More than two years after events overtook Upland’s premier high-end auto dealership, engulfing it in scandal and forcing its closure, the primary owner of the company and the company’s former business manager have been criminally charged.
On Wednesday, November 1, the California Attorney General’s Office filed 37 felony counts of grand theft and one count of elder theft and 13 charges of tax fraud against Clayton Thom, the former co-owner of now defunct CNC Motors. Valarie Tanaka, the Business manager and head accountant at CNC, was charged as a co-defendant to Thom in all 13 of the tax fraud charges.
In 2018, CNC, which had been founded in 2006 by Craig Thom and his sons Fraser Thom and ClayThom and had functioned out of three other locations, including one in Upland, located into an impressive automobile sales facility and showroom known as CNC Motors at 1018 East 20th Street, located just north of the 210 Freeway near the Campus Avenue exit in Upland. The dealership and its showroom were constructed under the aegises of CDJT Development, CNC Motors Real Estate LLC, and CRAIG THOM PROPERTIES, LLC, a California Domestic Limited-Liability Company created by Clay Thom in September 2016, four years after the death of Craig Thom. The undertaking, which entailed a 27,500-square-foot showroom, and 12,000-square-foot auto service and detailing facility, was built at a reported cost of  $11.5 million, which included land acquisition, grading, engineering and architectural preparation, construction and the cost of installing a storm drain and sewer lines in compliance with city specifications and requirements.
vehicles, including late model Maseratis, Ferraris, Jaguars, Porsches, Lotuses, Aston Martins, Lamborghinis, Bentleys, Rolls Royces, McLarens, Mercedes Benzes, less expensive mid-range vehicles as well as restored vintage 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s cars. Contained under the same roof as CNC were Lotus of Upland LLC, an auto dealer; Spyker of Upland LLC, another auto dealer; GFY Auto Inc, another dealer; Fast Fix & Detail, an auto services provider; and LIG Financial Services, a lender.
The dealership/showroom at 1018 East 20th Street played a key roll in allowing Thom to perpetrate what the California Attorney General’s Office now maintains was little more than a pyramid scheme. Thom utilized the showroom filled with well upwards of $30 million worth of impressive vehicles to get car owners to entrust him with their vehicles, many of which were exotic ones valued at over $100,000, so that he could sell them on consignment. Making confident representations that he could sell the vehicles in relatively short and obtain for the seller a price generally considered to be above the listed value of the cars, providing both himself and the seller a tidy profit, Thom in virtually every case induced car owner into voluntarily turning the vehicle over to CNC by personally driving the vehicle into the CNC showroom and handing over the keys to Thom or one of CNC’s employees. This was a strategy to turn any dispute over CNC’s possession of a vehicle it did not have title to and any subsequent disposition of the car into a civil rather than a criminal matter.
In most cases, Thom would then sell the vehicles, obtaining payment either in cash from the buyer or payment in full from the buyer’s lender. Thom invariably permitted the purchaser to take immediate possession of the vehicle upon the cash sale or the signing of documents, offering assurance that the title documentation to the car would be soon forthcoming.
When the seller would seek payment, Thom used a variety of assertions to defer passing the money received in the sale through to the title owner, including that payment was to be made later that day, the next day, or within a few days. Upon coming to the dealership, either by invitation or unexpectedly, the seller would be told that the dealership did not at that juncture have sufficient funds in its accounts to make payment or that the company controller who had possession of the company’s checkbook was not there. On occasion, Thom would arrange for a check to be cut to the car seller, but payment on the check would be canceled or it was returned for insufficient funds.
In some cases, Thom sold the cars directly to a buyer. In other cases, he unloaded the cars to a dealership. In virtually every case, Thom made those sales without himself being in possession, even as an intermediary, of the title, such that the purchaser never actually received title.
Multiple sellers reported to the Sentinel and other sources that they were not notified of the sales until they made an inquiry. In this way, the seller was not asked to hand off title nor provided with the opportunity to sign a release of liability. On at least three occasions known to the Sentinel, an owner, having logically but erroneously assumed on the basis of a misrepresentation by Thom or another CNC salesperson the individual or entity in possession of the car had secured insurance for it, canceled his insurance coverage for the vehicle.
