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Sentinel 06-17-16

First term Assemblyman Marc Steinorth shook off his second place finish in the June 7 Primary, expressing confidence it does not presage his exodus from the political stage.
In a head-to-head contest between political newcomer Abigail Medina and Steinorth, Medina edged the incumbent, 36,524 to 35,814 votes. Numerous factors were at play in the race. The 40th Assembly District is a relatively evenly divided political battleground, with 37.9 percent of its voters currently registered Democrats, 35.8 percent registered Republicans and 26.3 percent registered with other parties or unaligned with any party.
In 2014, Steinorth experienced what was a relatively comfortable victory over Kathleen Henry, when he took home 31,774 votes or 56.37 percent to Henry’s 24.597 votes or 43.63 percent.
California in general is dominated by the Democratic Party, with a Democratic governor elected by what was a convincing margin in 2010 and 2014 and what was a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature until Democratic State Senators Leland Yee and Ronald S. Calderon were indicted and Democratic State Senator Roderick D. Wright was convicted on perjury charges in 2014. The percentage of voters registered as Republican in the state stands at 29.3 percent, translating into just barely enough clout to mildly temper the Democrats’ policies and virtually no power to put GOP policy initiatives into effect.
There do remain pockets of Republican holdouts at various spots throughout California. One such bastion of Republicanism is San Bernardino County. Beginning in the 1960s and for more than four decades, San Bernardino County was a Republican stronghold. In 2008, the number of registered voters in the county identifying themselves as Democrats, some 314,000, eclipsed the number of those registered as Republicans, 312,000. Nevertheless, because Republicans turn out in far greater numbers at the polls than do Democrats as well as in voting by absentee, the Party of Lincoln has continued to dominate the county politically. In recent years, three of its four congressional representatives have been Republicans. Five of its eight assembly members were Republicans. Three of its five state senators were Republicans. Though county and municipal offices are considered non-partisan ones, those positions, overall are predominantly occupied by registered Republicans. Of the members of the board of supervisors, until 2012, four of five were Republicans. In the last four years, three of the five are Republicans. Of the county’s 24 incorporated cities, only three – San Bernardino, Colton and Rialto – had city councils with a majority of Democratic Party-affiliated members.
In Assembly District 40, there are 198,180 voters registered. At present, 75,085 or 37.9 percent of those are registered Democrats. Registered Republicans in the district number 70,947 or 35.8 percent. Last week, that 2.1 percent voter registration disadvantage redounded to Steinorth’s detriment, when 72,338 of the district’s voters participated at the polls or by mail-in ballot, and 36,524 votes or 50.49 percent were cast for Abigail Medina and 35,814 votes or 49.51 percent were cast for Steinorth.
The California Elections Code requires that in elections for candidates for state office, the two top vote-getters in primary elections move to run-off election in the November general election, even if one has obtained a majority of votes. Thus, Steinorth and Medina are scheduled for a showdown in November.
Steinorth said he is not terribly concerned over last week’s results.
“Nothing is decided in June,” he said. “It’s just a beauty pageant.”
Steinorth said he recognized that the primary election was not the crucial contest and so he husbanded his resources for use in November, when things will really matter. He said he was not going to be lured into squandering his money in the run-up to the June election, despite a concerted and well-funded effort by the Democrats on Medina’s behalf.
“It is more difficult as a Republican in California to raise the necessary resources against the Sacramento machine that wants to replace me,” Steinorth said. “I only spent enough money to do door hangers, probably ten thousand dollars, maybe more, but no more than $15 thousand. I will spend over a million in November.”
Steinorth said the obvious keys to victory in the 40th consist of voter registration and voter turnout. He said he and the Republican Party had previously been active in registering Republicans there but conceded he had been outhustled by the Democrats during the primary.
“At one point the Republican registration was up by 600,” he said with regard to his 2014 effort. “In targeting the district the Democrats were able to complete a registration drive and were up by 4,000 voters. That’s where it is currently. I think it is pretty close percentage-wise.”
Steinorth said he had the further disadvantage of Medina being able to ride the coattails of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters who were driven to the polls by the presence of those two candidates at numerous rallies locally just prior to the voting.
“Really, I was surprised her turnout was so low,” Steinorth said. “I was proud of how well my team performed. If you look at the turnout by party at the polls, Democrats turned out 2 to 1 over Republicans, yet I was behind by just over 700 votes. That was with two Democratic presidential machines campaigning heavily in my district in the two weeks before the election. There should have been a wave of Democratic voters to bury me, but that wave did not occur. I was able to get 20 to 25 percent of the Democratic vote. That reflects how positive many Democrats feel about my representation of them.”
Steinorth made a mercurial rise as a politician in just four years. In 2010, he vied, unsuccessfully, for Rancho Cucamonga mayor. Two years later, he ran successfully for the Rancho Cucamonga City Council Then, less than two years after that victory, he sought election as assemblyman. He struck pay dirt. Steinorth’s success, no doubt, resulted in part from his ownership of an advertising company. He was able to promote his candidacy, based upon his status as a fiscal conservative, in Republican-leaning Rancho Cucamonga, his base. Within the other portions of the 40th District, he was able to sell that philosophy by selectively targeting Republicans.
Once in office and commuting to Sacramento on a regular basis, Steinorth began to move toward the center, recognizing that vituperatively reproaching the Democrats, who are in control of the state capital, would avail him and his constituents nothing. But that shift did not buy him immunity from Medina’s challenge, and now he is in the position of having to rediscover his Republican roots to get his underlying constituency energized.
He acknowledged he must write off any possibility of finding favor with liberal Democrats but said he would try to bridge the gap between Republicans and conservative Democrats. “Of all of the constituents in my district, I think the Republicans and the more centrist Democrats see me as their representative,” Steinorth said. “My opponent authored an op-ed piece last year advocating Senate Bill 350, which would increase the tax on every gallon of gas sold in the state by as much as 25 cents. I voted against that because my district pays more in gas tax than we get in revenues for our infrastructure and roads. We are paying enough tax already. She wrote in another op-ed piece that she voted for Proposition 47.”
Proposition 47 reduced penalties for what were deemed “nonviolent, non-serious crimes,” particularly property theft and drug offenses.
“I represent cities that have been greatly damaged by Prop 47,” said Steinorth. “In my district property crime has skyrocketed. Prop 47 ties the hands of law enforcement. It keeps the police and the courts from taking action against these offenders. I greatly disagree with my opponent.”
Steinorth sought to frame his reelection effort as one of David versus Golliath, an outsider Republican against the insider Democrats.
“The Sacramento machine has nearly unlimited resources,” he said. “They have decided they to want to raise our taxes. They want to eliminate Proposition 13. They want to regain a supermajority in the legislature so there are no checks on government spending. They believe by spending as much money as necessary to beat me they will be able to shift the balance of power back to Sacramento for good. I won’t let that happen.”

