there are at least two members of the council who have questions in that regard, and that they too are troubled by Markman’s performance with regard to shuttering of the city’s fire department simultaneous with the city’s property owners being straitjacketed without a vote into what a judge now says is an illegally imposed assessment zone, as well as his continuing efforts to deny the city’s residents the ability to vote on reducing their park acreage.

A full generation after the shuttering of Norton Air Force Base, the board overseeing the entity that has replaced it sounded a call to make a serious effort to transition it into a regional passenger airport.
The Department of Defense signaled its intention to close Norton Air Force Base in 1988 and made good on that in 1994, an event that is widely recognized as the single largest factor in the demise of the economy in once-thriving San Bernardino.
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.
Despite the infusion of substantial amounts of money from the cities and the rerouting of property tax away from the county and the cities, primarily Highland, San Bernardino and to a lesser extent Redlands and Loma Linda, to the authority and agency to fund their operations, 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.
Recognizing that both the authority and the agency were being exploited by certain board members and staff members, the cities of Redlands and Grand Terrace opted out of both joint powers arrangements. The City of Highland, which grew highly skeptical after witnessing the position of Inland Valley Development Agency executive director being given to T. Milford Harrison, a former Loma Linda councilman and mayor and that city’s economic development director, withdrew from the Inland Valley Economic Development Agency.
Meanwhile, property tax money that would have otherwise gone to the cities upon which the airport sits as well as the surrounding cities – San Bernardino, Highland, Redlands and Loma Linda – has instead been slurped up by the authority and the agency. The cities have thus missed out on hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue over the last two-and-one-half decades.
In 2007, without any competitive bidding, the San Bernardino International Airport Authority 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.
At the September 25 meeting of the San Bernardino International Airport Authority Board, members talked about doing something to get the airport off of top dead center so that it actually functions like an airport, where planes land and from which planes take off. It was suggested that grandiose designs such as those implied in the airport’s branding as an international facility was a bit unrealistic at this point and that the airport would need to grow gradually and incrementally. Most logical in that progression was getting more charter flights to use the facility and to have it recognized as a convenient alternative landing facility for the Southland’s two largest airports, Los Angeles International Airport and Ontario International Airport.
Loma Linda Councilman Ovidiu Popescu, who is his city’s representative on the authority, said, “I think there’s an opportunity for charter flights. We’ve had a few. I think we can have a lot more. We’ve had some military flights. I think there’s an opportunity to have even more. I think that should be a key focus. We’ve just been added to the FAA’s [the Federal Aviation Administration’s] list of being a diversionary airport and I think we should work hard to talk to every single airline that goes into LAX [Los Angeles International Airport] to use us in case they need us. Most people don’t realize that there’s literally dozens and dozens of flights that get diverted from LAX because of weather. They get moved everywhere.”
Popescu referenced having supply bunks and beds in whatever Air Force barracks remain at the base, where passengers waiting at the airport could be put up for several hours or a whole night while the control tower makes arrangements for the flight they were on to be sent on to its original destination. “It’s an opportunity for us,” Popescu said. “It’s a very niche market because in a sense we’re not a very busy airport. We could meet that niche. I think that should be the goal.”
Highland Councilman Larry McCallon said, “This airport should be the economic engine for this part of the county. So far, it’s evolving, but I think we can do more in terms of generating jobs and helping the economy in this area.”
Colton’s representative on the board, Mayor Frank Navarro, rather dubiously asserted “The jobs we have created are greater than what was here when Norton was active. That’s commendable that we did provide all those jobs.  We are at at point where our logistics is pretty well set up.”
Navarro continued, “We are still working on logistical deals and yes, I do agree that we do need to expand the utilization of the airport to include commercial airlines coming in. Whether it’s one or two to begin with, it’s a baby-step thing. And the first and most critical item we have to address is Customs being here available when the flights come in. If a flight’s coming in and we don’t have the support staff from Customs, flights aren’t going to stop here. It’s going to go someplace else. So, we need to make sure we get that part of the plan set up in a concrete fashion to where we can say, ‘Yes, we feel very strong. We feel comfortable in the relationship we have established with Customs.’ So we can tell this airline, ‘We’re ready for you.’”
San Bernardino Coucilman Ted Sanchez, who with Mayor John Valdivia represents the City of San Bernardino on the authority board, said the authority and the airport’s management needed to “adjust the [airport’s] business plan to reflect the priorities the board has established.”
Valdivia, the board’s chairman, told Sanchez to make a stab at framing a resolution the board could vote upon.
“So, first of all, that staff actively approach fulfilling the goal of bringing commercial airlines…” Sanchez began, whereupon Valdivia interjected, “-meaning international or domestic scheduled passenger flights,” after which Sanchez continued, “as well as actively approach getting personnel from the Customs and Border Patrol to staff our airport needs and we’re also looking to diversify our cargo intake. Right now we’re vulnerable to the whims of the market. We need to diversify our investments and our marketing of this airport as a commercial cargo hub.”
Thereupon the full board, including Third District San Bernardino County Supervisor Dawn Rowe, voted to have staff “begin actively fulfilling a goal of bringing commercial airlines whether they be domestic or international [and] actively approach getting personal from Customs and Border Patrol to staff”  the airport.
-Mark Gutglueck

Under new guidelines set out by San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Bob Page, San Bernardino County’s poll workers will allow those showing up at the polls for the California Primary and General elections in 2020 to register to vote on the spot and cast provisional ballots. The ballots cast by the just-registered voters will be set aside and counted after the bona fides of each individual new registree is verified.
That new policy was among several changes announced during a meeting between Page, senior county election office staff members and the 22 of the 24 city and town clerks from around San Bernardino County or their representatives held on Wednesday, October 9.
