An off-trail area around Big Falls in the San Bernardino National Forest was closed to the public beginning July 4. Visitors are still able to hike the Big Falls Trail to a waterfall overlook, but areas beyond the railing will be closed by a forest order that is to remain in force through May 24, 2020.
“There have been too many search and rescues in this area in the past,” said Joe Rechsteiner, the district ranger for the Front Country Ranger District. “We want to make sure the public enjoys this beautiful spot while staying safe. Some of the rocks in Falls Creek are deceivingly slippery.”
Search and rescues by the San Bernardino County fire and sheriff’s departments are so frequent in this area that one rock in particular is known to locals as “Blood Rock.”

By Mark Gutglueck
The 2018-19 Grand Jury’s examination of the financial crisis besetting Upland makes no mention of the involvement of former Upland Mayor John Pomierski or that of his handpicked city manager, Robb Quincey, in creating the City of Gracious Living’s dire fiscal circumstance.
According to the grand jury report, which was released on June 28, “A complaint was received by the grand jury indicating that the financial status of the City of Upland was in poor condition. The main concerns were the financial health and practices of the city along with unfunded pension liabilities. In addition, the complaint alleged the city manifested a culture of poor management, hostile work environments, and nepotism as well as possible ‘Brown Act,’ violations. California Penal Code Section 925a provided the grand jury jurisdiction to inquire into these allegations. The grand jury subcommittee for the County of San Bernardino was formed to investigate the City of Upland complaint.”
The committee, the report states, obtained additional information and “evidence began to support various aspects of the original complaint, which also expanded to other functions and levels within the operation of the city that had been an issue for some time. The grand jury did not discover sufficient evidence of poor management, hostile work environments and nepotism to make findings and recommendations at this time. The committee found no evidence of “Brown Act” violations. The committee in its efforts to understand the city’s financial situation, contracted with a San Bernardino County-approved auditing firm to conduct an independent audit of the city’s financial health. Upon conclusion of said audit, the committee learned that the City of Upland, while not in great financial shape, was no different from other California cities of like size. The City of Upland did however, have future financial issues related to employee pension payments.”
According to the grand jury, “[T]he City of Upland’s revenue is relatively flat in nature and expenditures are rising at an exponentially higher rate. The City of Upland’s current overall financial status, although recently improved, still does not resolve future financial pension related issues associated with payments to other post-employment benefits and the California Public Employees Retirement System and the impact these payments have on the financial health to the City of Upland.”
The report presented figures to show that in Upland, over the last four years revenue has in general trended down while spending has trended up.
In fiscal year 2013-14, the report said city had revenue of $52,999,442 and expenditures of $46,156,242. In 2014-15, the city had revenue of $59,292,159 and expenditures of $50,605,012. In 2015-16, the city had revenue of $56,284,601 and expenditures of $53,658,982. In 2016-17, the city had revenue of $58,277,968 and expenditures of $54,532,470. In 2017-18, the city had revenue of $53,864,481 and expenditures of $54,646,392, according to the report.
The city had pension costs of 5,261,392 in 2013-14. Its pension costs will jump to a projected $15,661,000 in fiscal year 2027-28, the report stated.
According to the grand jury, “The City of Upland’s revenue grew at a flat rate of 1.5% from fiscal year 2013/14 through fiscal year 2017/18, which equates to an average annual growth rate of 0.3%. The City of Upland’s expenditures increased 18.2% from fiscal year 2013/14 through fiscal year 2017/18, which equates to an average annual growth rate of 3.64%. The City of Upland’s annual payments for retiree pension payments from fiscal year 2017/18 to fiscal year 2027/28 are projected to grow at an average annual mean rate of 7.47%, in plain terms from $8,963,000 in fiscal year 2017/18 to $15,661,000 in fiscal year 2027/28. Based upon the San Bernardino County contracted audit team and two grand jury interviews with the City of Upland’s management [it was] determined that the City of Upland does not have a formal plan in place to fund future payments to the employee pension plan.”
While the grand jury gave an overview of the City of Upland’s deteriorating financial circumstance, it did not offer any trenchant analysis of what put the city behind the eight ball monetarily beyond saying, “The vast majority of the growth in current and future expenditures are associated with the increase in employee pension costs.”
According to the report, the methodology for the investigation was limited to interviewing the complainant and receiving additional documentation and information, interviewing management personnel from the City of Upland as well as a union employee representative, researching numerous documents online and in various periodicals, as well as reviewing sister cities’ reports and financials, and contracting with an independent auditing firm to conduct what the grand jury report characterized as “an in-depth audit of the City of Upland’s fiscal situation.”
No review of historical factors relating to how Upland was maneuvered by its various employee unions into providing its employees with salaries and benefits, including pensions, the city could not afford was made.
In 2000, John Pomierski was elected mayor. He was reelected in 2004 and again in 2008. By late 2001 Pomierski had formed political alliances with his fellow council members Tom Thomas, Ken Willis and Michael Libutti. In May 2002, Libutti was appointed by then-Governor Gray Davis to a position on the Superior Court Bench to replace Judge Lou Glazier after his retirement. Libutti was thereafter replaced by Brendan Brandt on the city council. Pomierski thereupon formed a political alliance with Brandt.
Relatively early on in his tenure, Pomierski used the power of his position at City Hall to shake down individuals and companies with business pending before the city. In particular, Pomierski preyed upon applicants for project approval with the city’s planning division and community development department. Pomierski arranged for these kickbacks and bribes to be filtered to him in multiple ways. He owned a construction company, and those seeking approval of projects had the option of hiring his firm, JP Construction, as a subcontractor on those projects. To get money to Pomierski, project applicants could also provide work to a construction business owned by one of the mayor’s associates, John Hennes, who was also Pomierski’s designated appointee to the Upland Municipal Housing Authority. Another money conveyance and laundering mechanism Pomierski used was to have the project proponents hire him as a “consultant.” Additionally, Pomierski used the ruse of having those seeking the city’s approval of their projects use the consulting services of two of his “associates,” Jason Crebs and Anthony Orlando Sanchez, in perpetrating his extortion and pay-off schemes.
