The development of the Eastgate Air Cargo Facility at San Bernardino International Airport will result in what airport officials said they anticipated would be a “marginal” increase in flight activity over the San Bernardino Mountain communities.
Cargo carriers will seek to minimize the impacts of the increase in flight activity, consisting primarily of increased sound levels from what is anticipated to be no more than two dozen more flights per day, by the use of a flight route that will keep the planes from flying directly over Lake Arrowhead, Lake Gregory, Crestline, Twin Peaks and the Valley of Enchantment.
The Eastgate project is a project put forth by Hillwood Enterprises, LP, of which Ross Perot, Jr. is the chairman. Hillwood in January 2017 obtained from the San Bernardino International Airport Authority’s board of directors an exclusive right to negotiate for a ground lease on a 2 million square foot expanse located on the airport property for the creation a cargo logistics center. Upon the finalization of what is to be at least a 35-year ground-lease agreement with the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, the center is to be subleased to an as-yet unnamed eventual tenant/operator.
The undertaking entails the creation of a new hub at San Bernardino International Airport Authority which will mean an increase in cargo flights out of the facility. Some of those flights, primarily those ferrying cargo to the Midwest and East Coast, will fly over the mountains.
According to an environmental impact report on the project, “San Bernardino International Airport Authority proposes to develop the Eastgate Air Cargo Facility to accommodate the demand for air cargo logistics operations,” adding that the project will involve “construction of taxilanes and an aircraft parking apron to accommodate up to 14 aircraft, a 658,500-square-foot distribution center with connecting aircraft ramps, two 25,000-square-foot maintenance buildings, and automobile parking with approximately 2,000 parking stalls.”
The San Bernardino International Airport Authority is a joint powers agency among the County of San Bernardino, the City of San Bernardino, the City of Colton, the City of Highland and the City of Loma Linda devoted to the civilian use conversion of what was formerly Norton Air Force Base.
As of earlier this summer, the final language and terms of the ground lease had yet to be negotiated, nor had a tenant been identified. Despite that, there are other indications that such a cargo carrier is indeed interested in and committed to operating out of San Bernardino. In October 2018, the San Bernardino International Airport Authority approved the Eastgate project’s environmental impact report, which stated the “timeline for the [Eastgate project] been accelerated to meet the needs of a prospective tenant to have [Eastgate] in operation by October of 2019.”
According to the environmental impact report, a delay in construction  “is not feasible because it would not meet project objectives established by the prospective tenant. The project’s development is dependent on the support of the tenant, and the tenant would not support the extended timeline.” According to the environmental impact report, once fully operational, the facility will add 24 or more around-the-clock air cargo flights.
Overflights above Lake Arrowhead have been and continue to be a concern. In April 2017, the Federal Aviation Administration initiated its Southern California Metroplex Project, which was intended to increase the efficiency of the approaches into five Southern California commercial airports and reduce fuel consumption. The revised routing, based on pre-set satellite navigation beams, diverted westbound planes formerly headed to Ontario International Airport from their previous trajectory over the San Bernardino Mountains using Heaps Peak as a pass-over locus to the airspace above 5,100 foot elevation Lake Arrowhead. Those planes flew at anywhere from an elevation of 7,200 feet to 9,600 feet on what is referred to as the EAGLZ route, such that they passed somewhere between 2,100 feet to 4,500 feet over the homes, schools and businesses of Lake Arrowhead.
Those overflights, disturbing at any time of the day, were particularly problematic at night, when the natural ambient noise level had dropped and the jet engines’ cacophony interfered with the populace’s sleeping patterns. After an extensive lobbying effort by Quiet Skies Lake Arrowhead, a group led by Lake Arrowhead resident David Caine and the intercession of Second District San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford, Assemblyman Jay Obernolte, Congressman Paul Cook, U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, after a year the Federal Aviation Administration relented and Southern California’s terminal control center began vectoring Ontario Airport’s nighttime arrivals onto a path east of the EAGLZ arrival route.
