By Mark Gutglueck
At times over the last two-and-a-half years, the factionalism and contention among the directors of the Rialto-based West Valley Water District has rivaled or exceeded that on all or nearly all other governing boards overseeing the 87 governmental entities or agencies in San Bernardino County.  With the 2019 election approaching in which three positions on the water district’s board are up for election, both factions are seeking to assert control by blocking the reelection of the opposition and keeping their respective allies in office.
The contretemps in the district centers around Dr. Clifford Young, a California State University, San Bernardino professor and administrator who was selected in 2004 to serve as Fifth District county supervisor following Jerry Eaves’ forced resignation as the consequence of Eaves’ conviction on political corruption charges. For the better part of the next decade, Young contented himself with his academic role, but in 2013 returned to elective office when he was elected along with Linda Gonzalez to the West Valley Water District Board of Directors in a race that saw incumbents Don Olinger and Jackie Cox defeated.
A strong personality, Young, initially formulated alliances with his board colleagues upon moving into the post, eventually acceding to the position of board president. In due course, nonetheless, Young came into conflict with Alan Dyer,  an incumbent whose presence on the board preceded Young’s, as well as Gonzalez.  In most respects, throughout Young’s first and the initial part of his second term on the board, he and his fellow directors had few substantive differences with regard to the operational aspects of the district’s function, and the district’s personnel conformed, at least initially and for the most part, to the wishes, expectations and official instruction of Young and his fellow board members  when acting collectively in their official capacity. To the extent that difficulty with Young’s comportment as a board member manifested, it related to what his supporters referred to as his decisive and assertive manner and what his critics called his megalomaniac approach, which at times involved his acting outside of official channels by telling, instructing or ordering staff to initiate action that had not yet been ratified by the board.
Young, a Republican, a relative rarity among African-Americans, particularly in California, endeavored to have the water district put its best foot forward in the arena of public perception, hiring two high-priced consultants closely identified with the GOP, political lobbyist William Lowery and public relations guru Patrick O’Reilly, both through no-bid contracts.
In 2015, Olinger was successful in his bid to return to the board, gaining election along with newcomer Greg Young, who is no blood relation to Clifford Young. Alan Dyer was the sole incumbent reelected in that race.
In 2017, Clifford Young was handily reelected, extending his coattails and endorsement to Michael Taylor, a Rialto resident and longtime Baldwin Park police officer who had risen to the top of his profession as that department’s police chief.  Taylor displaced Gonzalez on the board. In the same election, Kyle Crowther was victorious in a specially-held contest to serve out the final two years remaining on Dyer’s term, which was necessitated after Dyer resigned. During his final two years in office, Dyer had been subjected to a series of investigations prompted by Clifford Young which were aimed at fleshing out an allegation that he no longer resided within the district’s boundaries after having sold his home in Rialto and having purchased one in Redlands. When his claim that he was renting a home within the district and yet residing there came under question, Dyer opted to leave. When Clifford Young, Greg Young, Don Olinger and Linda Gonzalez were unable to reach a consensus on his replacement, the county board of supervisors appointed Robert Bourland as his interim replacement. Bourland, however, failed to hold onto the position to which he was appointed, when Crowther, a Fontana School District police officer who had the backing of Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren, Fontana City Councilman Jesse Armendarez and Fontana political activist Phil Cothran and the assistance of Cliff Young in the form of shared electioneering resources, outdistanced him 1,640 votes or 54.85 percent to 1,350 votes or 45.15 percent in the November 2017 specially-called short term election to determine who would serve out the remainder of Dyer’s term.
Prior to the 2017 election, things were growing particularly testy between Young and Gonzalez, a circumstance that spilled over to involve some senior members of the water district staff, as Cliff Young had filed a Fair Political Practices Commission complaint against Gonzalez;  the district’s former chief financial officer, Suzanne Cook, had filed a lawsuit against Cliff Young and the district, alleging Dr. Young had engaged in improper hiring and financial practices; and the district’s general manager, Matthew Litchfield, had filed a claim against the district, alleging Cliff Young was seeking to micromanage the district by directly dictating orders to him without first obtaining the consensus of the other four members of the board. To a greater or lesser degree during the 2017 political season, then-Chief Financial Officer Marie Ricci,  then-Human Resources Manager Karen Logue, the board’s secretary, Shanae Smith, Litchfield and Litchfield’s wife had actively supported Gonzalez’s reelection effort while working against Cliff Young’s candidacy.
With his 2017 reelection, Cliff Young, appeared to be safely in control of the district for at least the next two years. Taylor, who like Young possesses a masters degree and a doctorate, fell, or so it appeared, within his camp. Greg Young, too, was a member of Cliff Young’s political machine. Olinger, who had been displaced in the 2013 election when Cliff Young and Gonzalez had made a clean sweep of Olinger and the other incumbent, Cox, appeared ready to dispense with whatever animus he felt toward Cliff Young over his defeat by him four years before as the district looked toward the future with its revamped political leadership in place. Nevertheless, Cook, Ricci, Logue, Smith and to a lesser extent Litchfield remained intent on raising questions about Cliff Young’s use of his expense account and the propriety of his comportment in office, efforts which Young’s supporters felt constituted efforts to undo the will of the voters.
On December 7, 2017 at a special meeting of the water district board, both Taylor and Crowther, as new members of the board, were sworn into office, and Cliff Young, as an incumbent, took the oath of office for another four years. Dr. Young, on a motion by Taylor and seconded by Greg Young, was appointed board president. Later in the meeting, on a motion by Taylor seconded by Crowther, the board by a 4-to-1 vote with Olinger in opposition, voted to hire Robert Tafoya of the law firm Tafoya & Garcia as the district’s new general legal counsel. Tafoya was also the city attorney for the City of Baldwin Park.
Four days later, at a specially called meeting of the board, on December 11, 2017, just one month and five days after his 2017 reelection, Cliff Young flexed his political muscle and moved to consolidate his power, effectuating a major makeover at the senior level of the district’s staff. While he succeeded in establishing that he could at that point translate his political primacy into immediate administrative authority, the event proved to be nothing short of an out-and-out Pyrrhic Donnybrook, although its full effect would not become apparent for more than a year.  At that meeting, Young’s associate from Cal State San Bernardino, Robert Christman, who for a time had been the acting chief financial officer of the water district, had been installed as West Valley’s acting interim general manager. The board, by a margin of 3-to-1, with Taylor absent and Olinger dissenting, placed District General Manager Matthew Litchfield on administrative leave and outright terminated chief financial officer Marie Ricci.
The following day, at the first regular meeting of the newly composed board and with all five members present, assistant general manager Greg Gage, the district’s human resources manager Karen Logue and the board’s secretary, Shanae Smith, were all suspended or placed on administrative leave by a vote of 4-to-1, with Olinger casting the dissenting vote.
As Christman, a firm Clifford Young ally and former Loma Linda mayor, took the helm as the interim head of the district staff, most of those who were being displaced took their parting shots at Young and his political affiliates and fellow board members. Litchfield, perhaps mindful that vindictive enunciations about his erstwhile political masters uttered in the heat of anger might have long term negative consequences on his future professional prospects, eschewed public comment.
That was not the case with Logue and Smith, however, who suggested that Young had been playing fast and loose with district funds and perquisites, and had improperly influenced the hiring of district personnel. For Taylor and Crowther, what was their first regularly scheduled meeting in their newly-elected positions, the ordeal proved to be something of a baptism-by-fire, as the atmospherics were more indicative of a scene from Bedlam than a public meeting, and a handful of police that were present to maintain order were at one time obliged to remove several members of the public after the disruption of the proceedings careened into chaos.
Within three weeks, Gage had been reestablished into his position as assistant general manager with the district. The others who had been suspended were on their way out.
Over the next 12 months, the board members remained on cordial terms with one another, at least outwardly, as Young, Taylor, Young, Crowther and Olinger appeared to be more or less in virtual lockstep with regard to district issues, the only notable exceptions being some votes in which Olinger abstained; a measure to raise the board’s compensation, on which Greg Young was the lone dissenting vote; and votes to pay for the district’s special counsel to carry out investigations into former staff members’ accusations against Cliff Young, expenditures about which Dr. Young was less than enthusiastic.  Nevertheless, though there was remarkable consonance in virtually all of the board’s votes over that period with regard to the decision-making processes relating to district operations, the board was beset with a degree of tension from the December 12, 2017 meeting onward.
The district employed a veritable who’s who of Southern California law firms over the ensuing timeframe in dealing with not only litigation and procedural actions relating to access to water availability that involved numerous other regional water purveyors, but claims and litigation the district became embroiled in with former employees. In addition to its general counsel, Tafoya & Garcia, the district at one time or another throughout 2018 was represented by the Kaufman Law Firm; Varner & Brandt;  Larson O’Brien;  Ziprick & Cramer; Albright, Yee & Schmidt; and Gresham, Savage, Nolan & Tilden.
In March 2018, the board rejected claims filed against it by Litchfield, Smith, Logue and Ricci alleging harassment and wrongful termination. Subsequently Logue and Litchfield filed unjustifiable termination suits against the district. Also that month, Baldwin Park City Councilman Pacheco was hired by the West Valley Water District as the “assistant general manager of external affairs.” Subsequently, Pacheco would be promoted to the position of assistant general manager.
In June 2018, with Olinger and Crowther absent, the board hired Clarence Mansell to serve as interim general manager to replace Christman.
In August 2018, Gage, having found employment elsewhere, departed from the district.
In October 2018, the board reorganized, appointing Michael Taylor board president and making Crowther vice president.
For much of the public, there were issues roiling below the surface that went completely unremarked. At the January 17, 2019 meeting of the board, the first overt hint of dissension among the board members was reflected on an item relating to a contract to renovate the customer service foyer at district headquarters. Both Cliff Young and Greg Young wanted to reject the awarding of a $567,000 contract to Caltec Corporation, which had been the low bidder on the project. Ultimately, both Young and Young, who asserted the pricing on the work was too high, were unable to convince their colleagues to hold off on the action, as they were defeated in a 3-to-2 vote.
The following month, at the February 7 board meeting, it grew clear that there was a rift on the board, and that it was widening. For starts, the board split 3-to-2, with Young and Young dissenting, to approve the district’s December 2018 purchase order report. There followed a 3-to-2 split over a $43,395.64 payment to Tafoya and Garcia for services rendered in October 2018, again with Young and Young at odds with their colleagues. That was followed by a 3-to-1 vote, with Greg Young in opposition and Dr. Young abstaining, to ratify a $32,679.10 payment to Tafoya & Garcia for services rendered in November 2018.
Thereafter, Dr. Young and Dr. Taylor locked horns on an item calling for the district to send a formal request to the state controller’s office to conduct a full financial audit of all of the West Valley Water District’s fiscal dealings over the previous two years, including all contracts and contractors used by legal counsel. Taylor suggested that instead of having the state auditor go over the district’s books, the district have the district’s previous auditing firm carry out the examination. When Greg Young insisted on the board voting on the original motion to seek the state audit, that motion failed 2-to-3. Taylor then motioned to have the district’s contract auditor carry out the audit to cover the period from the end of the last audit completed to the current date. That passed 3-to-0, with Young and Young abstaining.
