In a move widely perceived within San Bernardino County’s political and governmental circles as an egregious act of blatant cronyism, the West Valley Water District in Rialto earlier this month conferred upon Hesperia City Councilman Jeremiah Brosowske a job that will provide him with a quarter of a million dollars in total annual compensation.
Brosowske, the 28-year-old wunderkind of San Bernardino County politics, was hired to serve as West Valley’s assistant general manager at an annual salary of  $189,592 augmented by $62,500 in benefits. Brosowske has no experience, no training, holds no certificates or licenses, and possesses no expertise in water operations.
Even among the county’s crop of current and former elected officials, a culture in which the provision of payoffs, kickbacks and backroom accommodations which commonly involve multiple layers of quid pro quos wherein some of those elected officials are provided with employment by another governmental entity in exchange for the governmental entity or agency they represent extending employment to other elected officials, amazement was expressed at the audacity of advancing Brosowske into a position with a pay grade and responsibility level which so excessively exceeds his qualification and skill level.
Word spread immediately that Brosowke’s hiring into the post represented a tangible payoff in exchange for a vote or votes Brosowske has made or is now expected to make in his position and capacity as a council member in Hesperia.
In the face of the firestorm of controversy engendered by Brosowske’s hiring, those responsible for the action, including General Manager Clarence Mansell, current Assistant General Manager Ricardo Pacheco, Human Resources and Risk Manager Deborah Martinez, Board of Directors President Michael Taylor and board members Clifford Young, Don Olinger, Kyle Crowther and Greg Young have hunkered down into a crouch and are not fielding public or press inquiries into the matter. Twenty-three calls/messages from the Sentinel to the various officials with the district at their district office phone numbers or outside private or business lines this week went unanswered and unreturned. In particular, Mansell was unwilling to specify what skills or ability Brosowske possessed which justified his hiring.
Of issue in the controversy is that the position Brosowske was given is an essentially do-nothing job. His assignment as assistant general manager is vague under the terms of his employment agreement and, with the leave of the general manager, he is free to come and go as he chooses. Though the employment agreement references “certain services,” nowhere in the contract are those services or his duties specified or explained.
“[The] District desires to engage the services of Mr. Brosowske as an assistant general manager of the district,” the agreement states. “Mr. Brosowske represents and warrants that he has the skill and ability to serve as assistant general manager and wishes to accept such employment. Mr. Brosowske shall render certain services to [the] district as assistant general manager. Mr. Brosowske shall be an assistant general manager of the district and shall report to the general manager and perform such duties and services as shall be necessary and advisable to manage and conduct the business of the district, subject at all times to all applicable law(s) and board decisions, as well as the consent, approval and direction of the board. Mr. Brosowske will devote his full time and attention to the performance of his duties and to district business affairs. Mr. Brosowske shall report to the general manager and district’s offices for work under one of the district’s approved work schedules and at such other times as may be necessary to discharge his duties, except when away on district business, or as otherwise excused such as vacations and holidays. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Mr. Brosowske agrees that he will report to work when necessary to district’s operations, regardless of regularly scheduled hours to the extent such attendance is reasonably possible. Mr. Brosowske may devote a reasonable amount of time to professional water district and community related activities, so long as the time devoted to these other activities does not interfere with the performance of his duties to the district. Participation at those professional and other organizational activities will be subject to review and approval by the general manager. This agreement shall in no way be interpreted as prohibiting Mr. Brosowske from making passive personal investments and/or attending to such other personal business affairs, provided that such personal investments and/or private business affairs in no way interferes and/or conflicts with his duties and responsibilities as assistant general manager and/or the needs and best interests of the district.”
The agreement specifies a six-month probationary period for Brosowske, who is designated at “at-will” employee. If he is terminated with cause cited, he will be provided no severance stipend. If terminated without cause cited, he is entitled to a severance stipend equal to three to six months salary.  The agreement calls for the district supplying Brosowske with a cell phone, laptop computer, iPad, either a district vehicle or $600 per month vehicle allowance, holiday and vacation pay, sick leave, life insurance, medical coverage, dental coverage, vision coverage, travel expenses, and educational and/or tuition reimbursement up to $5,000 annually.
Attempts by the Sentinel to get West Valley General Manager Clarence Mansell to clarify what Brosowske’s approved “district work schedule” consists of or what services Brosowkse is to perform were met with no response.
According to an individual highly knowledgeable about district operations, Mansell was ordered by the board to hire Brosowske along with Logan Olds, the former general manager of the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority. Olds recently left his longheld post with the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority. Olds was hired into an assistant general manager position with West Valley as well, at a somewhat higher salary level than Brosowske of $210,000. There has been no controversy over Olds’ hiring, as he has the education, training, certification, licensing and experience that relates to a water district’s operations that would seem to justify his assumption of that position. The hiring of Olds and Brosowske, the one-time district insider told the Sentinel, was orchestrated by business and development interests that are heavily active in both the Victor Valley and Rialto/Lytle Creek areas, and are major donors to the campaigns of politicians in those areas. The generosity of those business owners toward politicians and public officials has gone beyond political donations to them, the one-time official said. Thus, several of those politicians, which include a majority of the West Valley board and Brosowske, are “owned” by those interests. The arrangements made by those interests in convincing the West Valley officials to provide the West Valley assistant general manager’s job to Brosowske, he said, was a means of solidifying the hold on Brosowske.
Mansell was not in favor of hiring Brosowske, but had no choice, the former official said. “There were probably 17 other prospects for that position, all with real, hands on experience in water operations or financial management,” he said. “Clarence would have rather hired any of them before hiring this kid. This wasn’t a decision made on the merits. Hiring Logan [Olds] and him [Brosowske] were a package deal.”
While the West Valley Water District has a “Transparency” page on its website, the page does not provide access to the board members’ campaign disclosure documents to allow their campaign donors to be instantly checked against the campaign donors of elected officials elsewhere, including those in the Victor Valley. The page provides the facility to download and print a public records request application, but the district requires that the application be submitted in writing through traditional physical rather than electronic mail.
Brosowske told the Sentinel that he anticipates his function will essentially relate to public relations with the district.
“My job at West Valley Water District will mostly be overseeing external affairs and customer service,” he said.
His talent is such that the district will be getting what it is paying for, he said, and the district was fortunate to land him rather than the other way around. “I had many employment opportunities and chose this one because of its location and ability to grow in the water industry,” he said. “I currently serve as a member of the Hesperia Water Board in a term that coincides with my council seat.”
He was not just given the job, Brosowske insisted, and his broad area of expertise in public affairs was what appealed to the district. “I was put through an extremely difficult interview process.” Brosowske said. “As you already know, I was a policy advisor to Supervisor Curt Hagman. I helped Supervisor Hagman craft water and development policy. I was the executive director to the San Bernardino County Republican Party. I oversaw all operations of the party with the media and operations. As you noted, I have working relationships across San Bernardino County. However, my relationships with West Valley Water District Board Members has been extremely limited. This interview process was extremely difficult and included a personal interview and a board closed session.”
Brosowske stood assertions that he had gotten the job solely on the basis of his political position and political connections on their head, saying. “If I did not hold any elected office this likely would not be a news story. Unfortunately people with political agendas chose to attack every aspect of my life, including how I make my living. It’s unfortunate that people would use my employment as a way to attack myself or board members of the West Valley Water District.”
Brosowske grew up in Apple Valley and attended Victor Valley College,  where he was elected to the Associated Student Body Council and Senate, serving in the post of parliamentarian and ultimately rising to the position of ASB vice president. After being thoroughly involved in campus politics at Victor Valley College, Brosowske was drawn into what has been a continual life in politics, Republican politics specifically. He became involved in a number of election or reelection campaigns. In 2014, he was hired at the age of 23 by then-County Republican Party Chairman Kurt Hagman into the post of executive director of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. He continued working on campaigns, including his own unsuccessful run in 2016 for a position on the Republican Central Committee.
Bill Postmus thereafter took Brosowske under his wing and sought to vicariously relive his political heyday through the younger man.
Postmus, himself a boy wonder of San Bernardino County Republican politics who in 2000 at the age of 28 was the fourth youngest person in county history to be elected to the board of supervisors and in 2004 acceded to the dual positions of chairman of the board of supervisors and chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, went on to be elected as county assessor in 2006 before his political career exploded in scandal. Despite his fall from grace, Postmus was able pull a multitude of strings and last summer the Postmus Cabal succeeded in having the Hesperia City Council appoint Brosowske to fill out the remaining time on Russ Blewett’s term on the city council following Blewett’s death in May 2018. Again, with Postmus’ guidance, Brosowske managed to be elected outright to the Hesperia City Council in November. Later that month, Postmus was sentenced to three years in state prison based on 14 felony convictions on a host of political corruption charges, including bribery, solicitation of bribery, conflict-of-interest, public conflict-of-interest, misappropriation of public funds and criminal misuse and misdirection of public funds. He remains incarcerated. A major portion of Postmus’ formula for political success was his recognition that individuals and business interests whose fortunes could be impacted by political decisions are willing to spend substantial amounts of money to influence the political decision making process. Postmus was very effective in having those individuals and interests had money over to him, dressed up, usually, in the form of political contributions. Using the political war chest at his disposal, Postmus while he was in office promoted his own candidacies and also used the money at his disposal and his fundraising ability to become a virtual kingmaker.
Brosowske’s acceptance of the West Valley assistant general manager’s position is making a substantial cross section of San Bernardino County politicians nervous because of the way it is focusing public attention on elected officials with one governmental entity holding employment with another governmental entity, including a number of cases in which they have parlayed their holding of elected position into obtaining a government job. This so-called double-dipping, critics say, creates a circumstance in which those officials are reluctant to hold the line on public employee raises and employment benefits, as the approval of such raises and increased benefits in the jurisdictions where they have authority can and does redound to the raising of pay and the increasing of benefits in the jurisdictions where they are employed, what can be categorized as either an indirect or direct conflict of interest. Public conflicts of interest are felonies in California. Within San Bernardino County, in 21 of its 24 municipalities – the  cities of Chino Hills, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Rialto, Colton, San Bernardino, Loma Linda, Grand Terrace, Redlands, Big Bear Lake, Highland, Yucaipa, Twentynine Palms, Needles, Barstow, Victorville and Hesperia and the towns of Apple Valley and Yucca Valley – there is at least one member of the city council or the mayor who is a public employee or public pension recipient. In addition, several of the cities have council members or mayors whose spouses work for a public agency or public entity.
-Mark Gutglueck