In response to Hillwood and the San Bernardino International Airport Authority’s plans for Eastgate, another grassroots organization, Friends of Lake Arrowhead Mountain Communities, led by Caine as the organization’s recording secretary, its president, Matthew Kallis, and its chief financial officer, Anthony St. John, initiated communication with the San Bernardino International Airport Authority’s executive director, Michael Burrows, the director of aviation at SBIAA, Mark Gibbs, and Steve Alverson, a project manager at the airport overseeing Eastgate. Reportedly, the representatives of Friends of Lake Arrowhead Mountain Communities were not able to achieve their goal of getting airport officials to keep any additional planes from flying over Lake Arrowhead and its environs but nonetheless wrung from airport official a nonbinding and unwritten assurance that the flights originating from Eastgate which sojourn over the San Bernadino Mountains will be routed over Heaps Peak, rather than Lake Arrowhead, Crestline or Lake Gregory.

While hailing the City of Upland’s now unfolding plan to provide Memorial Park with a comprehensive makeover, several of that city’s residents expressed lingering suspicions that the improvement plan contains within it a provision that will nonetheless reduce the grand recreational centerpiece’s footprint once more, this time by more than four-and-a-half acres.
Indeed, a differently composed city council than the one now overseeing civic affairs in the City of Gracious Living just last year angered a wide cross section of the city’s populace by committing to sell 4.631 acres of the southwestern portion of the park, one that contains a baseball field that is actively used by the city’s youth leagues, to San Antonio Regional Hospital. The main campus of the hospital immediately adjoins the park, and the hospital wants to convert the baseball diamond and some of the greenland around it to a multistory parking structure to accommodate the hospital’s burgeoning clientele. More parking is needed because of the hospital’s expansion and its recent partnering with the City of Hope to establish an oncology clinic.
On March 26, 2018, with 72 hours notice, the Upland City Council, advised by then-City Manager Bill Manis, then-Development Services Director Jeff Zwack and City Attorney James Markman, voted 3-to-1 to approve a purchase and sale agreement between the hospital and the city, with San Antonio Hospital paying $906,931.55 per acre, or a total of $4.2 million to acquire the 4.631 acres. Mayor Debbie Stone and then-council members Gino Filippi and Carol Timm went along with making the sale. Councilwoman Janice Elliott opposed it. Then-Councilman Sid Robinson was not present at the meeting.
With the 2018 election cycle, Filippi, Timm and Robinson, who was allied with them and Stone, were turned out of office, at least in some measure as a consequence of the unpopular move to reduce the park’s size.
In approving the sale, the city council also authorized City Attorney James Markman to undertake a so-called validation proceeding intended to foreclose any procedural or future legal challenge to the sale. In its validation action filed with the court, the city invited anyone opposed to the sale to lodge a protest. The challenge to the validation had to be filed within 60 days. Once the court validated the sale, any future lawsuits contesting the sale would be barred. The calculation by those favoring the sale was that no one would go to the expense of hiring an attorney to make an answer to the validation petition.
The validation procedure was directed to the courtroom of Superior Court Judge David Cohn in San Bernardino. To the chagrin of city and hospital officials, Marjorie Mikels, an attorney living in the city, as well as Cory Briggs, an attorney based in both Upland and San Diego, filed answers to the validation action. Those responses took issue with the sale on multiple grounds, among which was that the city selling off a slice of the park – in particular the one sold by the council on March 26, 2018, which included the long extant and actively used baseball field – is tantamount to abandoning public property. Such abandonments, under state law, cannot be effectuated without a vote of the citizens residing in the jurisdiction that owns that property.
Faced with not one but two challenges to the sale he had not anticipated, Markman sought to convince Judge Cohn that the city council, acting on its own authority, was within its rights to sell off city land. In response to the argument that a municipality’s abandonment of property it owned and was putting to beneficial public use had to be subjected to a vote, Markman asserted that selling the property did not constitute an abandonment.
Ultimately, some 14 months after the sale of the park property was approved by the city council, on May 29, 2019, Judge Cohn, after hearing the responses to the city’s filing, dismissed its petition for validation. Judge Cohn’s ruling cleared the way for anyone with standing – meaning essentially any city resident – to file a lawsuit challenging the sale.
Penultimately, hospital officials have resigned themselves to the necessity of subjecting the sale of the property to a citywide vote. It appears that balloting will take place in conjunction with the March 2020 California Primary election.
