The Highland City Council on June 11 approved a new ordinance eliminating a previous  restrictions on accessory dwelling units or so-called granny flats, substituting in new ones that to some degree liberalize rules, regulations and codes relating to permitting a secondary structure on existing residential parcels.
In essence, the change brings the city into compliance with recent state legislation intended to facilitate the provision of housing to redress California’s housing shortage.
With Mayor Penny Lilburn in opposition the item passed 4-1
In October 2017, Senate Bill 229 and Assembly Bill 494 were passed by the legislature and signed into law by then-Governor Jerry Brown, going into effect on January 1, 2018.
The legislature’s rational for easing requirements for accessory dwelling units was to give homeowners the flexibility to share independent living areas with family members and others, allowing senior citizens to age in place as they require more care and helping extended families to be near one another while maintaining privacy. Relaxed regulations and the cost to build an accessory dwelling unit make it feasible and affordable housing option for such purposes, according to the legislature. The state law also was intended to make it so that accessory dwelling units could provide property owners a way to supplement their incomes by renting the units while being able to serve different populations ranging from students and young professionals to young families, people with disabilities and senior citizens.
Senate Bill 229 and Assembly Bill 494 were in conflict with the City of Highland’s previously existing ordinance pertaining to second dwelling units on residential lots. In essence, the new laws rendered the city’s existing ordinance inapplicable. Cities yet had the authority to regulate, within certain parameters, granny flats, but could not ban them outright.
City Attorney Maricela Marroquin said, “When this law took effect it voided existing ADU ordinances that do not comply with the new state law. We essentially have no regulations until we put something into effect.”
The city’s newly adopted ordinance conforms with Senate Bill 229 and Assembly Bill 494, such that the accessory dwellings can be both attached or unattached from the primary residence, can exist as garage conversions, and can be as small as 150 square feet and as large as 1,200 square feet up to 50 percent of the size of the primary dwelling. These units must have a kitchen, bathroom, sleeping space and a separate entrance. The addition of one parking space is required unless the unit is within half a mile from public transportation.
Roughly 20 percent of the city’s residential properties are a half-mile distant of the city’s bus stops, according to Associate Planner TomThornsley. The parking must be on an improved surface; parking on dirt or the lawn or on the public street is not permitted, according to Community Development Director Lawrence Mainez.
The city’s leadership previously deemed the proliferation of granny flats as undesirable, based on their potential to crowd existing neighborhoods beyond their intended density and negatively impact the quality of life in the city.
It was clear, based on the vote of Lilburn and statements made by Councilman John Timmer, that a significant portion of the city’s leadership is conceptually opposed to permitting accessory dwelling units to proliferate in the city, and were making the changes only as a concession to the change in state law.
The change in the city’s regulations is unlikely to result in a mad rush to build granny flats, given the hoops that proponents of such projects will yet need to jump through to obtain clearance to proceed.
Without the city redrafting the ordinance, according to City Manager Joseph Hughes, “Somebody could come in right now and do one of these units.”
The city’s ordinance will now require that if a granny flat is built, it will be done so in compliance with the city’s “code requirements for such things as minimum lot size, building setbacks, unit size, parking, general plan consistency, and lot coverage,” according to a report to the city council from Mainez that was reviewed by Assistant Community Development Director Kim Stater and prepared by Thornseley.
Timmer said that “We currently are living under the state ordinance” and that the city was redrafting the no-longer-applicable ordinance to provide for “tighter regulations to better protect our city. We’re still doing what the state is saying,” he said, but utilizing the leeway in the state law to layer in reasonable requirements under the aegis of the city’s codes.
Until the state law went into effect, the impact fees applicants were required to pay along with other regulations dissuaded many of those who were contemplating accessory dwelling units. Two granny flats were built in the city over the past year. Under the new ordinance, applicants will yet be required to foot the cost of development impact fees, meet all standards with regard to the livability of the dwelling unit to be created, and be subject to code enforcement inspection and compliance with all applicable codes.
The ordinance further requires that such accessory units be constructed on a lot whereon the property owner resides, thus disallowing a property owner to use the liberalization in the state law to engage in absentee landlording.
At the recommendation of the planning commission the ordinance was drawn to include a provision prohibiting the units from being rented for any period less than 30 days.