Barstow city officials have taken up backroom discussions of whether the city council should outright, using its own authority, pass an ordinance that would permit entrepreneurs trafficking in marijuana operate in their city, including ones selling the drug, cultivating it or refining it for intoxicative or medical purposes, or, in the alternative, place a measure on the ballot that would allow the city’s voters to determine whether such commercial activities should be allowed in the city.

If the city council or the voters adopt such an ordinance, it will reverse the policy that has been in place in the railroad town with regard to marijuana availability and use for more than a century and the official ban on the substance the city has maintained throughout its 71-year history.

Barstow is not alone among California or San Bernardino County cities now seeking to come to terms with the social revolution, which has been brewing for over half of a century but has only manifested as a codified reality within the last two-and-a-half years, relating to the use of cannabis, and the social and legal acceptance of it.

The plant has long had its advocates and users who have extolled its relative virtues as an intoxicant in contrast to alcohol.

In the latter years of the 1800s and the early years of the 20^th Century, a significant segment of the U.S. population was growing intolerant toward the use of anything inducing inebriation. The temperance movement, which targeted in the main alcohol, was gathering momentum. In 1907, the poison act essentially rendered marijuana an illegal substance and from that point forward for well over sixty years the laws restricting it intensified. A century ago, the 18^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified by the 36^th State, triggering a prohibition on alcohol that lasted in the entirety of the United States from 1920 to 1933. Corresponding with prohibition was an era of intense gangsterism, which flourished in large measure because a subset of the criminal element catered to that portion of the public that wanted to indulge in the use of alcohol despite the official sanction against it. When the ban on alcohol was lifted, the restrictions on cannabis remained in place and for more than 80 years a subculture that was almost as pervasive and even more sophisticated in many respects than the one that facilitated the continued use of alcohol during the 13 years of prohibition developed within American culture to sustain the availability of marijuana. At an official level those participating in that network were considered elements of a criminal subculture, encompassing anyone who used the drug and possessed it in relatively minute quantities for personal use, as well as those who sold it and those who transported it, grew it or imported it into the country from outside the country. Those members of the subculture who were caught by law enforcement at whatever level of their involvement were subject, almost uniformly throughout the United States, to increasingly harsh, sometimes brutal and even draconian efforts to suppress marijuana at a multitude of governmental levels, both state and federal. By the 1970s, fully one-third of the adult population was using cannabis, even as police, prosecutors and the courts were engaging in efforts, at a cost of billions of dollars, to arrest, prosecute and imprison marijuana users and those who made it available.

In 1996, California’s voters provided the first indication of the sea change in attitude within the general population toward marijuana when the Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act, passed statewide. It called for allowing marijuana to be dispensed to anyone who obtained a prescription for the drug from a licensed physician. While doctors for patients suffering from maladies and conditions in which the drug was of some remedy indeed wrote out prescriptions for what were ostensibly legitimate purposes, medical marijuana prescriptions very soon became a means by which that portion of the population seeking to be able to use cannabis recreationally without being subjected to arrest, prosecution and imprisonment indulged in its use. Simultaneously, the political establishment and reactionary elements utilized that portion of the act that allowed local governmental entities to regulate or outright ban dispensaries selling the product from locating within their jurisdictions keep most of the cities and counties marijuana-free zones. Most cities and counties in the state had city councils or county governing boards composed of elected officials who yet considered marijuana to be anathema to a well-ordered society and community. Those officials, in league with zealous opponents of cannabis, used their dominant political authority to employ local law enforcement agencies to prevent marijuana purveyors from establishing a toehold in their communities. Routinely, medical marijuana distributors would set up dispensaries or clinics, in some cases straightforwardly or in others surreptitiously or by obtaining a business license by representing the operation as health food store or spa, reap a considerable but short-lived profit that would in most cases offset the considerable start-up costs, and then be shut down by code enforcement or zone enforcement or law enforcement action. In due course, these entrepreneurs would move on to reinvent their operation at a different location in the same jurisdiction or perhaps another jurisdiction, repeating the process. In some cases, emboldened clinic operators would reinvest their profits in legal action challenging the efforts by local authorities to shut them down, occasionally succeeding by obtaining a usually temporary injunction to prevent enforcement action or their closure.

As marijuana remained under federal standards a Schedule 1 narcotic indistinguishable from heroin and cocaine, those yet determined to stem the rising marijuana tide in California endeavored to utilize authority from up the governmental evolutionary chain to reestablish that the revolutionary forces all about them were in fact nothing more than moral reprobates and criminals. Either at the request of local authorities or in some cases on their own initiative, federal authorities, i.e., the U.S. Attorney’s office working in conjunction with the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency, pursued federal cases against some dispensary owners, operators or their landlords, particularly in those cases where the operators were deemed to be particularly defiant, asserted challenges to federal law, or were particularly persistent in their operations.