In what is perhaps a coincidence or perhaps another calculated move on the part of city staff committed to assisting the hospital in obtaining the parking structure to augment its operational growth, Doug Story, the city’s recreational services manager, has put together a conceptual plan for upgrading Memorial Park. Contained within that plan is a provision for a reduction of the park’s overall area that is in keeping with the hospital’s intention of proceeding with the construction of the parking structure on the aforementioned 4.631-acre parcel.
Story this week, at the city council’s August 12 meeting on Monday night, previewed the sugar-coated park enhancement plan – replete with refurbishing or replacing playground equipment, adding an amphitheater and an artificial turf multi-sports competition field, walking and exercise trails, a basketball court and an intensified outdoor nature conservancy with trees and plants hospitable toward bees, hummingbirds and the like – in which was buried the fishhook for the parking structure.
Envisioned in the grandiose plan are fulfilling some of the never-realized elements of the original blueprint for the park as it was drawn up by landscape architect Ralph Dalton Cornell when the park was designed in the 1930s, including oak trees, a greenbelt and the amphitheater. Were all of the elements Story has outlined to be brought to fruition, they would cost more than $18 million. Story proposes getting started with an infusion of $8.5 million, which is the maximum amount an applicant can receive in response to a grant request under the auspices of Proposition 68, a $4.1-billion bond measure to fund park improvement and enhancement projects approved by voters last year. Story has made just such a grant application on the city’s behalf.
What was hinted at is that other donors could put up money to augment the $8.5 million, should the city receive the grant. If the grant comes in, Story said $2.7 million of it will be earmarked for an amphitheater encircled by a greenbelt; $1.4 million will go to create a soccer/rugby/football field featuring not grass by artificial turf; $718,000 will be spent on playground equipment; $209,000 will cover the completion of a basketball court; $380,000 will be utilized to provide one tree-lined walking trail and one exercise station-outfitted walking trail; $310,000 is to be used for establishing a pollinator garden; and $600,000 would be utilized for lighting.
It was reported that San Antonio Regional Hospital has committed, conditional upon the city selling it the 4.631 acres, to springing for the exercise stations along one of the trails.
Contained on page 32 of the staff report Story authored to accompany his presentation of the park master plan was the following statement, “San Antonio Regional Hospital is interested in acquiring the existing southwest quadrant of Memorial Park for a potential joint-use parking lot sponsored by San Antonio Regional Hospital per an agreement with the City of Upland. This acquisition and agreement is subject to voter approval of a ballot initiative scheduled for the March 2020 election.”
Lois Sicking-Dieter, an Upland resident, on Monday night addressed the city council, telling its members and the city’s residents that they should take stock of what San Antonio Hospital is doing.
“San Antonio Hospital is interested in contributing funds to help build exercise fitness stations in a walking path to help improve public health,” Sicking-Dieter said. “Kudos to you, San Antonio Hospital! Now, they might be trying to buy good will because they are going out for an election. Knock yourself out. You can do it. It’s legal. You can buy good will in this town. We really need those exercise stations. Another thing is, there have been medical studies done on the benefit, the health benefit, to the public on parklands, open space. The 4.6 acres is a part of a wonderful paradise that we have here in Upland. And so, I would also ask San Antonio Hospital to take a look at the health benefits that the public can derive from their keeping their hands off our park. Let the people have the park.”
This is not the first or even second raid San Antonio Hospital has made on Memorial Park, Sicking-Dieter said.
“San Antonio Hospital has been buying parkland, or getting parkland from us since the 1970s, and then the 80s, and then the 90s,” she said. “Here we are, folks. It’s 2019 and we are their primary plan for parking here in Upland. They’re like a 55-year-old kid who returns home to mom and dad and says, ‘You know, rent is really high out there. They make me work so hard. Can I crash with you for a while? For the tenth time?’ Come on, San Antonio Hospital! We need to do toughlove. Let’s do toughlove with San Antonio Hospital, and say, ‘Find your own parking. Find your own parking capacity. You have it. We’ve given you enough land already.’ It’s time to say, ‘No.’”