The ordinance defines an accessory dwelling unit as “an attached or a detached residential dwelling unit which provides complete independent living facilities for one or more persons, with permanent provisions for living, sleeping, eating, cooking and sanitation needs sited on the same parcel as the primary dwelling unit.”
According to the new ordinance, an attached unit must have a separate entrance and they must meet setbacks requirements under the city’s code and conform to the current development standards for setbacks and lot coverage for the zoning district within which they are located.
If the unit is to consist of a garage conversion, under state law a replacement garage cannot be required. The units cannot be sold separate from the primary dwelling unit.
Under the city’s new regulations, only an owner-occupant of the primary dwelling unit is eligible to file an application for an accessory dwelling unit. An application for a permit to create an accessory dwelling unit shall be approved or disapproved ministerially without discretionary review within 120 days after the application is received.
Accessory dwelling units cannot be built higher than a single story to a maximum of 16 feet. Attached units cannot be higher than the main unit. A unit, however, can be constructed over an existing garage which is attached to a two story dwelling.
Granny flats must match the design of the primary dwelling unit and the surrounding neighborhood in terms of height, mass, landscaping, and architectural materials.
All fees that are applied to new residential units are applicable to accessory dwelling units.
-Mark Gutglueck

The feeling of June Gloom is real in Southern California. We went from high hot temperatures to perfect, cool and gloomy.  Despite it all, the sun hats are popping and the prints are blooming, be it tops, jumpers, skirts, shorts,  or dresses. Gloom is definitely not stopping the bloom! June is just the beginning of summer and we are looking excited with all the different looks the hot season adds to our wardrobe. There’s a lot of mixing and matching of tops with shorts and skirts. You  can definitely add a floral top and not do yourself any injustice. And if you’re in the mood for a summer dress, make sure its blooming with flowers and add a hat of any type. You can always take a jumpsuit and throw on a floral top or hat. Remember your sandals, because you might want to show off a floral colored pedicure. Whatever you wear, make sure you bloom the gloom out of it and enjoy the current weather. Stay tuned for more summer looks ahead.

“Style is something each of us already has. All we need to do is find it.” —Diane von Furstenberg

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the June 14 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 06-14-19

Less than a week after garnering the attention of government officials and public employees up and down the Golden State, San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia and the council majority he controls receded from what was widely anticipated to be a major step in effectuating public employee salary reform.
Indications last week were that Valdivia and his council allies were on the verge of initiating an across-the-board effort to reduce by close to half the inflated salaries of the entire workforce at San Bernardino City Hall in an effort to stave off a looming second bankruptcy in less than a decade.
In 2012, the City of San Bernardino was forced to take refuge in Chapter Nine bankruptcy protection after years of overly generous salaries and benefits provided to city workers had created a $49 million annual operating deficit. The city emerged from bankruptcy in 2017, but now, two years later, expenditures in the soon-to-conclude 2018-19 fiscal year are on a trajectory to eclipse revenues in the same period by more than $11 million. If current trends continue, that deficit will zoom to over $16 million by the end of upcoming 2019-20.
Since 2012, San Bernardino has seen two mayoral turnovers. Patrick Morris, a former Superior Court judge, was at the city’s helm when the bankruptcy filing was made. In 2014, the city turned to Carey Davis, a certified public accountant, who had been endorsed by Morris in his mayoral bid. It was widely hoped that Davis might infuse the city with the fiscal discipline needed to stanch the city’s inveterate hemorrhaging of red ink. While some cutbacks were made and a small reduction in the level of overspending was realized by the city under Davis, the city in the five years that the bankruptcy hung over the city balanced its books in the largest measure by simply skipping out on the mounting debt it had accumulated and continued to accrue. In the four years and ten months between the time it entered into bankruptcy in August 2012 and its emergence in June 2017, the city stiffed a combination of some 209 creditors, vendors and partners for just over $350 million. Left largely unscathed by that devastation were the city’s employees, who continued to draw paychecks throughout the ordeal. They have seen no reductions in pay and their benefits remain intact, including the pensions they were promised by past mayors and city councils, though going forward the city’s employees are now being called upon to make a slight increase in their individual contributions toward their retirement benefits. The employees’ pension plan remains in place, administered by the California Public Employees Retirement System, contributions to which constitute the city’s third largest current expense, behind salaries paid out to the city’s police officers and salaries to the city’s general employees. In order to convince Federal Bankruptcy Court Judge Meredith Jury that the city should be allowed to walk away from the debt it owed, the city utilized the services of the law firm of Straddling Yocca Carlson and Rauth, in particular its bankruptcy law attorney Paul Glassman. Straddling Yocca Carlson and Rauth has been paid $25 million in legal fees over the last six years and eleven months.