Attending were Barstow City Clerk Joanne Cousino, Big Bear Lake City Clerk Erica Stephenson, Chino City Clerk Angela Robles, Chino Hills City Clerk Cheryl Balz, Twentynine Palms City Clerk Cindy Villescas, Upland City Clerk Kari Johnson, Colton City Clerk Carolina Padilla, Grand Terrace City Clerk Debra Thomas, Hesperia City Clerk Melinda Sayer, Highland City Clerk Betty Hughes, Loma Linda City Clerk Barbara Nicholson, Montclair City Clerk Andrea Phillips, Redlands City Clerk Jeane Donaldson, San Bernardino City Clerk Georgeann Hanna, Victorville City Clerk Charlene Robinson and Yucca Valley Town Clerk Lesley Copeland. Attending the meeting for Apple Valley Town Clerk La Vonda Pearson was Kiel Mangerino; for Ontario City Clerk Sheila Mautz was Vicki Kasad; for Fontana City Clerk Tonia Lewis was Evelyne Ssenkoloto; for Rancho Cucamonga City Clerk Janice Reynolds were Linda Troyan and Patricia Valdez; and for Yucaipa City Clerk was Tammy Vaughan. Additionally, Cousino was accompanied by Tanya Gordon; Balz by Lynnae Sisemore; Padilla by Jacqueline Shook and Stephanie Vargas; and Hanna by Candice Alvarez and Diane Grant. Needles City Clerk Dale Jones participated telephonically. Adelanto City Clerk Brenda Lopez and Rialto City Clerk Barbara McGee did not attend.
Referred to as a “roundtable discussion” intended to prepare each of the cities or towns for the upcoming elections, Page briefed the attendees with regard to Assembly Bill 72, which was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom the previous day. AB 72 allows voters same day registration and the ability to vote at all polling places beginning in 2020. Previously, same day registration was permitted only at early-voting sites.
Early voting sites are locations around the county, including the Registrar of Voters headquarters at 777 East Rialto Avenue in San Bernardino, where voting machines, ballots and voting materials are available on weekdays in the weeks prior to the election so voters can cast ballots there and avoid having to vote at their designated precincts on election day or by mail.
Votes cast by a citizen registering at the polling station on the day of election will be provisional and counted last, as the registrar will need to verify that the person’s voting eligibility as well as making certain that voter has not voted in another county or another polling place. According to Page, the same-day registration and voting process will be aided by E-poll books, which are iPads, issued to election workers.
According to Page’s briefing, other equipment changes in the upcoming election will include new ballot marking machines and precinct scanners for ballots scanned at polling places so votes will be tallied at the polling places and the secure files transferred to the registrar of voters office. Two new mail-ballot counting machines and 20 mobile ballot printers are to be used at early voting sites.
After California Secretary of State Alex Padilla on February 27 of this year issued an edict calling for voting officials throughout the state to transition to voting systems that are in compliance with the California Voting System Standards adopted in 2015, and that they do so in time to conduct polling in conjunction with the March 3, 2020 California Primary election, the county board of supervisors voted to move ahead with the purchase of Dominion Voting Inc.’s $31.93 million Democracy Suite 5.2 voting system to be used countywide at its elections over, at minimum, the next 15 years.  Despite that outlay, it does not appear that the Dominion Voting program will be available for use in the March California primary in San Bernardino County. Instead, for the vast number of the county’s voters, paper – or actually cardboard – ballots will yet be used. The ballots to be used next year will have an oval to fill in, left of the candidate’s name, rather than ballots that required the voter to complete-the-arrow to the right of the candidate’s name which have been in use for the last decade.
In a statement to the Sentinel on Thursday, Page said  “Your assumption in July that the county’s purchase of a new [California] State-certified voting system would cause all voters to cast ballots electronically was incorrect. The primary method of voting will continue to be to mark a paper ballot, whether it is a ballot mailed to the voter or one provided at a polling place.”
Page on Wednesday said the state will defray roughly $8 million of the total cost of purchasing and putting into place the Dominion system.
Another specific issue of consequence taken up at the Wednesday meeting was the designation, or description, candidates are to be permitted to reference themselves by on the county’s ballots in the future. Over the past several years there have been disputes among some competing candidates over the manner in which certain candidates have characterized themselves or the titles they have laid claim to.
According to Page, ballot designations henceforth will not be approved without documentation that the candidate is employed in the fashion in which he or she claims or proof of what he or she does professionally or in some other capacity before that can be listed on the ballot as his or her designation. All candidates, including incumbents, will be required to provide such proof. Verification in some cases could include a pay stub, letter from the candidate’s employer’s human resources or personnel department or directly from his or her employer. If a candidate cannot provide documentation to the satisfaction of San Bernardino County’s in-house attorneys, no ballot designation will be granted.
To the Sentinel’s inquiry and suggestion that ratifying such a designation could require a subjective interpretation of complicated circumstances, Page said, “Regarding the candidate ballot designation process, the candidate must provide proof of the requested designation during the candidate filing period and the elections official has the authority and responsibility to reject a ballot designation that would mislead a voter or does not comply with Elections Code or California Code of Regulations.”
With regard to the changeover to allowing county residents to engage in last-minute registration, including registering on election day and then casting a provisional ballot, Page indicated that the county was complying with a new state law, and that measures were being taken to ensure that the new policy was not exploited to permit fraudulent voting. He said, “We are about to contract with a vendor for electronic poll books as we believe they provide us the most efficient and effective way to comply with SB 72, signed by the governor this week, which requires us to provide conditional voter registration and voting at all polling places starting in March 2020.”
Additionally, Page said, “The registrar of voters may implement additional changes to the voter experience in 2020, including the use of ballot scanners at voting locations to improve the counting process on election day and the use of electronic poll books instead of paper rosters to better check in voters and identify the correct ballot type for each voter. We have not yet made a final decision about whether and when to implement ballot scanners at voting locations. An image of every ballot scanned and the tally of votes for each scanner would be saved on a storage device and returned to the registrar of voters office after the polls close along with the paper ballots. A random sample of paper ballots from every contest on the ballots are to be hand counted to audit the accuracy of the machine count during the canvass period.”