There was further indication that Thom on some occasions took cars on consignment and then provided those cars to individuals or dealerships to whom he had previously owed money. CNC reportedly was in arrears to Lotus well over $2.5 million by Spring 2021, and as a result, those who had purchased brand new Lotus Evoara GTs from the dealership had not been given title to the cars and were unable to register them.
There were multiple narratives from Thom’s victims that he had, as a middleman, perfected the means of taking the money involved in the transactions he was involved in for himself and leaving ownership up in the air between the sellers and buyers, most often with the seller still in possession of the title and the buyer in possession of the car.
An element of Thom’s formula was keeping the seller in the dark as to who the purchaser was.
A significant number of the sellers financed the purchase of the vehicles in question and therefore found themselves owing money on the cars. Thus, the sellers were in a large number of cases counting on the sale of the vehicles to pay off the debt relating to the original purchase of the vehicles. By getting involved with Thom and CNC, the would-be sellers were in the position in which they were yet paying the liens on cars they didn’t have. In such cases, the original owner had title to the vehicle and legal liability for it. The individual in possession of the car did not have title, which rendered problematic the securing of registration and insurance for the vehicle in question. So, in addition to the owner yet making payments on a car he no longer possessed, he found himself in the position of having to pay for insurance on the vehicle as well.
In one case, the owner of a car was stiffed by Thom after he dropped the car off with CNC as part of a consignment arrangement. The car then was transferred to a dealership to which Thom reportedly owed money as part of a trade to pay down on that debt. The owner of the car, unable to induce Thom to make good on the money owed from the consignment sale, without Thom’s cooperation, initiated a search for his car. He succeeded in locating the vehicle in the showroom of another dealer. After first feigning interest in purchasing the vehicle, the owner was able to obtain particulars with regard to what had occurred, at which time he produced his title to the car and informed the dealership that the car was his. The dealership’s owner, recognizing that the dealership could not claim legal ownership of the car, while acknowledging that the owner indeed appeared to have the right to take possession of the car, prevailed upon the owner to permit the dealership to make contact with Thom to get things squared up before that occurred. After several days, nothing was resolved and Thom was not forthcoming with any money. At that point, the owner returned to the dealership with his title document and members of the police department in the city where the dealership was located, and was able to recover his car.
Outcomes for most of those who were seeking have Thom and CNC Motors sell their vehicles were generally not as satisfactory.
One factor is that the Upland Police Department has been reluctant to get involved in the matters involving CNC. On a basic level, since Thom did not have possession of the cars themselves and the original owners in their narratives generally acknowledged having voluntarily turned the vehicles over to CNC, investigators could readily conclude the matter fell within the rubric of civil law rather than criminal law, in that while what CNC and Thom had engaged in conversion and a civil theft, their collective actions did not rise to the level of a criminal act. Further, to the extent that criminal fraud could be conceivably have been alleged against CNC or Thom, the Upland Police were discouraged from pursuing the matter as a criminal case, given that CNC represented one of the City of Gracious Living’s more prestigious business operations. Consequently, when those who had lost a vehicle or money to Thom’s tactics approached the Upland Police Department, its officers routinely referred them to the California Department of Motor Vehicles and its criminal/civil investigative arm.
One of the earliest efforts to hold Thom and CNC accountable through a civil action was that by The Alegra Collection, LLC, a car dealership in Tampa , Florida that purchased 2017 Mercedes G550 for $225,000 in December 2020 from CNC Motors. Alegra sued CNC, Thom and Joseph Firmapaz a CNC sales representative in United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa, alleging that while CNC delivered the vehicle, it withheld the title. Ultimately, CNC, Thom and Firapaz were able to get the suit dismissed by going to an effort to pay the owner of the vehicle, obtain the title and provide it to Alegra.
This illustrated how Thom was able to remain a step ahead of the law and authorities in that he would ultimately perform and come through for those customers or victims if, but only if, they showed the willingness to pursue action of some sort against Thom and CNC. Those who took such meaningful action, which required finding Thom to serve him, would eventually be paid. Those who did not take any action or effective action would not be paid. The ratio of those paid to those who were not was less than one to ten. This qualified what Thom was engaged in, authorities say, as a pyramid scheme.