For the third time within the last month, the Upland Finance Committee sent Upland City Manager Rod Butler, Butler’s assistant Jeannette Vagnozzi and Upland Finance Manager Scott Williams back to the drawing board to revamp the proposed 2016-17 budget the full city council is slated to consider at its last meeting this month.
The government fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30 of the following calendar year. Traditionally, governmental entities great and small in the State of California – from school, fire and water districts, to cities to counties right up to the state government in Sacramento – have striven to arrive at a budget before July 1. Indeed, in years past most of those entities had their budgets finalized by early to mid-June. In recent years, nearly all governmental entities in California have faced moderate to severe financial challenges as costs have increased, public salaries and benefits have risen and revenues into government coffers have shrunk, exacerbated during the lingering 2007-2013 recession.
A common goal has always been to arrive at balanced budgets, that is, to have no more in expenditures than in revenue. As the recession persisted, many cities, including Upland, failed to achieve truly balanced budgets, and were unable to match outgo to income, instead plugging the gap through a reliance on depleting existing municipal reserves, that is, savings from previous years stashed in reserve accounts.
In addition, cities all across California are faced with a looming pension crisis. Over the last fifteen years, governmental entities have offered public employees increasingly generous retirement packages by agreeing to a pension calculation formula that allows those employees to draw a yearly retirement stipend that is equal to their highest yearly salary times a percentage, which varies between two percent and three percent, multiplied by the number of years those employees have worked for a public agency. Thus, a worker who reaches retirement age – between 50 and 65 – who has worked, for example, 30 years for a governmental entity and has risen to a position paying, for example $100,000 per year, would be eligible to pull an annual pension of at least $60,000 [$100,000 X 2% X 30] or as much as $90,000 [$100,000 X 3% X 30] every year for the rest of his or her life. Upon his or her death, if his or her spouse is yet living, she or he would be eligible to continue to draw half that amount for the rest of her or his life. Because government jobs offer relatively decent wages to most workers and because most workers generally advance to higher and higher paying positions over the term of their careers before retiring, this means districts, cities, counties and the state are paying out substantial amounts to cover pension costs on an annual basis. Retirement systems have been created to cover these ongoing costs, with both the governmental entities and the government employees contributing to them. The most significant of these is CalPERS, an acronym for the California Public Employees Retirement System, which manages the contributions into that retirement fund made by the governments and public employees. That money is put into the stock market and other interest bearing securities. CalPERS is the retirement/pension fund managing system for all state employees as well as most municipal employees throughout the state, including those employed by Upland. All government contributions into CalPERS are set at a certain rate each year based upon that particular governmental entity’s number of current employees and the terms of the pension benefits it offers. To stay fiscally balanced, CalPERS also has an earnings goal for the money it invests – 7.5 percent per year. When its investment do well and meet that goal, the only money contributed by the cities and state and participating agencies is the earlier referenced set amount. But if CalPERS’ investment portfolio does not meet its goals, then those governmental entities are committed to make up the difference. Last year CalPERS’ investment return was only 2.4 percent.
As years pass and more and more public employees retire, and with the average lifespan of Americans ever increasing such that many retirees are on average now living well into their seventies, eighties and beyond, the pension burden is burgeoning to a point that it is straining cities financially.
In Upland, which last year had a $43 million budget, $7.1 million went toward pension costs. Next year, that cost is anticipated to increase to $7.4 million. By 2022, that cost will zoom to $11 million, money being paid out to former employees who will no longer be working, representing money that will not be available to provide ongoing services, necessitating that city operations in the future be pared back to the bone. In Upland, the retirement age is 55. Safety employees – firemen and policemen – receive 3 percent for each year they have worked. Non-safety employees receive 2.5 percent for each year they have worked.
Glenn Bozar, since his election to the Upland City council in 2012, has demonstrated himself as the most fiscally conservative of the city’s officials as he has constantly advocated that the city not only live within its means, but that it closely examine expenditures and look for ways of reducing staffing levels when possible. Bozar has called upon city management to maintain prudent spending discipline that will allow a modicum of money to be salted away every year to be ultimately used to extirpate the future unfunded pension liability which is presently projected at $88 million and growing. Simultaneously, Bozar considers himself on a mission to ensure that the city avoids taking recourse in imposing further taxes on its residents, reasoning that doing so will create an illusion of solvency that will compromise the level of discipline city management needs to exercise in maintaining austerity.
On May 23, city manager Butler had finance director Scott Williams preview for the city’s finance committee his proposed 2016-17 general fund budget, which envisioned revenues of $46,685,000 and operating costs of $45,727,220. Buried within that budget were increases of 20.3 percent – $1,171,145 – into the city’s pension fund; 20 percent – $549,7217 – for so-called fringe benefits; and 5.39 percent – $1,024,553 – for salary increases. Into the mix were hefty increases for both the fire department and the police department – 12.5 percent and 11 percent, respectively – as well as administrative services division increases of 14 percent.
Though the budget projected modest increases in property tax and sales tax to lift its anticipated revenue to $46.685 million from the slightly over $44 million the city brought in this year, the upsurge in spending Butler and assistant city manager Jeannette Vagnozzi were calling for entailed shifting $978,000 in gasoline tax revenue the city is anticipating receiving into the general fund and making some $400,000 worth of other adjustments. The gasoline tax in Upland has traditionally been used to pay for street and road improvements. When that was laid before them, the finance committee’s members – Bozar, councilwoman Debbie Stone and city treasurer Dan Morgan – balked. They cited the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a measure recommended by the city’s blue ribbon fiscal task force more than two years ago and passed in a 5-0 vote by the council in January.
The fiscal responsibility act states that the city “base its operating capital on demonstrable sources of revenue. The city shall maintain cash balances to adequately provide for economic uncertainties, local disasters or catastrophic events, and other financial hardships or downturns in the local or national economy or contingencies for unforeseen operational needs. The city shall retain, per policy, a minimum unassigned fund balance of at least 12.5 percent of general fund operating expenditures, with a goal of bringing the total level of reserves up to 25 percent. Once the 12.5 percent reserve goal is met, the city finance officer will provide recommendations to the council for assigning any additional reserves to reduce or eliminate deficit fund balances for funds supported by the general fund or operating needs… into an IRS Section 115 Trust for the sole purpose of funding future pension and other post employment benefit liabilities.”