By Grace Bernal
Jordan Barton, the starting quarterback for the Damien High School Spartans, had high expectations for his senior year coming into the 2019 season. Having already received athletic scholarship offers from Redlands University and Sacramento State, he was in the hunt to see what other colleges might be interested in his talent and providing him with a  possible stepping stone to a career in the NFL.
At a still-growing 5 foot 11 and a yet-to-fully fill out 165 pounds, Barton can throw level passes with zip accurately to 45 yards, and heave the pigskin somewhat wildly in a looping arc to 65 yards. The Spartans had come off a somewhat disappointing show of things last year, with an overall 4-7 record and a league record of 1-4, in Mark Paredes final season as coach. Last January marked the arrival of Matt Bechtel, a Damien alumnus, who had just guided South Hills High through a season where they rang up a string of 14 straight victories, a Hacienda League championship and then two lopsided post season victories before being defeated for the first time in the 2018 California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section title game against Lawndale.
Bechtel’s return to Damien as a coach, some 20 years after he had played there as a quarterback, was a good omen for Barton, who was hoping the on-and-off-the-field discipline Bechtel is known for instilling in his players would redound to his benefit, allowing him to function as the Spartan’s field general in an environment tightly controlled by Bechtel in his role as sideline general. That, with what he knew was a solid group of linemen in front of him and some talented receivers he had been working with at Damien over the previous three years, held out the promise of being able to cap his high school football career with a winning, and quite possibly a championship, senior year.
Barton realized that Bechtel’s advent at Damien meant that the playbook he had been utilizing for the first years he was at Damien was going out the window and he would be required to learn everything anew.
“I studied the playbook about an hour everyday, but sometimes it’s no set time,” Barton said. “I just keep with it until I feel that I fully understand everything and know all my assignments and those of my teammates.”
He added, “We practice about eight hours a week, not including film time, so, yes, I have mastered the playbook. There’s new stuff every week but it’s pretty easy to learn and remember.”
Barton was raring to go. The first game of the season, in a non-league contest against Glendora, he had what appeared to be an auspicious start. In the first half, he completed seven of thirteen passes for 92 yards with one touchdown throw to Jacob Leazonby. He had just hit his stride in the second half, with two completions in three passes during the Spartan’s first possession in the third quarter. Having yet avoided any interceptions, Barton was ushering the offensive unit downfield toward what looked to be another sure touchdown when disaster struck. On a pass play in which a linebacker was blitzing, the forward running back, who was supposed to pick up any intruders into the backfield, missed his blocking assignment. As Barton was dropping back and had just set up to throw a midrange pass to his left, he was lit up by the linebacker. Because of his athleticism, Barton did not go down. However, because of the force of the hit he had sustained, when he came down he landed awkwardly with his left foot, causing it to bend slightly upward, resulting in an inside fracture mid-foot.
He came back into the game with the next series of downs, completing one pass and playing until Damien had to punt. It was clear at that point, however, that something was amiss. With Barton out of the line-up for the rest of the game, the Spartans were unable to stay on track offensively, and the Tartans prevailed 17-7.
An X-ray at Pomona Valley Hospital, where he was taken, revealed the break, what was termed a “slight” fracture of his left foot.
Barton thereafter came under the care of Damien’s head athletic trainer, Gabrielle White, who oversees Damien’s sports medicine program. Barton was outfitted with a boot and underwent a physical therapy regimen outlined by White, which included nonstop, weekends included, water therapy in the pool.
Barton remained sidelined for four weeks. The recuperative power invested in youngsters, along with the magic White worked, allowed Barton to make his long-awaited return in the Spartan’s sixth game, what promised to be a hard-fought contest against 2018 Baseline League Champion Upland High, who last year went all the way to the California Interscholastic Federation championship game before losing. Barton and his teammates played valiantly, but were overcome 21-3, with the Highlanders defensive secondary preventing Barton from making any scoring contact with his receivers.
“We always look forward to playing teams the level of Upland,” Barton said. “We can play with any team out there, and playing tough against them proves it.”
While Upland carried the day on the gridiron last week, it turns out that the Highlanders had failed to properly register two of their players, and under the California Interscholastic Federation’s rules, they were required to forfeit the game against Damien on technical grounds. That puts Damien on firm footing with a 1-0 record going into the rest of the Baseline League Season, which continues when they meet the Chino Hills Bulldogs tonight.
While with the four-game interruption it does not look like Barton’s season will turn out in quite the way he hoped, he was philosophical about things
“My injury has taught me to be patient and has taught me to keep a positive mindset,” he told the Sentinel. “Your mind plays a large role in how fast you recover from your injury. My advice to an injured athlete who’s eager to get back into the game is listen your body. You know your body better than anybody else. If you feel you can go and you know it won’t make things worse, go ahead and do it. Play it smart and get yourself healthy again and rest, but if you can feel it and your body is telling you ‘Yes,’ I say get back with your team. There’s nothing like being on the field playing with your teammates.”
Barton said, “I’d say the biggest challenge in football is just going out and living up to my own expectations every week. Every week I set a new goal for myself and challenge myself to get better than I was the week before.”
He is prepared for setbacks along the way, and fierce competition is part of sports, he said. “The Baseline League is loaded with solid teams all the way around,” Barton said. “It’s great competition week in and week out.”
It was rough being on the sidelines and not being able to play, but he says he was rooting for his team as hard as anyone, including cheering on Dylan Gutierrez, the 16-year-old freshman who filled in for him as quarterback.
The Sentinel asked if watching someone else at his position made him consider that he might have to take an alternative route to playing if someone were to beat him out as the play caller.
“I don’t shy away from playing another position because I’ll do whatever the team needs me to do,” Barton said, “but I feel I’m best at quarterback and I plan to stay at quarterback for the rest of my career.”