In time, a number of city employees became aware of Pomierski’s depredations. To buy their silence, Pomierski arranged for them to obtain raises. Yet raises being provided to a select group of city employees in itself raised suspicions, not to mention the hackles of city employees who did not receive increases in their pay and accompanying benefits. To smooth over ruffled feathers, Pomierski prompted his fellow councilmen to raise employee salaries across the board. Ingratiating himself even further with the city’s employees, he and the council consented to having City Hall transition to a four-day workweek. When a pattern of the city’s employees failing to show up for work at 7 am and remaining in place until 6 pm in keeping with their Monday through Thursday work schedule manifested shortly after that transition, Pomierski and his fellow council members chose to ignore those transgressions.
In 2005, Pomierski forced then-City Manager Michael Milhiser to leave, followed by then-Police Chief Martin Thouvenell, both of whom were nearing the outer margin of their tolerance for Pomierski’s antics. Pomeirski replaced Milhiser with Robb Quincey and promoted Steve Adams to police chief, considering the installation of both to be a hedge against any interference in his illicit maneuverings and exploitation of this mayoral authority.
After Quincey was in place, Pomierski persuaded his council colleagues to grant Quincey the perquisite of granting him the same level of pay and benefit increases to be provided to the city’s police officers. The Pomierski-led council then designated Quincey to carry out the city’s collective bargaining with the city’s police union, the Upland Police Officers Association. During the course of his slightly more than five-and-a-half years as city manager, Quincey was provided with eight salary enhancements, which zoomed his total annual compensation package from $269,000 per year to $429,000 annually.
The unions representing the city’s work force – the San Bernardino Public Employees Association, the Upland Police Officers Association and the Upland Professional Firefighters Association – uniformly endorsed Pomierski in his campaigns for reelection. Though the city was rife with reports of Pomierski being on the take, the police department under Adams undertook no investigation into the plethora of bribery schemes he was involved in.
In 2010, after years of inaction by the Upland Police Department, Pomierski was locked onto by the FBI, which in June of that year carried out raids at Upland City Hall, Pomierski’s home and office, as well as the offices and homes of Hennes, Crebs and Sanchez. In 2011, Pomierski, Hennes, Crebs and Sanchez were indicted and charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office with engaging in extortion and bribery. Pomierski pleaded guilty to bribery charges in 2012. Quincey followed Pomierski into infamy, being unceremoniously shown the door by the Upland City Council two months after Pomierski’s indictment. Quincey was subsequently criminally charged by the district attorney’s office with several felonies, including unlawful misappropriation of public money, gaining personal benefit from an official contract, and giving false testimony under oath. In September 2014 three of those charges against Quincey were dismissed and a felony conviction on a single count of conflict of interest by a public officer was entered against him.
After Pomierski’s fall, subsequent administrations shied away from asking the city’s employees or its unions to make any givebacks of what they had been provided as part of their corrupt bargain with the former mayor to let him continue with his exploitation of his political office, though in June 2011, Quincey’s successor as city manager, Stephen Dunn, did roll out a massive lay off/termination of 27 city workers, among whom were some but not all of those suspected of having, or known to have, assisted Pomierski and Quincey in their despoiling of the city.
By 2012, the degree to which the Pomierski-orchestrated giveaways to city employees had compromised the city’s financials was becoming apparent. The following year, an auditor’s opinion from the certified public accounting firm Mayer Hoffman and McCann that accompanied an audit of the city’s books through June 2012 stated that there were such serious questions with regard to the city’s solvency to the point that it was on a trajectory toward being “unable to continue as a going concern.”
Now, more than eight years after the end of the Pomierski era, city employees and their unions are lodging complaints about having gone seven years without raises, and they are pressuring the current council and its acting city manager, Rosemary Hoerning, to provide them with 10.5 percent raises.

The northern goshawk, known by its scientific name accipiter gentilis, is a medium-to-large raptor in the family accipitridae, which are raptors active in the daytime, such as eagles, buzzards and harriers.
Considered a “true hawk,” the northern goshawk has relatively short, broad wings and a long tail, common to raptors that require maneuverability within forest habitats. For an acipiter, it has a relatively sizable bill, relatively long wings, a relatively short tail, robust and fairly short legs and particularly thick toes. Those found in California are blue-grey above or brownish-grey with dark barring or streaking over a grey or white base color below. These birds usually become paler as they age, manifesting in mottling and a lightening of the back from a darker shade to a bluer pale color. In North America, juveniles have pale-yellow eyes, and adults develop dark red eyes usually after their second year, although nutrition and genetics may affect eye color as well.
Molting starts between late March and late May.
The male tends to molt later and faster than the female. Molting results in the female being especially likely to have a gap in its wing feathers while incubating, and this may cause some risk, especially if the male is lost, as it inhibits her hunting abilities and may hamper her defensive capabilities, putting both herself and the nestlings in potential danger of predation. The molt takes a total of four-to-six months, with tail feathers following the wings, then lastly the contour and body feathers, which may not be completely molted even as late as October.
The northern goshawk is on average the largest member of the genus accipiter. The northern goshawk, like all accipiters, exhibits sexual dimorphism, where females are significantly larger than males, with the dimorphism notably greater in most parts of Eurasia. Linearly, males average about 8 percent smaller in North America and 13 percent smaller than females in Eurasia, but in the latter landmass can range up to a very noticeable 28 percent difference in extreme cases. Male northern goshawks are 18 inches to 24 inches long and have a 35-inch to 41-inch wingspan. The female is much larger, 23 inches to 27 inches long, with a 43-inch to 50-inch wingspan. In a study of North American goshawks, males were found to average 22 inches in total length, against females which averaged 24 inches. Males from six subspecies average around 1.680 pounds in body mass, with a range from all races of 0.787 pounds to 2.646 pounds. The female can be up to more than twice as heavy, averaging from the same races 2.54 pounds with an overall range of 1.671 pounds to 4.850 pounds. Among standard measurements, the most oft-measured is wing chord which can range from 11.3 inches to 13.9 inches in males and from 12.8 inches to 15.4 inches in females.