Simultaneously, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office and in some cases the offices of various city attorneys sought to keep up. Initially what had been fewer than a dozen individuals willing to brave the legitimate marijuana sales frontier – running a medical marijuana dispensary in local venues where municipal ordinances did not allow for them – could be corralled into court and in some cases jailed and in all cases fined substantially in an effort to convince them to desist. By 2009 the number of illicit medical marijuana sales venues countywide had jumped to a score or more. By 2012 that number had zoomed to several hundred. At that point, the sheer volume of those willing to run the marijuana distribution restriction gauntlet had come to overwhelm local civil authorities. In July 2014, San Bernardino City Attorney Gary Saenz, taking stock of the number of pot shops sprouting up in the county’s largest city, offered his view that the cost and difficulty of shutting down dispensaries made enforcement of the city’s ban on the enterprises “futile.” Two years previously, Needles, lying at the extreme east end of the county on the shore of the Colorado River, the gateway to Golden State, was the first of the county’s 24 cities to bow to the new social reality, clearing the way for five licensed marijuana dispensaries to operate in what, at 4,900 residents, is the county’s least populous city.

Three years later, the City of Adelanto, led by then-Mayor Rich Kerr, became the second city to seek to cash in on the marijuana bonanza, enacting an ordinance by which the city was at liberty to permit large-scale indoor nurseries cultivating medical marijuana to operate within the city’s industrial park.

Adelanto and Needles, however, were the dual exceptions in San Bernardino County, with the other 22 cities and the county maintaining the ban.

When 2016 dawned, the minority of social conservatives in San Bernardino County whose philosophy held that the only form of moral and legal intoxication was to be found in a bottle continued with their generation-long success in ensuring that those who felt differently would be effectively labeled as criminals. Before the year concluded, however, those marijuana prohibitionists would be overtaken by events. A statewide movement succeeded in achieving the passage, in the November general election, of Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which legalized, for those of the age of majority in the Golden State, the possession and use of marijuana for its intoxicative effect, and legalized the cultivation and sale of the drug for the same purpose.

In one fell swoop the anti-marijuana crowd had been both discredited and ineffectualized as a driving social and legal force, at least in California.

Now ensuing that development is what many observers consider to be the hypocritical adaptation of the new ethos that is breathtaking in scope. Officials who for years or decades and until quite recently insisted that pot smoking was not only illegal but a severe moral failing and that those who profited by the sale of the substance were parasites feeding upon society and trafficking in human misery such that they were deserving of decade-long prison sentences are now in a headlong rush to get in on the ground floor of the new economy with marijuana at its core so their city’s can cash in, like the drug dealers of just a few years ago, on the public’s appetite for inebriation.

In addition to Adelanto and Needles, in the cities of San Bernardino, Montclair, Rialto, Victorville and Big Bear Lake as well as in the unincorporated county district of Bloomingon there are now storefronts selling marijuana doing a booming business, with a percentage of the proceeds from those sales going to the government. Hesperia hosts businesses that deliver marijuana, and that city is also getting a piece of the action.

Word now comes that Barstow officials are likewise looking to fatten their city’s coffers by consenting to host businesses which will retail marijuana for both medical and intoxicative purposes. That will be a shrewd move, those officials believe, as some 190,000 travelers headed to Las Vegas on average pass through Barstow on a weekly basis. It is calculated that the pot shops that set up operations in the 41.33 square mile, 24,000-population city could achieve gross sales nearing $20 million annually. With its voters having passed Measure Q, a one cent per dollar sales tax override, last November, Barstow now has the highest sales tax in San Bernardino County at 8.75 percent. Of that 8.75 cents per dollar, Barstow is entitled to two cents. Thus, if Barstow hits the $20 million marijuana retail sales mark annually, the city would reap $400,000 in sales tax. Yet that would not be the full extent of what the city might realize. At present, the discussions being carried out envision the city collecting a 5 percent to 15 percent operational tax to be levied on cannabis-related businesses within its jurisdiction. That would bring in an additional $1 million to $3 million. One possible factor that might reduce the city’s income from allowing the cannabis ventures to flourish would be that the sales tax would not be applicable to marijuana sold for medical as opposed to recreational purposes, as prescriptions are sales tax-exempt.

A criticism that has been levied at the city is that it has entrusted the formulation of city’s marijuana policy to the city’s Rules and Policies Committee, which is headed by Councilman Richard Harpole. Harpole spent just under 24 years with the Barstow Police Department, rising to the rank of lieutenant before retiring in 2008, at which point he was eligible for a pension, which currently stands at $77,700 per year. A primary element of his assignment during his last several years with the police department was overseeing drug interdiction efforts. Thus, Harpole, who spent more than two decades in arresting and consigning those involved in the trafficking of marijuana to prosecution and conviction often on charges of crimes of moral turpitude related to the sale of marijuana and the profiting therefrom, is now designing a policy by which the city will create opportunities for individuals to engage in the sale of marijuana and consequently make way for the institution with which he, Harpole, is affiliated, the City of Barstow, to profit therefrom.

Efforts by the Sentinel to obtain from Harpole his response to that criticism, as well as his perspective on the changing social and legal dynamics of marijuana use, marijuana availability and its legitimized commercialism were unsuccessful. Those efforts included a letter sent to Harpole by email and phone calls to his council office at Barstow City Hall.

In response to an inquiry made to the city on the subject, Anthony Riley, Barstow’s official spokesman told the Sentinel, “The city council is scheduled to review and discuss two cannabis ordinances at the June 3, 2019 meeting. At this time, no decisions have been made on the outcome of cannabis in the City of Barstow, and it may be premature to request the position of council members on an issue they have yet to discuss in open session.”

Significantly heavier rainfall than has historically been the case in May has resulted in the Orange County Flood Control District releasing a substantially greater amount of water from the Seven Oaks Dam than is normally the case at this time of year.
At times the water release through the 1,623-foot long tunnel outlet running through the base of the structure reached 700 cubic feet per second, more than five and a half times the normal flow of  125 cubic feet per second done during normally scheduled six-day release periods.
Seven Oaks Dam is a 2,980-foot-long arched embankment structure that at its apex is 550 feet above the Santa Ana River and 650 feet above its deepest foundations. Forty feet wide at its crest and more than 2,200 feet wide at its base, Seven Oaks has a gross storage capacity of 145,600 acre feet, with 113,600 acre feet reserved for flood control and the remainder for sediment accumulation. At full pool, the reservoir lies at an elevation of 2,604.4 feet and has an area of 780 acres. Water releases are controlled by the aforementioned 1,623-foot length tunnel base outlet as well as a 500-foot  wide ungated overflow spillway located southeast of the dam.
Situated proximate to the San Andreas Fault, the dam is designed to withstand an 8.0 Richter Scale earthquake.
Standing at the headwaters of the Santa Ana River, the dam collects runoff from a 176 square mile area or 209 square miles when the drainage area of Baldwin Lake is included. During deluges, Baldwin Lake’s overflow is vectored into the Santa Ana River system.
Given that the Santa Ana River wends its way through San Bernardino, Riverside and then Orange County before reaching the Pacific Ocean, and the area along its banks in Orange County serves as a major water source in Orange County, Orange County has historically taken an interest in preserving and securing its downriver flow. Generations ago, Orange County acted to tie up much of the property
around the headwaters.
After more than a decade of planning and preparation involving the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the State of California, and the counties of San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange, a contract for Seven Oaks Dam was awarded in 1994, with the federal government picking up 70.47 percent of the cost, Orange County defraying 27.09 percent of the price of the undertaking, San Bernardino County chipping in 1.71 percent, and Riverside County laying out 0.73 percent. Cost overruns on the project raised its final price tag to $450 million.
Construction work began in May 1994 and continued until just before its dedication in January 2000.  To create the dam’s embankment, earth was excavated from the Santa Ana River canyon immediately below the dam, the alluvial fan of the river north of Mentone, and a cut in a ridge just southeast of the dam that now serves as the dam’s spillway.
Care must be taken in releasing water from the dam, as inundating the Santa Ana with too much flow can prove devastating to the riparian habitat for many creatures that live in the river, such as the endangered Santa Ana Sucker, as well as ones that nest or dwell along its banks.
High water levels can be dangerous to humans, as well. Trails that run along the river were closed during the water releases, which typically go for several days at a time. Additionally,  before the water release as well as during it the sheriff’s department sent personnel to survey the run of the river at ground level and detailed its helicopters to fly above the river to locate, warn and remove elements of the county’s homeless population who have camped down along the river’s banks
-Mark Gutglueck