In November 2018, Davis was turned out of office by the city’s voters, who replaced him with John Valdivia, who since 2012 had been serving in the capacity of Third Ward Councilman. In the last three years of Davis’ term in office, which was extended by close to seven months when the city adopted a new charter that changed the city’s election cycle from odd-numbered to even-numbered years, Valdivia had emerged as Davis’ main rival on the council.
Since coming into office, Valdivia has had to deal with the legacy of the city’s spendthrift past which includes the unsustainable commitments it has made in terms of the pay level of city employees and the looming prospect that the city will once again fall so far into deficit spending that the only solution will be another bankruptcy or ending its 150-year run as a going concern and disincorporating.
Two weeks ago Valdivia and five of the council’s seven members who are generally considered to be allied with him fired Straddling Yocca Carlson and Rauth, which has continued since the city’s 2017 emergence from bankruptcy to bill the city at a rate of close to $200,000 per month to resolve outstanding claims made against the city by its past creditors who were unwilling to accept the city’s offers made in bankruptcy court to satisfy the remaining invoices against it with payments representing, depending on the case, ten cents, twenty cents, thirty cents or forty cents on the dollar.
Looking forward to this week, Valdivia and his team of strategists, which includes his chief of staff, Bill Essayli, political consultant Chris Jones, former San Bernardino City Councilman/former San Bernardino County Third District Supervisor Neil Derry and Republican Central Committee member Scott Olson, formulated a bold move intended to head off the financial maelstrom that had destroyed the Morris and Davis mayoralties. The plan consisted of reducing – indeed eliminating – the perpetual and overwhelming drain on city finances represented by the city continuing to employ at their inflated salaries all of its employees.
Over the past several decades, the public employee unions representing the city’s employees – the San Bernardino Police Officers Association, the former San Bernardino Firefighters Association and the San Bernardino Public Employees Association – had cultivated the city’s elected leadership, meaning its mayors and council members, by the practice of providing them with larger and larger donations to their respective political campaign funds to the point that union money was their essential lifeblood as politicians. If, and indeed when, any of those officials evinced the temerity of opposing the increasingly favorably-termed employment contracts providing higher and yet higher salaries or hourly pay to city employees accompanied by ever more ample benefits, the unions would instantly cease the flow of donations and vector the provision of money to the opponents of any elected officials who insisted on being hard-nosed in the collective bargaining process. The unions, with their virtually endless supply of money to be applied for this type of political persuasion, would pour whatever it took to provide the candidates they favored with enough of a monetary advantage to either keep them in office or remove from office any politician who did not adhere to the principle that keeping public employees well-paid should be the first priority of government. In turn, the elevated pay being provided to the city’s line employees necessitated that the supervisors of those lower- and mid-level employees, the city’s management division consisting of its administrative ranks such as department heads who were not represented by the unions, be provided with ever greater compensation in keeping with their status as the unionized employees’ supervisors. In this way, the cost of local government had risen into the stratosphere.
The Valdivia team’s plan was relatively simple and straightforward. Beginning where it could and had the unfettered ability to do so, it would impose on those city employees drastic, i.e., in the neighborhood of fifty percent, reductions in their pay and benefits. Upon effectuating those cost reductions, it would then proceed as logically and as efficiently as possible or as dictated by circumstance from there to a) ask of the city’s remaining workforce that they take voluntarily pay cuts in the 10 percent to 25 percent range; b) explore the reduction of that portion of the city’s workforce unwilling to accept drawdowns in their compensation either through layoffs or attrition; c) look into hiring by contract younger and more talented and energetic employees who were anxious to accept public employment and would be enthusiastic about coming to San Bernardino to replace the more expensive staff the city is now burdened with; d) direct the city manager to use the option she has to terminate the city’s remaining department heads who are not willing to reduce their remuneration by 25 percent in order to remain in place; e) fill the existing gaps in the city’s managerial ranks with capable talent hungry enough to take on the responsibility of leading a municipal department such that they would be willing to accept a pay level in keeping with the redefined standards being reformulated for the city; f) offer the city manager’s position to current interim city manager Teri LeDoux with the proviso that she accept remuneration set at a level of two-thirds that of recently-fired City Manager Andrea Travis Miller; and g) upon the expiration of the city’s current collective bargaining contracts, from a position of strength and authority, renegotiate those contracts based on the mandate of preserving the city as a going concern, such that the salaries and benefits to be provided will not threaten the city’s ongoing, continuing and future financial viability.