Northern goshawks generally vocalize only during courtship or the nesting season. Adult goshawks may chatter a repeated note, varying in speed and volume based on the context. When calling from a perch, birds often turn their heads slowly from side to side, producing a ventriloquial effect. The male calls a fast, high-pitched kew-kew-kew when delivering food or else a very different croaking guck or chup. The males produce it by holding the beak wide open, thrusting the head up and forward, than bringing it down as the sound is emitted, repeated at intervals of five seconds. This call is uttered when the male encounters a female. Two calls from brooding females are known, a recognition scream of short, intense notes – whee-o or hee-ya – which ends in a harsh, falsetto tone; then a dismissal call given when the male lingers after delivering food, consisting of a choked, cut-off scream. Meanwhile, the adult female’s rapid strident kek-kek-kek expresses alarm or intent to mob towards threatening intruders. This is often done when mobbing a predator such as a great horned owl (bubo virginianus) and as it progresses the female’s voice may lower slightly in pitch and becomes harsh and rasping. As the intensity of her attacks increases, her kakking becomes more rapid and can attain a constant screaming quality. Females often withdraw into the treetops when fatigued, and their calls are then spaced at longer intervals. Males respond to interlopers or predators with a quieter, slower gek gek gek or ep ep ep. A call consisting of kek…kek.kekk kek kek-kek-kek is used mainly by females in advertisement and during pre-laying mutual calling. Both genders may also engage in kakking during copulation. Vocalizations mainly peak in late courtship/early nesting around late March to April, can begin up to 45 minutes before sunrise, and are more than twice as frequent in the first three hours of daylight as in the rest of the day. Occasionally hunting northern goshawks may make shrill screams when pursuing prey, especially if a lengthy chase is undertaken and the prey is already aware of its intended predator.
The northern goshawk is always found solitarily or in pairs. This species is highly territorial, as are most raptorial birds, maintaining regularly spaced home ranges that constitute their territory. Territories are maintained by adults via display flights. During nesting, the home ranges of goshawk pairs are from 1,500 to 9,900 acres and these vicinities tend to be vigorously defended both to maintain rights to their nests and mates as well as the ranges’ prey base. Each gender tends to defend the territory from others of their own gender.
Though somewhat sedentary for a northern raptor species, the northern goshawk is a partial migrant. Migratory movements generally occur between September and early December and February to April. Spring migration is less extensive, peaking in late March to early April.
Northern goshawks are opportunistic predators, targeting insects, fish, small to medium-sized mammals such as reptiles and amphibians, tree squirrels and ground squirrels, rabbits and hares among mammals and birds found in forests, edge and scrub habitats, extending to corvids, pigeons, doves, woodpeckers, ducks, grouse and cormorants.
Males construct most new nests but females may assist somewhat if reinforcing old nests. Trees used for nesting include spruce, fir, larch, pine and hemlock. Broadleaf trees used include ash, alder, aspen, beech, birch, elm, hickory, hornbeam, lime, maple, sycamore, oak, poplar, tamarack, wild cherry and willow. While the male is building, the female perches in the vicinity, occasionally screaming, sometimes flying to inspect the nest.
Eggs are laid at 2-to-3-day intervals on average between April and June, most usually May, taking up to 9 days for a clutch of 3–4 and 11 days for a clutch of 5. The eggs are rough, unmarked pale bluish or dirty white. During incubation, females tend to become quieter and more inconspicuous. The mother can develop a brooding patch of up to 5.9 inches by 2 inches on her underside. She may turn the eggs as frequently as every 30 to 60 minutes. Males may incubate as many as 1 to 3 hours, but usually less than an hour, early in incubation but rarely do so later on. During daylight, females can do as much as 96 percent of the observed incubation. The incubation stage lasts for any time between 28 and 37 days, though rarely up to 41 days in exceptionally big clutches. After hatching occurs, the male does not come directly to the nest but instead just delivers food, usually already plucked, beheaded or otherwise dismembered, to a branch near the nest which the female tears apart and shares between herself and the nestlings. Food deliveries by the male can be daily or as infrequent as every 3 to 5 days. In turn, the female must feed the young about twice a day in order for the chicks to avoid starvation. Caching of food has been recorded near the nest, but only before the young start feeding themselves
Accipiter in Latin means “hawk,” from accipere, “to grasp.” Gentilis is “noble” or “gentle.” In the Middle Ages only the nobility were permitted to fly goshawks for falconry.
This species was first described under its current scientific name by Linnaeus in his Systema naturae in 1758.
From Wikipedia, raptorpersecutionscotland.files.wordpress.com, audobon.org

There’s something Godly about July. Here, in the Northern Hemisphere, people’s expression of themselves in the way they dress comes closest to, and features more of, their true selves. It’s only going to be hotter in the days to come and patience will be tested in the heat. The style that is under way and in business all day is what I call easy everyday wear. I’m seeing gold, silver, and nude sandals every day, along with shimmery satin dresses. All looking perfect for a daily outing, whether to a party or to the office. The message is simple cool, with a hint of Goddess. It’s difficult to be formal in the heat, but if you’re going to do it, wear light colors like pink or green. It’s always nice to see the dressier version of summer trying to keep up with what is expected in the workplace and its neat to see people having fun dressing for the rising temperatures. It’s all about having fun in the sun. Enjoy dressing for it and stay cool.

“Fashion is instant language.” -Prada

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the June 28 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 06-28-19

By Amanda Frye and Mark Gutglueck
The unfolding litigation launched against Redlands by former City Manager Nabar Martinez over the city’s unwillingness to live up to its contractual commitment to provide him and two of his children with lifetime medical benefits is parturient with extortionary factors suggesting Martinez has previously blackmailed and is now attempting to again blackmail members of the city council as well as senior members of the city’s managerial and administrative staff.