Asked if his perception of football has changed since he started as quarterback on the Damien freshman team, he said, “No, nothing has changed from freshman to senior year. It’s pretty much been the same amount of intensity all four years of high school.”
And even with the setback of this year’s injury, he said, he will look to play when he gets to college, proving he can compete at that level.
“Yes, I see myself playing college football,” he said.
As dedicated as he is to making it on the gridiron, Barton said that is not his only or even primary focus.
“Grades are very important to me,” he said. “My parents have drilled that into my head since I started going to school. Good grades are a must in order to get into a good college and create a good future.”
Barton said, “As of right now, I’m not sure where I want to go. I would love to stay close to home, but I will go anywhere if it means I will receive a great education and be given the opportunity to play football.”
Things do not always run smoothly or the way he and everyone else expects or wants, he said. His injury and the way it untracked him for four games illustrated that. He said, however, that whatever adversity and bumps in the road that one encounters, “You have to trust the process. There will be tough times, but it all happens for a reason. Those hard times will only make you better and stronger and make you strive to be greater. Also, don’t wish time away. Enjoy every little thing and every moment because it really does go by fast. Have fun and enjoy the game. It should always be fun.”

By Mark Gutglueck
Matthew Gage was instrumental in the expansion of the already established citrus industry in the Inland Empire, and is considered a major figure in the history of both San Bernardino and Riverside counties, though in one sense at least for converse reasons. Gage was at the forefront, in the 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s, in making adequate water available for the thirsty citrus industry. While his efforts began while what we know today as Riverside County was then primarily southern San Bernardino County, Gage’s efforts in enabling expansive citrus groves to spring up in Riverside and give that city financial independence from San Bernardino proved a deciding factor in the secession of Riverside County from San Bernardino County.
Matthew Gage was born on January 11, 1844, in Coloraine, Ireland. His mother was Margaret Jane Orr Gage. Available records do not provide his father’s name.
As a child, he came with his family to Canada.  He was raised and educated in Kingston, Canada, where, in 1869, he married Miss Jane Gibson. By profession, he was a jeweler, but not particularly successful in that capacity. He pooled the money he had been able to save, using it to arrange the purchase 20 acres of orange and other deciduous fruit trees more than 2,600 miles away in Riverside, at the corner of California and Jackson streets. He then crossed the Canadian/American border and made his way southwest across the continent, arriving in Riverside, which was then yet a part of San Bernardino County, in March 1881. His effort to make a go of it as a farmer failed, at least in some measure because of the lack of reliable water availability in Riverside.
Understanding the need for irrigation and water if any large scale agricultural venture in the area around Riverside was to succeed, he redirected his energies to diverting enough water out of the alluvial field surrounding the Santa Ana River, the headwaters of which lay at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains in the area around what is now known as Highland.
To raise capital for what he was about to undertake, Gage entered into commitments with individuals living in the area, including George Cooley and his son, George M. Cooley, both of whom were at one time or another members of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and who had a large ranch in the Colton area, as well as with the heirs of Jefferson Hunt. Through a variety of deeds, agreements and contractual arrangements, Gage bound himself, the water source he had acquired and the canal system he was intent on completing to guarantee the delivery of water in the future in exchange for grants to him of the necessary land, or for cash to purchase such land. Rights specified at that time as being in Gage’s possession were the East Riverside and the Hunt and Cooley rights.
In 1882, Gage filed for entry under the United States Desert Land Act of 1877 on Section 30, Township 2 South, Range 4 West, San Bernardino Base and Meridian, which lay adjacent to and immediately north of a large ravine known as the Tequesquite Arroyo. By that point, he also had title to a water well field located roughly twelve miles northerly in the valley of the Santa Ana River, on a tract of land southeast of San Bernardino which currently remains within San Bernardino County. He punched a series of artesian wells there and constructed a canal from that major water source to Section 30 during 1884 to 1886.
The enterprise under which Gage’s efforts were carried out, the Gage Canal Company, employed his brother, Robert Gage, as general superintendent, and his brother-in-law, William Irving, as chief engineer.
In 1888 and 1889 Gage constructed an extension of the canal from the north bank of the  Tequesquite Arroyo, across the arroyo and thence in a southerly direction, a distance of about ten miles.
On December 13, 1889, Gage entered into an agreement with Wilson Crewdson of London, England, in which it was recited that Gage owned what was formerly known as the ‘Carit Tract’ but which was referred to as the ‘Victoria Tract’ containing 2,377 acres, with water rights, and a second tract of 4,794 acres known as ‘Arlington Heights,’ plus a recently constructed canal. The agreement laid out that a company named the Riverside Trust Company, Limited, which was to be formed to acquire and work the lands, canals and water rights owned by Gage, and to take over the rights and duties described in the agreement. A provision was that Gage was to sell to the trust company the described lands, canal, and water rights, along with plant machinery and furniture used therewith, and the benefit of all contracts relating thereto. The trust company in turn obligated itself under two contracts with Gage to engage in the sale of water, one supply coming from Gage’s ‘East Riverside’ right and the second being the ‘Hunt and Cooley’ right. The agreement stated that after January 1, 1890, Gage would be deemed to be carrying on business on behalf of the trust company. The agreement then permitted that an “American Company” be formed to take title to such property as the trust company considered desirable, with Gage to be managing director of the said “American Company.”
Gage’s efforts were crucial to allowing the expansion of Riverside – both agricultural and developmental – to proceed.