Thom until 2021 lived in a 5,100-square foot mansion on a 0.38-acre lot at at 2588 West Euclid Crest in San Antonio Heights, the unincorporated county area north of Upland. That home, valued in 2021 at $1.4 when it sold in 2021 had been paid for by funds from the Thom Family Trust. Clayton Thom and his wife, Amy, cleared out of that residence as more and more of the victims of the fraudulent CNC car consignments had become aware of where the couple was living and began sharing that information with other victims.
Thom and his family sought to prevent those who had dealings with CNC and the public at large from learning where they were living in the aftermath of their departure from San Antonio Heights.
At this point, the long arm of the law has caught up with Thom.
According to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Senior Assistant Attorney General James Root, Supervising Deputy Attorney General Patricia Fusco and deputy attorney generals Michael Hasychak, Vikram Mandla and Marisa Landin allege 51 separate sometimes related and sometimes unrelated criminal acts against Thom and Tanaka, 44 of which are counts lodged solely against Thom and 7 of which are lodged against both Thom and Tanaka.
According to the criminal filing, Thom stole, or in the language of the filing, “fraudulently appropriated,” vehicles from sellers and stole, or in the language of the filing “did knowingly and designedly, by a false representation and pretense by fraud” from buyers of some of those cars. Not all of the cars stolen were fraudulently sold, though some were. In those cases where an alleged car theft occurred and an alleged fraudulent sale occurred, two counts are listed. Where only an alleged car theft occurred, as single count is listed. According to the filing, in one of the cases, a 2003 was stolen from a senior citizen sometime between June 2018 and December 2019 and was sold for $150,000. With regard to that matter, four counts were filed, one pertaining to the grand theft of the vehicle, another pertaining to the grand theft of the $150,000 and a third charge of grand theft from an elder and another pertaining to the grand theft of $250,000. Apparently, the vehicle was sold $100,000 more than it was valued at.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 2020 Mercedes G63 stolen on November 26, 2019, which was fraudulently sold for $251,593.85.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 2020 Chevrolet Corvette stolen in November 2020 and fraudulently sold for $47,986.16.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 1953 Jaguar X K 120 between September 2018 and March 2020 and fraudulently sold for $100,000.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 2020 Mercedes G63 stolen on June 1, 2020, which was fraudulently sold for $183,341.59.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 2005 Thunderbird stolen between January and February 2021, which was fraudulently sold for $22,000.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 2017 Nissan GTR solen between October 2020 and December 2020, which was fraudulently sold for $123,909.26.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 2017 Nissan GTR solen between October 2020 and December 2020, which was fraudulently sold for $109,084.09.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle stolen between July 2020 and October 2020, which was fraudulently sold for $40,000.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 2017 Chevy Corvette stolen between February 2020 and July 2020, which was fraudulently sold for $66,217,60.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 2018. Dodge Challenger Demon stolen between September 2020 and December 2020, which was fraudulently sold for $139,230.13.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 1999 Porsche 911 stolen between August 2020 and December 2020, which was fraudulently sold for $31,767.13.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 1981 Chevrolet Corvette stolen between September 2020 and February 2021, which was fraudulently sold for $20,378.
Two counts of grand theft were filed with regard to a 2000 Ferrari 360 stolen between October 2020 and December 2020, which was fraudulently sold for $73,869.08.
A single count of grand theft was filed with regard to a 2001 Hummer stolen between December 2020 and April 2020.
A single count of grand theft was filed with regard to a 2009 Audi R8 stolen between August 2020 and November 2020.
A single count of grand theft was filed with regard to a 2007 Ferrari stolen between July 2020 and October 2020.
A single count of grand theft was filed with regard to a 2014 Mercedes Benz SLS stolen between February 2021 to March 2021.
A single count of grand theft was filed with regard to a 2009 Maserati Quarttroporte stolen between July and October 2020.
A single count of grand theft was filed with regard to a 1975 Lincoln Mar IV stolen between October 2020 and November 2020.
A single count of grand theft was filed with regard to a 2017 Tesla stolen in August 2020.
A single count of grand theft was filed with regard to a 2016 McClaren 675 GT Spider stolen between December 2020 and April 2021.
Both Thom and Tanaka were charged with failing to report $434,381 in income collected by CNC Motors during the third quarter of 2018 in a filing dated October 18, 2018.