From that point onward there have been a significant number of items that have come before the board on which Cliff Young has dissented or abstained, quite often, though not always, joined by Gregory Young, particularly with regard to issues relating to the district’s financial dealings and less often pertaining to operational issues.
At the board’s May 16, 2019 meeting, the agenda contained an item relating to the potential disciplining, removal or termination of Assistant General Manager Ricardo Pacheco. Before the board adjourned into closed session to undertake that discussion, however, Taylor made a motion to pull the item off of the discussion calendar and all five board members agreed to do so. At the June 7 meeting, the ill-will between the diverging factions on the board appeared to have hit a crescendo. With Dr. Young absent, all items considered by the board passed 3-to-1, with Greg Young voting against everything, including considering the agenda, adopting the consent calendar consisting of multiple essential, signatory changes on all of the district’s JP Morgan Chase, US. Bank and Caltrust accounts, another action related to the local agency investment fund, approving a change order on a contract by Aerotek for temporary labor service,  and a change order on a well rehabilitation project.  Greg Young maintains he was compelled to dissent on those votes because the agenda for the meeting and the accompanying staff reports and back-up materials had not been made available the requisite 72 hours in advance to allow the board and the public an adequate opportunity to examine and evaluate those actions.
On June 20, with Dr. Young once more absent, Greg Young was again the dissenting vote on all issues that came before the board relating to financial issues.
In June, the degree to which the relationship between Clifford Young and several of the others within the district had degraded loomed into sharp relief with the revelation that on February 19, 2019, Clifford Young, West Valley Water District Chief Financial Officer Naisha Davis and West Valley Water District Assistant Board Secretary Patricia Romero as plaintiffs, represented by attorneys Rachel Fiset and Erin Coleman of the law firm Zweibach, Fiset & Coleman, had filed, under seal, a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, referred to as a qui tam action, which alleged West Valley Water District General Counsel Robert Tafoya and his law firm, Tafoya & Garcia; West Valley Water District Special Counsel Clifton Albright and his law firm, Albright, Yee & Schmit; West Valley Water District Special Counsel Martin Kaufman and his law firm; and West Valley Water District consultant Robert Katherman, as defendants, had violated the California False Claims Act. In the suit, Michael Taylor, Assistant West Valley General Manager Ricardo Pacheco, West Valley Water District Board Vice President Kyle Crowther and West Valley Water District General Manager Clarence Mansell were identified as co-conspirators.
A writ of qui tam is a private individual’s or individuals’ petition, who is or are claiming to be of assistance in a possible prosecution, for a court order against those the petitioner or petitioners alleges or allege have engaged in prohibited acts. The petitioner in a qui tam action can receive all or part of any penalty imposed on those adjudged guilty. The name qui tam is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur, meaning “[he] who sues in this matter for the king as well as for himself.”
The qui tam suit in and of itself embodies a paradox that presents a further dilemma and conundrum for the district and its board members. The suit names the district as a plaintiff despite the consideration that the district board never voted to file the suit and, in fact, three of the board’s members – Taylor, Crowther and Olinger – are adamantly opposed to the prosecution of the suit, disagree with the upshot of the suit, and have not empowered the law firm Zweibach, Fiset & Coleman, nor Rachel Fiset nor Erin Coleman to act on the district’s behalf. According to Coleman, however, Young’s, Davis’s and Romero’s assertions of whistleblower status taken together with the nature of the false claim allegations they are making against the defendants endow the complainants with the legal entitlement to sue on behalf of the district and its constituents.
The lawsuit alleged that Taylor, who was chief of the Baldwin Park Police Department from 2013 to 2016, had been terminated by the Baldwin Park City Council but was subsequently re-hired to a one-year contract to again serve as Baldwin Park police chief on December 1, 2017, some 25 days after being elected to the water board and six days before he was sworn in. Taylor’s contract to resume his duties as police chief was drafted by Tafoya, who was also Baldwin Park’s city attorney, according to the lawsuit. Upon being sworn in as a water board member and assuming his duties in that capacity on December 7, 2018, according to the suit, Taylor effectuated the hiring Tafoya as the West Valley Water District’s general counsel on a contract with no end date. In the ensuing 18 months, according to the lawsuit, Tafoya’s firm billed the West Valley Water District approximately $395,000.
Further, according to the suit, less than four months later, after Taylor assumed his position on the West Valley Water Board dais, Pacheco, a Baldwin Park City Councilman who had voted for Taylor’s reinstatement as police chief, was hired by the West Valley Water District as the “assistant general manager of external affairs.” He was later moved without board approval to the newly created position of “assistant general manager,” earning a salary of $192,000 per year, the suit alleges. Since his hiring, Pacheco and the California Education Coalition PAC he controls have donated a total of $8,000 to Taylor’s campaign and $1,000 to West Valley Water District Board Vice President Kyle Crowther’s campaign, according to the lawsuit.
According to the suit, in 2018, Taylor spearheaded the effort to hire his associate, Mansell, as the West Valley Water District’s interim general manager and subsequently as the permanent general manager, at an annual salary of $225,000.  The lawsuit alleges Mansell was hired by a 3-to-2 board vote without a recruitment effort.
The lawsuit alleges that in 2017 and 2018, Tafoya provided Taylor with travel and accommodations in Mexico and Las Vegas, paid for Taylor, Crowther and Cliff Young to travel to Arizona, twice paid for Crowther’s airfare to Florida and made contributions to Crowther’s and Taylor’s campaign war chests or otherwise assisted them in their campaigns. Tafoya further militated or lobbied on behalf of Albright, Yee & Schmit, the Kaufman Law firm and Robert Katherman in getting the two former entities legal work for the water district and a consulting contract for the latter while those firms and/or their principals were providing gifts, travel accommodations, entertainment and political contributions to members of the water board, in particular Taylor and Crowther, the suit alleges.  According to the suit, Taylor, Tafoya, Pacheco, Crowther, Mansell,  West Valley Water District Human Resources and Risk Manager Deborah Martinez and other law firms and consultants connected to Taylor and Tafoya  “have engaged in illegal kickbacks and bribes to ensure contracts with the district and subsequent approval of invoices for payment.”
Maribel S. Medina, representing the West Valley Water District as a real party in interest in the lawsuit, on July 9, 2019 filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, accompanied by a memorandum of points and authorities, a declaration and exhibits.
In general, Medina’s overarching suggestion is that Dr. Cliff Young, who was subject to complaints by Litchfield, Gonzalez, Ricci, Logue, Smith and ultimately Mansell of improperly seeking to extend his authority beyond the limitations of his statutory power as a single vote on the water district’s five-member board of directors by making direct orders to staff, had grown discomfited by his inability to quash the internal district investigations those complaints triggered. The investigations into those accusations were carried out, in large measure, by the Kaufman Law Firm. In this way, the suit implies the qui tam action is a reprisal by Young and those he is affiliated with against Mansell and the district’s political leadership – i.e., the board – for allowing Litchfield’s, Gonzalez’s, Ricci’s, Logue’s and Smith’s accusations to persist without being controverted by official district action.
According to Medina, the suit, filed under the auspices of the California False Claims Act, fails to meet the legal requirements of such an action and exists rather as a politically-angled hit piece that lodges spurious allegations of corruption against the members of the board who, over the roughly one year period after the 2017 election, had evolved toward resisting Dr. Clifford Young’s improper overreach in dominating and micromanaging the district utilizing his status by asserting authority outside his legitimate role and capacity as an elected member of the board. The qui tam lawsuit neither establishes that the defendants and their named co-conspirators acted in collusion or in secret, according to Medina, nor does it delineate any information or true or false accusations that were not publicly known previously. “The allegations in the complaint consist of sensationalized facts taken directly from negative news media articles,” the motion to dismiss states. “The purpose of the California False Claims Act is to expose undetected fraud, in order to guard the public. By [the] relators’ own admission this case has nothing to do with fraud, let alone any interest in protecting the district’s financial interest. [The] Relators declare, repeatedly in their various motions that this lawsuit was brought ‘to expose corruption at the district,’ and ‘expose a scheme of kickbacks and bribes.’ Consequently, as a California False Claims Act claim, the complaint is facially and fatally flawed.”
As used by Medina, “relator” is a term meaning plaintiff in a California False Claims Act case, as someone who has related a set of facts upon which the lawsuit is based.
“The fact is, this lawsuit has nothing to do with exposing fraud,” according to Medina. “It is the proverbial wolf dressed in sheep clothing. This lawsuit was brought in an attempt to interfere with ongoing investigations of harassment, bullying and misappropriation of public monies by relator Dr. Young, who has been represented by relators’ legal counsel Rachel Fiset in the ongoing investigations. This lawsuit is frivolous, vexatious and brought solely for the purpose of harassment. Under such circumstances, the district hereby moves to dismiss the California False Claims Act claim. On November 29, 2017, four district executives sent the district’s then general manager Matthew Litchfield a memo titled, ‘Director Clifford Young Sr. Activities.’ The memo outlined in significant detail examples of relator Dr. Young’s ‘grossly abusing his power and misappropriating public funds for his own personal benefit.’ On December 7, 2017, Marie Ricci, the district’s chief financial officer sent a complaint via email to the San Bernardino District Attorney’s Public Integrity Unit also alleging relator Dr. Young engaged in unethical and illegal conduct.  On or about January 11, 2018, the Kaufman Law Firm, APC was retained by the district to investigate allegations made against relator Dr. Young that he harassed, bullied and abused former General Manager Matthew Litchfield. Mr. Litchfield further alleged that relator Dr. Young gave him a list of people to hire and terminate under threat of retaliation. On or about the latter part of 2018, the district again retained The Kaufman Law Firm to investigate various complaints made by district employees against relator Dr. Young by alleged co-conspirators current General Manager Clarence C. Mansell and Deborah Martinez. The investigation concluded, [the] relator, Dr. Young, subjected Mr. Mansell and Ms. Martinez to ‘conduct which was harassing, intimidating and hostile.’ Relators’ legal counsel, Rachel Fiset, from the law firm of Zweiback, Fiset & Coleman, LLP served as legal counsel to relator Dr. Young during the investigation. On February 19, 2019, relators also served the California Attorney General’s office with the complaint and statutorily mandated ‘written disclosures of substantially all material evidence and information per §§12652(c)(2)-(3).’  Blatantly missing from the packet of material evidence submitted to the Attorney General is all the correspondence from the Fair Political Practices Commission, including the Fair Political Practices Commission’s final notice that they had concluded the investigation and would not be proceeding with any action.”
Medina’s reference to the Fair Political Practices Commission pertains to a complaint filed by Romero in early January which covered much of the same ground as that contained in the lawsuit, specifically alleging that the donations, gifts, travel expenses, accommodations and/or political donations provided to Taylor and/or Crowther by Tafoya; Albright, Yee & Schmit; the Kaufman Law firm and Robert Katherman constituted violations of the California Political Reform Act of 1974.
