By Mark Gutglueck
For five years Ontario kept up the same incessant drum beat: Los Angeles was purposefully mismanaging Ontario International Airport. The drumming was followed by this mantra: The megalopolis to the west, in accordance with its own selfish agenda related to advancing its own economy and the use and expansion of Los Angeles International Airport, is holding Ontario International Airport back. The drum beat and mantra would then be punctuated with this refrain: Give the airport back!
A campaign inspired and at least partially quarterbacked by Ontario City Councilman Alan Wapner, which was signed onto by all of his council colleagues, involved a full court press in which the public was repeatedly subjected to the proposition that Ontario Airport would expand its status from that of a medium hub regional airport to its rightful position as the most dynamic large scale hub airport in the country, if only it could unbind itself of the yoke Los Angeles had used to encumbered it.
In 1985, during the absence of then-mayor Robert Ellingwood, four members of the Ontario City Council as it was then composed deeded Ontario Airport to the City of Los Angeles for no consideration. That transaction was considered a public benefit transfer, one that came about because the City of Los Angeles and the corporate entity, Los Angeles World Airports, it used to operate its department of airports, had met all of the criteria that had been laid out in a joint operating agreement entered into some seventeen-and-a-half years previously. With a few notable exceptions, such as Ellingwood, most Ontario officials at that time believed granting Los Angeles possession of the airport to be beneficial.
Indeed, for four decades – from 1967, when the two cities entered into the joint powers authority relating to the airport, until 2007, when not just Ontario and Los Angeles but all of Southern California, all of California and the entire nation was first gripped by what would turn out to be a six-year-running economic downturn and lingering recession – the relationship between Ontario and Los Angeles vis-a-vis the airport could not have been more positive or cordial.
Wapner, somewhat ironically, was a creature of Los Angeles, having attended and graduated from both Los Alamitos High School, lying just across the Orange County Line immediately south of the Los Angeles County limits, and USC. As an Ontario councilman, however, he had no reluctance to militate against Los Angeles, where his roots were. By sheer force of personality, through coaxing and wheedling his council colleagues to demand that the airport be returned to Ontario, Wapner relentlessly pushed on, insisting the smaller city was being taken advantage of by Los Angeles. With each succeeding week it seemed, Wapner’s attacks grew ever more pointed and vitriolic and the campaign ever more acrimonious. Los Angeles and its officials, in charge of one of the world’s great and most celebrated municipalities, didn’t quite know what to make of the tempest and crisis its little sister and its officials to the east seemed intent upon precipitating. They attempted to carry on, remarking, with some degree of justification, that the downturn in passenger traffic into and out of Ontario was a byproduct of the lingering recession and contractions in the airline industry, exacerbated by the reluctance of airlines to maintain marginally profitable flights to hub airports. Wapner and his cohorts rejected those assertions as claptrap and excuses, demonizing the then-executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, Gina Marie Lindsay, as intent on running Ontario Airport, and the accompanying regional economy into the ground. Then, in 2012, Ontario formed, with San Bernardino County, the Ontario International Airport Authority. In 2013 it followed up with the filing of an administrative claim against the City of Los Angeles, in which it accused Los Angeles World Airports with neglecting the marketing of Ontario International Airport while imposing on airlines still operating there exorbitant enplaning and servicing fees that resulted in a precipitous drop in the number of passengers flying into and out of Ontario.
When Los Angeles rejected that administrative claim without addressing the specific and detailed grounds for relief contained therein, Ontario, represented by the law firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton filed suit against Los Angeles, seeking the return of the airport. After several rounds of legal sparring, 13 months ago, Los Angeles essentially capitulated, agreeing in principle to surrender not only operation but ownership of the airport in a deal that called for Ontario to fork over to Los Angeles $150 million for the airport itself, $60 million to purchase assets technically belonging to Los Angeles World Airports that are in place at Ontario Airport and which are crucial or indispensable to its operations and take on bonded indebtedness of roughly $60 million related to the financing for the provision of airport infrastructure that has become Ontario’s responsibility to service. In December 2015, officials with both cities signed a transfer pact that memorialized the $270 million deal, and tentatively scheduled Ontario’s actual takeover for July 1, 2016. Because there was a delay in the passage of federal legislation allowing passenger facility charges collected at Ontario International being used to make good on Ontario’s payments due to Los Angeles, the transfer has been delayed until November 1.
And while Ontario’s propaganda for the last six years has been that the airport will overnight transform itself on the basis of local control and the move away from Los Angeles’s ownership, the reality is very different. Indeed, the reality appears to be the precise opposite of the myth that Ontario perpetuated in its crusade to recapture the airport. At Ontario, seven airlines now flying into and out of Ontario International Airport. Sixty airlines fly into and out of Los Angeles International Airport. Los Angeles could induce, indeed has induced, airlines to fly to Ontario by offering them gate position advantage at Los Angeles International Airport. Ontario and the Ontario International Airport Authority possesses no such leverage. Los Angeles is a major player – or more accurately, one of the top five or six worldwide players – in the realm of passenger aviation.