And while Butler’s proposed 2016-17 budget technically met the requirement of setting aside 12.5 percent of the general fund’s operating expenditures into reserves, at the May 30 committee meeting, the committee registered displeasure at the consideration that city expenditures were to grow by $3.8 million over last year when revenues were increasing by just slightly over $2 million. Furthermore, both Bozar and Stone rebuked Butler, indicating they wanted the gasoline tax revenue utilized for fixing roads, not for plugging the gaps created as a consequence of the increases in pension fund, fringe benefits, salary increases and fire department, police department and administrative services division spending. They instructed him to revisit the budget, and find some way of keeping the gasoline tax earmarked for street and road maintenance. Morgan joined with Bozar and Stone in supplying that direction.
The upshot of those instructions appeared to be aimed at having Butler and Vagnozzi restore the gasoline tax to funding road infrastructure in full, while trimming expenditures in the city departments. Nevertheless, at the finance committee meeting this week, on June 14, what was presented was an expenditure sheet that was hardly altered at all, with almost all of the previously scheduled spending in 2016-17 left intact. What adjustments were made consisted of reducing from $978,000 to $600,000 the diversion of gasoline tax into the general fund while proposing a scheme whereby the city would market “excess water” at its disposal through its water division to other nearby water agencies.
This galvanized Bozar, who noted that city residents, the city’s water division customers, had met with the governor’s mandate that they reduce water consumption, achieving a reduction of 35 percent while being hit with water rate increases. The proposal to have the city sell water in the midst of a drought while city residents were bearing the brunt of that drought on both ends by using less and paying more was not a viable revenue producing alternative, Bozar said. Moreover, Bozar insisted, the gasoline tax needed to remain earmarked for city transportation-related infrastructure improvements and maintenance.
Bozar essentially said that Butler needed to bring back something that was in compliance with both the letter and spirit of the Fiscal Responsibility Act. This resulted in a rather spirited back and forth between Bozar on one end and Butler and Vagnozzi on the other, with Williams poised in between. Butler and Vagnozzi took the position that what they perceived as a frenetic wielding of the budget axe was not yet called for and that they were working on cost saving measures that will be incorporated later on and will manifest in some savings once the upcoming fiscal year is underway.
“You’re just kicking the can down the road,” Bozar intoned, embarking on a questioning of the calculations upon which the budget was based. In particular, Bozar sought to bring into focus the money earmarked to cover the city’s anticipated CalPERS responsibility. In response to Bozar’s questions, Williams acknowledged that the more than $7 million the city has set aside to fork over to CalPERS in the upcoming year is based upon its 7.5 percent earnings expectation. Williams conceded that CalPERS has already given a “heads up” that it will not meet that earnings goal and that a “mild recession” is anticipated in the relatively near future.
“Our financial projections need to be more realistic,” Bozar said, indicating the city’s CalPERS contribution will be well above $7.1 million this coming year.
Butler and Vagnozzi angled their comments to suggest the revenue drawdown and pension drain would be less severe than Bozar was projecting and they advocated that the city adopt the budget as proposed and make adjustments on the fly as needed.
Bozar did not recede, however. “Using the most optimistic projections is not feasible,” he insisted. “The scenarios you are using as the foundation of this budget are inconsistent with the CalPERS rate of return of 2.4 percent last year and the tax revenue we will receive. How can you project during a moderate recession that CalPERS will meet its 7.5 percent return goals and that we will receive adequate tax revenue?” Living up to the spirit of the Fiscal Responsibility Act dictated, Bozar said, that the city use “more realistic projections” in formulating its budget model. “These optimistic assumptions aren’t realistic,” he said of what the city was presently using.
Stone, who in previous go-rounds had supported Bozar’s call for budget austerity, appeared to be wavering. She was more tolerant of the proposal to market water than was either Bozar or Morgan. She seemed to be sympathetic as well to Vagnozzi’s displaying of a projection of a spreadsheet for the salary and deductions of an unidentified member of the city’s clerical staff, one of the city’s lowest paid employees, who had not received, Vagnozzi said, a pay increase since 2009.
Vagnozzi’s point was that raises for staff were in order. This clashed with Bozar and Morgan’s philosophy, which holds that the city has already demonstrated its appreciation of city employees by giving them free medical coverage as well as a pension that is equal to anywhere from 70 to 90 percent of their highest yearly salary while working.
With Stone vacillating and seemingly ready to sign on to staff’s budget recommendation, city treasurer Morgan stepped up, swinging his support squarely behind Bozar. Most pointedly, Morgan said, he did not think diverting gasoline tax revenue away from doing street repair to plug budget gaps was advisable or in accordance with the will of the city’s residents.
Bozar and Morgan said that if Butler and Vagnozzi truly felt that there were no further places in the city’s operations where they might find opportunities to institute economies or make reductions, they should test their conviction and see if they can get a four-fifths vote of the city council to declare a fiscal emergency so the Fiscal Responsibility Act can be suspended and reserves can be borrowed to balance the budget. From the context of the situation it was clear to Butler that he could not get a recommendation of the full finance committee for such a drastic option. At last, addressing Bozar directly, he asked what the councilman would suggest with regards to making those economies and cuts.
Bozar responded, “You’re the city manager hired to present the budget.” He told Butler he needed to use his own judgment and expertise in leading the city in a financially sound direction in accordance with the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
While signaling their willingness to have Butler facilitate increases within the police department’s budget to accommodate the hiring of four new police offers and four part-time unsworn police service technicians, the committee ultimately collectively instructed Butler to make modest cuts to other departments to bring the city’s budgeted expenditures into line with its revenues.

Controversy has broken out in Fontana over what some members of the Fontana Woman’s Club and other community members feel is an illegitimate ploy to commercialize the group’s historic meeting place. The effort is complicated by the consideration that the proponent of the change is a Fontana businessman long active in civic affairs with a reputation for philanthropy whose wife is one of the most active members of the Fontana Woman’s Club.
At the center of the contretemps is the Fontana Woman’s Club Building, located at at 6880 Seville Avenue, proximate to Fontana City Hall. It was built in 1923-24 by Fontana’s founder A.B. Miller and donated to the Fontana Woman’s Club, an offshoot of the national organization that had, just four years before, been instrumental in achieving women’s suffrage.
Over the next nine decades, the building served as a meeting place for the Fontana Woman’s Club, accruing landscaping and decorative embellishments and, in time, being placed on the registry of National Historic Places.
The prime mover in the proposal that is now generating so much controversy is Phil Cothran, a licensed insurance agent who owns Cothran State Farm Insurance, which has been successfully transacting business in Fontana for 34 years. Cothran has striven to demonstrate himself as an entrepreneur with a heart. As a lifelong Fontana resident, he has served on over a dozen community boards and commissions, including the Fontana Planning Commission, the Miss Fontana Organization, the Fontana Historical Society, the Fontana Rotary Club, the Fontana Water of Life Community Church, and the Fontana Motor Speedway Checkered Flag Club. He is a volunteer reserve Fontana police officer and reserve deputy sheriff and has either headed or participated in numerous charity drives.