One of the nation’s most dynamic military intelligence officers died on May 19 from injuries he sustained in a head-on collision that occurred three days previously along a treacherous stretch of one the county’s two-lane desert roads.
Colonel Alexander Merz, 50, the deputy director of Special Programs with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, was driving a 2018 Nissan Versa northbound on Old Woman Springs Road near Olvine Road around 4:40 p.m. May 16 when Twentynine Palms resident Anthony Wilson, 27,  driving a 2019 Ford F150 southbound, crossed over a solid yellow line to pass slower traffic. Wilson, moving at a rate of speed exceeding 70 miles per hour, collided with Merz’s vehicle.
Wilson was able to make his way out of the wreckage. A responding ambulance transported him to the Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs. Merz initially survived, but was totally immobilized. Responding firefighters had to use the jaws of life to extract him from the tangle of metal, glass and plastic he was encased in. Merz was transported by helicopter to Desert Regional Medical Center, where he was eventually placed on life support. Doctors were not able to save him.
An Air Force colonel with expertise relating to  a multitude of electronic intelligence collecting strategies, devices and methods, Merz’s assignments had included assuming civilian identities and traveling to foreign destinations where he was himself engaged in or facilitated efforts by others in clandestinely installing sensors and monitoring equipment which collected sound, video, vibrational and digital data.
Most recently he had been billeted at the Defense Intelligence Agency operations center in Palm Springs.
The dashing Merz had been twice deployed to the former Republic of Yugoslavia. As a captain he did a tour of duty in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and  on two separate occasions, the second while he held the rank of major,  he  was posted to Iraq.
The one-time commander of the  93rd Intelligence Squadron, Merz  was vice commander of the 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing, supporting  the National Security Agency and the Air Force with cryptologic intelligence. He served as director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for Air Force Special Operations from June 2015 to June 2018.
Merz was commissioned at University of Wyoming in December 1992 at the age of 23. Identified as an exceptional talent as a second lieutenant, Merz attended the National War College in Washington, D.C., the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and the Indian Defense Services Staff College, Wellington, India. He  did tours at the  Air Force Special Operations Command, Pacific Air Forces and the Joint Analysis Center, a military intelligence analysis center in England run by the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Old Woman Springs Road, also known as California State Route 247, runs from Yucca Valley at its southeast terminus and Barstow on its northwest extreme, with its major junctions being State Route 62 in Yucca Valley, State Route 18 near Lucerne Valley and I-15 in Barstow.
Merz survived by his wife, Tristan, and three children, Josiah, Tessa and Jack.
-Mark Gutglueck

Katya Zharkova

Councilman Harpole…
This is Mark Gutglueck with the San Bernardino County Sentinel.
I am writing with regard the city’s contemplated change of policy with regard to allowing the commercial sales of marijuana in Barstow. I have sent a similar letter to the city’s spokesman, Anthony Riley. I am writing this to you specifically because of your status as someone who spent his career in law enforcement.
The liberalization of the way in which marijuana and those possessing it, smoking it, buying it, selling it, growing it is not endemic to Barstow but has been occurring in many places in California. My questions would be equally applicable elsewhere. Nevertheless, Barstow appears to be on the brink of an epochal or generational change with regard to not only its toleration of this substance but its own active involvement with regard to it.
For generations, just about anything related to marijuana could land you in jail or prison. If you were caught in possession of a minute quantity you could count on being arrested and going to jail; it would not be unheard of that you might go to prison. If you possessed it in any quantity or possessed it in a small quantity but had it packaged into smaller quantities, you could very well be deemed to be in possession of it for the purpose of selling it and would definitely go to prison. Smoking it would get you into jail or perhaps prison.
The justification for this previous stance was that marijuana is anathema to a civilized society in that it is a pernicious narcotic and those who were involved with it were criminals and moral reprobates.
Even after the voters of California in 1996 passed Proposition 215 to allow the drug to be used for medical purposes, Barstow and its officials prohibited the operation of businesses intent on selling the product as medicine.
Now, the city is contemplating allowing marijuana to be sold, not only for medical use but for its intoxicative effect, what is referred to as recreational use. Moreover, the city is considering involving itself in this commercialization by arranging a taxing scheme on the marijuana trade that will take place within its jurisdiction.
How does the City of Barstow and how do its officials justify this change?
If marijuana possession, use and sales were deemed felonies, punishable by prison, and the city and its officials felt applying corrective action such as arrest, prosecution and incarceration to be morally justifiable, how does it and they now conclude allowing that activity to occur is okay?
If the sale of marijuana was deemed a felony that mandated prison time in large measure because an individual profiting by trafficking in human misery was considered unacceptable, how is it that the city and city officials now stand ready to participate in a financial free-for-all and be recipients of a windfall involving the sale of marijuana? What does this say of the city’s ethics? What does this say of city officials’ ethics? What does this say of the morality of the city and its officials? Does the prospect of revenue generation trump the concept of public morality in Barstow?
If the city’s position is now that a more enlightened age has dawned and the standards applied in the past were wrong such that throwing people in prison for their involvement with marijuana was a misguided exercise of public authority that is now apparent with the current enlightenment, what measures should now be taken with regard to redressing the infliction of punishment on those imprisoned for involvement with it in the past? On this issue in particular, I would like to get your perspective as a former law enforcement officer. You would know better than I the degree to which the enforcement of marijuana laws occupied your attention, time, energy and efforts when you were an active member of the police department. I can only guess. My guess is that arresting people for smoking it, possessing it and selling it was something you did at least a few times during your career. Given Barstow’s geographical position as a major crossroads in California from the central part of the state into the southern part of the state and through which a substantial number of people travel from outside the state into the state or from inside the state to outside the state, a fair amount of illicit marijuana must have passed though Barstow while you were on watch as a law enforcement officer. How now do you justify to yourself having engaged in applying the authority of arrest and initiating the prosecutions of individuals that had the potential or actual effect of subjecting them to incarceration while you are now engaged in arranging for the city to avail itself of revenues to be generated from the sale of marijuana? Do you see a contradiction here? Do you have any sort of personal moral dilemma or feel any qualms with regard to this? If the city moves to allowing marijuana to be sold within its confines and then takes a percentage of that money being spent on the drug through taxes, what would you say to someone you arrested for marijuana use, or marijuana possession or marijuana sales who went to prison who accuses you of hypocrisy? What relationship do you see between the law and morality? When you were enforcing the law, did the morality of the law have any significance to you? That is, did you consider all laws to be moral ones? Did you differentiate between laws you found justifiable and ones you did not? Or did you consider the law to simply be the law, and its morality or lack thereof to be immaterial? Is there, in your view, a correspondence between morality and the law? Do you consider all laws to be moral?
I don’t know whether you are willing to engage with me and the Sentinel on this subject or not. Again, I recognize that Barstow is not unique in its current and past prohibitions against marijuana nor is it the only jurisdiction in California making, or contemplating making, a 180 degree flip on this issue. Nevertheless, there is the perception of a significant contradiction in the public policy now under consideration, and I hope you understand and can respect my effort to have Barstow’s city officials explain and justify their collective action. As a former law enforcment officer, you bring an even more poignant perspective to this issue than many other city officials, and that is why I am endeavoring to deal with you directly with regard to this.
Thank you for whatever perspective you can provide me and the Sentinel’s readership.
…Mark Gutglueck

Councilman Harpole did not respond.

