Eight companies hit the $1,625,000 jackpot with the county in its public works contract sweepstakes at the last San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors meeting. Aspen Environmental Group, Dudek, ECORP Consulting, Inc., Jericho Systems, Inc., Lilburn Corporation, Michael Baker International, Stantec Consulting Services, Inc. and Tetra Tech, Inc. were separately guaranteed a total of $1.625 million each between January 29, 2019 to January 28, 2024, for on-call environmental permitting and planning services associated with transportation, solid waste and flood control projects.
Each is to receive $1 million for the transportation and solid waste related jobs and another $625,000 for the work relating to flood control.
Two other companies did well for themselves, too, but will see half of a million dollars less in work in the same January 29, 2019 to January 28, 2024 timeframe. Chambers Group, Inc. and Ruth Villalobos & Associates, Inc. were given not-to-exceed $500,000 contracts for on-call environmental permitting and planning services associated with transportation projects and another $625,000 for for on-call environmental permitting and planning services associated with flood control projects.
Three other firms were given $600,000 work guarantees for subsurface utility locating services. Hayward-based BESS Testlab, Inc., Riverside-based Kana Subsurface Engineering and Buena Park-based Wayne Perry, Inc. were each provided with a $300,000 subsurface utility locating service contract for work with the county in general and another $300,000 contract for subsurface utility locating service work to be done specifically for the San Bernardino County Flood Control District between January 29, 2019, through January 29, 2022.
According to Kevin Blakeslee, the director of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Works who is also the county’s chief flood control engineer, “The availability of on-call services allows the department of public works and the flood control district to accelerate the selection of vendors that provide these services, resulting in valuable savings of time and cost. This, in turn, improves the delivery of much needed projects while meeting the goals and objectives of the county and its chief executive officer to operate in a fiscally-responsible and business-like manner and providing for the safety of county residents.”
-Mark Gutglueck

By Mark Gutglueck
Emerging detail and further revelations about the board of supervisors’ selection of Dawn Rowe as Third District supervisor in December and her hiring of two “political hitmen” into key positions on her staff implicate both supervisors Robert Lovingood and Janice Rutherford in an effort to create a partisan electioneering operation within the fifth floor suite of administrative offices at the county’s governmental headquarters in San Bernardino.
Rowe’s hiring of political operatives Matt Knox and Dillon Lesovsky as her office’s chief of staff and policy advisor has resulted in a firestorm of controversy, based in some measure upon the brutal and illegal tactics employed by Knox and Lesovsky in campaigns against the opponents of the candidates they have worked for, as well as the prospect that both will work on Rowe’s electoral effort in 2020.
Rowe was chosen to succeed James Ramos, who was first elected to the Third District post in 2012, reelected in 2016 and then successfully vied for the California Assembly in the 40th District in November. Ramos’s 2016 reelection entitled him to hold the supervisor’s post until 2020. His resignation as supervisor to move on to Sacramento thus created a gap on the council. Rowe’s appointment to the position will thus end in 2020, and she has committed to seeking election as Third District supervisor in her own right next year.
State law prohibits the use of public money to pay for political or electioneering work on behalf of any candidate for public office and it is illegal for public employees to engage in partisan activity or any electioneering while functioning in their capacity as a public official or from public premises or while using public facilities, equipment, machinery, vehicles or materials. In hiring Lesovsky, in particular, Rowe appeared to be testing the envelope. There is a clearly identifiable anomaly to the arrangement relating to the provision of Lesovsky’s services to the county in that he remains as a full-time employee Monday through Friday with AvCom, a massive aircraft storage and aviation asset management facility involved in the leasing, sales and consignment of aircraft engines and avionics equipment located at Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, while he is simultaneously serving as a member of Supervisor Rowe’s staff. Generally speaking, supervisoral staff members have historically been full-time county employees functioning within the traditional workweek on an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily schedule, with only rare exceptions to that rule.  Lesovsky’s circumstance raises questions as to how he is fitting within the standard rubric for county employees. Moreover, Lesovsky has himself made statements which indicate that his function is a political one, i.e., getting individuals elected and in place to govern rather than one devoted to the actual act of governing or facilitating the delivery of governmental services to residents, citizens and constituents.