Both Thom and Tanaka were charged with failing to report $434,381 in income collected by CNC Motors during the third quarter of 2018 in a filing dated October 18, 2018.
Both Thom and Tanaka were charged with failing to report $593,128 in income collected by CNC Motors during the fourth quarter of 2018 in a filing dated January 31, 2019.
Both Thom and Tanaka were charged with failing to report $452,982 in income collected by CNC Motors during the first quarter of 2019 in a filing dated April 30, 2019.
Both Thom and Tanaka were charged with failing to report $442,840 in income collected by CNC Motors during the second quarter of 2019 in a filing dated July 31, 2019.
Both Thom and Tanaka were charged with failing to report $588,489 in income collected by CNC Motors during the third quarter of 2019 in a filing dated October 18, 2018.
Both Thom and Tanaka were charged with failing to report $695,887 in income collected by CNC Motors during the fourth quarter of 2019 in a filing dated January 31, 2020.
Both Thom and Tanaka were charged with failing to report $42,000 in income collected by CNC Motors during the first and second quarters of 2020 in filing dated May 20, 2020 and December 31, 2020.
Thom is also charged separately with failing to file tax returns for January through March 2021, filing false sales tax returns in quarters 1, 3 and 4 in 2019, filing a false sales tax return in quarter 1 of 2020, filing a false sales tax return in quarter 2 and 3 of 2020, failure to file a sales tax return in quarter 4 of 2020 and failure to file a sales tax return in quarter 1 of 2021.
Thom was taken into custody on Monday, October 30 at 4:40 p.m. by investigators with the California Attorney General’s Office at a residence in the 2100 block of Laurel Avenue in Upland. He remains jailed, held in lieu of $8.7 million bail.
Tanaka was arrested as well, but she has been released on her own recognizance.

Counter-reaction to resistance has shown itself to be contagious in the Chino Valley in the last fortnight, with two commissioners in the area’s two cities each being forced off the citizen participation panels they had been appointed to.
The most recent to descend from his municipality’s dais is Greg Marquez, whose exit from the Chino Community Services, Parks and Recreation Commission on November 2 followed by little more than a week Bob Goodwin’s booting from the Chino Hills Planning Commission.
Marquez’s hold on the vaunted position he has held has been eroding for some time, whereas Goodwin’s fall from grace was more sudden and accelerated.
Marquez was appointed to the Chino Community Services Commission in 2019. During his first three years in that capacity, he garnered something of a reputation for speaking his mind and offering a perspective that was appreciated by some and less popular with others. Marquez’s term had ended on June 30, 2022 a replacement for him had not been appointed, and his time on the commission had been temporarily extended.
One of the ways in which Marquez had garnered attention during his time on the commission was to suggest that with so many residents in 96,276-population Chino interested in civic participation, the city might want to take a look at limiting the number of terms an appointee to the city’s commissions could serve and perhaps consider term limits for the mayor and members of the city council, as well. While some found merit in the idea, others, particularly some members of city commissions who had been around for a while, took a different view.
Marquez declared his intention of running for the city council in the November 2022 election. In July, when he filed candidacy papers with the city clerk to vie in Chino’s District 2 race, one of Marquez’s Community Services Commission colleagues, Brenda Strong, questioned whether Marquez’s position on the commission conferred upon him an advantage in running for office in the city. Thereupon, a subcommittee of the commission, which included Linda Takeuchi, Neal Jerry, and Strong, was tasked with considering if allowing Marquez to maintain his status as a commissioner compromised either the integrity of the commission or the electoral process in Chino. Ultimately, the trio felt it would be best for Marquez’s post to be declared vacant and the city to seek applicants to replace him. Marquez remained in place on the panel past the June 30, 2022 expiration of his term, but Mayor Eunice Ulloa had not appointed a replacement, and Takeuchi, Jerry and Strong acquiesced in allowing him to remain on the commission until his replacement was found.
The incumbent in the District 2 council post was Walt Pocock, who had been appointed by the city council in May 2021 to complete the term to which Councilman Mark Hargrove was elected in 2018 following Hargrove’s death. To remain on the council, Pocock needed to vie for election in November 2022. He opted out of running however, and Marquez, consequently, found himself vying against Sylvia Orozco and Curtis Burton for the District 2 berth.