Spring is out and Memorial Day Weekend is the way to kick off into a new fashion season. With that said, how do you unofficially start in with summer? Time for BBQs, day parties, and a long weekend. Getting dressed for this casual holiday is always a breeze because comfort is key. My advice is dress in summer staples. Paired with lace up sandals, bleached jeans are perfect, and work well with the fun of summer. There’s also the jumpsuit. A jumpsuit is always a fun piece to rewear. You can try a cotton tie front  top with a satin skirt. It’s all about being laid back and finding your comfort zone outfit. Have fun!

“Fashion is part of our culture, and it’s about more than just a pretty dress.”
Joan Smalls

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the May 17 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 05-17-19

In a logical but somewhat delayed denouement to an act of political revenge by Upland’s lame duck city council last November, City Manager Jeannette Vagnozzi was handed her walking papers this week.
Vagnozzi began working with Upland in the capacity of deputy city manager in 2015, when she was brought in to assist Rod Butler, who had been hired as Upland city manager in 2014. Butler convinced the council to fund the deputy city manager position and hired Vagnozzi, who after 26 years with the City of La Verne, had risen from the post of intern to that of assistant to Bob Russi, La Verne’s city manager. Vagnozzi’s deputy city manager duties in Upland included serving as city clerk, administrative services director, human resources manager and risk management director. In 2016, three members of the city council – Mayor Ray Musser, then-Councilwoman Debbie Stone and Councilman Gino Filippi – grew disenchanted with Butler and terminated him without citing cause, giving him a severance package equal to nine months salary and benefits as he headed out the door.
The council had Vagnozzi fill in for Butler as acting city manager for less than a week, and brought in the Upland’s former police chief, Marty Thouvenell, to serve as interim city manager and simultaneously head up a recruitment drive to find a replacement for Butler. What was originally intended to be no more than a three-month stint for Thouvenell as interim city manager prolonged itself into an 18-month assignment, as efforts to replace Butler stalled.
Among those contemplated as Butler’s replacement were Vagnozzi, with her experience as Butler’s understudy and right hand woman, and two other department heads, Community Development Director Jeff Zwack, whose strength consisted of his overall command of the character of the city, and Finance Manager Scott Williams, who possessed a firm grip on the city’s bleak financial outlook, which was illustrated by a previous auditor’s opinion from the certified public accounting firm Mayer Hoffman and McCann stating 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.”
At that point, neither Williams nor Zwack nor Vagnozzi impressed Thouvenell enough for him to recommend that the council elevate any of them into the city manager’s role. Rather, for nearly 17 months, Thouvenell remained in place as the city’s acting city manager while an effort to recruit Butler’s replacement dragged on. In that time frame, Musser chose not to seek reelection as mayor in the 2016 election, and Stone successfully vied against then-City Councilman Glenn Bozar to replace Musser. Also elected to the council in 2016 was newcomer Janice Elliott. Following the November 2016 election and the installment of Stone as mayor and Elliott as councilwoman, the council chose to fill the vacancy within its ranks that resulted from Stone’s advancement into the mayoralty and her resignation from the council to do so by selecting Sid Robinson, who had finished in second place in the council race behind Elliott, to serve out the final two years of Stone’s council term.
Over the course of the year that followed, the four-member council majority of Stone, Robinson, Councilwoman Carol Timm and Councilman Gino Filippi went along with Thouvenell’s cost cutting and revenue generating plan to close out the city’s 110-year-old municipal fire department and annex the entirety of the city limits and neighboring San Antonio Heights into a county fire service assessment zone. This entailed the imposition of a $153 per parcel per year property tax addition and steering that newly created revenue stream and a share of the city’s pre-existing property tax to the county to have the county fire department take over the provision of fire and emergency medical service in the city. The council majority simultaneously moved to devote whatever savings the city made by shuttering its fire department to plugging its other municipal funding gaps. Only Councilwoman Elliott opposed that move.
The municipal fire department closure and the creation of the assessment zone, which was imposed upon the city’s residents, business owners and property owners without a vote, proved highly unpopular. Elliott’s opposition to the closure of the city’s fire department and the imposition of the assessments antagonized the mayor and her three council colleagues, leading to their removing Elliott from all of her municipal committee assignments and adjunct governmental joint power authority board positions, which did not dissuade her from opposing the city’s course on dissolving the fire department.
At that time and within what was then the ongoing political context, siding with what was a majority of four against Elliott, who was a minority of one, appeared safe. While it indeed had no immediate negative repercussions for Vagnozzi, in reality Elliott’s isolation on the council belied the sentiment among a significant portion of the City of Upland’s populace, who saw Elliott as their sole champion on a city council going against their wishes with regard to shuttering the fire department and imposing on them an assessment that was not of their own choosing. While there would be a delay in those chickens returning home to roost, those birds would indeed one day return, and they did not forget the role Vagnozzi had played in the effort to isolate and politically neuter Elliott.
Meanwhile, the search for Butler’s replacement continued. Vagnozzi applied for the post. Ultimately, the council, advised by Thouvenell, overlooked her application and in December 2017 settled upon hiring Bill Manis, who was then the city manager in Rosemead, making his hiring effective as of January 1, 2018.  Simultaneously, Vagnozzi was promoted from deputy city manager to assistant city manager, which entailed an $8,000 per year salary enhancement.
Manis was hailed all around as the perfect fit for Upland, he seemed to be pleasing his political masters as 2018, an election year, progressed. Indeed, that spring, Manis and Vagnozzi, together with City Attorney Jim Markman, complied with the council majority’s request to draw up articles of censure against Elliott. On May 29, 2018, the council voted 4-to-1, with Elliott dissenting, to censure her, effectively rebuking her for what they considered to be her contrarian attitude. The council majority believed that with such an official blemish on her public record, Elliott’s future political viability would be curtailed.
But with the November election, the first in the city’s history to involve by-district contests in three newly established intracity wards, approaching, the degree to which a large segment of the city’s electorate was unwilling to forgive the council majority for the municipal fire department shuttering and saddling city residents with assessments to pay for something they didn’t want was becoming more and more apparent. Reading the writing on the wall, Robinson opted out of seeking reelection. Timm and Filippi intrepidly pushed on, hoping the power of incumbency might somehow offset and overcome the cloud of resentment that was threatening their reelectoral viability.  Elliott, whose at-large election in 2016 entitled her to stay in the council position she held until 2020, nevertheless astutely recognized that given her residency in the city’s newly drawn Second District she would need to vie in 2018 or surrender until 2022 her ability to run for city council again, declared her council candidacy. To head her off, the city’s then-existing political establishment – Stone, Timm, Robinson and Filippi – backed Elliott’s rival in the race, Planning Commissioner Yvette Walker.
The battle for the heart and soul of Upland – at least for the next two years – was on. When Manis refused to accede to further pressure being put on him to use the machinery of city government to keep the political establishment as it was then composed in place by subtly adjusting things to support the candidacies of Timm, Filippi and Walker, he fell from favor. In September, with the election season intensifying, Manis’s departure from Upland was arranged, with the city “officially” allowing him to retain the position of city manager until November 1, 2018, at which point his number of years as a public employee would move from 32 to 33, raising the annual pension he would thereafter be eligible to receive from $190,800 [80 percent times Manis’s then-current $238,500 annual salary based upon the pension formula used by the California Public Employees Retirement System that entitled him to draw 2.5 percent of his top salary for every year he is employed by a public agency] to a $196,763 annual pension [based upon the same $238,5000 annual salary multiplied by 82.5 percent]. This purchased Manis’s silence about what was going on within the backrooms at City Hall.