“Although, statutorily the district must have been provided a copy of the complaint and material evidence 15 days after the Attorney General receives it, the district was not,” according to Medina. “The district became aware of the qui tam lawsuit only after the seal was lifted, when the named defendants were served with the complaint. On March 19, 2019, Deputy Attorney General Joseph Kanada, sent the packet of material evidence with a cover letter addressed to ‘West Valley Water District-Board of Directors, Attn: Don Olinger.’ Director Olinger is one of five members of the board of directors. Although the salutation was addressed ‘Dear Board,’ no other board member received the packet. The letter to Director Olinger from Deputy Attorney General Kanada had the notation, ‘Under Seal’ in capital letters and large font. Nowhere in the letter was Director Olinger informed that he would be the only board member receiving the packet. In fact, in bold letters were the following directives, ‘We therefore request that you keep the existence of this action and the enclosures to this letter confidential. Within your organization this case should only be disclosed on a need to know basis. This case should not be listed on any public agenda or discussed in open sessions during any meetings.’ Not only was Director Olinger not informed he was being given the packet as a representative of the entity, he was directed not to share the documents or the substance of the information with anyone. Further he was directed not to agendize this item for discussion. The Brown Act, governing how public officials communicate on matters within their subject matter jurisdiction, prohibits communication without properly listing the item for discussion on a publicly accessible agenda. The seal was lifted without the district even knowing the lawsuit had been filed. Upon learning of the lawsuit and retrieving from the court website a copy of the complaint, special counsel for the district contacted relators’ legal counsel advising her of the fact that the district was never properly served with the complaint or packet of material evidence. Relators’ legal counsel acknowledged knowing that the only individual who received a copy of the packet was Director Olinger, but she asserted that board members and the top executives ‘were conflicted’ from reviewing the information because they were listed as defendants or co-conspirators in the complaint. In addition, Relators’ questionable manner in handling this lawsuit is most evident in their refusal to provide the district, the public entity they are allegedly representing, the packet of material evidence.  Rather than simply providing the evidence purportedly supporting their claim, relators’ legal counsel sent a letter asserting it was the Attorney General’s obligation to provide the public entity the material evidence.”
In an email she sent to California Deputy Attorney General Emily Kalanithi on June 11, Medina indicates she was informed that the California Attorney General’s Office, upon review of materials previously sent it on behalf of Cliff Young, Davis and/or Romero or all three, had declined to take action against any of the defendants or identified co-conspirators in the subsequently-filed qui tam suit.
According to Medina, the billings that Tafoya and his firm; Albright, Yee & Schmit; the Kaufman Law Firm; and Robert Katherman made to the district were legitimate invoices for services that were actually rendered. In this way, the central premise of the legal action Young, Davis and Romero have filed is invalid, Medina insists, as no false claim was ever made by Tafoya; Albright, Yee & Schmit; the Kaufman Law Firm; and Robert Katherman.
“This notion was apparently not obvious for this lawsuit,” according to Medina.
“The California False Claims Act attaches liability, not to the underlying fraudulent activity or to the government’s wrongful payment, but to the claim for payment,” according to Medina’s motion for dismissal. “A ‘claim’ under the California False Claims Act is a ‘demand for money that induces the government to disburse funds or to otherwise suffer immediate financial detriment.’ [The] relators here allege in general and conclusory terms a ‘scheme of illegal kickbacks and bribes’ and somehow leapfrog to therefore named defendants ‘presented false claims for payment.’ But [the] relators fail to identify a single false claim. Instead, by [the] relators’ own admission, ‘Qui tam plaintiffs filed this action in order to shed light on the board’s corruption and misappropriation of public funds.’”
The plaintiffs were obliged to plead the case with specificity, according to Medina, meaning they had to lay out exactly what false claim the defendants had made. They were unable to do so, Medina said, because no false or fraudulent billing had taken place. “Relators do not even come close to meeting the ‘who, what, when, where and how,’” according to Medina. “In the 77 paragraphs of the complaint, relators do not identify a single false claim for reimbursement, let alone specify who did what. In fact, Relators do not even distinguish between the role of the named defendants or the named co-conspirators, which alone is a fatal flaw. The specificity requirement of the California False Claims Act requires separate allegations for each defendant and co-conspirator and not merely lumping multiple defendants together.” Medina cited the decision in the case of US v. Corinthian Colleges, which stated,  “In the context of a fraud suit involving multiple defendants, a plaintiff must, at a minimum, identify the role of each defendant in the alleged fraudulent scheme.”
The suit by Young, Davis and Romero inaccurately portrays the provision of gifts and political donations as being secretly conducted, according to Medina. “Relators also assert that the political contributions made by the named defendants to the members of the board of directors is evidence of this scheme of kickbacks and bribes,” according to Medina’s motion.  Making reference to campaign disclosure statements filed by Board President Taylor and Director Crowther that were cited as exhibits in the qui tam suit, Medina notes that disclosure of the donations were made and that Dr. Young was himself a political contributor to Taylor’s campaign.
“Not only is this not fraud, but the California Supreme Court has held, “[p]olitical contribution involves exercise of fundamental freedom protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 1 of the California Constitution,” according to Medina.
Of at least academic interest is at what point the once cordial relationship and political alliance between Cliff Young and Michael Taylor evaporated. Though the votes on the board betrayed no overt hostility until March, there is evidence to suggest those in Dr. Young’s circle were militating against Taylor and Crowther by late December 2018 or perhaps earlier.
The Sentinel has obtained a letter dated January 4, 2019 written by Romero to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Public Integrity Unit. That letter states, in part, “I have been a witness to the GM [general manager] Mr. Mansell and President Dr. Taylor tak[ing] authoritarian power from our CFO [chief financial officer] Naisha Davis over the finances and accounts payable and hand the responsibility to an uncertified personnel, Director of LT [business services] and Finance Jon Stephenson, and divert all money movement through the purchasing department with no qualified CPA [certified public accountant] and having Executive Assistant Melissa Blount oversee a lot of transactions regarding the allocating of funds to the consultants, [who] have not provided services and proper invoices for services render[ed] to our district for work product produced. Checks are being made out to consultants with no work product produce[d] or tracked. I have heard and seen consultant Rob Katherman on several occasion outside my office ask the Engineering Manager Linda Jedeski about our reserve funds. This is suspicious and alarming in nature.”
While the qui tam suit alleges Mansell was hired by a 3-to-2 board vote without a recruitment effort, background checks, or other standard hiring reviews, the minutes of the June 21, 2018 meeting indicate that Mansell was hired on a 3-to-0 vote during the board’s closed session, with Young, Young and Taylor voting in support of the hiring and both Olinger and Crowther absent.
Though the suit cites Taylor as having hired Tafoya as the West Valley Water District’s general counsel, Tafoya’s hiring was supported by Cliff Young, who was the board president at the time.
Fiset and Coleman assert that Dr. Young, as a plaintiff in the suit; Taylor and Crowther as named co-conspirators in the original suit; and the Tafoya and Garcia law firm, as defendants in the suit, are “conflicted” in terms of their ability to engage in any part of the decision-making or voting process with regard to action the district takes in response to the suit, and thus cannot vote on the matter or offer the district counsel or advice relating to the suit. Fiset and Coleman have asserted that Taylor and Crowther as well as Robert Tafoya have engaged in conflicts of interest in their official action on behalf of the district in response to the suit. In an amended complaint to the suit filed with the court, Fiset and Coleman have elevated Taylor and Crowther from the status of named co-conspirators to defendants, alleging against them violations of Government Code Section 1090, engaging in a conflict of interest.
While the case was earlier scheduled to be heard in the Los Angeles Superior Court courtroom of Judge Ruth Kwan, there is a pending motion by Fiset and Coleman to have the matter categorized as a “complex case,” so that it will be assigned to Judge Yvette Palazuelos, who in addition to being a judge is a renowned legal scholar. The presiding judge rendered a tentative determination that the matter qualifies as a complex case. Judge Palazuelos is, however, temporarily off the bench, and therefore Judge David Cunningham will be initially presiding over the matter. The district filed an opposition to the complex case designation, arguing that the lawsuit is fatally flawed on its face since it does not identify any or even a single false claim and therefore the motion to designate the case complex is simply a delay tactic by the qui tam plaintiffs. The district has also argued that qui tam plaintiffs are legally precluded from requesting the complex case designation since the West Valley Water District intervened and is therefore prosecuting the case.  Albright, Yee and Schmit has also filed an opposition to the complex case designation. The tentative decision to catalog the suit as a complex case has not yet been confirmed.
Of issue in the case and the overarching circumstance is timing. It is the observation of those familiar with the circumstance that the very existence of the lawsuit and the accusations of which it is composed are of potential damage to Crowther and his candidacy for reelection this year and represent a challenge to Olinger in his reelection campaign this year as well, given his closer affiliation on the board with Taylor and Crowther than with Cliff Young. The motion to dismiss was going to heard by Judge Kwan on September 19, 2019. That hearing has now been postponed in anticipation of a case status conference that will not be held until October 8, 2019. Those who perceive the qui tam case as lacking in merit maintain that it is a political ploy to influence the outcome of this year’s board election.
“Both the facts and the law, as they stand today, support an immediate dismissal of this case,” the district’s official spokesman, Steve Lambert, told the Sentinel.
An indication of how serious the stakes are for those involved in the district’s upcoming election in which Olinger, Greg Young and Crowther are competing to hang onto their respective positions can be seen in the effort by a West Valley Water District employee to obtain a restraining order against Greg Young that began last month and which has yet to be settled.
Naseem Farooqi, who is the public affairs manager with the water district, maintains that Greg Young grew so angry with him that Young made a threat to kill him.
The Sentinel is informed the fracas evolved out of a press release that Farooqi authored on behalf of the district and distributed. The press release in question apparently referenced a vote by the water board, and Greg Young objected to what he says was a factual error in the release, which stated that he had voted against the item being voted on when in fact he had abstained from voting.
Greg Young’s alleged threat came during a San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee meeting at which they were both in attendance. Farooqi maintains that while Young was upbraiding him about the error in the press release, Young threatened to kill him.
Farooqi said he had petitioned the court for a restraining order against Gregory Young because “I take all threats of this nature very seriously.” Queried as to whether what Greg Young had engaged in was simply a matter of overstatement or hyperbole, Farooqi said, “It was not a joke. Director Greg Young was very angry and threatened me out of anger.”
The matter came before Judge Barry Plotkin on the morning of July 31, as an ex-parte hearing.
Both Farooqi and Young under oath provided their version of events to the court, with Young having been advised of his 5th Amendment rights. Thereafter, the court went into recess to allow Farooqi to call a witness, a district employee, Socorro Pantaleon. When the hearing resumed at 1:38 p.m. Pantaleon offered her testimony. An exhibit was marked for identification and entered into evidence.