Sicking-Dieter said there should be full disclosure of all aspects of the proposed sale, with requirements that the hospital inform the citizenry of the sale, and the city facilitating awareness of the matter, as well.
“I appreciate this time we are going to an election,” Dicking-Dieter said. “Some are saying, ‘Wait a minute. We’ve been giving them land since the 1970s?’ Yes. Giving them. It should have gone to a vote. This is the first time we’re going to do it right. Let’s do it right. Let’s make San Antonio Hospital put signs up on every entrance going into Memorial Park, saying, ‘We’re trying to buy this land.’ I think we should have a flier, and those should go out in our water bills.”
-Mark Gutglueck

The Chino Valley Independent Fire District Board on August 14 declined Board President John DeMonaco’s motion to slap Board Member Winn Williams with what would have been a third censure.
Williams, a former fire captain employed by the district who previously served a two-year term on the board from 2004 to 2006, was returned to the board by voters last November. After he retired from the district as a firefighter in 2002 following an extended leave following an injury on the job in 2000, Williams in 2008 initiated an effort, at the age of 59, to be rehired as a firefighter, asserting he had by that point recovered from his injury. When the district declined to rehire him, he engaged in a series of three legal actions to be reinstated as a firefighter, two in state court and one in federal court, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful.
Almost immediately upon Williams’ swearing in in December 2018, tense relations developed between him and other members of the board and some district staff. Williams maintains the hostility in the district against him is unjustified and is an outgrowth of his having unseated longtime board member Ed Gray, with whom he says the other members of the board had a chummy relationship. The other members of the board, including DeMonaco, Harvey Luth, Sarah Evinger-Ramos and Mike Kreeger, have indicated that working with a board member who has thrice sued the district and has not yet come to terms with his having failed to rehire with the department after he had injured himself and reached an advanced age, has put the district in an awkward position. They say Williams is not on the board to represent the district’s constituents but rather to get even for what he wrongfully believes was a slight by the district he suffered more than a decade ago.
By February, little more than two months after Williams had assumed office, he was censured by a vote of his colleagues.  That censure was based on the contention that Williams was unduly harassing district employees and making use of district assets for his personal use. Williams denied the allegations.
Censures of elected officials are exceedingly rare, and usually are a move of last or near-last resort by members of a governing board against a colleague with whom they do not get along. The February censure of Williams appears to be the most rapid application of the censure process against an elected official in San Bernardino County history. Four months later, in June, the board censured Williams a second time, on that occasion for his having disregarded the expectations of his comportment set out in the February censure.
DeMonaco this week sought a third censure, which he asserted was appropriate based on an incident that occurred after the conclusion of the fire board’s meeting on July 10. According to DeMonaco, Williams “touched” him on the back and neck as they were engaged in an intense argument.
DeMonaco contacted the Chino Police Department on July 12 about what had occurred, and filed a complaint.
While Williams acknowledges that he had casual contact with DeMoaco during the July 10 encounter, he maintains that DeMonaco was mischaracterizing and exaggerating a gesture that was made as he voiced a sincere appeal to see if the contretemps between him and the rest of the board could be resolved.
The fire board, by taking up the board president’s request for another censure, gave currency to DeMonaco’s assertion that the incident was another of a series of actions by Williams that are out of keeping with the decorum that the board should maintain. Ultimately, however, the board decided against making a further official public rebuke of one of its members. The ongoing back-and-forth between Williams and the other board members has garnered considerable publicity that in the opinion of some does not reflect positively on the district.
Board Vice President Harvey Luth, who has been sharply critical of Williams in the past, spoke for the balance of the board when he stated that he was not in favor of lodging any further censures against Williams unless Williams’ action went beyond a threshold of negligence or wrongdoing that would involve the district in civil or criminal liability.
Williams, irascibly, referred to DeMoanco’s motion as both “stupid” and “crazy.”

Two years prior to the time he would otherwise be eligible to do so, San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan is retiring today at the age of 48, 27 years after he began with the department.
Paradoxically, as is sometimes the case with law enforcement professionals, the worse day of Burguan’s career launched him into the stratosphere of his vocation, transforming him instantaneously into a celebrity of national and even international standing.