It is the blurring of the distinction between his role as entrepreneur and philanthropist that burgeoned into a dispute that has grown to envelope the city, City Hall, both elected and non-elected officials, and a core of city residents involved in civic affairs and the preservation of the city’s institutions and history. For many, Cothran’s effort to exploit an historical resource for profit, and the way he is perceived to have cut procedural corners to do so, is tainting his legacy and causing some to question whether his philanthropy is truly altruism or a front for self-promotion.
With his wife, Lena, who happens to be the immediate past president of the Fontana Woman’s Club, Cothran indulged his entrepreneurial inclination, starting another business, known as Amazing View Weddings. The premise of the venture is that it would provide an aesthetically pleasing venue for nuptial ceremonies that would embody a hint of sophistication and historical presence. The Woman’s Club Building, with a bit of sprucing up, the Cothran’s reasoned, could be that venue. At the May Woman’s Club meeting, it was announced that Amazing View Weddings was going to pay the club $10,000 a year for unlimited use of the building and grounds, for weddings and parties. It was further stated that the modernization, renovations, etc. to the building and grounds were set to proceed.
At least three of the woman’s club members in attendance objected, however, with one asserting that such an arrangement could not be entered into without going through the City of Fontana’s planning department, and that there were further restrictions on alterations that could be made to the building, since it is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. Lena Cothran claimed that there had been an inquiry with regard to the property’s historic status and she had been informed that it was not any sort of historic site. Two members of the local Fontana Historical Society immediately asserted that the building indeed was registered as a historic site. An inquiry with the city’s planning department carried out subsequently confirmed that the building is in fact listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. The listing automatically triggers a requirement that any proposal with regard to alterations to the building would, by law, be subject to an approval process within the planning department prior to any project being initiated to ensure that the integrity of the original building and grounds are not compromised.
Without making any such application with the Fontana planning department or obtaining such permission, on May 24, a tree removal service hired by Phil Cothran cut down two sycamore trees in front of the club, both of which were more than 90 years old. Amy Colbrunn, the executive assistant to Fontana City Manager Ken Hunt, and Fontana Planning Division Manager Zai AbuBakar both told the Sentinel that no tree removal permit for the destruction of the sycamores was obtained prior to their removal. Colbrunn said, “Now that the trees are gone, it is pretty much impossible to inspect them to determine if they had historic or some other type of significance that would have required that they be preserved.”
Cothran’s reputation as an individual active in civic affairs who has engaged in acts of philanthropy notwithstanding, the effort by his wife to use her authority as a member of the woman’s club board to bypass the woman’s club board’s deliberative process in approving the arrangement with Amazing View Weddings is seen by some as an abuse of her position and a conflict of interest. Moreover, her husband’s move to destroy the sycamores without any compliance with the city’s planning process is widely perceived as an act of unforgivable arrogance.
What has now ensued is a clash of wills in which those resisting the use of the Women’s Club for commercial purposes are functioning on dual tracks. The first track consists of seeking to preclude Lena Cothran, who is perceived as having a direct personal financial interest in the arrangement with Amazing View Weddings, from participating in the decision with regard to any arrangement between the club and her and her husband’s company. That effort would extend to vacating any previous action the Woman’s Club has taken with regard to a contract with Amazing View Weddings, and calling for another vote of the board in which she does not participate and does not lobby her board colleagues who do vote. The second track consists of appealing to the City of Fontana’s political leadership to ensure that all land use authority the city possesses is brought to bear and that the alterations contemplated are subjected to a permitting process, including public hearings.
The prospect of success along the first track is questionable.
Lena Cothran’s twin sister, Leta, is the first vice president of the club. Phil Cothran, Jr. is the business manager for the club. Phil and Lena’s daughters, Amanda and Cecily, are on the board of trustees of the club.
At the same time, Phil Cothran is seeking to utilize the considerable goodwill he has generated with city officials as a consequence of his civic activity and his philanthropy to override any objections to his effort to utilize the Woman’s Club building as a venue for the ceremonies to be put on by Amazing View Weddings.
On May 10, Darlene Scalf, a member of the Fontana Historical Society, addressed the Fontana City Council. “We are asking the City of Fontana to stop any further modification of the Fontana Woman’s Club building that could compromise the historical integrity of that building,” Scalf said. “That building is on the National Registry of Historic Places. Electrical work, remodeling, even many painting projects on such a designated landmark must be approved by a process of consulting with the City of Fontana’s municipal code ordinances, as it pertains to the preservation of historic resources, for that building and grounds. At a recent meeting of the Fontana Woman’s Club, it was brought to the attention of the members that upgrades, repairs and remodeling was about to begin without going through the proper channels to ensure that that historic building would not be compromised.”
After noting that the “Woman’s club membership has asked for an emergency meeting to determine the validity and historical legality of the contract that was unauthorized by the general membership per by-laws,” Scalf said, “the Historical Society is asking the city’s help in making sure no remodeling, repairs or modifications are done to the building and property until after determination can be made concerning what, exactly, can be done legally to preserve its historical importance and integrity.”
Cothran acknowledged he was seeking permission to use the woman’s club building as a venue for wedding ceremonies, but said this was by no means a done deal.
“I put an offer on the table,” he said. “I am not sure I care whether they accept it or not. If I can be of help and they ask me, I will do so. There are 100 other things I could be doing out in the community. This is just one of them.”
As to the need to go through a whole rigamarole of permits to make the adaptations to the building envisioned, Cothran said, “We don’t have any intention of doing any renovation. What we want to do is put in heating and air conditioning. I am not sure we’re even going to do that. I’m not sure of where we are in the process. If they want my help with upkeep and maintenance, I will be there for them. If they don’t, then I don’t have to do anything. If they are very content with what they have, then that’s fine.”
Cothran continued, “The woman’s club has been around a long time. There are a number of issues that need to be taken care of with the woman’s club building grounds. There is a problem with the vents over the stove, the wheel stops in the parking lot, a wrought iron fence in the back, some things with the loading dock. There is a concrete block in the middle of the property that is a trip-and-fall hazard. A whole set of things needs to be done to upgrade the building and make it safe. I have paid for a number of things. My family has a history with the woman’s club. My youngest daughter drug my wife into the woman’s club years ago.”
He dismissed the assertion that he was not sensitive to the building’s historic significance.
“I am the past chairman of the historical society so I have a lot of interest in history,” he said.
Cothran disputed that a tree removal permit was needed to take out the two sycamore trees in front of the woman’s club building. “The city told us we didn’t need a tree removal permit,” he said. “We had four different arborist companies look at those trees. All four agreed the trees were dead and needed to come out. The planning department said that if they were dead trees, no permit was needed. The woman’s club’s insurance carrier said they needed to come out. And that wasn’t State Farm. State Farm doesn’t have anything to do with the woman’s club.”