An Illustrated History of Southern California: Embracing the Counties of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower California, which was published in 1890 by the Lewis Publishing Company of Chicago, said of Gage, “Perhaps no part of the United States, or the world, abounds in men of larger mental grasp, more daring enterprise and greater executive ability than does Southern California; men who possess the genius to conceive and the courage to undertake and carry forward to completion gigantic schemes which advance the welfare of whole communities and are so far-reaching in their effects that their benefits cannot be computed. Among the first of this class of public benefactors ranks Matthew Gage, the founder and constructor of the great irrigating canal and water system which bears his name. Mr. Gage came to Riverside, San Bernardino County, in March, 1881, and during that year took up a section of land under the Desert-Land Act, on the plain above the canals of the Riverside colony and eastward from the settlement. All the visible water supply having been previously appropriated, he began to cast about to obtain a sufficiency of this liquid monarch to enable him to improve his arid land, which was considered valueless without it. He gave much thought and time to the subject of developing water from some unknown source, not only for his own tract, but for the thousands of fertile but barren acres lying about it. He first bought some old water-rights in the Santa Ana River; then, conceiving the idea of developing a sufficient flow of water for irrigating on a extensive scale by means of artesian wells, he purchased a large tract of bottom land along that stream, about two miles southeast of the city of San Bernardino, and began sinking wells. Although practically without moneyed capital, he also commenced in 1882 the construction of the great canal, the cost of which would eventually reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hence Mr. Gage was compelled, through his own personal efforts, to create the values which enabled him to carry forward his great work as it progressed step by step. The task was herculean. Obstacles numerous and varied were met and overcome which would have discouraged and crushed men of less persistent energy and fertility of resource. Not the least of the difficulties he had to contend with was the determined opposition of jealous, narrow-minded people, who were unable to comprehend the magnitude of the importance of his grand enterprise. The first section of twelve miles of the canal were completed in little more than a year. Despite all impediments the work of construction advanced to completion without the sale of a dollar of stock or an acre of land. The canal is twenty-two miles in length and includes sixteen tunnels, besides aqueducts and flumes, which are built with a capacity to carry 4,500 miner’s inches of water. The cost of the work up to date, April, 1890, is $1,400,000. The Gage water system covers 12,000 acres of choice citrus fruit lands, which prior to the inauguration of his enterprise was a drug at $1.25 per acre, but which is now selling, with water rights, for $300 to $500 an acre unimproved. Water rights have been sold for about 4,000 acres of this land, 3,000 acres of which have been planted to oranges and lemons. With a view to interest moneyed men and secure the investment of capital in still further carrying out his ideal, Mr. Gage twice visited Europe during the past two years, and succeeded in associating with himself a number of wealthy Englishmen in a company known as the Riverside Trust Company, of London, incorporated under the laws of Great Britain, for the purpose of the further development of the property connected with and belonging to the Gage canal and land system, which is now worth several millions of dollars. This company is composed of some of the most prominent people financially and socially in Great Britain. Mr. Gage is managing director of the company and has the entire active charge of its business, ably assisted by his brother, Robert Gage, as general superintendent, and his brother-in-law, William Irving, as chief engineer. The company, which has its working office in Riverside, and its financial office in London, is investing a large sum of money in enlarging the water supply and putting in a system of steel distributing pipes costing $75,000 to $100,000, which convey it to every ten-acre tract of their land, known as Arlington Heights, together with the construction of streets and avenues, and other extensive improvements of an ornamental and useful character. They are building one main avenue, which has been named in honor of England’s reigning sovereign, Victoria. This magnificent street is to connect with Magnolia Avenue, and will be about twelve miles in length, and when finished according to design will be one of the most elegant rural drives in the world. Mr. Gage has had opportunity to dispose of his property and retire with an ample fortune, but declined, preferring to place it in its present shape, and devote his talent and energies for years to come to the perfecting and expansion of his grand ideal. Besides his large interests in the company, of which he is the directing head, he owns thirty acres of bearing orange grove in Riverside, where he and his family reside. Though but just at the meridian of life, Mr. Gage has accomplished alone and unaided a work which for magnitude of achievement and beneficent results to society, is equaled by the life-work of but few men; and he deserves to live many years to contemplate with satisfaction his struggles and enjoy his triumph.”
One of the realities of life is that often, when one individual or a group of people advances, others are set back. While Riverside gained immensely from Gage’s efforts, in a very real way, San Bernardino and San Bernardino County lost as a consequence of what he did.
Landowners, farmers, speculators, investors and business owners, chaffing under the yoke of county governance in San Bernardino moved to secede from San Bernardino County. On August 14, 1893, Riverside County broke away from San Bernardino, taking with it the southernmost lying section of San Bernardino County and including in its formation a limited portion of northernmost San Diego County.
After the secession, Gage continued to own property and water rights on the San Bernardino County side of the newly formed boundary. In this way, Gage was largely responsible for the exportation of water from San Bernardino County elsewhere, a precedent that has since proven problematic in San Bernardino County as numerous entities for more than 120 years since have attempted, with varying degrees of success and failure, to make raids on San Bernardino County water, including that in the Santa Ana River watershed, from the Mojave River and from various aquifers beneath the Mojave Desert.
Matthew Gage’s immense success was in some respects tempered by challenges, indeed failures, in his effort to secure control of the empire he had built. While he had essentially built that empire from scratch, based upon his own innovative know-how, hard work, sacrifice, gumption and creative arrangements without working capital, there eventually came a time where he had to pay the piper. Between 1892 and 1909, the Riverside Trust Company sold parcels in Arlington Heights to individuals. With each parcel conveyance, the trust company also transferred shares in the Gage Canal Company on the basis of two shares for every acre in the parcel sold.
In 1892,  Gage arranged to get a ‘Deed to Water’ from the Riverside Trust Company to the Gage Canal Company  in the amount of 1,000 inches under a four-inch pressure. The trust company assured the canal company that 1,000 inches of water was flowing or ready to flow at the headgates of the canal. In exchange for the deed, the canal company issued 10,000 shares of its stock to the trust company. In 1903, the trust company in exchange for 1,968 shares in the canal company, conveyed to the canal company 196.82 inches of water, the deed describing them as ‘water and water rights in the Gage Canal.’