For more than a decade while he was at the helm of Redlands City Hall, Martinez had a virtually unfettered hand to organize and structure the city’s staff at his own discretion, and the city was essentially run in accordance and in keeping with his judgment. While the model upon which Redlands and all 17 other general law cities in San Bernardino County and all 360 other general law cites in California are governed by calls for the city council to give the city manager policy directives upon which to carry out his day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month and fiscal year-to-fiscal year managerial duties, in point of actuality in Redlands the lion’s share of policy decisions along with those relating to managerial function were ones left up to Martinez. Thus, the city council merely rubberstamped whatever Martinez wanted to do, oftentimes after he had already initiated the policy without first consulting with or advising the council’s members, with the occasional exception of his behind-the-scenes interaction with whoever happened to be mayor at the time.
From the time he was brought in as city manager in March 2007 until midyear 2018, Martinez exercised close to absolute autonomy in administering the city’s affairs.
Very early on in his tenure Martinez established his unquestioned primacy and psychological domination over everyone involved at the city. Less than six months into his time as city manager, Martinez was sent an anonymous email form an ex-boyfriend of an employee in the city treasurer’s office alerting him to haphazard controls and accounting under the direction of then-City Treasurer Mike Reynolds. Less than a month later, through further email contact with the sender, Martinez was able to identify him, drawing out from him further detail with regard to problems with how the city’s books were being kept and how sometimes questionable city expenditures were not being subjected to an exacting examination.
Instead of assisting Reynolds in redressing the shortcomings in the way he was carrying out his duties, Martinez calculated the treasurer to be expendable and that the situation simultaneously offered an opportunity to make an object demonstration of his own reach. Martinez referred the accusations to the Redlands Police Department,  which in turn notified the district attorney’s office of the accusations. On October 18, 2007, the district attorney’s office served a search warrant on the city treasurer’s office, seizing reams of documents and several computers, while downloading computer files. Meanwhile, Martinez, in private consultation with Reynolds during which he falsely maintained he was on Reynolds’ side in what was after all merely a misunderstanding, persuaded the treasurer to send an email to City Attorney Dan McHugh suggesting that the city manager be empowered to hire temporary replacement staffing for the city treasurer’s office and that the treasurer’s existing staff be reassigned to other departments for the duration of the investigation. At its October 23, 2007 meeting, the city council went along with the suggestions in Reynolds’ email. The following day, pursuant to events choreographed in large measure behind the scenes by Martinez, Reynolds was arrested and charged with three felonies, including misappropriating public funds, falsifying records and keeping a false record. Over the next two weeks the city council further advanced Martinez’s hold over the city’s financial and city treasury operations, complying with his recommendation to contract with Judy Jacobson to serve as the city’s contract revenue manager and substitute temporarily in a role essentially indistinguishable from that the city treasurer, and contracting with Ajilon Professional Staffing, LLC for temporary staffing to replace the staff members previously answering to Reynolds. Reynolds authority for overseeing the city’s investments in the Local Agency Investment Fund was then entrusted to an ad hoc group headed and overseen by Martinez and which included Finance Director Tina T. Kundig, Assistance Finance Director Thomas M. Steele and interim Revenue Manager Judy Jacobson.
Despite all of that, Mike Reynolds, who was unopposed, was reelected to a four-year term as city treasurer with 5,465 votes on November 6, 2007. On November 20, 2007, the city council voted to transfer all non-statutory duties from the city treasurer’s office to the city’s finance director, who was directly answerable to and served at the pleasure of the city manager. On January 15, 2008, the city council ratified a reorganization of the city treasurer’s office formulated by Martinez which transferred signing authority on all city accounts held with Bank of America to Kundig, Steele and Jacobson, each of whom was answerable to Martinez.
At Martinez’s instigation, the city council on February 19, 2008 voted to move the date of the city’s November general municipal election from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years commencing with the year 2010. The ordinance added a year to the recently reelected city treasurer’s term of office, as it did to the terms of all incumbent council members.  On August 20, 2008 Mike Reynolds resigned as city treasurer. A week later, on August 27, 2008, Reynolds pleaded guilty to a single count of altering a public record and agreed to a penalty of three years probation, 30 days in county jail and to pay restitution of $38,000.
From that point onward, Martinez had absolute control over the city council, as he had instilled in them the Fear of God, or more accurately, the fear of the district attorney.
Thereafter, the city council, faced with the task of filling the vacancy in the elected office of treasurer by appointment or through the calling of a special election, engaged in a protracted debate as to how Reynolds was to be replaced. Penultimately, the city council on September 10, 2008 appointed Tina Kundig to the elective office of treasurer and delegated investment authority to the city treasurer and then ultimately placed a measure on the November 2010 ballot for voters to decide if the treasurer’s position should remain elective or become an appointed position.
Martinez, as the duly appointed city manager to whom the council had turned over policy setting authority in addition to his administrative and managerial tasks, had manipulated the circumstance so that he was the puppetmaster with regard to the city’s finances, solidifying his command of the city’s purse strings along with all other aspects of municipal governance.
To ensure that Martinez would have an absolutely free hand in how the city’s general fund money was to be expended without any interference from Kundig, whose primary responsibility was to consist of minding how the city’s surplus funds were invested, on November 4, 2008 the city council voted unanimously to remove the city treasurer as an official member of the city’s budget subcommittee.
Martinez had control of everything. He had control of city policy. He had control of city management. He had control of city finances. In time he had control over the city council, its members’ future political fortunes, as well as their consciences. He accomplished this through old fashioned political patronage and the provision of favors to the city council. Some or much of this crossed the line into outright graft. Since Martinez was not the recipient of this graft and he would take care in not directly involving himself in arranging for it by having city employees below his pay grade carry it out, Martinez minimized his own personal risk. The favors were myriad, ranging from enhancing the perquisites provided to council members to landscape work and the provision of decorative rock in front of Mayor Paul Foster’s residence, to requests for and the granting of preferential treatment of friends and campaign donors. Martinez documented details relating to the police department being called to the mayor’s home over a domestic disturbance, which included the mayor’s request to keep reference to the incident out of the police department’s files. His book also cataloged a disagreement Martinez had gotten into with the mayor, and Martinez’s version of events which accused the mayor of discrimination against him and another employee. Martinez entered all of the details about such goings-on into what he told a select group of his closest confidants among city staff at Redlands was his “black book.” That tome, in addition to explicating what where, how and when accommodations, services and goods paid for by the city’s taxpayers that were not available to average citizens were provided to members of the city council, also contained accounts of closed door sessions and private remarks and statements by the council, variances between public pronouncements by the council’s members and action taken during closed door votes, miscues by council members individually and the council collectively, as well as both illegal and simply embarrassing acts by council members since shortly after Martinez’s 2007 hiring. That black book served as an insurance policy of sorts for Martinez, as at every juncture there was enough blackmail material at Martinez’s disposal relating to at least three members of the city council that he could effectively dissuade a majority of that body from taking any action contrary to his interest.