Cothran said there was no effort to cut corners or use his vaunted position in the community to obtain something he was not entitled to.
“I hope I have a good reputation,” he said. “I would never do anything to harm the woman’s club. I don’t need to do anything there. If they want to let me help with some of their problems, I will be glad to do it.”
Cothran said he sensed that the resistance to his proposal emanated from “four women” who are members of the woman’s club who have reservations about his proposal. “I have no beef with those four ladies,” Cothran said. “If they are jealous of my relationship with the city that is unfortunate. I love Fontana. This town has blessed me and my family tremendously.”
Though he said he sincerely did not believe that he had taken inappropriate liberties with respect to the woman’s club and its building, Cothran acknowledged that others may perceive it differently and that there could be grounds for questioning his proposal. He said he respected those who are skeptical about what he is asking for. “I do make mistakes,” he said. “If I have stepped over the line, then someone should slap me back. It’s okay if they do.”

A fledgling organization its members call the “Needles Safety and Fire Protection Auxiliary” or auxiliary for short is collecting protest signatures in Needles this week in anticipation of a hearing to be held by the San Bernardino County Local Area Formation Commission (SBCLAFCO) clearing the way for the annexation of the area within the city’s boundaries into the San Bernardino County Fire District.
The application for annexation was approved by a unanimous vote of the Needles City Council. It calls for a $148.24 tax on all parcels in the city, with a potential 3 percent annual increase. The hearing will be held on June 22 at 3:00 p.m. at the El Garces Railroad Depot in Needles.
The SBCLAFCO reorganization proposal, entitled “LAFCO 3206,” includes a so-called “annexation” of a new “Needles Service Area” to the discontiguous Helendale Service Area, which lies over 100 miles away. The administrator of the auxiliary, Needles resident and former Needles city councilwoman Ruth Musser-Lopez, filed a protest against LAFCO 3206 claiming that the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission has no authority to process a merger of two service zones, with the residents in one having voted on the tax and the other with residents who had not. She asserts that the use of the term “annexation” for merging two service zones is a misnomer and that while the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission has authority to annex to a district and may annex Needles to an adjoining district where there is no special tax imposed, SBCLAFCO has overstepped its authority in attempting to tax the people of Needles without a vote by way of illegally adding Needles to the Helendale Service area in a totally different sphere of influence with different economic factors. Musser-Lopez cites Government Code Section 56021 and 56375, alleging that it is unlawful to either annex or merge districts or service zones in two different spheres of influence.
It is a peculiarity of California law, which normally requires that taxes, add-on taxes or new taxes be approved by a majority of the voters on whom those taxes are to be assessed, that local governments can arrange for a so-called “tax protest vote” in which a majority of those to be taxed must lodge letters of protest to stop the tax from being imposed. In such a case, all those who do not register a protest are presumed to support the tax. The fire annexation and accompanying assessment application by the City of Needles is subject to that process.
The reorganization is similar to one which was recently processed in the city of San Bernardino for the “Valley Service Area” annexation to the Helendale Service Area. The local objections in Needles are similar to those reported in previous editions of the Sentinel for that prior annexation. At the heart of the protest in both communities is a flat tax of $148.24 upon every parcel with a provision to allow for a 3 percent annual increase. Protesters in both communities have argued that the flat tax is an arbitrary and capricious dollar amount that has not been justified by any proven cost analysis within the sphere of influence that is being targeted and that the tax is being unfairly imposed without a vote of the people within the new service zone.
Further, the auxiliary states that the city should “strive to obtain the highest quality fire protection services with the least added cost to our taxes. We object to the county doubling the cost of fire services and then attempting to force this new tax. We support return of our fire department as provided for in our city charter and a return to local control and local hiring. Our local firehouse was adequate for the needs of our city but the [County Supervisor Robert] Lovingood administration is building a Taj Majal firehouse and now wants us to pay for it. We support paid call firefighters and we want our local young people to get trained. We are tired of county employees who want homes 45 minutes away in Lake Havasu City, including sheriff’s deputies, coming here, leaving us vulnerable if there is a call out and using our county vehicles to drive that distance into another state. We already pay property taxes that are supposed to cover fire protection services and we object to the planned rerouting of these public funds for other uses by our city management and council. We object to the unfair burden paying for county desert operations, including the new firehouse, thrust upon our shoulders without a vote.”
Of note is that the organized protestors in Needles stand a better chance of succeeding with their effort to quash the annexation, as Needles is the smallest of San Bernardino County’s 24 incorporated cities. Thus, the burden that must be met in obtaining the requisite number of protests is not as great in other municipalities in terms of sheer numbers.
The protest signatures may be submitted until the end of the hearing and will be evaluated by SBCLAFCO employees by counting the percentage of the number of registered voters on June 2, 2016 which was 1,607. If 25 percent of that total, 402, are good signatures of registered voters, the reorganization would be submitted to a vote in a special election. If more than 50 percent (804) of that total are received by the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission, then the reorganization would be terminated outright.
Similarly, SBCLAFCO will separately calculate the protests of property owners based upon the value of the parcels that they are protesting for. San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission Executive Officer, Kathleen Rollings-McDonald told the Sentinel that the total value of the proposed Needles service area property is $166,654,274 and that there are 4,849 land owners within the city limits. The value of each parcel is split evenly according to the number of land owners and each land owner is assigned a property value for purposes of calculating the protest vote. If protests are received from property owners controlling at least 25 percent of the value, then the reorganization will go to a vote at a special election. Similarly if protests are received from property owners controlling at least 50 percent of the value, then the reorganization will be terminated.
Musser-Lopez, a Democrat and member of the Desert Bones Democratic Club in Needles, personally appealed to Republicans in Needles to join with the auxiliary in taking a stand against the imposition of new and excessive taxes.

Six months after a Malibu-based law firm first put the arm on Chino, Upland and Rancho Cucamonga to force them to adopt ward voting systems as part of an effort to ensure political representation of ethnic minorities – Hispanics in particular – in those cities, Chino last week became the first to officially knuckle under to the threat of legal action.
In December, Kevin Shenkman, using the letterhead of his firm, Shenkman & Hughes, sent a boilerplate letter to more than a dozen cities in Southern California, including Rancho Cucamonga, Upland and Chino. Noting that the cities “relie[d] upon at-large election system[s] for electing candidates to [their] city council[s],” Shenkman charged that “voting within [those cities] is racially polarized, resulting in minority vote dilution, and therefore [those cities’] at large elections are violative of the California Voting Rights Act of 2001. It is our belief [those cities’] at-large system[s] dilute the ability of minority residents – particularly Latinos (a “protected class”) – to elect candidates of their choice or otherwise influence the outcome of [those cities’] council elections.” In those letters, Shenkman threatened to sue the cities “on behalf of residents” if those cities’ at-large council systems were not replaced by ones based on district representation.