During the hearing, an individual identified as Christian Dustin Duarte who was in the company of Farooqi took a photograph of the counsel table. Judge Plotkin, noting that taking photographs in the courtroom was unlawful, had a bailiff escort Duarte from the courtroom and excluded him from being present at the proceedings. After the testimony was concluded, Judge Plotkin denied the immediate granting of a restraining order, but ordered both parties to return on August 27 to see if a restraining order would be entered at that time.
This week, on Tuesday, August 27, both Farooqi and Young returned to court, where the hearing on the matter had been transferred to the courtroom of Judge Janet Frangie. Young was represented by his attorney, Thomas Pratt. Frangie stayed the granting of a restraining order, continuing the matter to September 16 to allow Young to file a formal response to Farooqi’s petition. She also issued an order for Gary Grossich, who was present at the Republican Central Committee meeting when the alleged threat was said to have occurred, to be present to testify at the September 16 hearing. The Sentinel has learned that Grossich is prepared to testify that he heard Young utter no threat to Farooqi and that he saw Farooqi willingly and cordially carrying on a conversation with Young.
“Despite Mr. Farooqi’s claim, I never admitted to making a threat,” Greg Young told the Sentinel. “I clearly told the judge that I did not recall all of the conversation and do not recall ever saying that I was ‘going to kill him.’ Furthermore, I certainly never said it three times in a row as he claims. The judge had to have a political associate of Mr. Farooqi removed from the court for attempting to take pictures of me during the hearing. Christopher Dustin Duarte is a friend and political associate of Mr. Farooqi.”
Young said he believed Duarte intended to use the photos he had sought to take “to make the whole proceedings into a political circus and have something my opponents can use against me in the campaign.”

By Gail Fry and Mark Gutglueck
The Sentinel has learned more about the July 11 fatal shooting of 29-year-old Sammy Lee Davis of Crestline by 27-year-old Alex Opmanis, also of Crestline.
In the initial aftermath of the shooting and the sheriff’s department’s homicide detail’s preliminary investigation, what occurred was cataloged as an apparent justifiable homicide.
In a July 12 official statement from the sheriff’s department, Davis was referred to as the “suspect” and Opmanis was not identified by name but described as being 27 years old and a resident of Crestline, and was referred to as the “victim.”
“The victim recognized one of the men as an associate of the suspect that assaulted him in January 2019, which resulted in hospitalization,” according to the sheriff’s department’s statement released the day after the shooting. “He felt threatened as the three subjects approached, verbally taunting him, and retrieved his firearm from a compartment in his car. One of the subjects, Sammy Davis, grabbed the victim’s shirt and punched him multiple times. The victim fired his gun, striking Davis and stopping the assault.”
After four weeks passed, the sheriff’s department’s homicide investigators in a significant reversal arrested Opmanis on August 9 on suspicion of murder in the shooting death
That shooting took place at approximately 9:17 p.m. on July 11 in the parking lot of Goodwin’s Market at 24089 Lake Gregory Drive in Crestline.
Deputies were dispatched to the scene after a 911 call reported that shots had been fired. Upon their arrival, the deputies found Sammy Davis on the ground suffering from a gunshot wound and an off-duty nurse administering medical aid. Davis was transported to St. Bernadine Hospital where he was pronounced deceased at 10:12 p.m.
Subsequently, homicide detectives responded to the Goodwin’s Market parking lot where they initiated their investigation and conducted preliminary interviews with witnesses and Opmanis. Opmanis told detectives that Davis and two other men had approached him.
Following its initial survey of the situation, the sheriff’s department assigned Detective Eric Ogaz under the supervision of Sergeant Angelo Gibilterra to look into the matter further. Later, Homicide Sergeant Joseph Steers augmented Ogaz and Gibilterra’s efforts.
Davis had a criminal record. On April 18, 2012 he entered a plea of guilty on a charge of burglary filed against him on May 11, 2011. On April 11, 2011, he entered a plea of receiving stolen property that was filed against him on April 1, 2011. On February 15, 2012 misdemeanor charges of drunk in public and failure to appear filed against him on November 17, 2011 were dismissed. On February 29, 2008, Davis pleaded guilty to a felony burglary charge that had been filed against him on February 26, 2008.
Opmanis was convicted on May 26, 2017 of misdemeanor driving under the influence of alcohol on a case filed on March 21, 2017 relating to an incident on New Year’s Day 2017.
A persistent report in the immediate aftermath of the shooting was that Opmanis did not have a concealed weapon permit. The information supplied by the sheriff’s department in the July 12 statement implied, but did not explicitly state, that the gun retrieved by Opmanis from his car and used in the shooting was loaded.
Under California law, an individual without a concealed weapon permit can transport a firearm in a vehicle only if the firearm is unloaded and locked in the trunk or in a reasonably secure place in the front of the vehicle, with the ammunition for the gun in the opposite location, either the trunk or in the vehicle, which also must be locked.
While many of those who carry firearms in their vehicles consider having them unloaded to be impractical, carrying a loaded firearm in a car or truck can be charged as a misdemeanor if discovered by a law enforcement officer. A second such offense can be ratcheted up to a felony.
While the July 12 report seemed to indicate that the sheriff’s department took Opmanis at his word when he said he had a fear for his safety when he encountered Davis, the sheriff’s department no longer considers Opmanis’s assertion to be credible.
“On Friday, August 9, 2019, Alex Opmanis met with homicide detectives to provide an additional statement,” according to an August 22 sheriff’s department release. “Following the interview, detectives determined Opmanis’ statements were inconsistent with the evidence gathered and placed him under arrest for the murder of Sammy Davis.”
In its August 22 statement, the department had dispensed with its reference to Opmanis as the victim and labeled him a “suspect.” Conversely, Davis was no longer referred to as the “suspect,” and the department used instead the term “victim” in describing him.
A video of the incident has been obtained by the sheriff’s department. An informed source who had seen video told the Sentinel that on July 11 Davis was in the company of two others. One of those accompanying Davis had previous violent contact with Opmanis, and it is that person, not Davis, who was “the likely intended victim of the shooter,” Sentinel was told. “It appears Opmanis had seen Davis and his two friends inside the store, and waited for them to come out. It does not appear that Davis and his friends saw him. When they were leaving on their motorcycles, Opmanis was at his SUV, standing up with his feet inside on the rail/floor board, and viewing over the roof. As they passed by, he waived them over to him.”
According to the informed source, the individual who had the previous violent encounter with Davis did not see Opmanis, but Davis and the man in his company did, and both turned toward Opmanis and parked. While the man who had the previous violent encounter with Opmanis initially rode off, several seconds later he turned around after he was on the highway and came back to the Goodwin’s Market parking lot.
“Raised voices can be heard” on the video, the Sentinel’s source said, as the returning motorcyclist came up on the other three, including Davis and Opmanis, and removed his helmet. “He is off the bike only seconds when two shots are fired,” the Sentinel was told. “It was Sammy who was shot. The story of taking a beating and getting into the car for the gun does not match the video.”
Based on the history of violence between Opmanis and the motorcyclist who had headed all the way out onto the highway before returning to the parking lot, the Sentinel’s source said, “I’m fairly certain Opmanis intended to shoot him, but Sammy was coming at Opmains after arguing about something. The word is Sammy did not know Opmanis.”

Deteriorating field conditions and growing fan apathy have prompted Yardbirds Baseball Team owner Andrew Dunn to depart from Adelanto Stadium. Dunn, who is also the owner of the independent Pecos League in which the Yardbirds compete, has given indication that he was prompted to leave the stadium because he was consistently losing money throughout the season.
Dunn took the action in July, electing to have the team play all of its home games on the road. Now, with the Yardbirds in the playoffs, Adelanto is once again being denied the opportunity to host another championship team.
His efforts to engage Adelanto officials in a meaningful dialogue were futile, Dunn indicated.
In large measure the city has neglected the field.
Though the Yardbirds lost their last home game in Adelanto, 6-4, to the Tucson Saguaros, the team did remarkably well while they were in place in the  City of Unlimited Possibilities.  In 2017, during its inaugural season, the Yardbirds captured the Pecos League championship.
This year, the Yardbirds ran away with the Pacific Division Championship, finishing the season with a 48 win and 16 loss record or a .741 win-loss percentage, 10 games ahead of the second-place finisher. Their record at Adelanto Stadium was 16-5  this year and their record at other venues around the league was 30-13. the team had an impressive division-leading batting average of .314 and a division leading ERA of 4.27.
A bizarre, indeed perverse, curse seems to attend Adelanto Stadium. Just as the Yardbirds had a wonderful record in the last season they played there this year, in 2016, the farewell year for the High Desert Mavericks, that team captured the California League championship, with a record of 82 wins and 58 losses, and then went on to sweep the Visalia Rawhide in the first three games in the five game league championship series. After what was arguably the team’s best performance in its 25-year history up to that point, at the end of the year the team departed what was then called Stater Bros. Stadium, never to return.
The Mavericks came into existence in 1991. At times, the stadium was packed with fans.
Litigation ensued when Adelanto forced the Mavericks’ departure. Main Street California, LLC, the corporate entity that owned the Mavericks, was seeking $11 million from the cash-strapped city. In March, city officials agreed to settle the lawsuit for $3.8 million, by means of a $1.5 million up front payment followed by 24 monthly installments of $95,800 that are set to end in June 2021.
The Yardbirds have managed to remain a going concern for three years, but have never proven a major draw while in Adelanto, as they were seemingly unable to capture the passionate fan base the Mavericks had cultivated. On average 40 to 41 fans were in attendance at the Yardbird’s games in Adelanto. A large number of those were dignitaries or guests who had been comped tickets.
Dunn’s losses were relatively modest, something around $300 to $400 per game.
The city had allowed the field to fall into a state of dishabille, with burned patches of grass and small pits. The field had been compromised in part by the city using the field for venues other than playing baseball, such as rodeos and motorcycle races.
-M.G.

Both Big Bear Lake and Lake Silverwood, two of San Bernardino County’s major bodies of water, have been plagued in recent weeks with potentially unhealthful algae blooms.
State, regional and local water boards urged boaters, swimmers, dog owners, fishers and everyone else to avoid direct water contact while visiting areas of both lakes due to the condition.
The areas affected by the bloom at Big Bear Lake include the North Shore, running for roughly a half-mile west of the Big Bear Solar Observatory, and the west side of Stanfield Cutoff, with toxins generally confined near the shore. At Lake Silverwood, bloom conditions have been mercurial, migrating rapidly, with wind and waves pushing the bloom into different portions  of the reservoir, and likewise impacting the concentrations of the algal material.
The phenomenon arises from  organisms known as blue-green algae or cyanobacteria, which will concentrate and accumulate into mats and scum, form foam at the surface and along the shoreline. While it generally ranges in color from blue to green, it sometimes manifests as white or brown.