Both Knox and Lesovsky have extensive and recent experience in running political campaigns and/or engaging in activity that is an adjunct to those campaigns. In the 2018 election, both were involved in the generation of attack or “hit” material relating to Congressman Paul Cook’s opponent, former California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly. Despite both Cook and Donnelly being Republicans, they faced off against each other in the November general election, having placed first and second, respectively, in California’s open primary voting in the June race in California’s 8th Congressional District. Previously, Lesovsky had been employed as a member of Cook’s Congressional staff. Knox remained as one of Cook’s staffers and was also functioning as Cook’s 2018 campaign manager. Knox and Lesovsky worked on the “Dirty Donnelly.com” effort, which consisted of a website and signs directing the public to that website, which utilized doctored photos to paint Donnelly in the most negative of light, and dwelt at length on a number of derogatories relating to the former assemblyman, including that he had a criminal record, was scamming senior citizens, had deserted his family, had engaged in “political fraud,” stole from his own wife and was unemployed. In violation of state law, neither the website nor the signs directing voters’ attention to the website had any identifying California Fair Political Practices registration number nor the indicia required under California law for campaign signs and materials to show what entity, organization, committee or campaign paid for the materials. The campaign on behalf of Cook directed by Knox and the hit perpetrated by Knox and Lesovsky proved highly effective, as Cook trounced Donnelly in the November 6 election 108,414 votes or just under 61.33 percent to 68,370 votes or 38.67 percent.
Those of a political bent took note of how effectively Cook was able to convincingly dispatch Donnelly, which was significant because Donnelly’s political persona, anchored to his identification as the most conservative politician in California and one who is unrelentingly faithful to bedrock ultra-right principles, matched perfectly with a solid plurality if not an outright majority of the voters in the overwhelmingly right wing 8th Congressional District. And while the identities of those behind Dirty Donnelly.com were unknown to the population in general, those in Republican Party circles recognized the site as the handiwork of Lesovsky and Knox.
For Supervisor Robert Lovingood and for Phil Paule, who is Supervisor Janice Rutherford’s chief of staff, the tandem of Knox and Lesovsky, with whom they were already quite familiar, presented interesting possibilities bridging out toward the future. Lovingood had first been elected supervisor in 2012, the same year Ramos had come into office. Like Ramos, he had been handily reelected supervisor in 2016. He is due to run for supervisor once more in 2020 if he wishes to remain as supervisor, which at this point is a possibility. It is equally possible that in 2020 he will be interested instead in moving on to higher office, as Congressman Cook, who next month turns 76, is mulling departing from Congress, and Jay Obernolte, the current Assemblyman in the 33rd District, is considering vying for Congress in the 8th Congressional District if Cook does elect to depart. Whatever his decision, to remain as supervisor, to seek to succeed Obernolte in the Assembly if Obernolte opts to run for Congress or to himself run for Congress in the aftermath of Cook’s decision to leave the House of Representatives, Lovingood will need to campaign in 2020. While Lovingood, as the incumbent, would be the odds-on favorite to be reelected to one last four-year term to the board of supervisors under the three-term limit in place for supervisors pursuant to the passage of Measure P in 2006, his viability as a candidate for either the Assembly or Congress would be far less certain and contingent upon the strength of the other candidates against whom he would be competing. Thus, being able to reliably call upon the off-the-shelf services of Knox and Lesovsky at that time would be of significant assistance to him. Paule, who has quite a history as a political operative himself and remains involved in electioneering efforts including those of his own and of other members of the Republican Party, likewise has an interest in being able to wield the services of Knox and Lesovsky on campaigns and on behalf of candidates of his choosing. Paule was the district director for Darrell Issa when Issa was a Congressman. In 2012, Paule ran for election to the California State Assembly in District 67. His campaign was co-chaired by Congressman Issa and former State Senator and Assemblyman Ray Haynes. That same year, he left Issa’s office and went to work for the then-newly elected James Ramos, who, though he was a Democrat, had been elected with the backing of the wing of the San Bernardino County Republican Party based in Redlands. Paule remained with Ramos’s office until July 2016, when he departed to serve as campaign manager for Issa in that year’s election. As the 2016 election season was drawing to a close, Paule was hired by Rutherford to serve as her chief of staff with the onset of 2017. Paule has also associated with a number of Republican Party heavyweights throughout California, including Issa, Cook, and Haynes; Congressman Doug LaMalfa, former Congress members Jeff Denham, Gary Miller, Mary Bono Mack and Mimi Walters; former state senators Bill Leonard, Dick Mountjoy, Bob Huff, Bill Emmerson, Tony Strickland, and Mark Wyland, former California Assembly members Kevin Jeffries, Beth Gaines, Jim Silva, Cameron Smyth, Diane Harkey, Chris Norby, Brian Nestande and Jeff Miller. Paule has been a board member with the East Municipal Water District in Riverside County since January 2007, after he was elected to represent the district’s Division 1 the November 2006 election. He has succeeded in warding off competition ever since and ran unopposed in 2010, 2014 and 2018.