Shenkman referenced a victory his firm had scored against the City of Palmdale in such a suit, bragging that Palmdale ultimately lost “After spending millions of dollars.”
The Chino City council, in accordance with advice offered by city attorney Jimmy Gutierrez, bowed to the pressure. The city hired two separate consultants, Marguerite Leoni, an attorney, and Douglas Johnson of National Demographics Corporation. Leoni and Johnson facilitated making the transition rapidly. Rather than holding a vote of city residents to ascertain whether they felt the formation of voting districts was appropriate, the city council by executive fiat directed that the city prepare to move toward district-based election by the upcoming election in November.
Less than three months after the council made that resolution, city officials last week completed the task of dividing 29.639-square mile, 77,983 population Chino into four voting districts.
The change will alter the way Chino does political business. Whereas under the at-large system used in the past all registered voters in Chino were eligible to vote in the city council’s elections traditionally held in even numbered years, this year, only residents of districts 1 and 4 will be able to vote for positions on the council. And only those living in those districts will be eligible to run for those council positions, with one candidate from each district getting the highest number of votes being elected. As chance would have it, current council members Glenn Duncan and Tom Haughey live in those districts. Neither faced opposition when they ran in 2012 and in 2008, when residents from anywhere in the city were eligible to run. It is an open question now whether an[y] opponent[s] for either or both will emerge this year now that the pool of potential candidates for those posts has been cut in half.
The theory behind holding ward elections is that racially polarized voting and minority vote dilution as a whole is less likely to occur in a political setting in which a city is divided into districts featuring at least one ward where the allegedly underrepresented minority ethnic group constitutes a majority or near majority of voters. City officials have not publicly said which of the city’s districts, if any, was consciously drawn to ensure it has a majority of Latino voters.
In Chino, as in the other cities, the mayor’s position will remain as one elected at large, so all city residents will be allowed to vote in this year’s mayoral election. Current Mayor Dennis Yates has indicated he will not seek reelection.
In 2018, Chino wards 2 and 3 will be in the election cycle. As chance or design would again have it, council members Eunice Ulloa and Earl Elrod live in those districts and their terms expire in 2018.
Chino residents can get a fix on their city’s district map by going to www.cityofchino.org/government-services/city-council/elections/voting-districts.
Earlier this year, when Shenkman deemed that Rancho Cucamonga officials were not acting with sufficient alacrity, he sued the city, which was served with the lawsuit on March 14. The lawsuit claimed the city was in violation of the California Voting Rights Act. The suit sought a court imposed requirement that Rancho Cucamonga have the district system in place by the November election.
That demand was an absurdity, since state law mandates that residents must literally elect to put an electoral ward system in place in cities with a population exceeding 100,000.
The City of Rancho Cucamonga and its attorney, James Markman, did not accede to Shenkman’s demand. Rather the city council voted to establish map criteria by which the city would be divided into four districts each with approximately 43,576 residents, which is one quarter of the city’s current estimated population of 174,305. The city is holding public hearings to assist it in establishing what the electoral map for the city will look like. It is anticipated a measure to approve the ward system as proposed will go before the voters in November. The possibility exists, however, that the voters will reject the imposition of a ward system or the particular ward system as represented by the map.
In Upland, the city council could have used its authority, as did the Chino City Council, to create the district system by drawing up four population-balanced wards and impose them on the city’s voters. Instead, the council chose to send the matter to a vote of the residents. After receiving Shenkman’s letter, the city attorney’s office negotiated with Shenkman’s firm, agreeing to pay Shenkman $45,000 and to draw up the plans for a ward system that the voters could consider. In return, Shenkman offered to hold off on filing the suit, at least until the vote on the district election forming measure is voted upon.
Upland is scheduled to hold a meeting on Wednesday June 22 at 3 p.m. at Sierra Vista Elementary School at which intends to hear public input on the drawing of the city’s ward system map. Another such meeting will be held on Saturday June 25 at Cabrillo Elementary School at 10 a.m.

The population of Trona is diminishing.
Situated at San Bernardino County’s extreme northwest corner, Trona is one of the county’s most obscure communities and is growing ever more obscure.
Adjacent to the dry Searles Lake bed, Trona came into existence as a remote mining outpost in the 1880s where borax was mined. Subsequently, the mining of the mineral trona, either in the form trisodium hydrogendicarbonate dihydrate or sodium sesquicarbonate dihydrate, became more predominant, and the town’s name was in this way derived. Trona is the primary source of sodium carbonate, also known as soda ash, produced in the United States. Soda ash is used in the fabrication of glass, detergents and dyes. Potash was also a major mineral mined in the Trona area.
In 1913, the American Trona Corporation, a mineral mining company, undertook to establish a company town at Trona, and planned and designed a community in which the workforce employed at the mines and in the chemical plant built there could live. As a self-contained company town, Trona became something of a world unto itself. Company employees were not paid in greenbacks or with checks but by company scrip, which was tender in the company-owned stores and shops in the town. The American Trona Corporation built a library, a school, a dance hall, recreation facilities, including a bowling alley and other amenities in the town. Several bars flourished both prior to, during and after Prohibition. The Trona Railway was built in 1913–14 to provide the town with a rail connection to what was then the Southern Pacific line at Searles.
The American Trona Corporation’s timing was excellent. An economic boom in Trona accompanied World War I, when Trona was the only reliable American source of potash, an important element used in the production of gunpowder.
The town’s population grew, peaking at around 7,000, making it what was at the time the eighth or ninth largest community in the county. There was talk of incorporating, but that never really got off the ground, since it was not in the American Trona Corporation’s interest to surrender control over the townsite.
Indeed, as the company went, so did the town.
The American Trona Corporation became the American Potash & Chemical Corporation in 1926, at which time its major products were borax, soda ash and sodium sulfate. Productions of these chemicals continued to expand throughout the 20th Century.
After World War II, the company was damaged by allegations that Latino workers were paid lower wages than whites.
In 1962 the company received nationwide recognition and an award for its innovative solvent extraction process to recover boric acid and potassium sulfate from weak brines.
In 1967, Kerr-McGee Corporation (now a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation) acquired American Potash and Chemical Corporation and they held operations of the Searles Valley facilities until 1990. That year the operations were purchased from capital investors D. George Harris and Associates, resulting in the formation of the North American Chemical Company. Ownership changed yet again in 1998 when IMC Global Incorporation acquired the North American Chemical Company.
In 2004 Sun Capital Partners purchased IMC Global Incorporation and renamed it Searles Valley Minerals, Inc. In November 2007, Nirma, based in Ahmedabad, India purchased the company from Sun Capital Partners.
While the population of Trona in 2000 stood at 2,742, it has been steadily declining ever since.