On Monday September 24, 2018, Manis reported to work as normal. That evening, he was on hand for the regularly scheduled council meeting. On the agenda for that meeting was a single item scheduled for discussion during the closed hearing of the council that was to take place at 6 p.m. outside the earshot and sight of the public, an hour before the standard business portion of the meeting open to the public was to commence at 7 pm. That item, according to the agenda, was to consist of “Consideration of public employee appointment pursuant to California Government Code Section 54957. Title: Acting City Manager.”
The language of the agenda, by implication, indicated that the position held by Manis was no longer, or would no longer be, occupied, necessitating the city’s hiring of a replacement.
At 7 pm, after the public portion of the meeting was underway, Mayor Stone designated Deputy City Attorney Steven Flower to disclose the reportable action that took place in closed session. Flower said, “The council considered [a] public employee appointment. The council on [a] motion by Councilman [Sid] Robinson and seconded by Councilwoman Timm voted unanimously to confirm Jeannette Vagnozzi as the acting city manager as of November 2 of this year. And they also agreed to schedule a future closed session to discuss the process of appointing a permanent replacement for city manager. I believe the city manager would like to add something here at this point.”
Thereupon, Manis said, “After long thought and talking with my family, last Tuesday I sent the mayor and city council a memorandum announcing I would be retiring, effective my last day of regular business hours… November 1. That was my decision to step down, and pursue additional opportunities in my professional life. So, I just wanted to share that with the community and thank the mayor and the council for the opportunity to have served here, and that concludes my comments.”
While Manis remained officially on the payroll, he effectively left City Hall that evening, never to return.
Vagnozzi, though at that point yet designated officially as the assistant city manager, was in fact acting in the capacity of Upland’s city manager.
Between the end of September and election day on November 6, 2018, City Hall saw its authority bent to efforts toward preserving the electoral viability of Upland’s then-existing political establishment. Despite those efforts, all three establishment candidates – Timm, Filippi and Walker – went down to defeat.
Thereafter, at the November 26, 2018 city council meeting, in its last hurrah as an intact entity prior to the December 10 meeting at which Timm, Filippi and Robinson would last assume their places on the dais to convene the meeting at which the victors in the November 6 contest – Rudy Zuniga, Ricky Felix and Janice Elliott – were to be sworn in, the council took up a proposal to elevate Vagnozzi to the position of city manager for a period of slightly more than three years. The contract under consideration was one that under no circumstances could be terminated any earlier than March 2019 and conferred upon her a conditional severance guarantee of roughly $155,500 if any future council elected to terminate her before the contract expires as of January 1, 2022.
Before the council voted on the matter,  21 members of the public, 18 of them Upland residents in addition to three current or former La Verne public officials, weighed in on the wisdom of the outgoing council imposing Vagnozzi as the city’s top staff member on the yet-to-be-installed council. While seven of those speaking, including all three from La Verne, hailed Vagnozzi as a skilled civic administrator who was more than capable of taking on the assignment, 14 others expressed opposition to the move, suggesting that the lame duck city council was improperly seeking to impose Vagnozzi upon the successor council. Some said the city should carry out a recruitment effort and a competition among those willing to apply for the position, including Vagnozzi, to find the best candidate possible. Several decried what they said was an illegitimate and vindictive application of the outgoing council’s authority that was intended to punish and hamstring their successors. Others reminded the council that they and Thouvenell had evaluated the multitude of applications for the city manager position that had come in during 2016 and 2017, which included Vagnozzi’s, and had come to the conclusion a year before that Vagnozzi had not been deemed qualified enough to preclude the council from instead hiring Manis. Some accurately predicted what has now come to pass, Vagnozzi’s firing, suggesting that saddling the incoming city council with Vagnozzi was an irresponsible move that might very well entail a squandering of taxpayer dollars to either buy Vagnozzi out of her contract or pay her the severance the contract specified if and when the new council decided her services were no longer needed or appropriate.
Then-Councilman-elect Felix asked the council to defer a decision on Vagnozzi’s hiring to those who would need to work with her over the next several years. “I have nothing against her,” Felix said. “She has always been very kind with me, very respectful toward me, but I do feel it would be a disservice to Upland if we didn’t postpone this vote until after December 10, where we could actually do more, the new council can do research to make sure she is the best person for the job. As of right now, she’s shown she is qualified, obviously. We’ve seen her qualifications. She’s done a great job, but I feel we need to do our due diligence to make sure we have the best person on here.”
Bob Russi, LaVerne’s city manager, said he had worked with Vagnozzi for the nearly five years between the time he started with the city in 2010 and her departure to Upland in 2015. “She served La Verne very well during that time and having her make the decision to come here to Upland was a very emotional and difficult decision, but I think she came here for all the right reasons, for her and for this community,” he said. “I think she came here to do what’s right and serve this community well, and give it the leadership in whatever capacity to help move Upland forward. Putting her into a full-time position is the right decision for this community. I will happily take her back if she is no longer wanted by the City of Upland. La Verne would love to have her come back and work for us.”
Then-Councilwoman Carol Timm, who was not at the meeting, sent from North Carolina, where she was celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday with her parents, a letter to the city in which she said she endorsed Vagnozzi’s hiring. It was read into the record.
In an effort at forging a compromise, Elliott sought to amend the contract so that the restriction on firing Vagnozzi during the first 90 days after the new council was sworn in would be removed and that the element of the contract which confers upon her six months’ salary and benefits as a severance in the event she were terminated be changed so that if she were to be terminated during the first four months of her tenure under the contract, she would only be due a severance equal to one month’s pay for each month she had served in the city manager’s role.
“My concern is not about the city manager but the timing and also the selection process,” Elliott said. She said the city could keep Vagnozzi on as the acting city manager and that the selection should “take time. Haste makes waste.” She decried the hiring proposal as a “disservice” and “disturbing,” entailing what she said was “a lack of respect shown by this council to ramrod our last meetings with these appointments. They are unprecedented. Some cities have lame duck ordinances that wisely prevent irresponsible actions like these. The request to appoint the new city manager is irresponsible, since three of you will not have any accountability after tonight’s action. This action is irresponsible because it ties the hands of the new city council for more than 90 days to make the most important decision that city councils have to make to affect the daily operations of our city. This action is fiscally irresponsible because it will cost us at least $150,000 extra to terminate this contract once ratified if the new city council chooses to do so. Waiting until after the new city council is sworn in reduces significantly this risk.”
Elliott’s requests made no inroads on her colleagues, however.
Robinson said. “While some of you might not agree, this proposal makes a lot of sense to me. It’s about trying to bring stability to our city. It obviously hasn’t been the case in a number of years. The last search for a city manager started in mid-2016 and took eighteen months before Upland found someone who was qualified and checked all the boxes. When Upland finally did pick a city manager, Jeannette was also a finalist for the position. She’s been vetted and is one of the top finalists after a very long and tiresome and thorough process. We’ve been through this process already and it was very recent.”