As the election season was getting into full gear, Chino residents interested in replacing Marquez on the Community Services Commission were invited to fill out applications by August 19. The commission, which consists of Takeuchi, Jerry, Strong, Marquez, Robert Martinez, Jamie Harwood and Julissa Montenegro-Olivas, were called upon on September 26 to consider the applicants, which included Michelle Ballantyne, Charleen King, Richard Montijo, Jamie Aviles, Armida Garcia, Cecil Howell, David Matza, Stepheno Padilla, and Marquez, who reapplied.
With Takeuchi absent and Marquez not participating in the discussion, the commission considered a recommendation by a selection committee, consisting of Martinez, Harwood and Montenegro-Olivas, that Marquez be reappointed. On September 26, the commission voted 4-to-1, with Jerry, Martinez, Harwood and Montenegro-Olivas prevailing and Strong opposed to make a non-binding recommendation that Marquez be kept in place.
The council confirmed his reappointment, and Marquez thus headed into the November 2022 election as a member of the commission, even with Strong indicating her concern that Marquez was exploiting his position on the commission to boost his council electoral chances.
In the November 8 election, Burton captured the District 2 post with 2,955 of the 6,079 total votes cast, or 48.61 percent, to Orozco’s 1,632 votes or 26.85 percent and Marquez’s third-place showing, with 1,492 votes or 24.54 percent.
Marquez remained animated about the city’s appointment and reappointment process for commissions and committees.
In 1990, when the methodology for appointing the commission members was settled upon, the members of the city council were elected at large as was the mayor. At present, the mayor is still elected at large, but the four council members now represent a single district and are themselves residents of one district. Each district comprises one fourth of the city.
The way the appointments to the seven-member Public Services Commission are currently made involves six being designated by the mayor and the seventh being selected by the members of the commission, with confirmation by the city council.
In May, Marquez said the selection process should be changed so that each council member makes a selection of someone from his or her district, with the mayor getting two appointments of residents living anywhere in the city.
In August, Marquez publicly restated his conviction that the city’s commissioners should not be indulged in monoplization of the limited number of positions in which residents can engage in the advisory and decision-making processes relating to civic issues for a decade or more, on that occasion making pointed reference to “ridiculously long terms.” He called for insuing the positions with new blood, new people and “new ideas.”
In the two months since then, west across the city limits in Chino Hills, Bob Goodwin, who is revered as a demigod by legions of residents of that city because of the yeoman’s work he did in convincing the California Public Utilities Commission to force the de-erection of 18 197-foot high high tension electrical towers in Chino Hills, was ignominiously bounced from the planning commission in that city.
Goodwin, with his grassroots effort involving a group he had formed called “Hope for the Hill” took on Southern California Edison, which in 2009 had obtained clearance in a 3-to-2 vote of the California Public Utilities Commission to place the above-ground electrical line within its 150-foot wide right-of-way running the entire 5.8 miles across Chino Hills from Tonner Canyon to the Riverside County line. There were long odds against the effort. Electrical lines run through communities throughout the state and no such previous effort to underground them had ever succeeded. When the City of Chino Hills sought to challenge the placement of the towers, West Valley Superior Court Judge Keith D. Davis ruled the California Public Utilities Commission had exclusive jurisdiction regarding the route used by Edison. Davis’s ruling was upheld when Chino Hills appealed it to the 4th District Court of Appeal.
By 2011, Edison was pressing ahead with the project and had erected 18 of the towers in the city when Goodwin and his cohorts pressed a last-ditch appeal to the California Public Utilities Commission, let at that point by its chairman, Michael Peevey, who prior to his time on the PUC was a senior executive and eventual president of Edison International and Southern California Edison Company.
A temporary halt to the towers’ construction was granted in November 2011 while a potential undergrounding alternative was explored. Meanwhile, after extensive exchanges of information and hearings, the California Public Utilities Commission’s board of directors in July 2013, voted 3-2, with Peevey and commissioners Mark Ferron and Catherine Sandoval prevailing, to reverse its 2009 decision and directed Southern California Edison to underground all of the towers in Chino Hills.
Shortly thereafter, Goodwin was appointed to the Chino Hills Public Works Commission, an honorific that had been extended twice thereafter.