The Trona Unified School District boasts two schools, an elementary school and a seventh through 12th grade high school. The district currently has an enrollment of 262. In 2016, 18 seniors graduated from the high school.
Several years ago, an arsonist began his destructive work, and as many as two dozen homes all over the community have been destroyed.
Today, Trona boasts a post office, a sheriff’s substation, a fire station, a store and a single restaurant, called Esparza.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
When is theft not a crime? When is burglary not a crime? When is a conspiracy not a conspiracy? Apparently, when government officials are the conspirators who deliberately arrange to engage in burglary and theft and then execute upon their plan…
The Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company predated the creation of the Town of Apple Valley by something like 43 years. The Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company was created in 1945 by Newt Bass and B.J. Westlund as an adjunct to their real estate company, Apple Valley Ranchos, which was their undertaking to develop Apple Valley. They were successful in a way they never lived to see and in 1988, the Town of Valley incorporated. At that time, the newly-formed town had the opportunity to acquire, for $2.5 million, the water system that served the community from Park Water Company, which had picked up Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company the year before. Park Water provided water to Compton, Downey and Norwalk in Los Angeles County and was then owned by the Wheeler Family. The Wheeler Family offered to let the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company go, but the newly minted Apple Valley Town Council, in its wisdom, declined at that time, choosing not to convert the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company to a municipal division, concerned less about the initial expense of acquiring the utility than with the projected ongoing and constant costs of having to repair, upgrade and maintain the system. In 2011, the Carlisle Group acquired from the Wheeler Family at a cost of $102.2 million the Park Water Company, which in addition to its Los Angeles County and Apple Valley holdings, also included the Mountain Water Company, based in Missoula, Montana. In 2011, the town impaneled a so-called blue ribbon committee to consider acquiring Apple Valley Ranchos. The committee advised against it. Then in 2014, prevailing sentiment shifted when Park, which in 2012 initiated rate increases on Apple Valley Ranchos customers totaling 19 percent while completing $8.1 million in capital improvements to the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company, tagged on another 30 percent rate hike on Apple Valley Ranchos customers to be implemented from 2015 until 2017. Shortly thereafter, town officials began trading notes with Missoula city officials, where Park Water’s Mountain Water Company had likewise escalated rates and local officials in the Big Sky Country sought to use eminent domain to acquire the water company. In late 2015, Park Water Co., Apple Valley Ranchos Water Co. and Western Water Holdings LLC proposed the sale of its assets to Liberty Utilities, doing business as Liberty Western Water Holdings Inc, for $327 million. During the last week of 2015, the California Public Utilities Commission signed off on that sale. The Town of Apple Valley in the first week of 2016 then moved to condemn the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company and use its power of eminent domain to take possession of the division of Liberty Utilities which operates the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company…
I hope I do not have to explain that there is a whole school of thought out there that holds that eminent domain is tantamount to out-and-out thievery. In concept, eminent domain exists to allow the greater public good to be served when a private property owns something – land or an operation – that the government needs to accomplish what a majority of its decision makers consider to be a worthwhile undertaking. A classic example would be a circumstance where a city or county or state government wants to build a bridge over a river. By building that bridge, hundreds or thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of people every day will see the benefit of being able to cross the river without having to drive many miles to another existing bridge up or down stream. For the majority of people who must traverse the river at that point, the use of eminent domain is a benefit. Perhaps the owner of the land where the bridge is to be built has plans for his land that don’t include a bridge. Maybe he wants to construct a marina on his property adjacent to the river. Or maybe he wants to build a riverside hotel. Maybe for those possible reasons or others, he does not want to sell his property. Eminent domain is the power of the government to force that riverside land owner to sell his land, even if he does not want to…
Eminent domain can be used for other things besides acquiring land. Maybe someone owns a car factory and a war comes and the government needs the factory to build tanks. It can use eminent domain to condemn the factory and pay the owner “fair market value” for it and then commandeer the factory for its war materiel manufacturing needs. The point here is that eminent domain legalizes taking something from someone against his or her will. Notice I used the term “legalizes,” because, to my way of thinking, this in no way “legitimizes” that taking. I know, I know, the person who loses what he owns gets paid something. But it still grates on me that someone can be forced to give up something he possesses against his will. In any other context, we call this stealing…
I have gotten slightly adrift of where I want to go with this, as I am not zeroing in, exactly, on eminent domain. It is important, though, to understand that what I am about to focus on here plays against the backdrop of the Town of Apple Valley’s use of eminent domain. It may even explain this governmental mentality in which government officials somehow believe that they have an entitlement to steal…
Apple Valley happens to own a golf course. Golf courses are water intensive. You have to keep the fairways and greens watered. It is not as if having a golf course in the middle of the desert, where Apple Valley is located, is a good idea to begin with. It has grown even worse with the now four-year running drought. In April, Apple Valley officials were becoming concerned about the health of the grass on the golf course’s fairways and greens. At some point that month the situation was exacerbated when a power surge disabled the pumps to the town’s well that provides irrigation water for the golf course…
On April 29, workers with the Town of Apple Valley took it upon themselves to go to a waterworks control vault owned by Liberty Utilities that is proximate to the golf course and bust the lock on the a vault, thereby gaining access to the company’s meters and control valves for the water system. Once in control of Liberty’s system, or a portion thereof, town workers then conveyed Liberty’s water, later determined to be some 869,000 gallons, into the town’s golf course irrigation system. This water heist lasted for three full days, until May 2, and was carried out entirely without the knowledge of Liberty Utilities…
Precisely how many town workers were in on this caper is not known beyond the confines of Town Hall. The story is that the town’s public works director, Greg Snyder, did not tell the town manager, Frank Robinson, about what occurred until well after April 29. Whether that is entirely true is not really known, considering that Apple Valley officials have such a penchant for stealing and lying to begin with. As of this writing Robinson hasn’t seen fit to fire Snyder or any of Snyder’s minions, which I take as an indication that a lot of winking and nodding was going on…
For their part, Liberty Utilities corporate officers registered a protest over the town’s action, but stopped short of lodging a criminal complaint, although they made clear that in other cases where regular citizens have tapped into the company’s water system without authorization, the company normally files a criminal complaint with the germane law enforcement authorities. In this case, because the company is trying to make peace with the town and stay on its good side, it merely billed the town $6,754.61 for the stolen water…
No no one at the town has been disciplined either for the risk town officials who pulled off this brazen theft subjected town residents to. It seems that in tapping into Liberty’s water, which is intended for all order of human consumption – drinking, cooking, bathing, washing, etcetera – the water was siphoned off through a system that did not have a backflow preventer, meaning that contaminated water sitting in the golf course irrigating system could have washed back into Liberty’s pipes once the water pressure into the city’s system equalized…
Perhaps most disappointing in all of this? The performance of Apple Valley Sheriff’s Captain Lana Tomlin and Sheriff John McMahon. The Town of Apple Valley contracts with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement service, one of fourteen of the county’s 24 incorporated municipalities that does so. Sheriff McMahon, with his family, resides in Apple Valley. Yet he and Captain Tomlin have shrunk, absolutely shrunk, from their duty to uphold the law. They have a clear indication that the theft occurred. They even have a pretty good idea of who perpetuated the act. Yet the sheriff’s department is not even investigating the theft as a crime. That town employees took action that might poison his family by putting into his own home and the homes of his neighbors contaminated tap water is of less significance to Sheriff McMahon than maintaining a “positive working relationship” with Apple Valley’s governmental officials. Someone should explain to Captain Tomlin and Sheriff McMahon that seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil is not a virtue in those who are sworn to uphold the law. How does the saying go? One hand washes the other…

James William Gerrard was born on April 2, 1910 in Santa Ana in Orange County. He was the son of Albert C. Gerrard, formerly of Canada, and Emma L. (Bond) Gerrard of Indiana. James graduated from high school in Pomona after the family moved there in 1920 and he later studied for and obtained a real estate broker’s license, which required “college education equivalence” in experience and training.