This had far reaching implications. Whenever a dispute developed between Martinez and a city department head or a city employee or between Martinez and a city vendor or between Martinez and a city resident, no matter what the substance of the dispute and the relative merits of those on either of the conflicting sides, the matters would be settled in Martinez’s favor.
To perpetuate his hold, Martinez merely needed to make sure that the members of the Redlands establishment and whoever were in political ascendancy at the moment were taken care of. And his formula involved guaranteeing that the other top dogs among city staff, such as the city attorney or department heads such as the police chief and fire chief were assured of generous salaries and comfortable retirements. This kept scrutiny off Martinez, in particular insulating him from detectives with the police department who could have come into his office to ask of him some questions it would have been somewhat difficult to give answers to.
While the city’s elected leadership – the city council’s members – were hoping that the public would not recognize the degree to which they had surrendered the political control that was yet supposed to be theirs to Martinez, that was wishfully delusional.
On November 2, 2010, when Measure B, a ballot measure asking “Shall the office of the Redlands City Treasurer be appointive?” was at last presented to the voters, faced with the prospect of themselves forsaking the opportunity to have a member of the public independent of the Martinez-controlled City Hall machinery controlling the Redlands treasury, Redlands voters responded with a resounding “No.” Measure B was soundly defeated, with 12,856 votes, or 61.49 percent against it and 8,052 votes or 38.51 percent in favor of it.
But the electorate only gets a vote with regard to two or three members of the council every two years and the treasurer every four years; city councils meet on average twice a month, involving themselves in a multiplicity of votes with regard to a host of issues at each of those meetings. Over the course of his tenure, Martinez was the virtual king of Redlands, with all of the privilege and power that attends royalty, and with a set of liegemen in the form of the city council who were both beholden and devoted to him.
He was yet riding high a year ago. At that time, former Human Resources Director/Risk Manager Amy Martin, who is now known as Amy Hagan, had filed a claim against the city to force it to make good on a guarantee that she would be provided with a “medical bridge” program giving her medical coverage until she reached the age of 65. That benefit had been conferred upon her in her separation agreement from the city, signed by her and Martinez on January 5, 2018 after a several months-long decline in the once-upbeat relationship between the two. That medical coverage was in addition to a cash settlement of $133,981.25 Martin-Hagan was given to leave, derived from providing her with six months’ severance pay in the amount of $84,500 along with a $49,481.25 cash conversion of her accumulated 609 hours of vacation, illness and administrative break leave.
When the matter of ratifying Martin-Hagan’s medical bridge came before it, the city council, which with the exception of Mayor Foster had been kept somewhat in the dark about the details in the deteriorating relationship between Martinez and Martin, had balked at extending Martin-Hagan’s medical coverage, particularly given her relatively brief four-year-and-five-month tenure with the city. Martin-Hagan threatened legal action over the city’s refusal, at which point the matter received public exposure in which it was revealed that an ex-employee with less than five years of service to the city was to receive some 27 years worth of medical benefits. Martinez, instead of inducing the city council and City Attorney Daniel McHugh to simply go along with honoring the commitment made on his own authority as he could have done, elected, perhaps because of negative publicity relating to the matter, to go along with denying Martin-Hagan’s medical benefit. Martin-Hagan filed an administrative claim with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The city, through its outside attorney, Howard Golds of the law Firm Best Best & Krieger, initially sought to put up a spirited defense in the face of Martin-Hagan’s claim, in doing so relying upon Martinez’s representations with regard to the souring of his relationship with Martin in mid- and late 2018. As the processing of Martin-Hagan’s claim proceeded with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, there were a series of revelations relating to Martinez’s comportment, in particular pointedly sexually-oriented exchanges and harassment that involved Martinez pressing her to coordinate, after work hours and over weekends, his approaches to “date” women 25 years, 30 years and 35 years his junior. While the issues Martin-Hagan raised would up to a year previous to that have likely been glossed over, coming as they did in 2018, at the height of the so-called “Me Too” juggernaut, which embodied deep outrage at the phenomenon of men’s sexual harassment of women, and in particular sexual harassment by men in positions of authority and power, felled Martinez. Those revelations ultimately led to Martinez being put on paid administrative leave in October. At that point, Martinez compounded his problem by threatening legal action of his own against the city in which he implied that he was the victim of bias and discrimination because of his Hispanic heritage and his age. Virtually overnight, it seemed, Martinez had gone from being able to do nothing wrong in Redlands to being a pariah in the 72,000-population city. Having at that point had too much of someone they previously could not get enough of, the city council was in a headlong rush to be rid of him. Hemmed in by an element of the Redlands Municipal Code prohibiting the city manager’s firing “during or within a period of thirty days next succeeding any general municipal election” in which a council member is elected, the council fired Martinez on November 6 of last year, which was election night. Had the council not acted that night, Martinez would have remained city manager, officially if not in actuality, at least until December 6.
A less-than-fully-thought-through and ultimately less-than-successful effort to keep the toxic secrets contained in Martinez’s black book from coming to light was made at the time of his firing. A report was that Martinez was willing to sell city officials a guarantee of his silence for a $1 million payout, such that he was looking to receive for all of 2018 $1,305,667.15, which was based upon 44 weeks of his annual pay of $282,859.05, subtotaling $239,342.28, and 44 weeks of his $78,383.94 in annual benefits, subtotaling $66,324.87, and $1 million. The city instead consented to pay him $845,325, consisting of $255,680 in salary and other pay from January 1 to November 6, $42,631 in benefits from January 1 to November 6, $225,313 for his accumulated and unused vacation and sick leave, and a severance payout equal to 15 months of his salary, which equaled $364,332.