Kelly Fredericks, who was lured away from managing Rhode Island’s largest airport to serve as Ontario International Airport’s CEO early this year, has seen passenger traffic drop at Ontario International Airport since he has been in charge of Ontario’s oversight of the airport. In the first six months of 2016, the airport sustained a 0.1 percent decrease – a downturn of 2,035 passengers – over the same period in 2015. Simultaneously, in Orange County John Wayne Airport experienced a 10.2 increase. Among Southern California’s sizeable inland commercial airports, Ontario’s performance in that regard was hands down the worst. Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport, the Southern California airport with the next lowest-performance in terms of passenger growth, saw a 1.7 percent increase in its number of passengers since last year.
In the starkest of terms, Southern California, with a population of more than 24 million, of which some 20 percent are considered affluent, will see roughly 103 million passengers embarking and disembarking at its airports in 2006. Roughly 79,310,000 to 80,340,000 of those, or some 77 to 78 percent, will fly into or out of Los Angeles International Airport. At Ontario International Airport in the same time frame, some 4,326,000 passengers will embark and disembark there, 4.2 percent of the region’s passenger share. More than a year after Los Angeles unofficially returned the airport to Ontario, it is languishing as it had for the previous seven years and the rhetoric city officials used in forcing Los Angeles to disgorge it has been revealed as wishful hyperbole.
Indeed, rather than adding to the seven airlines now functioning out of the airport – AeroMexico, Alaska, American, Delta, Southwest, United/United Express and Volaris – most of those have but a token presence in Ontario, with Southwest Airlines accounting for 54 percent of the passengers that come through the airport.
Ontario city officials and Fredericks are trying to ignore a rampant rumor that shortly after Ontario takes full authority over the airport in November, that list of seven airlines will be reduced to six or five.
In 2007, when the airport was under the management of Los Angeles World Airports, Ontario International accounted for 8.6 percent of the passenger traffic in Southern California. And while Ontario officials laid at the feet of Los Angeles the blame for the steady drop off of passengers at the airport that hit a 20-year low of 3,969,974 in 2013, it is the airlines that are the ultimate arbiters in terms of how many flights they will schedule into and out of the airport. Thus, the airport appears to have fallen into a type of chicken-or-the-egg syndrome. It needs airlines to agree to schedule more flights into and out of the aerodrome so that more passengers will likewise fly into or out of Ontario; but until more passengers materialize, the airlines are not inclined to increase the number of flights at the facility. And, having abandoned its partnership with Los Angeles, the City of Ontario does not have the leverage to induce the airlines to step up the number of flights at Ontario, even as some of them are contemplating leaving altogether.
Ontario’s best prospect of having the airlines return is that the airport will reassume the eight to nine percent share of the Southern California passenger market it enjoyed in 2006 and 2007.
The degree to which Ontario officials have deluded themselves and others into believing their own propaganda was thrown into stark relief when Ontario officials confidently stated the leadership team in place at the airport has everything under control. In hiring Fredericks, the Ontario International Airport Authority Board, which is dominated by the City of Ontario, assumed he would have some formula for marketing the airport to the general flying public and persuading three to four times the current seven airlines to set up operations at Ontario International. Fredericks acknowledged recently he has only begun to look into the myriad of challenges facing the airport, and he is turning to others, including consultants and the public, to clue him in as to what should be done.
Along those lines, the airport authority last week hired Daniel E. Adamus as its chief marketing officer. He will join Cassie MacDuff as the airport’s marketing manager.
The most upbeat news coming out of the airport issue in the last fortnight was Fitch Rating’s indication on Monday September 12 that it had uprated Ontario International Airport bonds, previously deemed as negative, to stable.
Of note is that Fitch’s assessment of the mid- and long term financial health of the airport clashes somewhat with that of Standard and Poor’s, another bond rating firm.
Fitch Rating’s uprating of the airport bonds is based on the controvertible assertion that the airport’s passenger traffic is on the upswing. In 2011 Ontario Airport had 4,551,875 passengers. In 2012, 4,318,994 passengers.
In 2013, 3,969,974 passengers. In 2014, 4,127,278 passengers. In 2015, passenger traffic at Ontario reached 4,209,311. But, as earlier noted, passenger traffic at Ontario dropped during the first six months of the current year. And projections are that there will actually be fewer passengers passing through the airports gates this year than last.
Fitch Ratings’ size-up of Ontario International’s fiscal health was not based on the most-up-to-date data. “The outlook revision reflects the stabilizing traffic performance” after a lengthy period of declines since the recession, the Fitch Ratings report states. “Boardings have increased since fiscal 2015 and remain above 2 million.”