In July, the Chino Hills City Council – consisting of Ray Marquez, Cynthia Moran, Art Bennett, Brian Johsz and Peter Rogers – considered and approved a $55,000 proposal to have the company Architectural Design & Signs create a so-called mayors’ wall that would display framed photographs and remembrances of the city’s mayors going back to its 1991 founding. The council considered the idea to be a routine one, such that it was not scheduled to be voted upon as a separate item but was placed on the city council’s consent calendar, which is reserved for what are deemed noncontroversial issues. Ray Marquez, who is no blood relation to Greg Marquez, objected to the concept and had it pulled from the consent calendar so he could cast a vote against. The creation of the wall was thus approved on a 4-to-1 vots.
Goodwin was critical of the idea and the outlay of money for what he deemed to be a show of egotism by the city’s politicians, what he characterized as gratuitous self-aggrandizement. Over the last several months, other voices around the community were heard echoing Goodwin’s opposition. On October 10, with the mayor’s wall not having yet been completed, the city council revisited the issue, with the project no longer being presented as the “mayors’ wall” but rather as a “History and Leadership Display.” During the public comment portion of the meeting, Goodwin spoke in opposition to the project, as did another resident, Greg Fresonke. Another resident, Jim Gallagher, suggested that the wall in the City Hall lobby where the project is to be completed be dedicated to all members of the city council rather than just the mayor.
The item was again pulled from the consent calendar for discussion. Both Bennett and Moran decried the lack of civility of those criticizing the project. Some sensitivity on the part of the council was expressed with regard to the cost of the project, and the matter was tabled, i.e., put on hold, pending efforts to find some alternate form of funding to pay for it other than through the city’s budget.
Two weeks later, at the city’s October 24 meeting, an item appeard on the agenda entitled “Consideration and possible action to remove Bob Goodwin from position a public works commissioner.”
At that meeting, the council voted 4-to-1, with Ray Marquez dissenting, to remove Goodwin.
It was against that backdrop, with a clear display that the wages of dissent in the Chino Valley is ostracism from the establishment, in an atmosphere in which Greg Marquez found himself being pressured to remove himself from the Community Services Commission. Chino city officials saw how how their counterparts in Chino Hills were able to insist that those allowed into the City Hall tent are required to be team players who are deferential to those in leadership roles. A point made by members of the Chino Hills City Council was that it was poor form for Goodwin, a city insider, to have publicly belittled Chino Hills’ city fathers. If he could not keep his thoughts and criticisms to himself, they suggested, he should have quietly buttonholed the members of the council to convey his feelings rather than washing such linen in public, they said.
Greg Marquez, whose accomplishments on behalf of Chino do not rise to the level of what Goodwin did for Chino Hills a decade ago, had let his ego run away with him, some Chino officials aver. He was being pressured to get off the panel he was privileged to be appointed to. If he did not accede to that pressure, he would very like have been removed. Next week, the city council is slated to consider eliminating the Community Services Commission’s at-large seat, supplanting it with another position on the panel to be appointed by the mayor.
Marquez got the message.
He penned a resignation letter, submitted to the city yesterday, in which he stated,
“I hereby resign immediately from the Community Services, Parks & Recreation Commission. It is obvious that the commission no longer recognizes its purpose to involve the public in the delivery of community services. I am determined I can be a better advocate for the residents of this city as a private citizen.”

Moving on to a year after Upland voters rejected Measure L, which would have imposed a half-cent sales tax increase on non-food and non-pharmaceutical transactions in the 15.6-square mile city, City Hall appears to have bypassed the dire financial consequences city officials warned would occur when they were promoting the tax.
Citing the pending complete discontinuation of special federal and state funding provided to cities as special augmentations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the anticipated deficit that would result in, Mayor Bill Velto and councilmen Rudy Zuniga and Carlos Garcia, Councilwoman Shannan Maust and then-Councilwoman Janice Elliott used their authority to place an initiative, subsequently designated Measure L by the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office, on the November 8, 2022 ballot.
Upland Treasurer Greg Bradley, Upland Parks Committee Member Sarah Lee, Upland resident James Thomas, retired Upland Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Loren Sanchez and retired Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Susan Higgins Coniglio, standing in for Mayor Velto and the city council, in the summer of 2022 stated “Without the local funding Measure L will provide, Upland will be forced to cut vital public safety services. Today, Upland cannot afford to maintain basic local services like local street, alley, or pothole repair, clean up piles of trash and litter that people dump along streets and sidewalks, maintain our parks, or address homelessness.