A report at the time was that in addition to the $305,667.15 Martinez was paid for the 44 weeks he had worked, the city had worked out a deal with him in which he was to receive not $1.305 million over the 12 months of 2018 to secure his silence forever with regard to untoward acts by current and former city officials, but an additional $888,920.43 beyond his salary and benefits for the 44 weeks he worked that year, consisting of 18 months of his $350,896.08 annual salary & add-on pay – $526,344.12 – and 18 months of his annual benefits of $78,383.94 – $117,575.91 – along with a cash buyout of his accumulated perquisites including unused sick leave and vacation time and equipment and vehicle allowances totaling roughly $245,000. The Sentinel was informed by the city’s chief spokesman, Carl Baker, however, that the report of the $888,920.43 payment to Martinez was in error.
In the aftermath of Martinez’s exit, the city council and other top-ranking city officials have gradually come to a recognition of the degree to which the depredations both they and Martinez were engaged in are on the brink of exposure. Martinez has yet held his fire, however, refraining from going public with the contents of his black book, while still trying to milk more money out of the city.
The vehicle he has chosen to effectuate that consists of a lawsuit he, his son, Enrique Anatoly Maryshev-Martinez, and his daughter, Marianna Valentina Marysheva-Martinez, have launched against the city. Throughout the first eight years of his service with the city, Martinez and his eligible dependents were provided with the medical coverage available to other city employees.  On May 19, 2015, Martinez’s contract was altered to state that upon his achieving 15 years of service with the city he would be eligible for lifetime medical coverage. Referenced in that provision was coverage being extended to his “eligible dependents.”
On March 1, 2016, in the third amendment to his employment agreement with the city, the contract was changed to contain “Upon, and from and after, the city manager’ s separation of employment from [the] city, the city manager shall receive `lifetime medical and dental insurance’ coverage as the same exists on March 1, 2016. [The] City shall pay all premiums required for such `lifetime medical and dental insurance’  coverage only for the city manager and the city manager’s two eligible child dependents whose names are Enrique Anatoly Maryshev-Martinez and Marianna Valentina Marysheva Martinez.” Gone, apparently, was the requirement that Martinez remain with the city for 15 years before he would be eligible for lifetime medical benefits.
Martinez, Maryshev-Martinez and Marysheva-Martinez contend that the city has refused to provide those benefits to them. The trio collectively followed up with a $1.5 million claim against the city, indicating they would relinquish their rights to those benefits only upon the city making such a cash payout. The city rejected that claim and Martinez, Maryshev-Martinez and Marysheva-Martinez filed suit against the city and City Attorney Dan McHugh on April 29 of this year.
The city, represented by the law firm of Best Best & Krieger, is constructing its defense against the suit on multiple grounds, rejecting the suit’s primary allegation of fraud and negligent misrepresentation, while pointing out that the extension of lifetime medical coverage to Martinez while he was in the capacity of city manager was inconsistent with the city’s best interest, unduly influenced by Martinez and the outgrowth of a conflict of interest. The contract, therefore, is theoretically void given that under California law, any public contract tainted by a conflict of interest is void. Moreover, Martinez, as the city manager at the time that the deal to provide Martinez and his children with the medical coverage was arrived at, is therefore a party to the fraud and negligent misrepresentation he is alleging, according to the city.
By continuing to contest the lawsuit, city officials come ever closer to Martinez unloading the material in his black book.
Already a move has been made in that direction. It was revealed last week that on May 4, 2010, with the eighth amendment to McHugh’s employment contract, the city conferred upon the city attorney and his eligible dependents lifetime medical coverage, and that the lifetime medical benefit provision was reiterated in the ninth amendment to McHugh’s employment contract on October 5, 2010, and reiterated in the tenth amendment to his employment contract on October 18, 2011. On December 5, 2017, the same day that the city made a sixth amendment to Martinez’s contract, McHugh insisted on inserting the following into his contract amendment: “[The] City and [the] employee hereby expressly reconfirm that [the] employee’s retirement health benefits relating to medical and dental coverage as set forth in [the] employee’s employment agreement were vested as of May 4, 2010, and shall remain a vested benefit for [the] employee because such retiree medical and dental benefits are included within [the] city’s policies pertaining to employment, evidence exists that such benefits were an inducement for [the] employee to seek and obtain employment with [the] city (e.g., [the] city was aware at the time of employee’s hiring that [the] employee’s spouse had and continues to have through this date a significant pre-exiting medical condition), that such benefits are a form of compensation and were important to [the] employee in continuing and advancing to his long-term employment with [the] city, and that such benefits remain an inducement for [the] employee to continue to be employed by [the] city.”  That same day, again at McHugh’s insistence, somewhat similar language was inserted into the amendment of Martinez’s contract amendment, together with language to indicate that Martinez’s health retirement benefits, for which he was not to become eligible until 2022 under the terms by which they were originally stipulated “were vested as of December 5, 2017 and shall remain a vested benefit for employee.”
Thus, it is apparent that Martinez has taken a shot across the city’s bow, reminding everyone that he was not the only one who received favorable treatment by the city council and that if the city continues with its opposition to his and his children’s access to lifetime medical coverage, a similar issue will be made of favorable treatment provided to others.
The Sentinel was contacted by an entity intimately familiar with the goings-on at Redlands City Hall in the year, months, weeks and days prior to the ratification of the second amendment to Martinez’s employment contract in May 2015 and the sixth amendment to Martinez’s contract in December 2017
“The mayor knew that the CM [city manager] was asking for life-time medical and the CM and the mayor discussed it several times,” it was said.
Word leaked that McHugh finalized the language on the lifetime medical coverage for Martinez, Maryshev-Martinez and Marysheva-Martinez, and that at no point did he bring up any issues with it. The Sentinel was told that Martinez’s and McHugh’s contracts were signed on the same night, December 5, 2017, and that before the contract amendments were presented to the council McHugh tweaked the wording in the amendment to his own contract to ensure his benefits could never be taken away. It was suggested that McHugh went along with Martinez getting lifetime benefits for himself and his two children because that was consistent with McHugh locking in lifetime benefits for himself and his wife.