Fitch states the airport, prior to beginning the round of payments to Los Angeles, has an unrestricted cash reserve of $67 million, which would be enough to cover operations for nearly one-and-three-fifths of a year. The airport has a debt service coverage ratio above 1.6, with annual debt service payments ranging from $7 million to $7.3 million, according to Fitch.
One reality that cannot be denied is that under the stewardship of Los Angeles, Ontario International Airport prospered.
In 1967, when Ontario Airport yet had a gravel parking lot and fewer than 200,000 passengers passing through its gates annually, the Ontario City Council ratified the joint operating agreement with the city of Los Angeles to permit the larger city to use its stronger negotiating position with the airlines serving Southern California to induce them to utilize the Ontario facility. Using its leverage, Los Angeles persuaded a whole host of airlines to begin flying into and out of Ontario.
By 1969, flights out of Ontario dramatically increased. In short order, Continental Airlines, PSA, United, American Airlines, Hughes Air West, and Delta established routes from Ontario. In the early 1970s, Ontario was in competition with John Wayne Airport in Orange County, which at that time was expanding dramatically. Though a benchmark of 10 million passengers at the airport by 1975 was not achieved, the Los Angeles Department of Airports still assiduously promoted Ontario International.
In 1981, a modern, second east-to-west runway was built, necessitating the removal of the old northeast-to-southwest runway.
After all of the performance criteria in the original joint operating agreement were achieved, in 1985 the city of Ontario deeded the airport to the city of Los Angeles for no consideration. Under Los Angeles World Airports’ guidance the former backwater air field was transformed into a world class aerodrome, its existing east-west runway was improved and another constructed so that it now has the largest civilian runway in California. The facility now boasts an ultra-modern concourse and two state-of-the art terminals.
In 2007, passenger traffic at the airport reached 7.2 million, a 3,600 percent improvement over what the airport experienced when it was last under the control of Ontario.

HIGHLAND—Public interest groups filed a lawsuit late yesterday challenging the City of Highland’s approval of the high-density Harmony development in the rustic area straddling the extreme extension of Highland into Mentone along the foothills at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains near the headwaters of the Santa Ana River.
Harmony, the remote development project sponsored by Upland-based Lewis Operating Company, is proposed for land at the confluence of Mill Creek and the Santa Ana River, directly adjacent to San Bernardino National Forest lands. It will cover 1,657 acres acquired by Orange County Flood Control in the Seven Oaks Dam project area with 3,632 houses and other improvements and amenities. The project area is currently home to numerous endangered species, rare habitats, wetlands and crucial wildlife connectivity corridors.
The new development calls for the construction of the more than 3,600 new housing units on 658 acres as well as a neighborhood commercial center covering close to six acres, an additional 16 acres set aside for neighborhood commercial uses, community public facilities that include the development of one elementary school, a 1.5-acre site set aside for the development of a new fire station after 1,000 homes are built and water
reservoirs, a water treatment facility, a sewage treatment plant, and a pump station.
The residential neighborhood will be confined to 658 acres of the land. The commercial and public infrastructure and utility uses, including the school site and wastewater and water treatment facilities will monopolize around 100 acres. Some 1,900 acres in and around the project footprint will remain, at least for the foreseeable future, as open space.
Homes will range from 1,500 square feet to estate homes of almost 4,000 square feet.
“There’s nothing harmonious about the Harmony development,” said Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Not only does this project threaten endangered species and some of their most important habitat but the city’s analysis did a lousy job of looking at how Harmony will affect air quality, traffic and the climate crisis.”
The lawsuit was brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society and the Greenspot Residents Association, who are represented by the law firm Shute, Mihaly and Weinberger. It argues the City of Highland City Council’s August 11 approval of the project violates the California Environmental Quality Act.
The proposed development site is far removed from Highland’s city services and is vulnerable to episodic fire, catastrophic flooding, and the San Andreas Fault, project critics contend. The suit maintains that the environmental review completely ignored that a bridge over Mill Creek – which would be required to access the development – will permanently alter that free flowing creek. The project will also harm rare and protected species, including critical habitat for endangered San Bernardino kangaroo ratsand federally threatened Santa Ana sucker fish as well as habitat for endangered southwestern willow flycatchers, the plaintiffs assert.
“It is developments such as this that push rare plants and animals to the brink of extinction,” said Drew Feldmann of the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society. “The amount of rare wildlife and habitat already existing on the site points to conserving it, not developing it.”