The gambit, if successful, would have the effect of not just placing San Bernardino on the road to long-lasting economic recovery, but widening and boosting Valdivia’s political prospects. It is no secret that as a young and ambitious up-and-coming politician, Valdivia has ultimate designs on the governor’s mansion in Sacramento. Though handicapped by the consideration that he is a Republican in a state absolutely dominated by Democrats, Valdivia and his handlers perceive, quite possibly correctly, that the Republican Party is just one charismatic Hispanic candidate away from making a vast turnaround in California. Moreover, the problem of excessive public employee salary levels is not one that is endemic to San Bernardino. Indeed, in all but the most economically vibrant of California 482 municipalities, public employee pay scales, by which workers in the public sector are paid by the taxpayers at a rate, on average, that is nearly double that paid to workers in the private sector holding roughly equivalent or comparable positions, exacerbated by the fashion in which public employees are further provided with retirement benefits that are overwhelmingly superior to those enjoyed by workers in private industry, has eaten up funding that would otherwise be used by cities and local agencies to construct and maintain vital infrastructure and provide the services which those agencies and municipalities were originally intended to provide. In the vast majority of those cases, California’s towns, cities and counties are not in danger, of ceasing as going concerns, having to declare bankruptcy or disincorporating as was the case with San Bernardino in 2012 and is again growing increasingly likely. Nevertheless, hundreds  of California cities are unable to meet the reasonable expectations of their citizens with regard to maintaining and upgrading existing and dilapidating infrastructure or ensuring the timely delivery of basic governmental services because of encroaching public employee salary commitments. If Valdivia and those within his network could succeed in breaking the public employee culture’s lock on and monopolization of the financial means available to the San Bernardino city government and redirect it to the benefit of the city’s residents, he would very likely create a model that could be replicated throughout the state, demonstrate himself as a visionary, strong and determined leader with the character to stand up to the power and intimidation of public employees and their union, and show he is in possession of the mettle needed to function in a gubernatorial capacity. That was the goal toward which Valdivia was angling. Word to that effect had spread, and as result, thousands of  government officials throughout the State of California had logged onto the City of San Bernardino’s website Tuesday night to watch the meeting, to the point that the server was overtaxed and kept crashing.
Thus, those who had the best vantage on what was happening at Tuesday evening’s specially-called meeting were those who were physically present in the room. In the main, the meeting had been called so the council could make a review of the city’s proposed 2019-2020 budget. The council was nevertheless purposed to also consider a proposed cost saving measure ostensibly derived by a subset of the city council recently created by Valdivia to consider cost-saving measures. Dubbed the Economic Development Council Ad Hoc Committee and consisting of council members Henry Nickel, Ted Sanchez and Juan Figueroa, that panel’s proposal related to the current positions of the city’s elected city attorney, elected city clerk and elected city treasurer. While under the San Bernardino City Charter established in 1905 all three of those posts were elected ones, the city’s new charter enacted by a citywide vote in 2016 transitioned the city attorney and city clerk into appointees of the council and dispensed with the city treasurer’s post altogether. Because, however, the current holders of those positions – Gary Saenz, Georgeann Hanna and David Kennedy, respectively – were elected in 2015 to terms set to expire at the end of March 2020, they are entitled to serve in those capacities until then.
Under the charter established in 1905, the city attorney and city clerk positions were deemed full-time ones, with the treasurer serving in a part-time oversight capacity. There had been no salary requirement for the positions codified into law or ordinance and previous city councils had conferred upon the positions salaries and benefits they accorded to be fair and within the scale of wages consistent with municipal standards throughout the state for cities of a comparable size to San Bernardino.
Last year, the in-house attorney staff that had supported the city attorney for the last several decades was jettisoned, replaced with two attorneys with the firm of Best Best & Krieger, who are currently functioning in the capacities of assistant city attorney and chief deputy assistant city attorney. On April 1, 2020, with Saenz’ departure, Best Best & Krieger will become the city’s contract city attorney. Saenz has been working with the firm, acclimating it and its attorneys to the hundreds of legal issues the city is faced with.