Rowe, a former Yucca Valley Councilwoman, was closely associated with Chad Mayes, currently an assemblyman and formerly Yucca Valley mayor and himself formerly Rutherford’s chief of staff. Rowe has referenced Mayes as a mentor who encouraged her to become involved in politics. She associated as well with Cook, and was, until she resigned to accept the position as Third District supervisor, a member of his staff. While working for Cook, Rowe was a colleague to both Knox and Lesovsky. As a member of Cook’s staff in 2018, Rowe was aware of Knox’s and Lesovsky’s hit campaign against Donnelly.
In 2015, Lesovsky, while yet a member of Cook’s staff, was caught on video by the Project Veritas group acknowledging that campaign donations made to Cook could purchase influence, favorable votes and support from Cook on legislation impacting those donors. With regard to Boeing and Mitsubishi Cement, Lesovsky is heard on the audio portion of the video saying, “They are big campaign contributors of ours. You know, we’ll help them out.”
Cook and his office were embarrassed by the incident, which necessitated that the congressman make a show of distancing himself from Lesovsky, and Lesovsky was either terminated or resigned. Nevertheless, arrangements were made to help him land on his feet, and he soon thereafter was given another governmental job on the staff of one of Cook’s political allies, Supervisor Lovingood, where he remained until finding the position he now has with AvCom.
Both Paule and Knox recommended to Rowe that she install Lesovsky on her staff. Reports now are that Lovingood encouraged Rowe to hire Lesovsky and that Rutherford, either directly or through Paule, suggested that Lesovsky would make a welcome addition to her staff.
What has been suggested by both circumstance and observers is that Lovingood, Rowe and Rutherford, along with Lesovsky, Knox and Paule, are involved in an effort to construct a political shop on the fifth floor of the county administration complex dedicated in general to the promotion of Republican candidates in San Bernardino County, with the immediate specific focus being the 2020 campaigns of Supervisor Rowe in her effort to remain as Third District supervisor and Supervisor Lovingood in his electoral effort for whatever office he chooses to either retain or pursue.
Neither Lovingood, Rutherford, Rowe, Lesovsky, Knox or Paule were willing to comment with regard to the nature of the political operation that was being assembled in Rowe’s office. Neither Rutherford nor Lovingood responded to questions about their awareness of Knox’s and Lesovsky’s involvement in the Dirty Donnelly.com political hit during the 2018 election. Nor would Rutherford or Lovingood say whether they might consider a county ordinance, similar to that which exists at the federal level in the Hatch Act, prohibiting members of San Bernardino County’s supervisorial staffs from engaging in political activity relating to the election campaigns of their employers or employers’ colleagues, if such a restriction could be constructed in a way that is consistent with the U.S. Constitution.
Lovingood did not respond to questions about whether he intends to employ either Knox or Lesovsky in his 2020 campaign and he did not offer a response to the suggestion making the rounds in the county that he had gone along with Rowe’s hiring of Knox and Lesovsky because he stands to benefit by the assistance that Knox and Lesovsky will render him in his 2020 campaign.
Paule was unwilling to say whether he had recommended to Rowe that she hire Lesovsky and Knox, or if he and Supervisor Rutherford had any discussion with regard to Knox and Lesovsky prior to their hiring by Rowe.
Lesovsky directed all questions about the circumstance to Suzette Swallow, Rowe’s official spokeswoman. Swallow has not returned the Sentinel’s phone calls and Rowe’s staff has refused to provide Swallow’s email address to facilitate written communication with her.
Knox did not confirm reports or respond to questions relating to whether he is to work on behalf of Supervisor Rowe’s election campaign or if was already engaged in making preparations for the 2020 election. Nor would he say whether he intends work on any other political campaigns in 2020.
Asked by email if he saw any conflict between his role as chief of staff and his electioneering efforts on behalf of the supervisor, Knox did not answer. Knox would not comment on or speak with regard to the Dirty Donnelly.com element of the Cook campaign.
And Knox did not respond to whether reports that he was on the brink of resigning as Rowe’s chief of staff and taking Lesovsky with him in an effort to resurrect the supervisor’s reputation and good name.