Unless we keep our taxpayer dollars local, Upland will have no choice but to further cut vital street, storm drain, waterway, and sidewalk repairs, costing we taxpayers millions as repairs cost more in the future.
local business leader Jason Gaudy, Bradley, Lee, Thomas and both attorney Jason Gaudy and retired Upland Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Loren Sanchez, again speaking for Velto, Zuniga, Garcia, Maust and Elliott, told Upland residents, “Upland services have been slashed to the bone and cannot be cut further without impacting the services you expect and deserve. Without Measure L, we won’t be able to keep the number of police officers patrolling our neighborhoods.
Your Yes on L vote is the only thing that will allow current sidewalk repair programs to continue.
Unless we act, Upland will have to cut police officers on top of 14 unfilled police positions, making our neighborhoods less safe. Without Measure L, our streets, sidewalks, trees, parks, and storm drains will worsen, affecting your cars and all our wallets as we must pay more to repair in the future. Measure L will allow us to address the basic quality of life services we all need.”
Eleven months after Measure L was defeated, with 10,222, or 44.6 percent of the 22,919 Upland residents participating voting in favor of it and 12,697 or 55.4 percent voting against it, Upland officials maintain there has been no diminution in the quality of life in the City of Gracious Living.
A circular inserted by the city in the most recent utility billing sent to Upland residents states, “The City of Upland has passed a balanced budget for the 2023/2024 fiscal year – the first time in four years that the budget was balanced without using one-time funding. Despite rising costs, the city tkes pride in the fact that our departments are performing outstanding work with the resources they have. We will continue to seek additional revenue sources to improve the quality of life in Upland. Faster 9-1-1 police response times, getting potholes fixed quicker, citywide street improvements, and sidewalk repairs remain top priorities we are working to address in the future.”
The circular continues, “The good news is that Upland’s fiscal condition remains stable and there are signs of improvement. The city council’s thoughtful and measured response to our fiscal situation has kept Upland on a sustainable financial path while the city continues to provide core services. Looking forward to the next five years, we must focus on safeguarding our operating reserves and make strategic financial decision to ensure that we have a resilient city over the long-term. With this year’s budget, the general fund will cover all the recent staffing additions to our police department made initially two years ago with one-time funds from the American Rescue Plan Act. The city council prioritized identifying long-term funding for these new police position so they wouldn’t go away when the one-time funding ended.”
An assertion made in promoting Measure L last year was that Upland is underpayng its city employees, most notably its police officers, and that with other cities in the region offering their employees higher salaries and more generous benefits, Upland was in danger of losing its best employees, including its police officers, to other jurisdictions.
According to the circular, the city employee pay issue has been addressed.
“Another accomplishment was the recent completion of new memorandums of understanding with the city’s four bargaining groups,” the circular states. “The city council supported efforts to retain our valuable employees and implemented a classification and compensation study that brings Upland employees to the median salary of our comparable agencies,” which the circular clarified consisted of “12 local cities of a similar size.” According to the circular, “Negotiations with the city’s four bargaining groups yielded long-term agreements that give the city the labor security essential for efficient operations over the long-term.”
Furthermore, according to the circular, “[N]otable capital improvement projects are scheduled for completion this fiscal year, including the Arrow Highway rehabilitation project, which is bringing new pavement from North Benson to North San Antonio avenues at a cost of over $11 million and the multi-year construction of Reservoir 15 at over $17 million, an infrastructure investment which will provide clean water storage for many years to come.”

An incident in which a local high school basketball coach was sucker punched by a former Cal State San Bernardino hoop standout-turned-referee during a hoops game last month is garnering unwanted national attention.
On Saturday October 28, the Oak Hills High School basketball team was competing against Arlington High’s five in a fall season game at Santiago High School in Corona.
According to witnesses and video footage of the game obtained by the Sentinel, Oak Hills High School head coach Rob Alexander took exception, it appeared, to at least two calls that Brandon Knapper made during the game’s second half. He yelled a verbal protest about at least one of those calls during the course of play prior to the incident, according to witnesses.