Fate dictated that Burguan was at the helm of the department on December 2, 2015 when Syed Rizwan Farook, a restaurant inspector employed with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, approached and then went into an auditorium at the Inland Regional Center where both a training session and a pre-Christmas banquet for Public Health Department employees was being held. Wearing ski masks, armed with semi-automatic pistols and rifles and clad in load bearing vests holding magazines and ammunition, Farrok and Malik killed two pepole before entering the building and thereafter unleashed a fusillade of more than 100 rounds inside before fleeing. In the process they killed fourteen and wounded 22 of the 86 people present, virtually all of whom had been Malik’s co-workers in the Department of Public Health. Ultimately, some four hours after the initial attack and Farook and Malik had returned to their residence in Redlands and were coming back into San Bernardino, San Bernardino Police officers spotted the couple driving a vehicle rented by Farook four days before the attack, and which the department had identified. Officers gave pursuit and confronted Farook and Malik, at which juncture a shootout ensued on San Bernardino Avenue just east of Sheddon Drive. As more police units arrived to converge on them in and around their vehicles, 23 officers firing a combined total of at least 440 rounds mortally wounded the murderous pair.
Burguan was widely credited with his calm, methodical, vigilant, thorough and ultimately successful response and the coordination of his department’s resources throughout the ordeal. Thereafter, he was in great demand by other departments all over the country for input on preparation for similar emergencies. The highly articulate Burguan found himself torn between what he felt was a legitimate need to contribute to readiness and preparation among agencies throughout the law enforcement industry nationally and his duties in running his own department that was struggling under challenging circumstances that were unrelated to the December 2, 2015 attack. San Bernardino had filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in 2012, and the city’s overall financial condition complicated even further the city’s unenviable position of being what was ranked on one survey as the 16th most dangerous city in the United States with a murder rate that was more than twice the national average.
Despite the opportunities that were presented to him to take on an even more lucrative police chief’s assignment elsewhere, Burguan remained in San Bernardino, even as he was being criticized for his attention sometimes being diffused by requests for his input with regard to response readiness in other jurisdictions.
He began with the San Bernardino Police Department in January 1992, when he was 21. Throughout his time with San Bernardino, he worked in, supervised or managed units in every division of the department, while earning a bachelor’s degree and a masters degree in management from the University of Redlands. In 2012, he sojourned to Boston, where he took graduate courses and graduated from the Senior Management Institute for Police, which is part of the Police Executive Research Forum of Boston University, He also was a member of Class 53 of the California Police Officer Standard and Training College, from which he was provided with a management certificate.
In 2013, he succeeded Robert Handy as police chief.
Burguan for years has made the daily commute from Lake Arrowhead.
He took an extended leave in February to undergo knee replacement surgery. Boosted into the position of his temporary replacement at that time was Eric McBride, who had promoted to the position of assistant chief under Burguan and whom Burguan had supported in that promotion. McBride has now moved into the police chief’s position, which was not previously anticipated as McBride is four years older than Burguan. With the traditional minimum retirement age for police officers being 50, it was previously thought Burguan would most certainly remain with the department at least until he eclipses his 50th birthday in November 2020, and would perhaps remain with the department until 2025, at which point he would maximize his pension at 100 percent of his salary. In 2025, McBride will be 59, somewhat past what is considered the standard retirment age in the law enforcement profession presently.
Burguan’s return from his medical leave for the knee surgery was anticipated in May. One unconfirmed report was that his physician had not cleared him for resuming his duties. The true reason for the delay in his return has not been made clear, however. There are indications that the ascendancy of John Valdivia as San Bernardino mayor may have been a factor in Burguan’s decision not to return. It is an open secret that Valdivia is under investigation by the FBI stemming from reports that money originating from the sale of illegal drugs has been filtered into his personal banking and political campaign accounts, accompanied by reports that the largesse provided to the mayor purchased those donors protection from investigation and arrest by the San Bernardino Police Department and prosecution by the district attorney’s office, and that Valdivia had encouraged the department to step up enforcement efforts against his donors’ competitors in the sale of illicit substances out of storefronts and other businesses within the city. Burguan’s positive reputation as a consequence of his handling of the December 2, 2015 attack has opened doors for his possible employment elsewhere, including at the federal level with the Department of Homeland Security or with big city police departments such as those in Philadelphia or Cleveland, conditional only upon the formality of his making an application. He thus may have decided that returning as police chief in San Bernadino under the current circumstance is too risky and potentially damaging to his prospects elsewhere.