The Sentinel encountered conflicting reports, one of which held that the city council went into each of the contract arrangements with Martinez that were increasingly favorable toward the city manager with all of its members’ eyes wide open as to what was going on because they were yet positively disposed toward Martinez, and they were willing to give away a sizable portion of the public treasury to keep him as city manager. Another version offered was that the balance of the council, excluding the mayor, had not been apprised by McHugh of the full implication of the terms being extended to Martinez because McHugh wanted to avoid any in-depth questioning with regard to the lifetime medical coverage issue so that he himself would be able to participate in the same lifetime medical coverage giveaway as the city manager. It is only now, the Sentinel was told, that the degree to which city attorney’s own greed has been widely revealed as an example of the recurrence of circumstance in which city officials have exploited their positions of trust to put their own personal interest ahead of that of the taxpayers.
In response to an inquiry by the Sentinel, Redlands Public Information Officer Carl Baker said, “On behalf of the city, including the city council and city attorney, we will not respond to questions regarding a matter of ongoing litigation.”
Martinez could not be located for comment.

In discussing the proposed annual budget for 2019-2010, The Upland City Council at its meeting on Monday of this week gave indication that other than hiring a single unsworn assistant at the police department in the coming fiscal year and perhaps making a promotion of a sergeant or detective into a soon-to-be vacant lieutenant’s position, the police department will not likely fill any of its ten remaining  unfilled berths, nine of which are police officer positions.
After Mayor Debbie Stone indicated she had a “question about adding or reclassifying new positions at the police department,” acting City Manager Rosemary Hoerning said, “As part of the budget process, Chief [Darrell] Goodman looked at his organization and he said,  you know, he could freeze four positions within the police budget, but there were a couple positions that he needed in order to facilitate his operations. He could speak to that, but those two new employees are embedded in this ask for additional staff as part of his overall budget. He’s actually frozen some positions he feels he won’t be able to fill at this time and would like to revisit those the next budget cycle if there’s money permitting.”
Goodman told the council that he was prepared to live within a budget for 2019-2020 that had been pared back from four anticipated hirings to one over the next year.
“The positions are varied,” Goodman said. “One is a lieutenant position and it’s based on the fact we have a pending vacancy there based on future promotion, so I’ll freeze that position The other positions are based on officers positions that have not been filled for the last couple of years.  We’re currently at nine vacancies.  And while the hope is to always fill those positions, the reality is we’ve been trying to ever since I got here, and it just takes time. So looking at trying to help the budget situation, I can realistically project that we will not fill nine positions in the next twelve months if we haven’t been able to fill them in the last 24. So, it’s reasonable to suggest that at least two of those positions, which is what we agreed to, can be frozen, not eliminated, but frozen for this next fiscal year. The fourth is a dispatcher lead position. We have two of those that have not been filled, and we have not used either of them, so again, for cost savings, we have agreed to freeze that position as well. The other thing that should be mentioned along with this is a lot of this is being supplemented or helped by the salaries savings that we have contributed by not having those positions filled to the tune of almost $2.3 million. So that factors in as well.”
The city will hire a police service technician in 2019-2020 at a cost of $59,788.
-Mark Gutglueck

Jurors on Monday, June 24 returned mixed recommendations on what the penalties should be for the 2010 murders of the McStay family the panel on June 10 convicted Charles Merritt of committing. For killing Joseph McStay, with whom Merritt was a longstanding business associate, the jury called for Merritt to serve out the rest of his life in prison. The price that should be exacted upon him for his murders of Joseph McStay’s wife, Summer, and the couple’s four-year-old and three-year old sons, Gianni and Joseph Jr., is death by lethal injection in each case, the jury determined.
The recommendations on punishment for each count Merritt was convicted on were read separately. On two of the occasions when a death recommendation was pronounced, Merritt, sitting to the right of his defense co-counsel Raj Maline, and in front of his defense co-counsel James McGee, briefly buried his face in his hands.
Merritt’s conviction on June 10 came five months and three days after opening statements in the trial were made on January 7.
It was the prosecution’s contention that what Supervising Deputy District Attorney Sean Daugherty called “a mountain” of circumstantial evidence implicated Merritt in the crime.
Relying upon gaps in Merritt’s cellphone activity that evening and brief and grainy footage from the front yard security video camera of one of the McStay family’s neighbors on Avocado Vista Lane in Fallbrook in northern San Diego County, the prosecution maintained that Merritt had driven from his home in Rancho Cucamonga to Fallbrook the night of February 4, 2010 to carry out the murders. Again using call activity registered on his cellphone against him, the prosecution placed him in the High Desert in the late morning and early afternoon of February 6, 2010, where it was asserted Merritt was in a remote desert area between Victorville and Oro Grande, burying the family’s bodies in two shallow graves. Those graves had tire impressions leading away from them. Those tracks, one set of which was 76 inches wide and the other of which was 73 inches wide, were formed in the soft desert earth that existed on February 6, 2010 because of the slightly more than one inch of rainfall that fell in the Victorville environs that day, the prosecution alleged. And one of those sets of tracks matched, the prosecution insinuated, the tires on Merritt’s work truck.
Merritt’s motivation for the murders, the prosecution maintained, consisted of the consideration that Merritt had begun stealing from Joseph McStay out of financial desperation brought on in part because of Merritt’s gambling addiction, and that he then murdered McStay and his family as part of an effort to cover up his larceny after his thefts were discovered. Merritt was the primary contractor for McStay’s company, Earth Inspired Products, which involved a relatively lucrative arrangement by which Merritt constructed high end water features such as decorative fountains and artificial waterfalls that Joseph McStay was marketing to their mutual financial benefit.