Cyanobacteria or microcystis aeruginosa is a single-celled blue green alga which produces several strains of toxins. Microcystis can proliferate to combinate into multiple toxins, including the potent liver toxin, microcystin.  When microcystis die, their cells break open, releasing the toxin microcystin into the water.  Ingestion of water or algal cells containing microcystin has produced adverse effects a wide cross section of animals, including fish, dogs, cats, livestock and humans.
Microcystis blooms are typically well-hosted in warm, turbid, and slow-moving water. Water that is high in nitrogen or phosphorus, known as eutrophic waters, supports blooms with the highest biomass.  Microcystis require substantial light intensity to facilitate blooming. In Southern California, cyanobacteria proliferate in the early summer through late autumn and may last for up to four months.  Occasionally, microcystis may be present in the water without apparent blooms on the surface, with the blooming taking place beneath the water.
In humans, algae bloom toxins typically result in gastrointestinal symptoms including nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, as well as eye and ear infections, earache, sore throat, blisters, muscle weakness and pain.
In dogs, cyanobacteria can cause vomiting, stumbling and falling, foaming at the mouth, diarrhea, convulsions, lethargy and sudden loss of appetite, tremors and seizures.

An investigation initiated by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and completed by the Los Angeles Police Department after a burned body turned up in a dry lake bed in Joshua Tree earlier this month has led to the arrest of three people believed to have murdered a 72-year-old Marina del Rey man in an effort to appropriate his $2.6 million home.
On August 16, a 911 call that came in at 8:49 a.m. alerted sheriff’s deputies about a body discovered in the area near Sunway Road and Rosehedge Avenue, a few blocks east of Sunfair Road.
“Based on evidence at the scene, detectives from the sheriff’s department homicide division responded and assumed the investigation,” according to the sheriff’s department.
After the body was determined to be that of William Webb, 72, of Marina del Rey, San Bernardino County handed the investigation over to the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Bureau homicide division.
In relatively short order, Los Angeles Police Department investigators connected the circumstances relating to William Webb to 44-year-old Haena Kealia Worthing, of Marina Del Rey. In June, Webb had sought a restraining order against Worthing, who was described variously as Webb’s “stepdaughter” and “former stepdaughter.” According to Webb’s court filing, Worthing had threatened him and had stolen documents relating to the title and sale of his house.
It was ascertained that Webb had expired from a severe beating by a heavy object.
Upon further investigation, the police department identified Worthing, 44; John Schiefer, 38 of Nipomo, and Shavonne Webster, 40 of Winchester, Indiana, as having been in contact with Webb in the days before his mid-August disappearance. Working with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, homicide detectives obtained arrest warrants for Worthing, Schiefer and Webster.
According to affidavits filed in conjunction with the warrants, Schiefer and Webster were renting a room at Webb’s Marina del Rey residence.
Available information is that Webb’s wife and Worthing were opposed to Webb’s stated intention to sell his upscale house.
According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Worthing, Schiefer and Webster participated together in bludgeoning Webb to death using a hammer on August 15. His body was then driven 153 miles eastward, where it was set afire.
Webb’s wife had reported him missing on August 16.
Schiefer and Webster were arrested August 21. Over the next several days, the Los Angeles Police Department carried out repeated and thorough searches of Webb’s house. Worthing was arrested on August 26.
Schiefer, Worthing and Webster are being held in Los Angeles County custody in lieu of $2 million bail each.
They are next scheduled for court appearances on September 9 and September 19.

With summer coming to a close, we begin to welcome fall and all the diverse outfits and opportunity for layering. We have booties, slip skirts, leather, blazers and a lot more to have fun with. With that said, get ready to  mix and match for the season. The combination of pieces are endless. Be sure to include the dress over your favorite jeans. This season is going to vary, because it’s full of different trends. There’s something for the minimalist to the Boho Chic lover to the person for whom anything goes! It depends on your personal preference. The more unique your pieces are, the more you’re going to sway into your own style. Autumn is full of emotions, and I can’t wait to see all the different personalities that fashionably shine from it. Get ready!

“There are days when I want to feel cool, sexy, goofy, and at these times, fashion helps me define my mood.” -Disha Patani

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the August 23 San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 08-23-19

By Mark Gutglueck
Adelanto Mayor Gabriel Reyes this week offered his perspective on recent turns of events in the City With Unlimited Possibilities, contesting the widening perception that City Manager Jessie Flores has come to represent a torch of graft that has been passed to him from the Rich Kerr regime that Reyes and two of his council colleagues deposed in the 2018 municipal election.
Flores, with his thin curriculum vitae, marginal academic and professional background, sketchy governmental experience and highly dubitable track record, was plucked from relative obscurity last year by then-Mayor Rich Kerr to serve as Adelanto city manager. Previously, as the city’s contract economic development director put into place by Kerr, Flores carried out Kerr’s marching orders to transition the financially-challenged city to a marijuana-based economy, and had facilitated a free-for-all atmosphere in the city for actual and would-be cannabis entrepreneurs that had caught the attention of the FBI. With Kerr as mayor, Kerr’s two allies on the city council, Jermaine Wright and John Woodard, and Flores in the role of unchecked economic development consultant, Adelanto in the first three-and-a-half years of Kerr’s tenure as mayor had burned through six city managers, each with greater or lesser misgivings about the way in which Kerr was having the city conduct its affairs by partnering with dozens of questionable business applicants, often suspending its own ordinances, regulations and rules to please those business people. Along the way, Wright had been arrested by the FBI and charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office with bribery as a consequence of his having personally cashed in on the marijuana bonanza all around him, and both City Hall and Kerr’s home had been raided by the FBI seeking to uncover evidence of kickbacks being delivered to city officials by grateful marijuana entrepreneurs granted lucrative marijuana cultivating and marketing licenses in the city. Upon being elevated to the city manager’s post, Flores expressed his gratitude to Kerr by intensifying the effort to establish Adelanto as the California city with the largest number of legalized and licensed operations involving the cultivation of marijuana, the wholesaling of marijuana, the manufacturing of cannabis-based products, the distribution of unaltered marijuana together with cannabis infusions and derivatives, and the storefront retailing of marijuana and cannabis-based products. Accompanying that intensification came ever more bold suspensions of the city’s own regulations, greater scrutiny of the city’s action by the FBI and suspicion among the public in general that a mob-like element, led by Kerr with Flores as his capodecina managing his made guys, had muscled in on City Hall.
In that atmosphere, with the growing perception that bribes and kickbacks were the reality in Adelanto’s municipal culture, a reform movement grew, crystallizing around the mayoral candidacy of Gabriel Reyes and the council candidacies of Stevevonna Evans and Gerardo Hernandez in the 2018 election. All three were successful, driving Kerr and Woodard from office.
A clearly pronounced expectation was that upon their installment in office, perhaps even as early as the day all three were sworn in, Reyes, Evans and Hernandez would vote to terminate Flores. No such move played out upon the trio taking their places on the council dais. Reyes, as the new mayor, quickly established the pecking order on the council, nominating Evans to serve as mayor pro tem. In fielding the obvious and expected questions about what the council intended to do with Flores, Evans acknowledged Flores’ undeniable connection to the Kerr regime and the outstanding issues with regard to the activities within the city over the previous three years and the way in which Flores represented both a real and symbolic obstruction to the reform of City Hall that the voters had expressed so clearly at the polls. Still, Evans said, she and her colleagues could not precipitously fire Flores for no stated cause whatsoever in what might be widely perceived as a crass political move. She said the council was reviewing the city manager’s past and current performance very carefully and would take whatever action, including termination, was appropriate based upon methodical evaluation.
In the meantime, the marijuana entrepreneurs who had backed Kerr and Woodard to the hilt with generous donations to their campaigns before the election in November had to come to terms with having wagered their money on the wrong political horses. They looked to make amends, swooping in to provide post-election campaign donations to the victors, hoping doing so would help them forget that they had opposed their elections so they might not hold that against them when votes impacting them came up in the future. Central among those was Brad Eckenweiler, the chief executive officer of Lifestyle Delivery Systems, which had obtained an operating license for a sizable undertaking involved in all order of cultivation and production, which included manufacturing under-the-tongue absorption cannabinoid strips. Eckenweiler provided Reyes with a $7,000 peace offering in the form of a political donation.
As 2019 progressed, the will to part with Flores did not materialize. While Councilman Ed Camargo, who had been at odds with Kerr over the direction he had been committed to taking the city in from the outset, was a solid vote to cashier Flores, Councilwoman Joy Jeannette, a holdover from the Kerr political team, remained foursquare behind Flores. By late January, it was clear that Hernandez was in agreement with Camargo, and was willing to jettison Flores. Still the same, Reyes and Evans, who were both being heavily lobbied by Kerr and his supporters, including those from the cannabis industry, were learning of the city’s dire financial position. They were being prosthelytized with the mantra that the capital to be generated by the marijuana trade that had been created for the city by Kerr, Wright, Woodard and Flores represented the one surefire prospect the city had of being able to find the revenue needed to remain as a going concern and avoid eventual bankruptcy or disincorporation.
On February 13, after Reyes learned of a $30,000 severance payment Flores had made to a city code enforcement officer Flores had apparently forced into resigning, the mayor made a point of raising the issue during a closed session and the city council voted to place Flores on paid administrative leave while an internal investigation relating to the matter was carried out. On March 7, the council voted 3-to-2 to reinstate Flores to his full duties as city manager, with Reyes, Evans and Jeannette prevailing and Camargo and Hernandez dissenting.
Last week, it appeared that a third vote had materialized to hand Flores his walking papers. Evans had sent signals indicating she would be willing to entertain another review of Flores’ performance, to be accompanied by an up-or-down vote to hand him a pink slip. Camargo arranged, through City Attorney Victor Ponto, to put the evaluation and possible action on the agenda for discussion at the council’s August 14 meeting. Before adjourning into that executive session, however, Mayor Reyes objected to the item being resurrected after the council had endured a recent closed session discussion relating to Flores’ performance and Flores had come away from that evaluation unscathed. Enough is enough, Reyes maintained, saying he objected to again subjecting Flores to a life-or-death vote. When Reyes called for a vote to remove the item from the closed session discussion, Hernandez, who was widely assumed to be a reliable vote to get rid of Flores, swung to support Reyes and Jeannette, preventing Evans and Camargo from being able to take the issue up in that evening’s closed session. Later, Reyes, Hernandez and Jeannette foreclosed an effort to schedule Flores’ possible firing during a future closed session.
Evans’ unanticipated reversal showing her willingness to fire Flores was thus accompanied by an equally surprising flip in the opposite direction by Hernandez, who went from gunning to remove Flores to supporting his retention as city manager. That development sent shock waves through the community, raising suspicions and hackles. Compounding the confusion, it was revealed that Reyes is on the verge of asking his colleagues to rescind Evans’ appointment as mayor pro tem and to confirm his nomination of Hernandez to the position.
The full implication of all of this requires a contextual understanding.