Robinson then suggested that the incoming council would not be up to the task of properly selecting a new city manager, and that it was therefore incumbent upon him and his colleagues before they left office to do so for them. “Let me assure you, it’s an awful lot to ask a new council with at least two and maybe three new members who have never served in any municipal capacity to take this on, especially when the work has already been done,” Robinson said. “It’s a matter of providing them with the type of stability in office I believe they will need. She brings decades of experience as a city administrator along with a wealth of knowledge about how to run a city.”
Robinson said there would be “difficulty in finding a new city manager. We went 18 months. You need somebody who wants to be here. Outside of our world here in Upland, qualified city managers don’t really want to come here as we saw in that last search process. If they do, they are going to ask for a lot more money than is being proposed here. Upland does not exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to city managers. We’ve seen seven over the past ten years. Do you really think we’re going to find someone who is both qualified and affordable? I believe this action is a gift to the next council. And you may not think that way, but I think it is in the best interest of Upland. It may seem counter-intuitive to you but it makes perfect sense both in practical terms and financially. She’s proven her worth and value and I don’t think Upland can afford to lose her.”
Mayor Stone, like Robinson, made a veiled reference to Thouvenell’s recommendation against hiring Vagnozzi, which she indicated the council had blindly followed. “I’ll be the first one to admit we missed the boat the first time around,” Stone said. “Jeannette has done so much for this city. We are overlooking the fact that we have experience, we have knowledge, we have a person who cares about the City of Upland, we have the qualifications, we have compassion and we have a person who is dedicated to this city.”
And, like Robinson, Stone suggested the incoming council would not have the skill and sophistication to make the right hiring decision, so it was up to the current council to do so.
“This has nothing to do with disrespect to the new council, but they need her leadership,” Stone said. “There is hardly anyone left here to lead here and that’s what they need.”
Filippi, after acknowledging “Some of the choices with city managers have been wrong,” said, “Upland needs a responsible and experienced person in that seat. In my view, Jeannette will continue to serve with dedication. She is very proficient. There is far more going on in this city than most people might be aware, and she knows what to do here. The new council will understand that, but it will take time, and if they’re not satisfied with that, they can cut her loose.”
After Elliott’s motion for a compromise by giving the incoming council the option of terminating Vagnozzi prior to March 2019 and reducing her guaranteed severance of $155,500 during that period died for lack of a second, the contract as proposed was approved 3-to-1, with Elliott dissenting.
As of December 10, 2018 Robinson, Timm and Filippi were gone and the new council, down to four-fifths strength because of Elliott’s departure from the at-large position she had captured in 2016 to assume the Second District district post she had just been elected to in 2018, consisted of Stone, Elliott,  Zuniga and Felix. From that point onward, Vagnozzi was in a severely compromised position, as Elliott and Zuniga, representing two of the three votes necessary to terminate her, were in place on the council. Should she displease just one of the council’s remaining members – one of which was at that point yet to be identified since Elliott’s replacement on the council had yet to be chosen – she would instantaneously be in danger of being fired.
Complicating the circumstance was that within City Hall among a cross section of city employees there was growing consternation and dissatisfaction over what they felt was insufficient pay. While this discontent was not directed at Vagnozzi, per se, as the new city manager she was at once thrown into being the point person with regard to the issue. The mounting negative sentiment among the city’s rank and file virtually overnight was vectored at her. More to the point, Vagnozzi’s tenuous relationship with the council gave the union’s negotiators leverage they otherwise would not have had, and that leverage involved making a full frontal attack on the city manager.
For several years, Upland city management has been engaged in collective bargaining sessions with the city’s employee unions, all of which were given extremely generous contracts in 2008, based largely upon deals the union’s representatives were able to cut by promising to ensure their members’ silence about the depredations then-Mayor John Pomierski was engaged in, which included graft involving payoffs and kickbacks paid to him for providing business interests doing business with the city with preferential treatment. Pomierski’s activity subjected the city to a round of unwanted negative publicity, which included an FBI and IRS raid on City Hall in June 2010, Pomierski’s federal indictment in 2011 and his conviction in 2012, as well as the filing of three felony counts consisting of misappropriation of public funds, perjury and personally benefiting from a public contract against Pomierski’s hand-picked city manager, Robb Quincey. In the more than five years from 2005 until 2011 that Quincey served as city manager in Upland, he was given eight salary enhancements, which zoomed his total annual compensation package from $269,000 per year to $429,000 annually. Several of those enhancements played out against the backdrop of his being made eligible to receive whatever increases the city’s police officers received as a result of the collective bargaining process. The Pomierski-led council then designated Quincey to carry out the city’s collective bargaining with the police union. In the aftermath of the Pomierski scandal that rocked Upland, city officials considered it unwise to provide Upland’s municipal employees with any further salary or benefit enhancements. Upland’s city manager, the city manager’s office and the human resources manager have been involved in contract negotiations that have remained stalled for more than four years. As deputy city manager and human resources manager and later assistant city manager and city manager, Vagnozzi was involved at least tangentially and in other respects as a principal in those negotiations. Over the last year, as their members have transitioned from ten years to eleven years without any pay increases, the city’s employees unions have stepped up their efforts to pressure the city into providing substantial raises, seeking ten percent enhancements. Given the city’s current financial circumstance which renders raises of that magnitude out of the question, negotiations have approached an impasse.
In January, sensing the discontent on the council and in the community toward Vagnozzi and smelling blood in the water, both the Upland City Employees Association and the Upland Police Officers Association cast overwhelming votes of no confidence in her. By joining forces with Elliott, Zuniga and the increasingly vocal group of residents gunning for Vagnozzi’s removal, the union’s strategists hoped to convince as little as one more member of the city council to come across and fire Vagnozzi. Thereafter, in dealing with Vagnozzi’s successor, the unions would be in a position to point out that no Upland city manager could hope to keep his or her position if he or she did not placate the unions.
By March of this year, the Sentinel has learned, Vagnozzi, the most powerful personage at City Hall, the top staff member to whom all city employees were, or theoretically were, answerable, was purposefully avoiding many of those employees, winding her way, in some cases, in an indirect route as she walked through City Hall so she would not have to come face to face with or have eye contact or any other interaction with certain employees.
Still, Vagnozzi’s tenure as city manager continued, her continuing status intact and held in place by means of delicate political threads. The once-perceived displacement of the ruling coalition of which Mayor Stone had been an intrinsic part when the other three members – Timm, Robinson and Filippi – left the council, remarkably, had not been fully effectuated. Councilman Felix had not joined with Elliott and Zuniga to create a new ruling dynamic on the council. After Elliott in January, in an effort toward bridge-building and compromise, provided a crucial third vote to go along with installing Planning Commissioner Bill Velto, who was Felix and Stone’s choice, to fill the gap on the council, Velto gravitated toward an alliance with Stone and Felix. The third vote Elliott and Zuniga needed to actually terminate Vagnozzi remained elusive. That did not prevent Elliott and Zuniga from requesting and obtaining permission to discuss in closed session the quality of Vagnozzi’s service.