Rutherford told the Sentinel, “I supported the appointment of Dawn Rowe as Third District supervisor because of her previous elected service, her outstanding application and interviews before the board, and her detailed knowledge of the policy issues facing that district. As with any supervisor, decisions about how to staff her office are up to her and any questions about why she chose particular individuals should be directed to her.”
David Wert, the county’s official public spokesman, this week offered a defense of the fashion in which Knox’s and Lesovsky’s hirings had been placed on the consent calendars for the meetings of the board of supervisors on January 8 and January 29. The consent calendar is reserved for items deemed to be noncontroversial, such that a multitude of items considered to be unworthy of public discussion are collectively voted upon with a single vote.
“Members of the board of supervisors and most certainly the clerk of the board do not determine whether agenda items appear under consent or discussion,” Wert wrote. “That process is handled by the county administrative office. And all items are consent unless there is a legal requirement to have them on discussion (public hearings, first readings of ordinances) or if the CEO or chairman of the board directs that they be placed on the discussion calendar. It doesn’t work in reverse. Discussion items are not placed on consent. As for board staff appointments, I can safely say that in nearly 30 years of covering the county as a reporter and working for the county as public information officer, never has a board staff appointment been moved to the discussion calendar.”
Rowe has not returned phone calls placed to her office and was not available at the county administrative building for an interview this week when the Sentinel thrice sought to speak with her there.

In an extraordinary turn of events that was both unanticipated and unprecedented, officials with the cities of Chino Hills and Diamond Bar have persuaded their counterparts with the City of Industry to give up their aggressive development designs on 2,445-acre Tres Hermanos Ranch.
The immediate upshot of settlement worked out between the three municipalities puts to rest six lawsuits Chino Hills and Diamond Bar had launched against the City of Industry in 2017 and 2018.
The Tres Hermanos property, long the rustic playground of oil baron Tom Scott, former Los Angeles Times Publisher Harry Chandler and the heirs of California pioneer John Rowland,
was twice purchased by the City of Industry in the course of 40 years, each time with the intention of utilizing the acquisition to host extensive utility facilities that would complement the intensive industrial uses within the City of Industry. In 1978, the City of Industry paid $12.1 million ($30.6 million in 2019 dollars) for the land, and later transferred ownership of the property to the city’s redevelopment agency, known officially as the Industry Urban Development Agency. Indications over the years were that the property would be utilized to host a reservoir or reservoirs which would have water holding capacity equivalent to the fifth largest body of water in Southern California.
In 2011, legislation closed out all redevelopment agencies statewide, and ownership of the 2,445 acres transferred to the so-called successor agency to the redevelopment agency.
A handful of real estate development concerns including GH America Inc. and South Coast Communities of Irvine expressed interest in acquiring the 2,445 acres at Tres Hermanos Ranch for the purpose of developing it both residentially and commercially, offering $100 million for it. In August 2017, the City of Industry, which had substantial representation on the boards of both the successor agency to the Industry Urban Development Agency and the oversight board to the successor agency to the Industry Urban Development Agency, boldly took action to acquire the property. After the city tendered a $41.65 million offer on the property, in very short order the oversight board, at its August 24, 2017 meeting, directed the successor agency to sell the property to Industry for the aforementioned $41.65 million. That action was accompanied by an indication that the ranch would be in large measure converted into a solar power generating field utilizing photovoltaic panels to generate 450 megawatts of electricity while leaving some of the property dedicated as “open space” for public use. In nearly equally short order, the cities of Chino Hills and Diamond Bar raised objections with the California Department of Finance. After the California Department of Finance allowed the processing of the sale to proceed, Chino Hills and Diamond Bar lodged a series of legal actions in 2017 and 2018, all of which sought to thwart Industry’s plans to lease the property for a large solar facility to an entity. In the face of those legal challenges, the City of Industry moved forward with its arrangement with La Jolla-based San Gabriel Valley Water and Power, headed by William Barkett, to lease the ranch property to the company for $1 per year, extend to the company a 65-year option on continuing the lease of the property and an exclusive right to develop a solar farm on at the ranch, and provide Barkett with loans and other funding for feasibility studies and preparations relating to the solar project, what was essentially a commitment of public financing of the company’s efforts in the initial stages of the project’s development. In exchange, San Gabriel Valley Water and Power committed, once the solar plant was functioning at capacity, to make an annual payment of $4 million to the city for the use of the property along with the sale of the energy to be produced there to the city and City of Industry-based businesses at bargain basement rates.