Nearby residents, including those within the Highland City Limits and those outside the city, have not embraced the project. Beyond objecting to the development of what is rustic property at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains and the headwaters of the Santa Ana River, other specific issues were raised by local residents who contested the project proposal, including ones pertaining to traffic circulation, the burden 3,632 homes will place on the school system, water use, the reliance on a Mello-Roos financing arrangement for the infrastructure on the project that will impose on the future owners of the homes in the project assessment above and beyond the property taxes they will be obliged to pay, the consideration that some of the project property was taken from the previous owner by eminent domain, and public safety concerns stemming from the project’s location, its vulnerability to flooding and fire and inadequate routes of escape in an emergency.
Two groups, the Greenspot Residents Association and the Alliance for Mill Creek, registered opposition to the project.
A draft environmental impact report was circulated amongst nearby property owners between March 21, 2014 and May 5, 2014 and after 50 comments from the public were received it was amended and re-circulated once more with changes to the air quality, biological resources and traffic issues. A final environmental impact report was completed and made available to the public on March 17, 2016.
Earlier this year, city staff, led by city manager Joseph Hughes, public works director Ernest Wong, community development director Lawrence Mainez and assistant community development director Kim Stater, generated a report, essentially justifying staff’s collective recommendation to the council to approve the project. In that response, at least some of the opponents’ points were addressed.
While the staff report conceded that “In some instances, mitigation measures for the project could not reduce the level of impact to less than significant [in the areas of] air quality, transportation and traffic,” the city council had the legal authority “to determine whether the benefits of the project outweigh significant environmental effects” and that the council was entitled through its authority to “adopt a statement of overriding considerations stating the reasons supporting the approval notwithstanding the significant environmental effects.”
On August 11, the Highland City Council held a meeting that was entirely devoted to considering the Harmony project. Ultimately, the council adopted the statement of overriding considerations, adopted the environmental impact report, amendments to the general plan relating to the project, approved the zone change, adopted the specific plan, approved the development agreement, and approved the subdivision of the property.
The Greenspot Residents Association is an unincorporated association comprised of concerned citizens within the area historically known as “Greenspot,” that covers much of the Mentone, Redlands, and Mill Creek Canyon communities. Dedicated to the historic, cultural, ecological and agricultural preservation of the area, the association was formed and is managed exclusively by local residents.
“The area has a long tradition of rural and agricultural living, not high density housing as is proposed with the Harmony plan” said Wendy Rea, executive director of the Greenspot Residents Association. “This development is precisely the sort of ill-conceived 1960’s leap-frog planning that has plagued this county for decades. Rather than focus on economic development and urban renewal, the city and an outside county have pushed an enormously unpopular development on a remote, annexed piece of land surrounded by unincorporated citizens. It is a fundamentally flawed and unsafe plan, built on a heritage of eminent domain and disregard for the community.”
Randall Lewis, the executive president of the Lewis Operating Company, this morning told the Sentinel, “I haven’t had a chance to look at the lawsuit but our team of consultants and attorneys will be examining it very closely. What I can say is that at this point we believe this is a good project that went through a very thorough environmental review and approval process.”

The saga of Apple Valley’s quest for water independence grew even more absurd this week with the revelation that the town has spent over $1.5 million in the last five years in procedural, research and legal fees aimed at acquiring the town’s water system.
In 1988, shortly after the formation of the town, the water system’s then-owner offered to sell it to Town Hall for $2.5 million. The town spurned that offer, and the water system has changed hands twice. At present, the current owner, Liberty Utilities, does not appear disposed to sell it for anything less than $90 million. The town, in the meantime, appears purposed to effectuate a takeover of the water system, up to and including utilizing its power of eminent domain to force a sale.
Assistant town manager Marc Puckett, who oversees Apple Valley’s finance department, this week told the town council and the public that between January 1, 2011 and August 31, 2016, the town has expended just over $1.5 million in taxpayer funds in simply looking into the possibility of purchasing the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company from the Wheeler Family/Park Water Company, the Carlisle Group and Liberty. According to Puckett, the town spent $1.1 million between January 1, 2011 and January 1 of this year dealing with water takeover issues, and another $400,000 in the first eight months of this year. Of the $1.5 million laid out, $974,205 has been spent on legal fees, Puckett said.
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, their undertaking to develop Apple Valley after they acquired 6,500 acres from the Southern Pacific Railroad for $2.50 per acre. Bass and Westlund installed the minimum amount of infrastructure to support the construction of subdivisions and make the community grow, anticipating that as Apple Valley matured, that infrastructure would be replaced by higher quality pipes, reservoirs, pumping units and appurtenances. It would turn out, however, that as the town was built piecemeal, the water company merely expanded with it, a hodgepodge of water mains and lines built one after the other, patched together in correspondence to the new development it was called upon to serve.
While Apple Valley was yet an unincorporated county area, the Wheeler Family acquired the Apple Valley Rancho Water Company.