The November 2018 election cycle that heralded the ascendancy of Reyes, Evans and Hernandez matched by Kerr’s, Woodard’s and former Councilman Charlie Glasper’s removal from office mirrored the 2014 election when Kerr, Woodard and Glasper had ousted incumbents Cari Thomas, Charles Valvo and Steve Baisden in a clean sweep.
Upon joining Ed Camargo and Jermaine Wright on the city council in 2014, Kerr, Woodard and Glasper, mindful that in June 2013 the Thomas-led council had declared Adelanto to be in a state of fiscal emergency, a move preparatory to a declaration of bankruptcy, embarked on an effort to rejuvenate the city financially.
Without hesitation, Kerr and Woodard embraced dispensing with the city’s longstanding ban on the sale of medical marijuana within the city limits, calling upon staff to prepare the way for the city to utilize the freedom it had under the auspices of the 1996 passage of Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act, to license entrepreneurs to sell medical marijuana within the city and capture the revenue from taxes imposed on the sales of the drug to fatten city coffers. Because of Glasper’s advocacy against making marijuana available for any purposes and his contention that a significant number of those purchasing medical marijuana for medical purposes would actually be using it for its intoxicative effect, Kerr and Woodard, by that point joined by Wright, compromised with Glasper to change the nature of the marijuana-based businesses the city was contemplating permitting from dispensaries and storefronts marketing or selling marijuana to end uses to large-scale indoor cultivation facilities operating exclusively from buildings within the city’s industrial park. Councilman Ed Camargo remained in opposition to allowing any commercial activity that entailed the production or sale of marijuana. The council majority also had to overcome the resistance of several city staff, which included former City Manager Jim Hart, former City Engineer/Public Works Director/interim City Manager Tom Thornton and City Attorney Todd Litfin.
By late 2015, having succeeded in getting the city moving full speed ahead on a strategy that would allow the agricultural production of marijuana to create tax revenue for the city, Kerr, Woodard and Wright began to maneuver around Glasper, who at that point was in the early throes of dementia, to broaden the city’s toleration of a cannabis-based economy from cultivation alone to retail sales of the medical marijuana product. Moreover, looking forward to what they anticipated would be the November 2016 statewide approval of Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act which would allow marijuana to be used for its intoxicative effect, Kerr, Woodard and Wright began militating toward opening areas of the city within its industrial and commercial districts to retail establishments.
The council majority arranged to hire Jessie Flores, a longtime political hanger-on, whom Kerr, Woodard and Wright recognized might be useful. Flores, who would do practically anything for money, was given a position as the city’s contract economic development director, under a contract which skirted conflict of interest regulations and allowed him to seek out business interests and entrepreneurs and facilitate their applications for business licenses and permits and, if the applicants were amenable, hire Flores to work for them or retain him as a consultant. On the face of this, it appeared that Flores might be acting as a means of conveyance – through accepting money from the applicants for Adelanto business licenses – as a bag man for bribes being delivered to members of the council to guarantee the approval of those business license applications.
As the City of Adelanto expanded its acceptance of marijuana-related businesses to include retail establishments, it adopted a host of zoning, permitting, inspection and regulation measures meant as window dressing to reassure the public that the city was seeking to ensure the move toward liberalization of marijuana use did not create a lawless environment. These regulations were offered as a demonstration that the new age of enlightenment was not ushering the city into an era of chaos after more than a century of marijuana prohibition. As importantly, the regulations at least appeared to be an assurance that the permitting fees and taxes that were to accompany the marijuanification of Adelanto that was to generate money to sustain the city would be fairly, uniformly and conscientiously collected.
In short order, however, it was growing ever more apparent that the Kerr regime’s publicly announced plan to get Adelanto in on the ground floor of the California marijuana revolution and thereby see to it that the city moved ahead of other municipalities in terms of hosting lucrative tax- and fee-producing  businesses was essentially a cover for venal and self interested purposes. Initially Kerr and his team said the number of cannabis related business licenses would be limited to six operations citywide and would need to comply with a requirement that those operations draw at least fifty percent of those who work there from Adelanto itself.
Virtually overnight the limit on the number of operations to a half dozen was dispensed with. For a time, city officials said the untoward impacts of businesses selling a substance, the possession of which California law previously designated as a felony, would be minimized by strict zoning codes. Those zones were generally in areas away from residences, schools, churches and other sensitive uses. But as the number of applicants for marijuana-related business permits burgeoned, the council casually expanded the zones. In multiple cases there was evidence to suggest that marijuana-related business applicants were provided with information in advance of those zone changes with regard to where land previously designated as off-limits to commercial cannabis or agricultural activity was to be altered to permit such operations, allowing the entrepreneurs to secure quarters in which to operate before those zone changes caused the price on the property to escalate. Word on the street was that members of council or Flores were providing that inside information, at a price.
As Kerr, Woodard and Wright persisted in their headlong pursuit of allowing virtually unbridled permitting of any marijuana-based businesses in the city, some city employees openly questioned the wisdom, propriety and legality of what was occurring. Others were less expressive but quietly protested by insisting on adhering to protocol and having the applicants meet both the spirit and letter of the city’s ordinances. This brought a reaction from Kerr, Woodard and Wright, expressed both officially and unofficially, instructing staff to get with the program and clear the way for the project applications to proceed, or else. Both code enforcement and building and safety officials were ordered to stand down and simply check off the inspection documents relating to the new cannabis-related businesses. When some applicants learned that many of the properties that had been zoned to allow for water-intensive and electricity-intensive indoor cultivation facilities were located in areas of the city that were not yet outfitted with the utilities to supply water and electricity, they made offers to purchase city facilities where such utility hook-ups were in place. In one case, C.B. Nanda, a marijuana cultivator who was a principal with two companies, AMN, LLC, and American Scientific Consultants, who had entered into an agreement with Canniatric, LLC, a company which makes tinctures of cannabis, tendered a $1 million offer on the city’s public works yard, located at 17451 Raccoon Avenue in Adelanto. The public works yard featured two two-story metal buildings, one of which housed the city’s emergency operations center, which had been constructed on the site and outfitted through a $375,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security the city received expressly for that purpose in 2011. City officials committed to selling the public works yard to C.B. Nanda for $1 million, despite one time-City Manager Gabriel Elliott’s insistence that it would cost the city two-and-one-half times to three times that amount to replace it. Because of that resistance, Elliott ultimately found himself on the wrong side of Kerr, and was suspended and eventually fired. Similarly, other city employees were shown the door because they were not on board with the then-council majority’s agenda to transform Adelanto into the marijuana capital of California. Those included Senior Management Analyst Mike Borja, Conservation Specialist Belen Cordero and Public Works Superintendent Nan Moore, former City Clerk/City Manager Cindy Herrera, former City Attorney Julia Sylva, former City Attorney Curtis Wright, former interim City Manager Brad Letner, former contract City Engineer Wilson So; former Assistant City Engineer Aaron Mower; Senior Planner Mark De Manincor; and a former public works employee, Jose Figueroa.
Under the contract that Flores had to serve as the contract economic development director that had been approved by Kerr, Woodard and Wright, Flores was able to serve work both sides of the street with marijuana project applicants by ensuring that they received approval and were given permits and licensing to operate while going to work on their behalf on his own as a consultant. This became a laundering mechanism for kickbacks to the city council members who were approving the projects and the needed zone changes to allow them to set up. Wright, dissatisfied with having to accept only a portion of the money coming back to him through Flores, chaffed under that arrangement and took to making deals with the cannabis entrepreneurs on his own. Ultimately, in 2017 he was tripped up when he accepted a $10,000 cash payment from an FBI agent who was posing as an applicant for a marijuana distribution business. Wright agreed to accept the money in return for protecting the putative marijuana distributor from enforcement and regulatory action by city employees. After a failed attempt by the FBI to utilize Wright to gather information for them relating to Kerr’s, Woodard’s and Flores’ involvement in receiving and distributing bribes and kickbacks, the FBI arrested Wright in November 2017 and he was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office with bribe-taking. He remained incarcerated for more than six months after his arrest, and on January 3, 2018 the council voted to remove Wright as a council member based on California Government Code §36513 and the Adelanto City Charter §505, under which city officials are obliged to vacate a council member’s position when that official has been absent from all regularly scheduled city council meetings for a period of 60 consecutive days.
The city five months later held a special election corresponding with California’s June Primary in which Kerr and Woodard marshaled their political forces to get their ally, Joy Jeannette, elected to the council. Kerr’s political machine continued to dominate the city for the next five months, during which Kerr and Woodard manipulated Jeannette and Glasper to support elevating Flores, who possess no educational degrees beyond a high school diploma and whose only governmental experience other than his contract position as Adelanto’s economic development director consisted of political appointments to field representative posts by former San Bernardino County supervisors Bill Postmus and Brad Mitzelfelt as rewards for work he did on their electoral campaigns, to be city manager. In the November election, the city’s voters wary of the direction the Kerr regime was moving in, chased Kerr and Woodard from office, voting in Reyes, Evans and Hernandez, who were widely perceived as reformists. Glasper did not seek reelection.
After assuming office, Reyes, Evans and Hernandez came face-to-face with example after example of Flores’ missteps, incompetence, questionable judgment, skirting of the law and outright violations of city ordinances and state law. An examination of the record and city documents showed that in return for his promotion to city manager, Flores had agreed to more fully institute the graft-tainted paradigm of municipal governance that met with Kerr, Woodard and Jeannette’s expectations. That involved tweaking the policies that applied to Adelanto making the transition to a reliance on a marijuana-based economy and simultaneously favor a set of cannabis entrepreneurs who were being provided with, if not a monopoly within the cannabis market, a position of dominance over the lion’s share of their competitors and some order of assurance that they would get fees waived, would not be required to pay duties and taxes, and would not be subject to the basic regulations such enterprises were supposed to be functioning under. The upshot of the evidence within the record was that Flores had accommodated Kerr and Woodard in providing favorable treatment to the marijuana-based operations that had taken care of them financially. The expected revenue to the city that was to come from the marijuana operations that had been allowed to set up in the city so Adelanto could turn its dire financial circumstance around had not materialized. Indeed, the city had failed to collect the lion’s share of the taxes that were supposed to be provided by those operations. The council learned that under Flores the city had failed to record a whole host of its transactions, allowing its books to fall into such disarray that they did not lend themselves to being audited.
By March, a majority of the council appeared to have lost its nerve as well as the pre-electoral zeal to reform operations at City Hall. Indeed, several principals among the coterie of cannabis-entrepreneurs, as well as Kerr himself, had taken to lobbying the council, asserting that the city’s only hope for avoiding financial ruin was to stay the course with the gameplan that Kerr, Woodard and Wright had formulated, which consisted of allowing the cannabis industry license to function essentially unmolested by the city’s regulatory arm, primarily its building and safety as well as its code enforcement divisions. They urged the council to look beyond the consideration that the highest grossing marijuana-based businesses were paying minimum taxes or not paying any taxes at all and that they were essentially functioning on the so-called “honor system,” by which they were trusted to report their proceeds without having to allow an independent set of eyes to see their books. Keeping Flores in place was imperative toward the goal of the cannabis operations making their way through their individual start-up phases to gather the strength to sustain themselves and continue to operate into the future, the industry’s advocates maintained.