In defiance of normal standards of public disclosure that attend the operation of governmental entities, the City of Industry provided virtually no information about the proposed projec beyond a rudimentary description of its parameters, while essentially bankrolling the San Gabriel Valley Water and Power in the earliest stages of the project preparation. Ultimately, that lack of accountability redounded to the City of Industry’s detriment, as Barkett and San Gabriel Valley Water and Power burned through roughly $14 million in carrying out preliminary planning on the project and spent another $6 million in legal fees and other nondescript expenses by December 2017 without producing anything tangible in terms of physical assets on the ranch grounds nor anything other conceptual plans and projections as to generating capability. The city satisfied San Gabriel Valley Water and Power’s billing up to that point for that work and those expenses, but began questioning whether the company was working in good faith toward the goals outlined in their development agreement. When Barkett and San Gabriel Water and Power next submitted invoices for services relating to the solar farm proposal exceeding $1.5 million but was not convincingly responsive with regard to the justification for that billing, the city council balked at making those payments. In January, the city council took up discussion of firing all three Industry staff members most closely identified with championing the solar project – then-City Manager Paul Philips, then-City Clerk William Morrow and Anthony Bouza, an attorney the city was employing with regard to the solar farm’s development and legal issues, moving by the end of January to sack Morrow and Bouza, and thereafter were summoning up the requisite votes by the end of February to hand Philips his walking papers.
Having spent $53.75 million over the years in securing the property, then squandering another $20 million in the its thoroughly unproductive relationship with San Gabriel Valley Water and Power and its legal bills mounting in having to fend off the lawsuits brought against it by Chino Hills and Diamond Bar, the City of Industry last year entered into quiet negotiations with those entities.
On Tuesday February 5, Chino Hills Mayor Cynthia Moran announced, “Months of negotiations have led to a new partnership among our three cities that will benefit the entire region. I applaud the City of Industry, and their leadership, for taking a new direction and recognizing that this beautiful natural property in the middle of our urban area is a valuable environmental asset that should be protected.”
Under the terms of the settlement, the City of Industry is to become a full voting member of the Tres Hermanos Conservation Authority, a joint powers agency formed more than two decades ago in January 1999 by the cities of Diamond Bar and Chino Hills. The authority’s board will increase from four to seven members, with City of Industry allotted three board positions, Diamond Bar two members, and Chino Hills two members. The City of Industry will sell Tres Hermanos Ranch to the Tres Hermanos Conservation Authority with deed restrictions that limit future use to open space, public use, and preservation.
“Being a regional resource is at the core of what the City of Industry is all about, like the businesses located in our city, open space also brings a greater benefit to our region,” said City of Industry Mayor Mark Radecki. “With Tres Hermanos Ranch, the value is in what the land means to the people of this region, to the wildlife that use it as a corridor, and in what our communities can accomplish together to protect the special environment that has been preserved.”
According to the settlement, the City of Industry will absorb 90 percent of that purchase price in the sale of the land to the conservation authority. Chino Hills and Diamond Bar will cover 10 percent of the sale price prorated according to the acreage within their boundaries. With 1,750 acres of Tres Hermanos Ranch in Chino Hills, and 695 acres in Diamond Bar, Chino Hills will pay Industry $2,959,967 and Diamond Bar will pay Industry $1,205,033.
“This is an incredible opportunity that truly reflects the best interest of our community and residents,” said Diamond Bar Mayor Carol Herrera. “We now have a seat at the table for Tres Hermanos and a voice to ensure it remains a valuable open space resource in our cities and region for decades to come.”
“The Tres Hermanos Conservation Authority is a public body with posted agendas and opportunities for public participation,” said Troy Helling, Industry City Manager. “The interests of all three cities and our communities will be represented as discussions occur in the coming years about how best to conserve this important resource.”
Konradt Bartlam, Chino Hills’ city manager, told the Sentinel, “The settlement agreement has been approved by all three cities” and “It’s as tight as we can make it,” but said there are yet actions that must be completed to put everything in place. “There are a variety of conditions to the settlement agreement,” he said. “One is that we will not finally dismiss our lawsuits until San Gabriel Valley Water and Power are no longer at issue.
According to Bartlam, the agreement is to last into perpetuity and will not sunset. He said, however, that the agreement does not absolutely ward off some form of development taking place on at least a portion of the property. “There are provisions for any future use to be approved by the joint powers authority board and the underlying jurisdiction” but added, “The deed restriction limiting the property to open space, preservation and public use will not be removed.