Shortly after the town’s 1988 incorporation, its maiden town council spurned the Wheelers’ offer to sell the town the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company for $2.5 million. Town officials at that time were 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, an American multinational private equity and asset management corporation, acquired from the Wheeler Family at a cost of $102.2 million the Park Water Company, which in addition to its water holdings in Apple Valley included the water system serving Compton, Downey and Bellflower in Los Angeles County, as well as the Mountain Water Company, which serves Missoula, Montana.
The Carlisle Group packaged the water companies serving Missoula, Bellflower, Compton, Downey, Missoula and Apple Valley together as what it called Western Water Holdings and put them on the market. In addition, in the summer of 2015, the Carlisle Group had arranged for Apple Valley Ranchos to acquire, for $300,000, the water system which serves some 900 residents in the desert community of Yermo, which lies roughly 36 miles from Apple Valley.
Three years ago, the Town of Apple Valley, alarmed at the prospect that the water company serving the community’s 69,135 residents and its businesses was about to be purchased by a Canadian company, challenged the proposed sale by means of a complaint to the California Public Utilities Commission,
Town officials enunciated concern that the joint application left open questions as to how Algonquin/Liberty would balance out the proposed $327 million purchase price for Park Water without subsequently imposing substantial increases in the rates Apple Valley residents and businesses would pay for their water, particularly given that Algonquin/Liberty would need to assume at least $77 million of existing long-term debt tied into Park’s assets. Almost two years ago, the California Office of Ratepayer Advocates entered its own protest with regard to the application, citing a succession of issues which were counter to the public interest.
In 2011, the same year that the Carlisle Group purchased Park Water, the town of Apple Valley impaneled a so-called blue ribbon committee to consider acquiring Apple Valley Ranchos. Again, however, the town failed to bite the bullet and buy the water system when the committee advised against the acquisition. Prevailing sentiment abruptly changed less than three years later, however. Park, after beginning to implement in 2012 rate increases on Apple Valley Ranchos customers totaling 19 percent and then completing $8.1 million in capital improvements to the Apple Valley Ranchos Water Company in 2014, instituted 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.
Subsequently, the city of Missoula utilized its power of eminent domain to condemn and seek to acquire Mountain Water Company from Park Water Company. Mountain Water fought the takeover, but when the matter went to trial before Judge Karen Townsend in April 2015 it resulted in Townsend on June 15, 2015 entering a judgment in favor of Missoula.
Even before Missoula prevailed in that case, town of Apple Valley officials began angling to take Apple Valley Ranchos away from Park Water Company, banking on a strategy that included blocking Algonquin/Liberty’s acquisition through its protest to the California Public Utility Commission, and then achieving either an amenable or forced purchase of Apple Valley Ranchos through a financing strategy involving issuing bonds to create the capital to make the purchase. The town calculated it would be able to service the bonded indebtedness and carry out improvements to the water system by means of the payments made to the city by water users/customers, i.e., the town’s residents. The town’s officials maintain that the revenue from the water sales will be dedicated solely to this bonded debt service and water division operations and maintenance and can be effectuated without any water rate increases.
That scenario was highly dependent upon Park Water’s willingness to sell the Apple Valley Ranchos water system lock, stock and barrel for a price of the town’s choosing, i.e., around $50 million. In support of this, the town, obtained from what it referred to as “an independent appraisal firm” the rather wishful “fair purchase price” of $45.54 million.
That strategy, however, ran aground when the California Public Utilities Commission’s entered a ruling in late December 2015 that the conditional sale to Liberty could proceed.
In January 2016, Liberty Utilities, an American subsidiary of Canadian-owned Algonquin Power and Utility Corporation, finalized its acquisition of Apple Valley Ranchos by consummating the purchase of Park Water Company from the Carlyle Group.
Though the California Public Utilities Commission’s action did not rule out the possibility that Apple Valley might acquire Apple Valley Ranchos from Liberty by means of the eminent domain process or otherwise, Liberty’s willingness to pay what the market bears for Park’s collective water assets is a strong indication that the Town of Apple Valley’s notion that it will be able to acquire Apple Valley Ranchos for anything near the $45.54 million the town’s “independent” appraiser previously said it is worth or the $50.3 million offer tendered by the town in informal discussions with Park last year is entirely unrealistic.
In Montana, local water commissioners in June 2015 set the fair market price of the Mountain Water Company, which owns and operates 37 mostly shallow and medium-depth wells, at $88.6 million, pursuant to the eminent domain confiscation process of that entity successfully achieved by the City of Missoula through Judge Townsend’s court. Missoula, with 69,821 residents, is comparable in population size to Apple Valley, which numbers roughly 71,000 at present.