He married Pauline M. Thomas of Los Angeles on October 24, 1934 in Los Angeles. They had one daughter, Linda Annette, later Mrs. Linda Walkup. James and Pauline had two grandchildren.
James Gerrard’s father was the founder and first president of the Alpha Beta Food Market chain. It was only natural that his sons should follow in his footsteps. James Gerrard became the owner of Gerrard’s Market in San Bernardino in 1940, following his farther’s death, and his brother, Paul Gerrard, became the owner of Gerrard’s Market in Redlands. In 1945, James Gerrard helped to establish Radio Station KRNO, later KBON, in San Bernardino and was elected its president.
In November 1952, James Gerrard was elected to the board of supervisors to represent the Fifth District. He held this post for four years, being succeeded by Nancy Smith. During his term of office as a San Bernardino County supervisor, the county’s flood control district under took the extensive North San Bernardino Flood Control Project, which required a municipal bond issue amounting to $3,425,000. Other significant construction included considerable work in the Twin Creek Spreading Grounds, costing $108,000; Twin Creek Channel work amounting to $132.000; Small Canyon Dam construction of $123,000; and Mojave River work of $153,000. There were also three three major Army Corps of Engineers projects constructed or begun during this period. – the $7.3 million San Antonio Dam was completed as was the $250,000 Lytle-Cajon Island Levee and the $2 million Devil Creek Diversion Channel was started. It was in 1952 and 1953 that the 1,500-foot long $455,000 Cucamonga Creek box culvert was built at Ontario Airport by the Air National Guard.
As a county supervisor, Gerrard sponsored the county’s $9 million new-building program and moved for a “T-wing” annex to the courthouse. He sponsored the Board of Trade, the Industrial Commission and other significant projects. He was a member of the Native Sons of the Golden West and the Assembly of God Church and was the president of the Full Gospel Christian Men’s Fellowhip, Interntional. He had just been relected to a a second term in that office when he died suddenly on Febraury 12, 1977 at the age of 66.

California mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus californicus, is a subspecies of mule deer whose range covers much of the state of California, including the San Bernardino Mountains and the San Gabriel Mountains in San Bernardino County.
The California mule deer’s antlers fork in an upward growth, distinguishing it from the closely related black-tailed deer and white-tailed deer, the antlers of which grow in a forward direction. It is named for its ears, which are large like those of the mule. The mule deer has a height of 31 inches to 42 inches at the shoulders and a nose to tail length ranging from 3.9 to 6.9 feet. Adult bucks normally weigh 120 to 330 pounds, averaging around 200 pounds. Does are smaller and typically weigh from 95 to 200 pounds, with an average of around 150 pounds.
Although capable of running, mule deer are often seen stotting, which is also called pronking, with all 4 feet coming down together.
The Odocoileus hemionus californicus subspecies is widespread throughout northern and central California in the California coastal prairie as well as inner coastal ranges and interior mountains, as well as the Sierra Nevada. This deer will much less frequently be found on the floor of the interior valleys, and then it will mostly frequent riparian zones.
Generally, the California mule deer has a preference for hill terrain, especially an oak woodland habitat. It is a browser and will typically take over ninety percent of its diet from shrubs and leaves and the balance from grasses.
California mule deer usually browse close to lakes or streams providing their water source. From that reference point of water consumption they may roam one to two miles, and typically make their beds in grassy areas beneath trees within such a one-mile distance radius from both water and forage.
Repeated beds will often be scratched to a nearly level surface, about six-and-a-half feet in diameter. Less regularly used bedding areas are manifested as flattened grass. On hot summer days California mule deer often seek shade and rest in the mid-day.
In summer, California mule deer mainly browse on leaves of small trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, but also consume many types of berries, including blackberries, huckleberries, salal and thimbleberries. In winter, they may expand their forage to conifers, particularly twigs of Douglas fir, aspen, willow, dogwood, juniper, and sage. Year-round, they will feed on acorns; grasses are a secondary food source. Where humans have encroached on historic deer habitat by suburban development or orchards, California mule deer will diversify their diet with garden plant material, with tree fruit, and, occasionally, even with pet food.
Fawns and does tend to forage together in familial groupings while bucks tend to travel singly or with other bucks. California mule deer browse most actively near dawn and dusk, but will also forage at night in open agricultural areas or when experiencing hunting pressure.
Rutting season occurs in autumn when the does come into estrus for a period lasting only several days. Males manifest aggressive behavior in competing for mates. Does will begin estrus again if they do not mate. The gestation period is approximately 200 days, with fawns arriving in the spring. Mule deer females usually give birth to two fawns, although if it is their first time having a fawn, they often only have one. The young will remain with mothers throughout the summer and become weaned in the autumn. The buck’s antlers fall off in the winter-time but begin to regrow almost at once or by early spring in anticipation of the next autumn’s rut.
Since prehistoric times the Native American indigenous peoples of California are known to have hunted California mule deer. It appears that for 14,000 years human populations have served as a control to the numbers of California mule deer. In the modern era, since European colonists and Euro-Americans settled in California, hunting pressure intensified as the human population expanded and hunting became an activity associated with more than just food supply. In addition human population growth through urban development in California has consumed large amounts of natural habitat of the California mule deer starting in the late 19th Century and continuing through the present.
The mule deer’s several predators other than humans include mountain lions. This leading natural predator often select weak, sickly, or young deer to kill, but will also take down the largest and healthiest mule deer on occasion. Bobcats, coyotes, black bears are capable of preying on adult deer, but usually either only attack fawns or infirm specimens or eat the deer after it has died naturally.