Perhaps the strongest evidence against Merritt consisted of a series of checks totaling more than $20,000 on the Earth Inspired Products account which he had apparently written to himself in the days just prior to, the day of and over the four days following the family’s disappearance.  Those checks embodied certain specific anomalies, such as an atypical lack of capitalization in the names of the payees to whom the checks were made out and in the checks’ memo lines, as well as all of those checks drafted after the family’s disappearance being backdated to February 4, 2010. Based upon those differences from the way Joseph McStay drafted checks written against the Earth Inspired Account, the prosecution asserted that Merritt had been engaged in embezzlement from the company. When Joseph became aware that Merritt was pilfering from the company, the prosecution alleged, it precipitated a confrontation between McStay and Merritt that occurred on February 4, 2010, which in turn led to Merritt’s homicidal rampage, using a three-pound sledgehammer against the skulls of all of the victims, that night. A sledgehammer was found in the grave containing the bodies of Summer and Gianni McStay.
The prosecution further alleged that trace amounts of Merritt’s DNA found in the McStay family’s Isuzu Trooper abandoned at the border in San Ysidro identified him as the person who had left that vehicle there in what was implied was a ploy to suggest the family had fled to Mexico to throw investigators off his track. After the family’s disappearance, the case hung in mysterious limbo until the graves were discovered by a motorcyclist dirt-biking in the desert on Memorial Day 2013. After a year-long investigation by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Merritt was arrested in November 2014.
The defense subjected virtually every element of the prosecution’s case to some level of contradiction, vigorously cross-examining the prosecution’s witnesses and then, after the prosecution concluded the presentation of its case, putting on a defense that lasted 10 weeks, one week longer than the prosecution’s exhibition of its witnesses and evidence.
The defense demonstrated that the vehicle seen on the McStay family’s neighbor’s security video footage pulling out of the McStay family driveway at 7:47 on the evening of February 4, 2010 was not, as the prosecution insisted, Merritt’s truck, and that the prosecution’s own original measurement-and-photographic-analysis-and-comparison expert witness on the matter had conclusively demonstrated the vehicles could not have been one and the same before the prosecution fired him.
The prosecution further demonstrated that much of the prosecution’s evidence was subject to differing – meaning both sinister and benign – interpretations. Evidence in the form of cell phone records that placed Merritt somewhere in the High Desert in the Victorville/Oro Grande/Hesperia/Apple Valley area on February 6, 2010 was implicative, the defense illustrated, only if several of the prosecution’s speculative assertions were accepted. In particular, the defense brought forth to the jurors, the prosecution’s theory of guilt held up only if the family had been buried in the shallow desert graves on that particular day and that Merritt’s cellphone activity was an indication that he was at the gravesite rather than anywhere else in the 240-square mile environs of the Victor Valley. The prosecution’s evidence on all of these issues was less than exact.
Though the prosecution throughout the trial had been insistent that the family had been killed in their Fallbrook home on the evening of February 4, 2010, during its closing arguments it backed away from that theory after the defense had repeatedly brought that assertion into question by drawing attention to the conspicuous lack of evidence of mayhem within the premises, which was the focus of an extensive search 15 days after the family’s disappearance when San Diego County Sheriff’s investigators had obtained a warrant to search the McStay home in conjunction with its inquiry into the highly mysterious multiple missing persons case.
The defense capped its case with the provision of evidence and elicitation of testimony that indicated another business associate Joseph McStay was involved with in marketing the water features, website designer Dan Kavanaugh, was the more logical suspect in the murders in that he had derived over $200,000 from the Earth Inspired Products operation in the nine months after the family disappeared, and McStay had nearly succeeded, at the time the deaths occurred, in cutting off the business ties he had with Kavanaugh.
In the end, however, the jury rejected the defense’s energetic and often intricate and involved set of expositions, including ones steeped in precise and complex technical detail, in favor of the prosecution’s far less sophisticated assertions. In their closing statements for the prosecution, both Supervising Deputy District Attorney Britt Imes and Deputy District Attorney Melissa Rodriguez, conscious of the sometimes elliptical and occasionally speculative nature of the theories and narrative of their own case, called upon the jury to disregard what they characterized as the defense’s efforts to stretch the perception of events toward conclusions that were within the realm of possibility but were out of keeping with what they said were the normally-defined boundaries of reasonable interpretation.
Ultimately, the jury rejected the alternative interpretation of the evidence the defense was propounding.
During the penalty phase, the prosecution put on victim impact testimony from Joseph McStay’s mother and brother, Susan Blake and Michael McStay, as well as from Summer McStay’s brother and sister, Kenneth Aranda and Tracy Russell. Imes and Daugherty then told the jury that Merritt’s action merited the death penalty.
The defense in its presentation during the penalty phase forwent cross examining the victim impact witnesses and putting on character witnesses for Merritt. Instead, Merritt’s co-counsel Raj Maline sought to reiterate a litany of elements in the defense’s case during the guilt phase, emphasizing as best he could the corresponding counterpoints of weakness in the prosecution’s case in an effort to appeal to any lingering doubt the prosecution had. Maline said the prosecution’s theory of guilt was not supported by the evidence that had been presented.
After the pronouncement of the jury’s sentencing recommendations, the entirety of the jury was summoned to the internal quarters on the courthouse’s second floor behind the courtroom where the deliberation rooms and the judges’ chambers are located, and which are beyond access to the general public. Once the jury was ensconced there, the McStay family’s relatives were invited to join the jury for formal introductions, exchanges and expressions of appreciation.
A sizable contingent of the national, Southern California and local press were present and told by San Bernardino County Superior Court Spokesman Dennis Smith that the venue at which the jurors would be available for interviews if they chose to be interviewed was within the courtyard at the south entrance to the courthouse. When, in compliance with Smith’s instructions the lion’s share of the press corps went to that location and set up in anticipation of speaking to some of the jurors, the jurors were hustled out the back and secured entrance of the courthouse with only one member of the jury, who departed early and separately from the others, leaving the courthouse through the public entrance/exit. She declined to make any comment.
San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Michael A. Smith, before whom all of the pretrial and trial proceedings in the case were heard, set a sentencing date of September 27. Smith has the authority to countermand the jury’s recommendation of death and reduce the sentence on all of the murders to life in prison without the possibility of parole but cannot second guess the jury with regard to its decision to sentence Merritt to life rather than death on the murder of Joseph McStay.
-Mark Gutglueck