The proposal by the Nickel, Sanchez and Figueroa committee, which had met on May 30 and June 5, called for reducing by 45.8 percent the compensation Saenz is to receive during the nine months of 2019-2020 that he will remain in office; reducing the compensation Hanna is to receive during the remaining duration of her tenure by 59.2 percent; and lowering the compensation Kennedy is to receive by 90 percent. Saenz currently receives $246,266 in total annual compensation as city attorney, including salary, benefits and add-ons. Hanna currently receives $171,466 in total annual compensation as city clerk, including salary, benefits and add-ons. Kennedy currently receives $65,000 in annual compensation as city treasurer, including salary, benefits and add-ons. Thus the committee was asking the council to reduce the compensation Saenz is to receive from July 1, 2019 until March 31, 2020 from $184,700 to $100,000, the compensation Hanna is tor receive over the same nine-month span from $128,600 to $52,500, and lessen Kennedy’s remuneration in the same timeframe from $50,200 to $5,000. Saenz was being called upon to see his compensation reduced by $84,700. Hanna was to sustain a reduction of $76,100. Kennedy was to accept losing $45,200. The calculated savings in payroll costs relating to the three as proposed was $206,000.
When the council took up the compensation reduction issue Tuesday night, Saenz weighed in.
The city attorney said that the city’s charter designates him to “serve as chief legal advisor to the council, the city manager and all city departments, offices and agencies” and that he represents the city “in all legal proceedings.” His authority stems from the city’s charter, Saenz said, asserting the “mayor and council are powerless to change my role, duties, authority, obligation and my responsibilities. Therefore, my role, duties and responsibilities are exactly the same now as they were before the city contracted with BB&K [Best Best & Krieger]. At this time last year, before the BB&K contract, I was provided an in-house staff with some eight attorneys, and near equivalent number of support staff for a total of approximately 17 to 18 staff members. That support staff changed by the council action of July 2018 to two in-house support staff and the contract with BB&K. So while the means by which my duties to the city are met have been so changed, my duties, role and level of responsibility are exactly the same. I am still the city attorney of the City of San Bernardino. While Best Best & Krieger provides the chief assistant city attorney and assistant city attorney and performs the majority of the day-to-day function of the office, BB&K understands that the city’s resolution to contract provides that Gary Saenz is the ultimate city attorney authority. And while BB&K is responsible for meeting its obligations under the contract, Gary Saenz is ultimately responsible for fulfilling the city attorney duties to the city. I am a salaried elected officer. This means that the city and I have agreed upon a reasonable compensation level for my filling the role of city attorney as described in the charter. I am compensated for acting and filling the role of city attorney as defined in the charter and not by the number of hours required to meet that responsibility. Whether I spend 50 hours or 30 hours, the compensation level is the same. The number of hours is not relevant; rather it is the level of authority and the high level of responsibility that justify my compensation. My authority and level of responsibility have not changed with the staffing by BB&K. The mayor’s chief of staff recently came to me and attempted to calculate a change in my compensation via some formula of hours times a dollar amount. Such an attempt demonstrates nothing but a complete lack of understanding of the role and responsibility of the city attorney.  As attorney of record for the city in the bankruptcy court, I presently have a high level of responsibility to both the bankruptcy court and to the city as its legal counsel of record. The termination of Straddling Yocca Carlson and Rauth as bankruptcy counsel by the city council means Gary Saenz alone is responsible to the court and to the city. Likewise, in all case litigation pending I am listed as an attorney of record which means that I am responsible to both the court in which the action is pending and to the city with respect to each such case.”
Saenz said, “I am disappointed with the so-called Economic Development Committee’s recommendation, not only because of how it impacts me and my family but because of how it failed to address or recommend any plan of action for economic development.”
He noted that Nickel had said “We need to focus on revenue.” Saenz said, “So, I am bothered that instead, their recommendation is merely to chip away at the compensation of the city attorney, city clerk and city treasurer, elected by the people, to address the city’s $11 million deficit. If cuts to compensation are an acceptable way to address our budget woes, shouldn’t cuts be across the board, to the council members, mayor, perhaps even to all staff? It remains a mystery to me how the committee believes singling out cuts to the city attorney, city clerk and city treasurer and to no other elected officials or city employees is fair, just or reasonable.”