In Los Angeles County, Park Water supplies between five and six percent of Compton’s water by means of the four wells it operates there, while purchasing somewhere between 92 and 94 percent of the water delivered to Compton from the Central Basin Municipal Water District which wholesales potable water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. In Bellflower and Downey, Park Water supplies about 15 percent of the supply to those two cities with water drawn from the groundwater basin through its eight wells there, while purchasing roughly 81 percent through the Central Basin Municipal Water District.
In addition, the Golden State Water Company also serves the communities of Compton, Downey and Bellflower.
By contrast, the Apple Valley Ranchos Water company operates 24 deep wells throughout Apple Valley and three wells in Yermo.
Though there are other methods of calculating the value of a water purveying operation than the sheer number of its wells, in using that yardstick, it appears that Apple Valley Ranchos’ 24-well operation in Apple Valley entails one third of Algonquin’s Western Water Holdings’ 72-well inventory of water-producing assets. With Algonquin having just paid $327 million for Western Water Holdings, it stands to reason any judge hearing the eminent domain case will accept, unless the Town of Apple Valley can present compelling evidence to support a conclusion otherwise, that Apple Valley Ranchos is valued at somewhere in the neighborhood of $109 million. While Apple Valley officials had previously pinned some of their hopes on the City of Missoula challenging the sale to Algonquin, that action did not change the valuation of the water assets already determined by Judge Townsend.
In presenting a 10-page third installment of the Rancho Acquisition Efforts Transparency Report to the Town Council on Tuesday, Puckett revealed the ongoing cost of the water system acquisition effort as slightly more than $1.5 million and vouchsafed a prediction that the town would expend as much as another $3.5 million in legal fees and technical services to move forward with the acquisition. Thus, it appears that Apple Valley is purposed to spend something on the order of $5 million on legal fees to effectuate what is almost certainly going to be a $100 million purchase of a water system it could have purchased a generation ago for $2.5 million.
Puckett reported that $381,562 of the $974,205 spent on attorney fees so far went toward advice letters and fighting Liberty rate cases. Lawyers were paid another $165,995 to respond to over 80 public record requests on water-related topics. The town marshaled over 247,000 documents in response to those requests at a cost of $277,420 for having staff search files and evaluate records and data.
According to Puckett, the town paid more than $47,000 for the services of Remcho, Johansen & Purcell LLC in regard to the preparation of Measure W, the town’s alternative to Measure V, the Liberty Utilities-backed “Right to Vote on Debt Act.” If Measure V passes at the upcoming November 8 election, the Town of Apple Valley would be prohibited from using an ordinance or resolution of the town council to issue bonds or other forms of public debt in an amount exceeding $10 million to provide funds for the acquisition, construction, improving, or financing of an enterprise without town voter approval.
Another cost related to the ongoing war with Liberty is the $63,566 the town paid in its articulation effort with the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority to use recycled water from a currently under-construction treatment plant, the recycled water from which Liberty maintains it has a right to use in its groundwater recharging operations.
The town also spent $47,235 to compile what was termed a joint legislative audit report which contrasted the operation of Liberty, Golden State Water and the Hesperia and Victorville municipal water departments.
Puckett said the town’s efforts and the expense it is going to with regard to the water system is justified because, ““The [water] rates in Apple Valley are more than twice of what they are in Hesperia and the surrounding communities of Victorville, Adelanto and Barstow. Our water rates are excessively high.” Puckett said the town is reacting to complaints and demands that something be done to shield Apple Valley residents from the rapacious designs of Liberties Utilities California President Greg Sorensen.

By Carlos Avalos
A former officer was run out of the Fontana Police Department, several officers with that agency have told the Sentinel, because of the policeman’s cultural and attitudinal differences with a core group of high ranking and favored members of the department.
Police officer David Ibarra was an officer at the Fontana Police Department for ten years, from 1996 until 2006. While working at the Fontana Police Department, Ibarra was the National Latino Peace officer of the year in 1999 and recognized by Former Congressman Joe Baca. He received several accommodations for his work in the community. He was also a member of the United States Naval Reserve, with which he served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006.
Those accolades and that service did not isolate him from the pitfalls of serving in an organization in which some of its members often found themselves at odds with many of the values, and in certain respects at war with members, of the community.
According to some Fontana Police Department officers who served with Ibarra, he encountered harassment from his fellow white officers, and specifically experienced severe mistreatment by and harassment from a married couple of Germanic descent employed by the department. This husband and wife were referred to as the “Golden Couple,” according to department members. Sources within the department stated there were “dozens” of occasions where Ibarra was so put out by the treatment he had received that he made complaints to his superiors. The couple in question, according to some of the department’s officers, evinced apparent Nazi affiliation that was known by the department’s higher ups. The couple engaged in activities that could be construed to indicate reverence for Adolf Hitler. The officers said they, Ibarra and many other Fontana Police officers had on numerous occasions witnessed the husband click his back heels together and raise his right hand with his palm facing downwards and would say “Heil Hitler,” while they were in the Fontana Police Department parking garage just after they had been given their daily briefings and were about to head out onto Fontana’s streets in their patrol assignments.