Asked if a future conservation authority board authority acting in conjunction with majorities of all three cities city councils could act to essentially abrogate the principles of open space and preservation to thereby urbanize the property, Bartlam said, “I believe it will be impossible for that scenario to occur.”
Batlam said the term “protect” in the agreement “was inserted by the oversight board as a deed restriction when they approved the sale to the city” and that the condition has survived into the current agreement involving the three cities.
Asked how the term “open space” is to be defined, Bartlam said that trails would qualify as open space. He said that a reservoir would “perhaps” be considered open space. “Keep in mind that there is a reservoir on the property now,” he said. As for windmills, Bartlam said “I would not consider windmills as open space, but they could be considered a public use depending on who owns/operates them and for what purpose.” Bartlam said that solar panels disguised as trees or painted as giant flowers might also be considered to be a public use.
With regard to what guarantee existed that Chino Hills’ definition of open space will match the City of Industry’s definition of open space, Bartlam said, “Ultimately it will be the decision of the joint powers authority board and the underlying city council. Obviously any serious disagreement would likely be adjudicated by a court.”
With regard to the term “public use” as is used in the agreement, Bartlam said that simply because the public has access to something or gets to use it, it does “not necessarily” qualify as a public use. A park, Bartlam said, would certainly qualify as a public use he said and hehasid a swimming pool and tennis courts “perhaps” might meet the public use specification. As to whether an amusement park or shopping mall would fall within the rubric of a public use, Bartlam said, “Not in my opinion.” Bartlam said that cottages for the homeless, duplexes for the homeless or apartments for the homeless “perhaps” might meet the definition of a public use. As to highrise apartments or even mega-highrise apartments being considered a public use, Bartlam said “It depends on who owns/operates them and for what occupants.”
Bartlam said any emerging dispute between Chino Hills and the City of Industry over the definition the definition of open space would not be grounds for abrogating the settlement.
As to how many of the 2,445 acres were to be preserved and in what form, Bartlam said “The joint powers authority board will have all rights as a property owner with the deed restrictions and underlying city jurisdiction dictating what that might be.”
Bartlam was asked if he was confident that the City of Industry and its officials could be trusted, given the intensity of the dispute Chino Hills had with the City of Industry that resulted in the filing of three of the six lawsuits against Industry relating to Tres Hermanos Ranch. “I trust no one,” he said. “I have told them that trust is earned, not given. They still need to prove themselves.” He said that the intense misgivings he had a year ago with regard to the City of Industry and its intent toward Tres Hermanos Ranch “still may be” justified, “but in this deal we are partners. Perhaps they are reforming themselves. I will say this: Troy Helling, their new city manager is a genuine guy, not like their past city managers.”
–Mark Gutglueck

Public invited to monthly winter count this Saturday

• Big Bear Lake area participants will meet at 8 a.m. at the Big Bear Discovery Center on North Shore Drive (Hwy 38) for orientation. Contact Robin Eliason (reliason@fs.fed.us or 909-382-2832) for more information. Please call 909-382-2832 for cancelation due to winter weather conditions – an outgoing message will be left by 6:00 pm Friday, Feb. 8, on the evening before of the count, if it has to be canceled due to snow. There will also be a free slideshow presentation about bald eagles at 11 a.m. after each count.
• Lake Arrowhead/Lake Gregory area participants will meet at 8 a.m. at the Skyforest Work Center on Hwy 18 for orientation. Contact Robin Eliason (reliason@fs.fed.us or 909-382-2832) for more information. Please call 909-382-2832 for cancelation due to winter weather conditions – an outgoing message will be left by 6:00 pm Friday, Feb. 8, on the evening before of the count, if it has to be canceled due to snow. 
• Silverwood Lake State Recreation Area participants should plan to meet at the Silverwood Lake’s park office on Cleghorn Rd. (west of Highway 138) at 8 a.m. for orientation. Contact Mark Wright for more information about volunteering or taking an eagle tour (760-389-2303 between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.; or email: mark.wright@parks.ca.gov).
• Lake Hemet participants should plan on meeting at the Lake Hemet Grocery Store at 8:30 a.m. for orientation.
• Lake Perris State Recreation Area participants should plan to meet at the Lake Perris Regional Indian Museum at 8 a.m. for orientation. For more information call Lake Perris SRA at 951-940-5600 or the Lake Perris Regional Indian Museum at 951-940-5657.