It is unclear whether the city had given him a special dispensation in allowing him to retire at 48.
In an email to police staff that went out on Wednesday and which has since been publicly disclosed and has come to serve as his farewell statement, Burguan wrote, “Any success that I ever had in a leadership position came as a result of good people within the organization doing good work, and I am truly appreciative of each and every one of you and the service that you have provided to the city and the department.”
–Mark Gutglueck

Judge David Cohn this morning rebuffed the coalition on the San Bernardino City Council led by Mayor John Valdivia in its effort to have the financially-challenged city it heads reduce the pay of two of its lame duck officeholders.
In June, the city council, in a move orchestrated by Valdvia and his then-chief of staff, Bilal Essayli, followed a recommendation to reduce the pay to be provided to City Attorney Gary Saenz and City Clerk Georgeann Hanna during the last nine months of their terms in office.
Both Saenz and Hanna hold office under the bylaws of San Bernardino’s municipal charter that was first put in place in 1905 and which remained in absolute effect for 111 years. In 2016, the city’s voters gave approval to Measure L, which called for a redrafting of the charter and reduced the mayor’s administrative authority, moved the city from an odd-numbered-year election cycle to an even-numbered year one, and transitioned the city attorney’s post and the position of city clerk from elected ones to staff members hired or appointed at the discretion of the city council, and dispensed with the elected city treasurer’s office altogether.
Because Saenz and Hanna had been most recently reelected in 2015 to terms that ran from April 1, 2016 through March 31, 2020, they were and are entitled to remain in office, as elected officials, for the duration of their terms, at which point their positions will be filled by the city council’s designees. As elected officials, Saenz  was being provided with $246,266 in total annual compensation as city attorney, including salary, benefits and add-ons, and Hanna was receiving $171,466 in total annual compensation as city clerk, including salary, benefits and additional pay. A committee formed by Mayor Valdivia to explore cost-saving strategies chaired by Councilman Henry Nickel and including council members Theodore Sanchez and Juan Figueroa, all of whom are Valdivia’s political affiliates, recommended that Saenz see the $184,700 he was scheduled to receive between July 1, 2019 and March 31, 2020 reduced to $100,000 and that the $128,600 Hanna was scheduled to get over the same nine-month span be dropped to $52,500.
A host of considerations attended that move. Perhaps foremost was the city’s financial circumstance. In August 2012, San Bernardino had filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection and did not emerge from that status until June 2017, during which period the city stiffed its creditors, vendors and service providers for more than $350 million. Indications this year are that two years after the city’s assumed financial recovery, it is again poised over a deepening financial abyss, with expenditures once more substantially outrunning revenue such that by October or November 2020 the city will have burned entirely through the reserves it was able to accrue while being artificially propped up by the bankruptcy court, at which point it will again face the likelihood of needing to make another bankruptcy petition. Curiously, the committee did not call for the $160,800 to be saved by the reductions in pay to Saenz and Hanna to be salted into the city’s reserve account but rather to be used to pay for lobbyists and legislative advocates. Another issue driving the pay reduction was the perception that Saenz was a member of former Mayor Carey Davis’s team. Valdivia served nearly five of his previous six-and-a-half years on the city council while Davis was mayor, and had challenged him in 2018, qualifying by finishing first in the June primary to then vie head-to-head against Davis in the November run, a race which Valdivia narrowly won. He is now intent on purging the city of any vestiges of the Davis era. Moreover, Saenz as city attorney had offered legal counsel that on occasion clashed with the direction Valdivia wanted the city council to take. Hanna, who has proven somewhat mercurial in her relationships with the city’s mayors, council members and staff over the years she has been in office, had been among those who ran for mayor in the 2018 primary. After Valdivia’s installment as mayor, she had clashed with him on the issue of city record availability.