Saenz implied that Best Best & Krieger had advised the council against the compensation reductions. “If council chooses to defy the voters, defy the legal advice of BB&K, a court will address this issue at great cost to the city, including attorney fees for those who seek the court’s intervention, attorneys for the city, and all other costs of litigation, and I predict in the end the reductions in compensation will not be allowed,” he said.
Saenz’ statement was echoed in a warning provided to the council by former Mayor Patrick Morris, who said that the imposition of the compensation reductions would likely result in the filing of litigation against the city.
“Practically speaking,” Morris said, “the ad hoc committee indicates a savings of about $200,000. You can expect, as a mayor and council, immediate lawsuits by these officeholders asking the Superior Court for injunctive relief and a writ of mandate. I’m confident they will be successful in every aspect of their lawsuit, and the cost to the city will certainly be probably a lot more than the proposed savings the ad hoc committee suggests. You will pay your attorney’s fees and costs and maybe for depositions and interrogatories. Losing, you will pay the attorney’s fees and costs for the officeholders, as well. And you will suffer the embarrassment, quite frankly, of having attempted to drive from office and diminish the professional stature and careers of distinguished public officials officers we elected to these offices with the expectation that they would serve until the end of their elected term.”
Saenz said, “If you’d like to adjust my pay to a reasonable hourly wage, $300 per hour is a conservatively reasonable amount for an attorney with 40 years of experience. Last week I worked over 36 hours, which equated to $10,800, extrapolated to an annual compensation of $561,000. More typical for me now is a 25-hour week in the office, which extrapolates to $386,000 total compensation.”
When Valdivia offered Hanna an opportunity to address the compensation reduction proposal, she declined, citing the advice of legal counsel.
Nevertheless, P.J. Seleska addressed the council, in so doing relating events which strongly implied she was speaking on Hanna’s behalf.
“The San Bernardino City Clerk is a working master municipal clerk who reduced her office from six employees to three and one part time, and did cut seven percent this year as requested, while the mayor exploded his staff budget,” Seleska said. “Not a single council member has a clue how many hours the city clerk puts in, let alone what the job entails. This is not about the budget. This is not fiscal responsibility. This is about political retribution, corruption, and overstepping authority to exact revenge. The San Bernardino mayor and his chief of staff are angry because, in their words, ‘The people know too much.’ They want to censor access to publicly-funded information, insisting they should have the final say as to who gets access to what public documents. The city clerk refused this demand, as they do not have the authority. The mayor shared that he intends to limit public comment to 90 seconds and intends to challenge those who speak against him. He expressed his desire to scrub the city website of public officials’ statements of economic interest and other relevant information. This administration is blatantly terrified of the San Bernardino city clerk’s sunshine ordinance campaign, which calls for governmental transparency.”
According to Seleska, “On two separate occasions, San Bernardino Mayor John Valdvia has attempted to bribe San Bernardino City Clerk Georgeann “Gigi” Hanna. He summoned her to his doughnut shop on 40th Street, after hours, where he made an offer that Gigi Hanna turned down. Subsequently, John Valdivia called the city clerk into the mayor’s office and made multiple offers that were again turned down. The Economic Development Council Ad Hoc Committee recommendation is in direct retaliation of Gigi Hanna’s refusal to be bribed. The administration can’t buy her out, so let’s starve her out or force her to quit.  All contemporaneous notes and evidentiary supporting information regarding these actions have been submitted to various appropriate authorities.”
Ultimately, the council voted 4-to-2, with Councilman Jim Mulvihill absent, to ratify the compensation reductions as proposed. Along the way, however, there were several remarkable developments, not the least of which was the Valdivia team’s abandonment of the underlying game plan, of which the reductions had been designed as a crucial starting point.
While councilmen Nickel, Figueroa, Sanchez and Councilwoman Bessine Richard voted in support of giving Saenz, Hanna and Kennedy the pay cuts, that vote had come on a substitute motion to a previous motion made by Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra. Ibarra, who heretofore had been a steady ally to Valdivia and one who could be counted upon to support his agenda down the line, had departed from his fold when the discussion regarding the compensation reduction matter intensified. Ibarra’s motion called for keeping compensation for Sanez, Hanna and Kennedy intact and instead reducing where appropriate the city’s contracts with and payments to outside counsel, supporting a staff recommendation to reduce outlays in the mayor’s office by four percent and an entirely unanticipated proposal to terminate Bilal Essayli as Valdivia’s chief of staff by eliminating that position. Councilman Fred Shorett seconded her motion but they were outmaneuvered through the majority’s use of parliamentary procedure whereby Sanchez’s substitute motion prevented Ibarra’s motion from being voted upon.