It was around that time, well after the turn of the 19th Century to the 20th Century, Gage resolved to free himself of the commitments he had made to Crewdson and the other owners and investors in the Riverside Trust Company. He drew together all of the unencumbered capital he had  – $100,000 – along with $200,000 in loans he had raised from the Bank of California. He sojourned to London with the $300,000 in hard cash with which he intended to buy up the remaining stock of the Riverside Trust Company, extending to all of the real estate in Arlington Heights that had not yet been sold, and ensure that he had from that point going forward management of the company.  Gage made his pitch to the London directors of the company, who in response sent Crewdson and another director with the last name of Newton across the Atlantic and then across the continent to Riverside to investigate the local management of their holdings.
“Upon their return they reported adversely,” the Los Angeles Herald reported in its June 1, 1904 edition, “and Gage’s plan failed.  It Is announced that an entire change in the management of the concern will be made at once.”
Gage had pledged all of his stock in the Riverside Trust Company with G. Howard Thompson of the Bank of California as a mortgage for $200,000 he needed to carry off the deal he was trying to effectuate.
“The stock of Gage, which was hypothecated with G. Howard Thompson, Is now in the latter’s hands,” according to the Los Angeles Herald’s June 1, 1904 article. “It is stated that formal announcement of the future course of the company will be made in the near future.”
The Herald reported that some of Gage’s associates suffered as the result of his inability to wangle the Riverside Trust company takeover. “Several local firms are concerned in the failure of Gage’s deal, one of which is said to have lost $12,000,” the article stated.
For a time, Gage withdrew from the Riverside area and went to live in Berkeley.
Gage had indeed succeeded in becoming a Southern California water baron. Nevertheless, his dreams of becoming a land baron as well had been dashed.
Gage was able to maintain a working relationship with the Riverside Trust Company, which accrued to the mutual benefit of both parties. In 1909, a deed to “water and water rights in the Gage Canal, lying within the counties of San Bernardino and Riverside, in the State of California” consisting of twenty-eight inches of water measured under a four inch pressure was transferred by the trust company to the canal company in exchange for 280 shares of trust company stock Gage still owned.
In 1890, Gage and his wife had seven surviving children. The names of five of them were Margaret, Maude, Anna, Horace, and Frances. In early 1916, Gage, who was again living in Riverside, contracted pneumonia and died on January 22 of that year, 11 days after his 72nd birthday. His obituary, which ran in the Riverside Daily Press stated that he was survived by his widow; his three daughters; two brothers, W. John Gage, of Riverside, and Robert Gage of Utica, N. Y.; two sisters, Mrs, William Irving, of Riverside, and Mrs. William Spooner, of Kingston, Canada; and a grandson, Gage Henderson. It made no mention of surviving sons.

By Robert Porter
As I close my eyes and dream about Arrowhead Peak
My brain gets excited, and my soul starts to seek.
As I open my mind, I appear at the great hills base .
Then I start up the mountain, a kind of flat slanted place
I see the heart clear as an Arrowhead, waiting for coyote to this day.
Ready to run up to Big Bear, near God’s Eye is where they say.
Then up the huge grizzly bear that’s been carved into the earth.
Wow, I see the jaguar in all is glory, the Creator before birth.
The great white eagle soars, with a dove feather to drop.
I just can’t believe it, the art on the dirt canvas just won’t stop.
Then I awake from my vision and my mind is left in pure blessed awe.
It’s real, it’s real, the Creation Song of Arrowhead Peak, is what I saw.

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the October 4 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 10-04-19

By Mark Gutglueck
The Hesperia City Council this week scheduled a vote to take place at its upcoming October 15 meeting to choose Fourth District Councilman Jeremiah Brosowske’s replacement.
At its September 3 meeting, the council voted 3-to-2 to remove Brosowske from the council based on what Mayor Larry Bird and councilmen Bill Holland and Cameron Gregg maintain was convincing suspicion that Brosowske is not actually living in the apartment unit at the Sultana Mulberry Apartment Complex at 16784 Sultana Street he secured on September 1 last year just prior to beginning his 2018 campaign for the city council in Hesperia’s Fourth District.
Brosowske was able to run for that position as an incumbent councilman because in July 2018 the city council, as it was then composed, had appointed him to replace Russ Blewett, who had died two months previously. Brosowske had moved from outside of the city into temporary lodging at the home of former Hesperia Mayor Bill Jensen at 8075 E Avenue to be eligible for that appointment. At that point, the 27-year-old Brosowske was considered to be an up-and-coming star within the Republican Party, who had the support of former San Bernardino County Assessor/First District Supervisor Bill Postmus, Jensen and several others.
Holland, who had succeeded Blewett in the mayor’s post upon the latter’s passing, supported Brosowske’s appointment, as did then-Councilman Paul Russ and Councilwoman Rebekah Swanson. Larry Bird, who was then a councilman, opposed Brosowske’s appointment.
Brosowske grew up in Apple Valley, graduated from Granite Hills High School and developed an appetite for politics nearly a decade ago, as a fledgling college student at Victor Valley College. He was elected to the Associated Student Body Council and Senate, serving in the post of parliamentarian and ultimately rising to the position of ASB vice president. Thereafter, Brosowske gravitated toward the Party of Lincoln, working initially in the trenches on behalf of a handful of local Republican candidates, making acquaintances among and then forging friendships and alliances with several of the region’s GOP officeholders.  Bringing his youthful energy to bear, Brosowske worked assiduously toward meeting party goals and by 2014, he was taken under the wing of Curt Hagman, a former Chino Hills mayor, California assemblyman, and now the Fourth District county supervisor who this year acceded to being chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and who in 2014 was the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. Hagman arranged for Brosowske’s hiring as the executive director of the Republican Central Committee, a position that was not highly remunerative but which carried with it an impressive sounding title, and no small degree of influence. In that capacity, Brosowske ingratiated himself with ever more of the Republican Party stalwarts in San Bernardino County.