On at least one occasion this behavior occurred in front of former Fontana Police department Sergeant Jim Anderson, the officers said, but nothing was done to curtail the officer’s action. The Sentinel was told that the emulation of Nazi mannerisms appeared to be vectored at Ibarra in particular, perhaps as part of an effort “to get under Ibarra’s skin.”
The Sentinel was unable to ascertain whether the histrionics by the officer in question were sarcastic displays or whether he was indeed acting out of a genuine affiliation with the Nazi movement. The potential of false dramatization aside, the officer on numerous occasions made disparaging comments about Ibarra to him personally and to other officers, according to some of those officers.
Over the police radio, the officer would taunt Ibarra and state that he was not good at his job or not carrying out his assignment correctly. Officer Ibarra at one point was assigned to work in the crime prevention unit with the distaff element of the Golden Couple, the wife of the officer with the fondness for the Nazi soldier impersonations. The female officer would constantly ask Ibarra if “he thought she was racist” because she thought another Mexican-American officer’s kids were ugly, officers told the Sentinel.
Ibarra was one of just a handful of Fontana police officers who resided in Fontana. Ibarra lived on the west side of Fontana in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. This earned Ibarra the sobriquet, while he was serving on the Fontana Police department, of “Mr. Fontana.” A number of the department’s officers constantly ridiculed Ibarra for his decision to live within the city that he served. On occasion Ibarra would retort by asking why it was that his fellow officers felt compelled to carry a gun with them while in Fontana when they were off duty. To their responses that they did not trust the people who lived in Fontana and needed to watch their backs, Ibarra would chuckle at their fearfulness and brag that he could walk around or go to any part of the city in a tank top, flip flops, and without his gun.
A few of Ibarra’s admirers who are yet employed with the department said that Ibarra was able to circulate in the Fontana community fearlessly because he had a reputation of treating those he encountered with respect, without bias, equally and fairly.
Ibarra volunteered at many local events in Fontana and because of this his face was a fixture in the community. Moreover, Ibarra was a certified translator and the press information officer for Mexican T.V networks Telemundo and Univision. At one point, Ibarra had a national syndicated program called “PLACAS,” which was a Mexican version of Cops, the television show.
In 2001, Ibarra applied for a special enforcement detail (SED) position as a hostage negotiator. Ibarra was a licensed psychiatric nurse at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, a state run facility for the mentally ill. At the time of his application into the special enforcement detail unit he was working as a part time charge nurse at a psychiatric facility in Riverside.
Officers currently with the department told the Sentinel that as part of the selective process for induction into the SED unit, prospective officers being considered for recruitment are subject to evaluation by the members of the special enforcement division. Unit members hold a secret table discussion and vote on who they want on their team. The Sentinel was told that the majority of SED officers voted to accept Ibarra, but according to the SED’s only Mexican American officer, during the secret meeting the German American male officer and Obie Rodriguez, who is of Cuban descent, vetoed allowing Ibarra into the special enforcement division.
Subsequently, however, sources told the Sentinel, Ibarra did in fact become a “semi special enforcement detail officer,” and was utilized in the capacity of SED’s hostage negotiator after he was originally rejected. Nevertheless, Ibarra was not looked upon, the officers told the Sentinel “as a fully fledged SED member.”
On one occasion, the Sentinel was told, Ibarra was wearing his SED pin on his uniform when he was approached by SED Sergeant Douglas Imhof, a long time member of the tactical team. Imhof tugged on Ibarra’s pin, according to this version of events, and in a rude tone said, “I guess they will let anyone wear that pin.” Ibarra removed the pin and never wore it again.
In 2005, Ibarra was serving in Iraq, during which time all emails Ibarra sent and received as well as those of his fellow sailors were monitored and placed on a time limit. While Stationed in Habaniya, Iraq, between Ramadi and Fallujah, Ibarra was on base in support of the 5th Marines’ ground operations, U.S Navy Petty Officer Ibarra received an email from Fontana Police Department Internal Affairs Investigator Mark Jacobson. The e-mail stated that a complaint against officer Ibarra had been received and was being investigated by the internal affairs unit. While that complaint was later determined by the department to be unfounded, the email called upon Ibarra to sign the internal affairs letter and mail it back to the Fontana Police Department. The email was seen by Ibarra’s superior officer, Navy Commander Jeff Giles. Giles asked Ibarra “why his police department would send him an unfounded false Internal Affairs letter to a war zone?” Ibarra had no answer for his commander. Ibarra was embarrassed because personal matters should be confidential and there was no need, he believed, for this email to be sent to him. Mark Jacobson, who sent the email, was later disciplined for his actions.