Treasure Ortiz, who last month vied unsuccessfully against Figueroa to succeed Valdivia as Ward 3 council representative, addressed the council. “You really think we’re here talking about a budget the ad hoc committee thinks is going to save $200,000 when you had behind the scenes tried to give the chief of staff a $20,000 increase in his pay?” Ortiz asked. “He makes $94,000. You gave the police department over $430,000 in raises. This is about a budget? No. What this is about is retaliating against the city clerk because she controls public records and you want to control the information that comes out of this city.”
Valdivia had Nickel explain the rationale for the council’s action. While asserting that ultimately, “cuts are not the answer” and that “growth is the answer,” Nickel lamented a bleak budget picture consisting of an $11.2 million shortfall as the current fiscal year is concluding and prospects that look even worse as 2019-20 is about to start. Wielding the budget rapier, he said “reflects the reality we are having to face this fiscal year. We’ve got, over the next year, a very short window of time to turn around a very dire situation. We stood back and we said, ‘What makes sense?’ We proposed some cuts, but we knew when you start diving into salaries of individuals, first of all, it’s radioactive. I wouldn’t want anyone diving into my salary, but the reality is the charter allows that. That’s the way it works. So I’ve learned to deal with that. The fact of the matter is we have a firm, BB&K, on board. We also looked at the functions of the city clerk. I’ll be honest: There’s some cities where the city clerk is more or less a figurehead, especially the elected city clerks, some of the appointed city clerks. They are. That was information that was presented to us. That’s not to say that that’s necessarily the case here. And certainly, if we want to keep time cards now, when they were elected officials, they didn’t have to keep time cards. If they want to consider themselves employees, then yeah, we’re going to have to track your time, because at the end of the day, the taxpayers pay all of our salaries here. And we have to respect the taxpayers. It’s never easy to cut budgets, and we have quite a few competing priorities in the city,” Nickel said. “This isn’t an easy process, and nothing we do up here in the context of our budget this year is going to be easy or pleasant.”
Ultimately, after achieving the reductions in Saenz’s, Hanna’s and Kennedy’s compensation, the Valdivia team abandoned the strategy of seeking across-the-board reductions in employee pay, when they came to terms with the consideration that two of Valdivia’s council allies whose votes would be instrumental to carrying out his plan are themselves government employees pulling comfortable salaries with a considerable  investment in the public pension system. Councilwoman Bessine Richard, has been an employee with San Bernardino County since 1981. In 2014, she was promoted to the position of workforce development supervisor with the County of San Bernardino Workforce Development Board and was working that job when she ran for the city council in San Bernardino’s Sixth Ward in 2015 and finalized her election to the council post in a run-off in February 2016 before being sworn into the post in April 2016. Five months later she was promoted to a senior position as workforce development manager.
Councilman Henry Nickel is an analyst with the County of San Bernardino Workforce Development Board, having been in that position since November 2016. He previously worked in government as a rail analyst with the Riverside County Transportation Commission.
Were the City of San Bernardino to prove successful in cutting city employee salaries and benefits, in the event that would trigger similar governmental employee pay decreases, both Richard and Nickel would potentially be impacted, seeing their own paychecks reduced.
Contacted by the Sentinel after Tuesday’s vote, Valdivia’s chief of staff, Bilal Essayli, indicated that a move to trim San Bernardino’s operational costs by drastic reductions in employee compensation in general was no longer and had never been a seriously contemplated option.
Essayli acknowledged that the city’s participation in the California Public Employees Retirement System represented a major drain on the city’s finances.
“We will be paying CalPERS [the California Public Employees Retirement System] $3 million more than last year,” he said. “It’s the pension plan that’s the problem, not salaries.”
Asked directly if the Valdvia team was preparing to secure salary and benefit reductions from city employees as part of the effort to stave off another bankruptcy, Essayli said, “I would say no. I haven’t heard anything like that. The issue is CalPERS. The reality is that San Bernardino has been harder hit by the loss of revenue. Revenue has stagnated. That is a problem in every jurisdiction in the state. It is not something that is going to be solved by San Bernardino.”