In 2016, he ran for election to the Republican Central Committee representing the First District himself, but was unsuccessful. Despite that personal setback, he continued to work in conjunction with other Republican candidates, including that of Rebekah Swanson for the Hesperia City Council.
Brosowske had also entered into a close working relationship with Bill Postmus, who was a decade-and-a-half ago one of the most powerful political figures in the region when he was simultaneously the chairman of both the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. Postmus would subsequently successfully run for San Bernardino County assessor, the most powerful taxing authority in the county, before his political career foundered in subsequent scandal. Nevertheless, Postmus, who had been among the five youngest members of the board of supervisors in county history as well as the second youngest chairman of the board of supervisors, remained obsessed with politics. Through a Wyoming-based company he had founded, Mountain States Consulting Group, he remained highly involved in politics in San Bernardino County, particularly in the San Bernardino County desert region. He used the Mountain States Consulting Group to take in money from various individuals, entities and companies who had a dog in the hunt with regard to San Bernardino County governmental decisions, and used the lax corporate reporting requirements that are applied to companies in Wyoming to pass that money through to local politicians in San Bernardino County and the High Desert in a way in which the actual original source of the money could not be identified when it reached the campaign coffers of the elected officials or candidates who received it. In addition to trafficking in this type of political influence buying and selling, Postmus used Mountain States Consulting Group as a launch pad, of sorts, for Brosowske’s political career. Perceiving in Brosowske the same potential he had once possessed, Postmus continued his political career vicariously through Brosowske. The assistance Postmus extended to Brosowske included hiring him as a Mountain States Consulting Group employee, allowing Brosowske to hold body and soul together while he engaged in the time-and-energy-consuming efforts of instigating his foray into political office. Postmus’s had been a major hidden hand in getting Brosowske appointed to the Hesperia City Council in the aftermath of Blewett’s passing.
In the 2018 Hesperia Municipal Election, the first one in the city’s 30-year history in which council members were elected by-district rather than at-large, Bill Holland was re-elected to the city council in the newly created Second District and Paul Russ was ousted by 28-year-old Cameron Gregg by 81 votes in the city’s Third District. It appeared that Brosowske had been chased from office, having been outdistanced by Brigit Bennington in the Fourth District, 1,011 votes or 50.75 to 981 votes or 49.25 percent in the first vote count. But over the next four weeks as straggling absentee mail ballots arrived and were counted along with a handful of provisional ballots that were deemed qualified, Brosowske edged ahead of Bennington, gaining election ultimately by a margin of 1,688 votes or 52.08 percent to 1,553 or 47.92 percent.
During that election campaign, for a reason that remains unclear to most if not all of the public, Holland and Brosowske came to loggerheads. By March, an effort to qualify a recall ballot measure against Holland was underway. Shortly thereafter, Holland was lodging public accusations that Brosowske was in some fashion behind the recall effort. Thereafter, Jensen, whose provision of living quarters in his house last year to Brosowske to thereby qualify him as a Hesperia resident had been crucial to originally getting him appointed to the council, had served as a broker on the sale of a coffee shop owned by Holland and was one Holland’s primary political backers. Jensen at that point found himself at odds with Brosowske, despite Jensen having played a key role in convincing Holland to appoint Brosowske to the council. Brosowske’s actions, his comings and goings, became the object of close scrutiny.
In May, when Brosowske was hired into a lucrative position as assistant general manager at the West Valley  Water District in Rialto, his whereabouts became far easier to track than they had been previously, when he was working as a political consultant without operating from a fixed address. Those tailing Brosowske reported that he was actually residing in Rancho Cucamonga, driving to work in the morning from a specific location there to the West Valley Water District headquarters and eventually returning to Rancho Cucamonga in the evening.
Hesperia Recreation and Park District Board Member Kelly Gregg, the father of Cameron Gregg and Hesperia School District Board Member Cody Greg, is the head of operations of True Liberty Protection Services. True Liberty’s personnel carried out a concerted around-the-clock monitoring of Brosowske’s apartment at 16784 Sultana Street. According to Kelly Gregg, Brosowske was a virtual no-show at his Hesperia apartment, making appearances there only on rare occasions. According to Kelly Gregg, Brosowske has claimed or established residences in Apple Valley, Brea and Hesperia.
At the September 3 city council meeting, the council first voted 3-to-2, with Brosowske and Swanson dissenting, to have City Manager Nils Bentsen and City Attorney Eric Dunn return with options for having an attorney or private investigator carry out an investigation of Brosowske’s residency status, with the understanding that the council could then vote to contract at a future date with the individual or firm selected to carry out that probe. Curiously,  the council then voted by the identical 3-to-2 margin, with Bird, Gregg and Holland again prevailing, to remove Brosowske from office based upon the assumption the not-yet-identified-or-hired investigator’s findings would indicate Brosowske was not living in Hesperia, and therefore did not meet the residency requirement to be serving as Fourth District councilman. That vote appeared to be logically out of keeping with the previous vote to undertake the investigation, several individuals including both Brosowske’s supporters and those who are at political odds with him pointed out, since the undertaking of an independent investigation into Brosowske’s living arrangements was widely viewed as an admission that sufficient facts were yet needed to warrant removal action against Brosowske.
Preparatory to the September 3 meeting, Brosowske’s Corona-based attorney, Chad Morgan, had submitted to the city 211 pages of documentation supporting Brosowske’s claim of residency. Included in that documentation was Browsowske’s eight page rental contract for Unit 7 at 16784 Sultana Street in Hesperia, signed by Brosowske on August 31, 2018 and L. Christensen, representing Sultana Mulberry Apartments LLC, electricity bills from Southern California Edison in Brosowske’s name for “16784 Sultana St. Apt 7 Hesperia, CA 92345” for 12 months from September 2018 until August 2019, similar bills from Southwest Gas to Jeremiah Brosowske for residential gas service to a service address at “16784 Sultana St #7” in Hesperia for the same timeframe, a bill from Spectrum for internet service in Brosowske’s name at the 16784 Sultana Street Unit 7 address for August 2019, and a color photocopy of Brosowske’s driver license, which gives his address as “16784 Sultana St 7 Hesperia, CA 92345.”