Those elements of the community that were yet calling for reform pointed out that in early 2018, Kerr and Woodward were confidently predicting that milk and honey were just around the bend for Adelanto, which merely needed to continue to allow the marijuana operations to put one foot in front of the other on a daily basis and that by the time the city got to fiscal 2019-20, some $5.2 million to $5.6 million in marijuana tax revenue would be flooding into the city, such that Adelanto City Hall could meet all of its needs, and further allow city officials to restore line items to the city’s budget that had been taken out years ago and still more than balance the city’s ledgers. They predicted the city would boast a $1.1 million surplus when the new fiscal year began more than a month-and-a-half ago, as of July 1, 2019. In actuality, as June 30, 2019 and the end of Fiscal 2018-19 approached and the beginning of Fiscal 2019-20 was moving up on the city, the reality was that Adelanto had a $6.5 million budget deficit.
At this point, nine months after the election, with Flores yet in place as city manager, Reyes finds himself fending off charges that Adelanto is essentially engaged in the same dance as it was during Kerr’s tenure with a different partner.
This morning, in a wide-ranging exchange with the Sentinel, Reyes sought to dispel that notion.
The city is wrestling with overwhelming financial challenges that in many ways have limited its options, Reyes said. At the same time, the city needs to be run and managed on a day-to-day basis, and the council and city administrators have to devote some of their focus toward sustaining the city into the future. These are daunting tasks, the mayor said, that require calm and reasoned analysis that can only be carried out in an atmosphere of stability. Frenetically lurching from one desperate action to the next in the face of one crisis after another is likely to lead to a cascade of further crises, he said.
He acknowledged that excess and corruption marred the city under Kerr.
“I personally believe that, yes,” Reyes said. “One of the reasons I believe there was corruption is the episode with Bug [i.e., Woodard, who was a real estate professional] being the broker on the deal for the Jet Room.”
The Jet Room was a bar located at 17535 Adelanto Road, that was a popular drinking establishment and night spot frequented by airmen when George Air Force Base was operational. It went into decline and closed after George Air Force Base was shuttered in 1992. It lay fallow for more than two decades and was purchased at the bargain basement rate of $450,000 in October 2016 by David Serrano, who subsequently transformed it into a medical marijuana dispensary. When Serrano purchased the property, it lay outside the zone that would permit uses involving the retailing of marijuana. Woodard brokered the sale to Serrano, receiving a commission of $12,375. A month-and-a-half later, Woodard was involved in council action which expanded the cannabis retail zone to include the property.
“I hope there was no wrongdoing,” Reyes said. “I hope all of this is not true, but personally, I believe something [illegal] was done. I do believe the FBI will eventually arrest all the people who are guilty.”
That Flores was mixed up in what was going on at City Hall while Kerr, Woodard and Wright were on the council is undeniable, Reyes said, but he pointed out that a whole lot of people were working for the city during the four years Kerr was mayor and they cannot all be painted with the same brush or be held to be complicit in what Kerr, Woodard and Wright were doing simply by association. Both the high ranking staff, such as the city’s several city managers during that time, and those lower down on the chain of authority were overwhelmed by Kerr, he said.
“None of them were able to stand up to Rich [i.e;, Kerr],” Reyes said. “If they didn’t do what Rich told them to do they were fired.”
When it was pointed out that Flores, before he was city manager and while he was still in the capacity of the city’s contract economic developer, was militating on Kerr’s behalf and functioning in such a way that he had removed himself from being answerable to any of the city managers, and was in essence enabling Kerr to assert his authority in ways that were improper, Reyes acknowledged that it was possible that Flores had acted in ways that were, at best, ethically questionable, and there were probably other instances in which he had crossed over into skirting the law. The mayor said there is currently an effort to determine the full extent of the abuses that occurred under the past regime. “We are still looking into that,” he said. “I’m really trying to understand how the economic development director could have more power than the city manager.”
When he trained his focus on the consideration that Flores was working for the city under a contract that called for him to interest businesses, investors and speculators in establishing operations or investing in Adelanto while allowing Flores to go to work for those business interests he was courting on behalf of the city – a classic case of a conflict of interest – Reyes indicated it did not seem right to hold Flores to account for a shortcoming in the terms of a contract he was functioning under. “I can’t say that is the type of a person who should be fired,” Reyes said.
With regard to recurrent reports that under Kerr’s watch as mayor favorable treatment was provided to certain marijuana-related entrepreneurs, in particular ones believed to have kicked back to Kerr, Reyes reacted, “Did Jessie take part in setting that up? Did he create it on his own? Would he have orchestrated that by himself or was that something done by Rich?”
Reyes acknowledged that the city has failed to realize the tax income from the cannabis trade in the city that was predicted, and he did not dispute that an element of that shortfall might have been due to favoritism that was shown to a select, or even large, number of marijuana cultivators or cannabis purveyors.
There are three factors at play which have significantly reduced the city’s revenues from the cannabis-related operations that have already been permitted in the city, he said, of which, he added, the public is generally unaware.
One is that a deal was cut with some growers that allowed them to make an upfront payment at the time they were licensed and then forego having to make tax payments for several years thereafter. He said it is not clear which companies entered into such an arrangement, which is favorable to the companies but disadvantageous to the city. “There were companies who paid that tax in advance,” he said. “The city is trying to determine which companies those are,” Reyes said.
Another factor which has severely limited the success of the cultivators in Adelanto and thereby has cut the city off from a commensurate amount of tax revenue, Reyes said, is that at least 65 percent of the properties where cultivation operations are licensed in Adelanto do not have electricity and therefore are not engaged in operations.
“No more than 35 percent – and it is probably less than that – have electricity,” the mayor said. “I have talked to So Cal Edison and they say that those utilities will not be extended to that area until 2021 or 2022.”
And the mechanisms for collecting the tax revenue was neglected, Reyes said. “No one thought about the infrastructure system that had to be in place,” he said. “No one thought about the cannabis tax collection end of this. The collection system that we have now was put in place by my administration. Before, the city collected $40,000 per month. Since I have come into office, our collections are now up to $160,000 to $170,000 per month. Year to date, we have collected $920,000. By the end of the month we will have collected almost $1,000,000.”
Reyes took on the invective that was hurled his way which suggested that he was deposing Evans as mayor pro tem to punish her for her move toward terminating Flores, and that he was rewarding Hernandez with the mayor pro tem appointment for his support for keeping Flores in place.
“Jerry is not a sell-out,” Reyes said. “He wouldn’t change his vote for a promotion and I am not making Councilman Hernandez mayor pro tem for a vote. I am not in control of this council and how it votes. I have run into plenty of opposition and been outvoted on at least five occasions.”
He said he was seeking to remove Evans as mayor pro tem because “I don’t trust her.”
Asked to explicate Evans’ change of heart toward Flores, he said that her motivation was “political and personal,” citing four issues.
He said Evans’ loyalty to the Democratic Party outran her loyalty to the residents of Adelanto, which he said was demonstrated by her reaction to Flores’ unilateral decision to terminate the city’s contract with GEO Group at the Adelanto East Prison facility. That cancellation was done, Reyes said, for sound financial reasons and was entirely within Flores’ purview as city manager. Evans took umbrage at it, the mayor said, because GEO Group is a generous backer of the Democratic Party, in which Evans is highly active.
Reyes said that after the city council inadvertently engaged in a violation of the Brown Act – the State of California’s open public meeting law – the city’s law firm advised the council to make a correction of the error. Evans, Reyes said, used the incident to assert the law firm had not been diligent in preventing the violation from having occurred in the first place, and she sought to have the city switch its legal representation to another firm with which she has a relationship. Reyes said he believed this was inappropriate.
Evans was miffed with Flores’ move to reduce the number of service groups and nonprofit entities, including the city itself, from the eligibility list for the sale of fireworks within the city, according to Reyes. That is another element of her motivation against the city manager, the mayor said, and does not form a rational basis for removing him.
A fourth animus that Evans has against Flores stems from his suspension of three employees in the city’s water division, one of whom is Evans’ friend, the mayor said.
“All of those things are personal or political,” Reyes said. “Those should not be factors in the decisions she is making about the city and its policies in her role as a councilwoman. That is why I feel she should be removed as mayor pro tem.”
With regard to Flores’ qualifications and performance as city manager, Reyes said, “Jessie is not the best city manager, but we haven’t given him the tools to be successful. He has been effective with the resources he has.”
The city has the need for experienced and skilled leadership, Reyes said, but at present, it does not have the wherewithal to obtain it, and the challenge of finding someone with the skill set to guide Adelanto out of the straits it finds itself in is daunting.
“I’ve talked with five city managers,” Reyes said. “One of them was Jim Hart.”
Hart had been the administrative services director in Rancho Cucamonga, the city manager in Twentynine Palms and the city manager in Rancho Margarita before he landed the job as Adelanto city manager in 2004. Hart was fired in February 2015, three months after Kerr became mayor.
“We went through five city managers in three years after Rich became mayor,” Reyes said. “Everyone I talked to said it would be professional suicide to go to work in our city. I was told that we would have to pay from $325,000 to $375,000 [yearly salary to convince an experienced and fully competent city manager to come to work in Adelanto]. We’re paying Jessie $150,000. That’s what we can afford.”
Reyes said he is acutely conscious “of the rumors that are out there. People are saying I’m taking bribes from the cannabis crowd. They say all kinds of things I would rather not hear. None of them are true. It would be so easy to just fire Jessie. That would end a lot of what people are saying. But that’s not a reason to fire someone.”
Kerr made the mayor’s bed in Adelanto, and now he, as Kerr’s successor, has to lie in it, Reyes said.
“We have the cannabis industry here,” Reyes said, adding that it is in substantial disarray. “I am trying to stabilize that industry.”
Voicing stoic resignation, he asked, rhetorically, “Do I want Adelanto to be known for nothing more than weed?”
After a pause, he said. “No, I don’t. Adelanto is much more than that. But it is a major industry here, and I have to support any industry in my city.”

A property owner’s appeal of the Victorville Planning Commission’s approval of a solar project on the north end of the city has refocused attention on a chapter of city history in which city officials appear to have openly colluded with private developers to maneuver an elderly couple into selling their land for less than 17 percent of what it was worth, cheating them out of $437,800.
The well-documented incident is not the only time city officials, working in tandem with private sector interests intent on obtaining property in the possession of elderly and vulnerable landowners, have used the threat of eminent domain and accompanying intimidation tactics that employ governmental authority to in essence steal property or force its sale at bargain basement prices, another younger landowner who successfully fought off the land grab said.