Queried as to whether what the council did Tuesday was a first salvo in the war against overpaid employees and if the balance of the city’s employees should prepare themselves for a round of similar belt tightening, Essayli said, “That action was very specific. Those three positions have been abolished by the charter. There has been a significant reduction in their duties. Their suggestion that they should receive the same amount of pay is ridiculous. Their reduced compensation is directly related to their reduced duties under the new charter.”
Essayli again resisted the Sentinel’s invitation to divulge what efforts the Valdivia administration is on the brink of taking to either impose salary and benefit reductions on city employees or request of them on a voluntary basis to head off massive layoffs.
“We have very limited leverage,” Essayli said. “Under the collective bargaining contracts now in place, their salaries  and benefits are locked in, and when we go into negotiations, if we don’t come to an agreement they continue on the same terms as before. They can never lose. They can only gain.  It is a very difficult situation. The problem is not salaries. The real problem is the ongoing cost, the total ongoing and future cost of pensions, the unfunded liability.”
-Mark Gutglueck

Despite intensely concerted efforts over the last sixth weeks, authorities have yet to find the body of six-year-old Duke Flores, who was believed to have died at the hands, or as the result of the depraved and indifferent negligence, of his mother.
Duke Flores was diagnosed as suffering from autism. He was living with his mother, 29-year-old Jackee Contreras, and his aunt, Jennifer Contreras, his mother’s twin sister. On occasion, the child stayed with his grandmother.
Duke’s father, Jose Flores, did not cohabit with his son or Jackee Contreras, but had semi-regular contact with Duke. On Thursday, April 25, 2019, a blood relation to Jose Flores who has not been publicly identified requested a welfare check be carried out on the child.
Authorities have been less than fully transparent about what transpired thereafter, although some details are known.
On Thursday, April 25, at approximately 10:06 pm, deputies from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department stationed in Apple Valley as members of that town’s police department responded to the Contreras residence in the 22000 block of Cherokee Avenue. Upon arrival, deputies were told by Jackee Contreras that she had not seen her son for approximately two weeks. Deputies immediately began a search of the area. Jackee Contreras was arrested, transported and booked into the High Desert Detention Center for child neglect, stemming from her delay in reporting her son missing. She was later transferred to the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga.
There is a report, the provenance and reliability of which is unknown, that Duke Flores was actually seen in the front yard of his mother and aunt’s home earlier in the day on April 25.
Investigators say that both Jackee and Jennifer made a series of inconsistent statements to them as they labored to determine whether the boy was yet alive, and if so, his whereabouts.
Following Jackee’s arrest and booking on April 25, Jennifer was arrested on April 27.
According to a public release of information, investigators are given to believe that Duke Flores is dead and his body was disposed of in a dumpster. There has been no disclosure with regard to what led investigators to that conclusion.
Shortly after 7 am on Monday, April 29, a crew involving an unspecified number of homicide detectives, sheriff’s department volunteers and landfill personnel were actively searching the landfill in Victorville for the body of Duke Flores.
By 1 pm that day, the search team had swelled to four homicide detectives, 36 sheriff’s department volunteers, three canines, and 17 additional sheriff’s department members as well as landfill personnel. The primary area being searched was approximately 70 feet x 70 feet x 10 feet in depth, involving some 600 tons of material.
The search resumed on the morning of April 30. Also that morning, Jackee Contreras and Jennifer Contreras were brought before Superior Court Judge Lisa Rogan for arraignment in Victorville Superior Court. With more than a dozen of Duke Flores’ family members present, they each entered a single not guilty plea to one count of murder. Judge Rogan set their bail at $1 million each.
Intensified searches at the landfill continued on May 1, May 2 and May 3. Those searches typically involved detectives, additional sheriff’s deputies, volunteers, search dogs, and landfill workers. The search resumed the next week. In the several weeks since, the searches have continued, with differing levels of intensity and numbers of participants as the effort has dragged on. To date, the boy’s body has yet to turn up.
The search for several weeks was confined to one section of the landfill, which entailed sifting through some 1,200 tons of rubbish wherein the refuse disposed of at the landfill in April had been deposited.
Pre-preliminary and preliminary hearings for Jackee and Jennifer Contreras have been scheduled for June 26 and 27 at the Victorville Courthouse.
If the body of the child has not been found by June 26, a determination at the pre-preliminary hearing could be made to postpone the preliminary hearing.