The video seen by the Sentinel, shot from an elevated vantage point behind the Oak Hills bench, was silent and the verbal altercation between Alexander and Knapper was therefore not audible.
The video depicts the ongoing game, as a player is seen going down beneath the basket at the closest goal to the camera and the ball bounces out of bounds beyond the goal. As another referee closer to that action retrieves the ball, Knapper can be seen walking along the sideline of the court near the Oak Bench. He approaches Alexander in a casual manner, and Alexander, standing just out of bounds near the bench, refocuses his attention from the action on the court to Knapper, who has come to stand directly in front of him. Knapper begins to engage verbally, it appears in a nonthreatening manner, with Alexander, who remains in an unguarded stance, with his hands on his hips, beginning, it seems, to be put his hands in his pockets. At that point, Knapper, who looks to be holding the whistle attached around his neck with his left hand, quickly and violently sucker punches Alexander with a straight across right. Alexander collapses at once, folding toward the ground slightly to his right, into a semi-sitting position on the bench, whereupon Knapper follows his first blow with at least two more downward punches and attempts at a third and a fourth, as what appears to be another Oak Hills coach who was seated on the bench attempts to press Knapper away from Alexander. Oak Hills players on the sideline begin to react and then swarm toward and over the two men, with one of the Oak Hills players punching Knapper in the head as Knapper is still seeking to unload punches on Alexander.
Thereafter, the players on the court as well as players from the opposing team across the court come toward the Oak Hills bench in what appears to be a frenzied melee.
Law enforcement was called and the game was discontinued.
Alexander was taken to a hospital, where he told officers he wanted to press charges against Knapper.
Knapper voluntarily surrendered at the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department jail Sunday, and was charged with battery causing serious bodily injury and assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury, both felonies.
His bail was set at $25,000. He was released Wednesday. He had a court appearance this morning, but the Sentinel was not in attendance and was unable to obtain any information by press time.
Knapper was once a promising Division I college basketball player, but he has been unable so far to make the transition to the NBA.
He graduated from South Charleston High School in 2016. During the 2015-16 season at South Charleston High, playing for coach Vic Herbert, he averaged 28.5 points, 6.0 assists and 5.4 steals per game as a senior.
Rather than going directly to college, Knapper re-enrolled at the High School level, attending Hargrave Military Academy to sharpen his scholastic skills to be able to go to college and play basketball there. At Hargrave in 2016-17, he played for coach A.W. Hamilton.
In 2017-18, at West Virginia University, he redshirted as a freshman due to a knee injury.
Thus, he was considered a redshirt freshman in 2018-19, again at West Virginia University, playing in 32 games starting in four and averaging 5.0 points per contest while averaging 13.8 minutes per game.
In his redshirt sophomore year at West Virginia University in 2019-20, he played in 27 games and was named to the Academic All-Big 12 Men’s Basketball Second Team, while averaging 2.6 points per game. He scored five points against Kansas State and five points against Texas Christian University, 10 points and four rebounds in the win over No. 22 Texas Tech, eight points with two steals and a block in the win at Oklahoma State and five points in the win over No. 2 Ohio State.
In 2020-21 Knapper transferred to East Kentucky University, where he appeared in only four games but was impressive in those appearances, averaging 18.3 points, 3 rebounds, and 1.3 assists per game while shooting 38 percent from the floor and 31 percent on three-pointers.
He left college for a year and reportedly worked as a coach at Santiago High School in Corona. In 2022-23, as a redshirt senior, Knapper played guard at Cal State San Bernardino, where he was a member of the Division 2 California Collegiate Athletic Association All-West Regional team, named the California Collegiate Athletic Association player of the week for November 14 through 20, the 2023 All-West Regional Most Outstanding Player and was a member of the 2022 Hoops in Hawaii Thanksgiving Classic All-Tournament Team. He reached 1,000 career points on January 1 against Cal Poly Pomona. He was named to the All-California Collegiate Athletic Association first team and was the 2022-23 Cal State University San Bernardino men’s student-athlete of the year.
The Hesperia Unified School District in a prepared statement characterized Knapper’s assault on Alexander as “senseless and shameful. The district is thankful for the swift and decisive action taken by the event promoters and local law enforcement. We are also happy to report that Coach Alexander is in good spirits and looking forward to returning to coaching and teaching as soon as possible.”