At a specially called meeting on March 4 the council had a closed door meeting for the purpose of a “public employee performance evaluation” relating to the city manager. Likewise, at a specially called meeting on March 17 the council had a closed door meeting for the purpose of a “public employee performance evaluation” relating to the city manager. Given that Vagnozzi’s contract specified that her termination could not come until 90 days after a city council member had been sworn into office, the council could not have voted at either of those junctures to fire the city manager, given that Velto had taken his place on the council on January 28. The council scheduled yet another specially called meeting on April 29, the first day upon which Vagnozzi could be terminated under the terms of her contract, for yet another closed door meeting for the purpose of a “public employee performance evaluation” relating to the city manager. Given the limitations of the description of what was to be discussed, the council at that point had not given itself the option of firing her. There was no action reported to the public after the April 29 meeting, meaning Vagnozzi was yet in place. There was no sign at that point that either Velto or Felix were willing to join with Elliott and Zuniga in handing the city manager a pink slip.
At that point, however, Vagnozzi appears to have made a crucial error in judgment. Panicked or otherwise unnerved at the constant evaluations and their import, she retained a lawyer, Woodland Hills-based Terry Goldberg. Focusing on those recurrent evaluations, Goldberg sought to fire a shot across the city council’s bow to convince its members that the city would run the risk of a wrongful termination suit if it did in fact let Vagnozzi go. Goldberg’s methodology for doing so entailed a comedy of errors which ultimately had the precisely exact opposite effect than what was intended.
Through his firm, Goldberg & Gage, Goldberg filed with the State of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing a discrimination complaint on Vagnozzi’s behalf on May 2. In a rapid turnaround, the State of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing on the same day returned to Vagnozzi, in care of the Goldberg & Gage firm, a document known as a notice of case closure and right to sue. That letter stated that because Vagnozzi, through Goldberg, had requested an immediate right to sue, the State of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing would not itself pursue an investigation of the alleged discrimination but rather had cleared Vagnozzi to pursue a lawsuit against the city in a California court of competent jurisdiction on her own. The letter stated that Vagnozzi had one year from the May 2 date to file such a civil action. It further stated that if Vagnozzi intended to pursue a case against the city for discrimination in federal court, she must seek a federal right to sue letter within 30 days of receiving the May 2 letter or within 300 days of the alleged discriminatory act, whichever is earlier.
On May 6, Goldberg’s assistant, Christina Lara, sent Upland City Clerk Keri Johnson a letter from Goldberg informing Johnson and the City of Upland that Vagnozzi had obtained a right to sue letter from the State of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Upon receiving the letter, Johnson made general distribution of it, which included members of the city council. The upshot of Goldberg’s communication – that Vagnozzi was contemplating suing the city – was startling in and of itself. Exacerbating the situation, the complaint to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing was included as an attachment to Goldberg’s letter. In the complaint Goldberg stated that Vagnozzi had “suffered discrimination, retaliation, and harassment based on her protected characteristics/activities.” Those characteristics consisted of, Goldberg stated, her “religious creed, dress and grooming practices, sex/gender, medical condition (cancer or genetic characteristic), age (40 and over), marital status,” and other issues associated with her being a “member of a protected class.”
Furthermore,  the letter stated that Vagnozzi “was terminated, asked impermissible non-job-related questions” and “denied a work environment free of discrimination and/or retaliation.”
Based on the tortured language in the complaint, word spread throughout City Hall that the unmarried Vagnozzi was gay and suffering from cancer, had been outed as a lesbian, and had been fired. In short order reports to the same effect had reached a substantial number of Upland residents, most particularly within those circles which had been at odds with her and City Hall for more than two years over the fire department shuttering and the fire service assessments.
Of crucial import to Vagnozzi was the impact of all of this upon the three members of the city council who until that point had not been sold on the wisdom of dispensing with her services – Stone, Felix and Velto. All three were rocked by the recognition that the city manager was on the verge of suing the city. Troubling as well was the consideration that her lawyer had moved to the conclusion, before the fact, that Vagnozzi had been fired.
Of the greatest significance was the inference that Felix drew from the tangle of circumstance. A devout and practicing member of the Upland congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with three young and impressionable daughters and whose public persona is shot through with references to his religiosity, Felix was overwhelmed by the entire circumstance, unable to process Vagnozzi’s attorney’s accusation that he and his colleagues had engaged in a show of prejudice against the city manager, particularly given that he had no previous inkling about her sexual orientation one way or the other. Seriously taken aback, he went along by the close of the business day on May 8, with Elliott, Zuniga and Velto in scheduling for the May 13 regular council meeting a closed session discussion that was to include a “performance evaluation and consideration of public employee dismissal” relating to the city manager.
Somewhat belatedly, Vagnozzi appeared to recognize that events were moving beyond her span of control. In response to the Sentinel’s inquiry on Thursday, May 9, she offered a terse and guarded statement, acknowledging that she had retained legal counsel, but downplaying the resultant legal threat to the city. “I have a right to representation, and I have retained a lawyer to make sure I am represented,” she said.
She then moved to dispel the widespread misimpressions and misinterpretations engendered by the language Goldberg had used in his letter to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
The inference that some drew to the effect that she is claiming she is being ostracized because of her sexual orientation, her manner of dress or the church she attends, she said, “is incorrect information. Perhaps he [Goldberg] confused me with another client. I am not homosexual and do not actively have any sign of cancer though do receive treatment from an oncologist. I attend a Catholic church. I have not been terminated at this time but have had numerous closed session ‘evaluations.’”
She said she had only recently retained Goldberg and said there might have been some “miscommunication.”
Whatever damage control her statements to the Sentinel represented along with any other efforts she might have made to ameliorate the members of the city council were insufficient to stave off the shellacking she took when the council met early on Monday evening.
Despite the best efforts of Mayor Stone, who in November was one of the key votes to install Vagnozzi as city manager at least through December 31, 2021, to convince Velto and Felix to stay the course with Vagnozzi, upon coming out of Monday night’s closed session, City Attorney Jim Markman reported the council voted 4-1 to dismiss Vagnozzi, officially as of June 13, just one month shy of the four-year anniversary of her July 2015 hiring by Upland. Vagnozzi would not be permitted to remain at City Hall for the next month, however, and was placed on leave, as her departure from City Hall was considered to be immediate, in accordance with what is routinely done in such partings. She was locked out of her office at once, and her access codes to the city’s information system were disabled.
A reliable source reported to the Sentinel that when it became clear to Stone that Velto was not willing to keep the coalition in support of Vagnozzi together, the mayor had a few choice words for the appointed councilman.
Acutely conscious of the issues raised in Vagnozzi’s complaint to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the council elevated Public Works Director/City Engineer Rosemary Hoerning, a woman over the age of 40, to the post of interim city manager to take over from Vagnozzi.
Yesterday, May 16, Hoerning told the Sentinel, she could not offer any insight on the events that led to Vagnozzi’s departure. “I was not privy to what went on during the closed session,” she said.
As to the possible legal challenge Vagnozzi’s forced departure might subject the city to, Hoerning said, “I think the council was very careful in the action it took. Her evaluation had been ongoing for a while.”
Vagnozzi’s personal circumstance may not be as dire as is normally the case for someone who has just been terminated. The Sentinel contacted La Verne City Manager Robert Russi, who in November indicated his support for Vagnozzi’s hiring as Upland city manager, and who said at that time he would welcome her back to La Verne if Upland elected not to make use of her talent.
“I have been in contact with Jeannette,” Russi told the Sentinel. “While that position is currently filled, in the event that or another similar position becomes available I will be reaching out to her.”
To the Sentinel’s requests for her reaction to the council’s action, Vagnozzi offered no comment.
-Mark Gutglueck