While the rental agreement and the bills established that Brosowske had arrangements to live at the 16784 Sultana Street Unit 7 address, the evidence consisting of the utility bills was undercut by the consideration that the service address on the bills does not match the billing address, which is 16036 Tude Rd. in Apple Valley, corresponding to the home of Brosowske’s mother and father.
Also included in the compendium Morgan presented were a series of text messages that passed between Brosowske’s cell phone and that of Bill Jensen, including ones on June 12, 2018 and on June 28, 2018. Those on the former date show that Brosowske was earnestly seeking a place to live in Hesperia. Those text messages on the latter date seem to indicate that Brosowske is at that point living at Jensen’s Hesperia premises, with Jensen referring to Brosowske as his “roommate.”
According to Morgan, “as a matter of law” Brosowske qualifies as a Hesperia resident and Hesperia Fourth District resident based upon his intent to set up a domicile in Hesperia, and his residency is confirmed by his action in actually moving into the city and setting up his living quarters there.
With Morgan as his representative, Brosowske is pursuing a quo warranto proceeding with the California Attorney General’s Office, which is intended to make a prima facie case that he has established residency in Hesperia, thereby giving him leave to sue the city in court to be reinstated to the city council.
His client, Morgan said, “does live in Hesperia” and the action the city has taken in removing Brosowske from office “exposes the city to liability for damages and attorney fees for having to defend his right to hold the office.” A number of residents, including ones who count themselves among Brosowske’s supporters and a few who are hostile to him and his political agenda, advised the city ahead of his removal to refrain from doing so unless and until it found itself on sound legal footing to establish unequivocally that Brosowske does not live where he says he does. Since his removal, some of those have suggested the city is being cavalier and profligate with taxpayer money by inviting legal action it stands a good chance of losing.
The Sentinel has learned, however, that the council is functioning on information, perhaps illicitly obtained, which has given its members absolute confidence that Brosowske has been regularly residing at a location outside the city. One report is that the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has used its capability of collecting cell tower data to compile a profile of Brosowske’s precise whereabouts on a daily, indeed hourly and minute-by-minute, basis going back to the time he was first appointed to the council. Because cellular signal emissions propagate over the airwaves rather than across a wire, no warrant is required in capturing them. While there may be legal complication in the sheriff’s department’s use of agency-to-agency privilege in sharing with certain Hesperia city officials the information it has gleaned with regard to Brosowske’s whereabouts, thus making the raw cellular phone data unusable or inadmissible in constructing a case against Brosowske in a court of law, the information the data embodies puts city officials in a position of strength in proceeding against Brosowske since it will lead them to the gathering of other information that could be used to make the case that Brosowske was only on the rarest of occasions present over the last 13 months at Unit 7 at 16784 Sultana Street in Hesperia.
A signal that the case against Brosowske is a slam dunk came Tuesday night when, with Councilman Bill Holland absent, the council voted 3-to-0 to appoint Brosowske’s successor on October 15. Councilwoman Rebekah Swanson, whose political career has been largely advanced by Postmus and Mountain States Consulting Group, who was a Brosowske ally and who at times on September 3 passionately, stridently and eloquently inveighed against removing Brosowske from office, on October 1 docilely went along with the council’s move to make an appointment and replace him at the next council meeting.
The council by law has 60 days to make an appointment to fill a council vacancy or schedule an election to have the voters choose a replacement. Practically, that meant the council has until November 2 to make a determination as to what it is going to do in the aftermath of the action it took against Brosowske. Essentially, the council had three choices. One was to appoint his replacement to remain in place until the next regularly-scheduled election, provided that election did not occur any sooner than 114 days after Brosowske’s removal, which in this case is the March 3, 2020 California Primary Election. A second option was to appoint his replacement to remain in place until a specially-scheduled election that did not occur any sooner than 114 days nor more than 180 days after Brosowske’s removal. A third option was to appoint Brosowske’s successor to serve until the next general election, which in this case will correspond with the November 3, 2020 Presidential election.
Prior to the council voting, resident Bob Nelson, who has been a candidate for city council previously, recommended that the “residents of District 4 be allowed to choose their own representative.”
James Blocker, who has also run for city council previously,  said the council should use its authority to fill the post, citing the expense of holding a special election. “You have the wisdom to appoint the correct person,” he said.
While there was no official indication from the city council as to whom it would choose on October 15, sentiment and belief among a sizable percentage of residents in the city of 96,000 is that Brigit Bennington should supplant Brosowske. Bennington was the only other candidate beside Brosowske in the 4th District race in November, one whom Brosowske narrowly defeated after conducting a campaign in which there were $46,032.93 in expenditures from his campaign war chest and untraceable expenditures from what were represented as “independent” committees but which were in fact coordinated by Brosowske’s political team, from which emanated “political hit” and “attack pieces” targeting Bennington, including a blitz of such material in the latter stages of the campaign as polling conducted by political consultants hired by the Brosowske campaign showed substantial name recognition and positive name identification and continuing resilience on Bennington’s part in the face of a far more expensive and aggressive campaign being waged by Brosowske’s forces. In the hours and days after the polls closed, Bennington led Brosowske by a razor-thin margin, but her lead evaporated as late mail-in ballots came in.  Several residents have voiced the opinion that Bennington, a longtime Hesperia resident, has earned a place on the council due to her close loss to, and the obloquy she sustained from, a well-financed carpetbagger whose loyalty to the city has since fallen into question.