The city council on June 11, with Councilman Jim Mulvihill absent, voted 4-to-2, with councilmen Nickel, Sanchez and Figueroa and councilwoman Bessine Richard prevailing over Councilman Fred Shorett and Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, to institute the pay reductions for Saenz and Hanna as of July 1.
Subsequently, Saenz and Hanna, represented by the law firm of Wagner & Pelayes, filed claims and a legal action against the city, including a petition for a writ of mandate challenging the pay reductions.
That matter came before Judge Cohn this morning as a predisposition hearing.
Representing the city was attorney Edward Kotkin of the law firm Lynberg & Watkins, a different firm than that of Best Best & Krieger, which the city has retained as what is essentially its acting city attorney at present and which will officially replace Saenz in April.
Saenz and Hanna were not represented by anyone from Wagner & Pelayes but rather an independent labor law attorney from West Covina, Thomas Yu.
In hearing Sanez’s and Hanna’s motion regarding the writ for mandate, Judge Cohn took judicial notice of both the 1905 and 2016 charters and ruled that the provisions of the former and current San Bernardino municipal charters were not specific in providing the city council with the authority to change the rate of pay of the city attorney and city clerk while they are serving in their elected capacities, and that the California Elections Code thus dictates that they are entitled to receive, throughout the duration of their terms in office, the salaries and further compensation that was in place for those respective positions when they were elected.
Judge Cohn reasoned that the vote of the city’s residents in 2015, when Saenz and Hanna ran unopposed and were elected with 7,601 and 7,607 votes, respectively, was tantamount to being hired through the electoral process, entitling them to the salaries and benefits then associated with the positions, and that allowing the city council to change that would in essence invalidate the election.
Judge Cohn then stated his tentative ruling, entered before the hearing, on the record. “The writ of mandate is granted,” the record of his ruling states. “Salaries which were in place remain in place till [the] end of office.”
After the hearing, Hanna told the Sentinel, “I’m glad the court agreed that the council had no authority to cut our salaries. It was an ill-advised, costly and completely unnecessary distraction. They were warned by Best Best & Krieger recently, and another law firm in 2017, that it was not advisable to do this. Going forward, perhaps the council would be well-served to heed the advice of its professional advisors.”

The invasive goldspotted oak borer (GSOB, Agrilus auroguttatus) was detected last week in recently-killed and dying California black oaks on private property in the unincorporated San Bernardino County community of Sugarloaf. Larval, pupal and adult life stages of the beetle were extracted by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and U.S. Forest Service personnel from under the tree bark. A San Bernardino County fire hazard officer, who had received goldspotted oak borer identification training, made the initial discovery while conducting hazard inspections. This is the second goldspotted oak borer infestation identified in San Bernardino County, the first discovery being in the Oak Glen area in fall of 2018. This is also the second goldspotted oak borer infestation on the San Bernardino National Forest, the first being in Idyllwild in 2012.
The long-range spread of the goldspotted oak borer from its native range in Arizona to San Diego, then Riverside, Orange, Los Angeles counties and, now, San Bernardino County, has been attributed to the movement of goldspotted oak borer-infested firewood. Therefore, it is critical to take precautions to avoid transporting potentially-infested oak firewood within, to or from the San Bernardino Mountains.
The goldspotted oak borer may already be in other portions of San Bernardino County but haven’t been discovered yet. These non-native beetles aggressively attack California black oaks, coast live oaks and even canyon live oaks, whether in mountain communities, forests, valleys or cities. To make matters worse, goldspotted oak borers prefer larger oaks, the very trees we depend on for beauty, shade and wildlife habitat.
Learn about the goldspotted oak borer at www.GSOB.org, including how to identify and report a suspected goldspotted oak borer infestation. If you have oak trees that have recently died and have been cut down, it’s critical to make sure the wood is not infested before transporting it! The goldspotted oak borer website has information on how to manage infested wood.
CAL FIRE, the San Bernardino National Forest and other collaborating agencies will develop a goldspotted oak borer response plan for the mountaintop communities in San Bernardino County. This will include determining the current extent of the infestation in the area. In the interim, at-risk communities should educate themselves about the goldspotted oak borer threat and share the information with their neighbors and friends in any San Bernardino County communities with oak trees.

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