This year, Middle River Power succeeded in reviving a long-dormant plan to construct a solar power facility on 642 acres on property within the Southern California Logistics Airport planning area located near the intersection of Helendale and Colusa Roads north of the airport runway, south of the Victorville city limit line east of Helendale Road and west of the Mojave River and Victor Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Bob Landwehr with his siblings owns a five-acre parcel that is located within the footprint of the site where Inland Energy, headed by Buck Johns, the original proponent of the solar power facility then referred to as Victorville II,  proposed to place the solar arrays. While some owners of the property Inland Energy coveted for the project agreed to sell their land to Inland Energy, other did not, and Inland Energy turned to the City of Victorville to help it acquire sufficient acreage to proceed with the project. Landwehr was among those targeted in the effort by the city in its use of eminent domain to seize by condemnation the property of those unwilling to sell. Landwehr, even in the face of the city’s threatened use of eminent domain, resisted giving up his and his siblings’ property. Before Inland Energy was able to complete Victorville II, in 2010 it postponed the undertaking and then gave up on it, in some measure because of serious mismanagement of the project and in some measure because of the downturn in the economy that began in late 2007 and intensified over the next several years.
Subsequently, Middle River Power, headed by Mark Kubow, sought to revive the project, with much of the discussion toward that end taking place behind closed doors at Victorville City Hall. Landwehr was unaware of the re-initiation of the project that was again on the verge of encircling his family’s property until he belatedly received a planning commission action notice in May of this year, informing him of the action Middle River Power and the city were taking that would impact the property, most notably by taking away the access easement, Martin Hollow Road, the Landwehrs used to access their property. The Landwehr family had not set up a residence on the property but made use of it, with the family and friends camping and picnicking there. Bob Landwehr wanted to keep it as a getaway property, with the option of developing it as a place to live at some indefinite point in the future. Though Middle River and its corporate subsidiary, HDSI, LLC, again considered and threatened to have the city use its power of eminent domain to obtain the Landwehrs’ property, ultimately a decision was made to forgo obtaining the family’s land and instead building the solar facility on the expanse of ground surrounding its five acres.
On July 10, 2019, the Victorville Planning Commission, by a vote of 4-to-0, approved the project. Landwehr then appealed the decision, citing the city’s violation of California Environmental Quality Act requirements and asserting that his land would essentially be taken from him as a consequence of the project development, that Middle River Power could not be trusted, that past land use decisions by the council were damaging to Landwehr and other land owners and that the action would eradicate the easement to the Landwehr property, Martin Hollow Road. Rob Kurth, a member of the planning commission who is a principal in the Kursch Group, a real estate company handling land acquisition for Middle River Power, did not participate in the planning commission vote. The remainder of the commissioners did take part in the vote, however, despite the financial interest of their commission colleague in the project.
At the council meeting on Tuesday, the city council heard the appeal, ultimately voting 4-to-1, with Councilwoman Blanca Gomez in the minority, to deny Landwehr’s appeal. Along the way, however, Landwehr referenced what had occurred to two of his neighbors – Christopher and Linda Iseman – at the hands of the city and Middle River Power.
The Isemans were full-time residents at 13612 Martin Hollow Road. They owned two 5-acre parcels (APN 0460-242-07 & 0460-242-08). In December of 2008, the Isemans signed an agreement to accept a purchase offer from Epic Land Solutions, which was hired by the City of Victorville to acquire parcels for the Victorville II footprint. Epic Land Solutions appraised each five-acre parcel at $261,000. The offer to the Isemans thus stood at $522,000. Prior to Epic Lands Solutions handling the land purchase offers for Victorville II, bidding on the needed properties was being conducted by Bill Johns from Inland Energy, Inc. Inland Energy, Inc was offering $55,000 per 5-acre parcel. Bill Johns is Buck Johns’ son.
At one point, the Iseman’s had found a buyer for their property, which is proximate to the Mojave River and upon which there is a well, for $400,000. The buyer backed out, however, after being informed by Inland Energy and the city that there was an eminent domain hold on the property.
The Isemans later received a letter from the city attorney’s office claiming that their parcels were no longer needed for Victorville II. This was a prevarication. The Isemans’ parcels were both identified as being part of the land needed for the solar array for Victorville II and subject to “eminent domain” according the California Energy commission licensing case that was still active when the Isemans sold their 10 acres to HDSI, Inc., as the corporate intermediary for Middle River Power, in August of 2017.
On February 17, 2009 Linda Iseman appeared for public comment at that evening’s city council meeting. There she put on the record how, after she and here husband were victimized by vandals who had illegally damaged their property, city officials doubled down, illegitimately using municipal authority to persuade them to just give up and sell their property. She said that she and her husband had been cited by code enforcement for a mobile home that was abandoned on Martin Hollow Road, which blocked the Isemans’ access to their home. At that time, Jim Cox was there in his then-capacity as city manager. Mrs. Iseman complained about how the city reneged on the purchase of their property, as well. She talked about her husband losing his job after the Alcoa plant closure in Vernon, and being unable to feed her horse.
At a subsequent point there were only two parcels that the city did not own for the Victorville II portfolio. One of those other parcels was owned by the Landwehrs, who were resisting the pressure to sell and contested the application of eminent domain. In 2011 the court ordered that the property be returned to those owners. The city was by that time having difficulty unloading the Victorville II project to any other potential buyers because Buck Johns, the original proponent on the project, had layered a clause into the agreement that no matter who developed the power plant he was to get five percent of the net profit from the operation. As efforts to package the deal proceeded,  HDSI, Inc. pressured the Isemans, who were still under the threat of eminent domain, to let go of the property for $84,200.
Some of those who have examined the case observe that it appears the city was party to what was tantamount to theft. Others are slightly more charitable, saying that it needed to be noted that the Isemans had received something – $84,200 – and that technically this did not constitute theft. Rather, they said, the city merely assisted HDSI and Three River Power in cheating the Isemans out of $437,800. When the Isemans’ name was brought up during this week’s city council meeting, Jim Cox, who was Victorville city manager from 1969 until 1999 and then served as city manager again from 2009 until 2011 before retiring once more and being elected to the city council in 2012 and reelected in 2016, somewhat nervously asked Landwehr if he was the Isemans’ legal representative.
Landwehr said he was not representing the couple, who, records indicate, have moved to South Carolina.
The Sentinel reached Cox this afternoon. Asked if the city would consider looking into having HDSI and/or Three River Power adjust the $84,200 they had been paid for the property upward by $437,800 to match the fair market appraisal on the property, Cox said, “I don’t know.”
Cox, who in 2013 while serving as Victorville’s mayor was a prime mover in extending the 5-year licensing agreement for what had been the Victorville II project including the eminent domain authorization to obtain property for the undertaking, did say that an effort should be made to determine if the city’s past misrepresentations and the underhanded tactics employed by Inland Energy and then HDSI on behalf of Three River Power had resulted in the Isemans being defrauded.
Cox acknowledged that he had taken action as city manager in 2009 that might have inadvertently resulted in the city undercutting the Isemans as they were acceding to the offer to have them part with their property.
“I came back to the city in January 2009,” Cox began, explaining, “I was interim manager for 90 days and I was trying to figure out what the debt was and where we were going financially. On April 1 [2009], I was hired as the permanent city manager. The first thing I did was was cancel all contracts relating to buying property north of the base [former George Air Force Base, now Southern California Logistics Airport]. All of this was new to me and if there was any question about the need for the property or there was any litigation or if the property owner had not sold, I canceled the purchase.  At that point or shortly thereafter, it became evident they [Inland Energy] could not proceed with the power plant which was then called Victorville II. There was a whole lot of litigation, and so I talked to the attorney for the city and he confirmed we had the power of eminent domain, and I was told they had used eminent domain. Some people had fought that in court including the fellow that was there this week [Bob Landwehr]. When the whole thing was done, we came up with a policy that unless you are going to use the property within a five-year period you could not move on with eminent domain. If the project was canceled the city could not sell bonds and we were in a suit with General Electric [over the loss of $50 million the city had to pay for failure to take delivery of power plant turbines that had been ordered]. The city could not sell bonds and as they were going further with the project we told them [Inland Energy] ‘If you don’t own it [the land for the project] stop all of the proceedings.’ We went on to win the lawsuit [with the Carter & Burgess engineering firm over the design flaws and delays in the Foxborough Power Plant project, which was being managed by Inland Energy]. That land stood vacant for years, and then an individual [Mark Kubow of Three River Energy] came in who wanted to put a solar plant in there. But everything was on hold – the plans, the permits, the approval – because the project had been stopped. It came back to the council to see if the council wanted to move on that to lease the property to the individual [i.e., Three River Power] and the council said, ‘Of course we do. We can’t just let the property sit there.’”
Upon hearing about what had happened to the Isemans, Cox said, “I asked the attorney to provide me with the details. I didn’t know if the offer was made, when the offer was made, who made the offer, whether it was someone who worked for the city or an agent of the city or an agent of the proponent. The only one who would have that information is Keith Metzler, our city manager. Looking at the staff report for the first time, I saw details of what was going on. I listened to what he [Landwehr] said. What he was referring to was not his property, and we were there for the appeal about his property. We voted to uphold the planning commission because he didn’t deliver any new information [relating to his own property]. I drove out to the site and I could see it is vacant. He and his family camp there from time to time and there are others who camp there, I believe without his permission, but that individual did not deliver any new information, so we upheld the planning commission decision. Now, maybe he can force an environmental impact report to be done for the project.”
What was new to him, Cox said, was the information, incidental to Landwehr’s appeal, about the Isemans.
“It struck me as odd that they were made an offer and it was purchased at a different price,” Cox said. “I want the city attorney to look at that and see what occurred. I do not recall at any time anything coming back to the council where we were asked to make a condemnation. I don’t know if someone threatened them with condemnation, but I want to find out. I need the facts to see if it did occur or didn’t, and if there was a misrepresentation or an abuse of discretion. We represent all of the residents of the city and I think we have to make sure the city didn’t do anything wrong. I had several years of not being involved and I didn’t have authority at the time the condemnation process was in use, so I don’t know what that was about, at all. Since I have been on the council, I have no recollection of us being asked to approve any eminent domain condemnation.”
Landwehr told the Sentinel that Victorville’s use of eminent domain authority to blow landowners out of their property was par for the course.
“In 2007, I made the mistake of believing a deputy city attorney and Bill Johns while attempting to negotiate the land sale of my aunt’s property (APN 0460-242-04),” Landwehr said. “At the time I had complained to the city about the strong-arm tactics of threatening eminent domain, which scared my aunt into selling. She sold her property for $67,500. Fifteen months later, $261,000 was offered to the remaining property owners. The e-mail that I had sent to the deputy city attorney complaining about not being aware that Aunt Fran was by law entitled to an independent appraisal of her property paid for by Victorville was later viewed by three deputy city attorneys who each billed the city for reviewing it.”
His aunt has not been made whole, Landwehr indicated, by the city or anyone else.
Sue Jones, Victorville’s public information officer, did not respond by press time to a host of questions the Sentinel had posed about the city’s use of the eminent domain process as tool to pressure property owners to sell their land at prices below fair market value.
-Mark Gutglueck