When Ibarra returned to the Fontana Police Department as a decorated war veteran he thought that he would be welcomed with open arms by his fellow Fontana police officers. This was not the case. The harassment that he was subjected to by his fellow officers and specifically the so-called “Golden Couple” continued. According to department members, Ibarra complained to then-lieutenant Robert Ramsey, and Ibarra documented several incidents of his mistreatment in his personal calendar. Lt Ramsey made a copy of Ibarra’s calendar but no action from the department’s administration was forthcoming.
Ibarra, despairing of any prospect that the department and what was termed its “Good Ol Boy” system would change, challenged his superiors, questioning them and other officers why the Fontana Police Department was not representing the population of Fontana, in particular pointing out that the upper command staff of the department was nearly devoid of minorities.
Fontana Police Department sources confirmed that Ibarra, while serving as Scott Snyder’s field training officer, heard an account of Fermin Rincon’s 2002 death at the hands of Fontana officers. Snyder had been a paramedic at that time and manned an ambulance that was dispatched to the scene where Rincon died on that fateful evening in 2002. Snyder told Ibarra that Rincon’s windpipe was crushed so badly that when he attempted to put a breathing device down Rincon’s throat, he was unable to. Sources in the department confirmed that Snyder directly told this to Ibarra.
Sources within the department told the Sentinel that Ibarra had grown acutely aware of the department’s practice and custom of treating minority officers and minority residents differently compared to white officers and white residents living in the community.
Sources in the department also confirm that Mr. Ibarra did not like, respect, or appreciate that the Fontana command staff would constantly send Ibarra to deal with the Hispanic community residents’ problems or calls. To Ibarra, this showed that the command staff at Fontana PD did not really care about familiarizing its command officers with the Hispanic portion of the population they serve.
The Sentinel was told that the special enforcement detail strove to attract like-minded officers into that unit and had a hazing ritual for all members initiated into SED. It is unclear if this type of hazing ritual still takes place but it was definitely something that has taken place in the past, the officers said. When SED members join the team, they are encouraged to drink alcohol until reaching a state of severe inebriation. At that time the officers are asked to drop their underwear and get on their hands and knees. While they are so postured, they are instructed to form a circle and, after a long chain is wrapped around their genitalia to link them, they are obliged to progress in a circular motion. This is known as the Fontana Special Enforcement Detail’s infamous “Elephant Walk,” which provides both a symbolic and actual demonstration of the need for members of the unit to carefully coordinate their activity and recognize that action contrary to the interest of one member can and will be contrary to the interest of all members. This might explain why so many qualified candidates, minority and white, never make the SED team, as some individuals are unwilling to partake in the Elephant Walk rite.
In August of 2006 Ibarra submitted his resignation after he was offered a deputy sheriff’s position in another state. While in the locker room on his last day of work at the Fontana Police department, Ibarra told a collection of minority officers, “Do not love the Fontana Police Department because they will not love you back. They hire us Mexicans and African Americans because they have to, not because they want to.”
The Sentinel was able to locate and contact Ibarra, who lives in a Southern state where he has since achieved the rank of sergeant with the agency that now employs him.
The Sentinel asked about the alleged racism that exists in the Fontana Police Department.
Ibarra said that he “put all of the bad things that happened at the department behind me and in the past.” Ibarra is the first Mexican American sergeant at his current department. He said the chief at his department “does not tolerate racist cops. He has fired several police officers that have made racist comments.”
Ibarra also went on to say that “There are good officers [in Fontana]. I still have friends at the department. As for change in the department, that will only happen if they bring an outside minority officer into the department to be chief, the DOJ [Department of Justice], F.B.I, or an outside entity looks into the department, a woman chief is selected; or, lastly, the Fontana police department is disbanded and the sheriff’s department takes over.”
Asked if he could offer any validation to the information supplied to the Sentinel by officers yet employed by the Fontana Police Department with regard to his tenure there, Ibarra characterized it as “one hundred percent accurate to the best of my knowledge.”

The Chino Valley Unified School District’s sponsorship of a three-quarters of a billion dollar bond issuance on the November ballot has garnered considerable attention in recent weeks. Unfortunately, that buzz has been less than a positive one, as public officials in the area with competing priorities who have their own designs on taxpayer-provided largesse have misgivings that the sheer size of the issuance and the lack of clarity as to its ultimate use might deplete the reservoir of taxpayer generosity some prognosticators say voters might evince this year.
Measure G, if approved, would permit the Chino Valley Unified School District to issue $750 million in bonds at legal interest rates to provide, in the district’s words, financing “to upgrade neighborhood schools and retain/attract quality teachers by repairing deteriorating classrooms/restrooms; replace deteriorating, rusty pipes/ensuring safe drinking water; removing asbestos/lead paint; upgrading fire safety, science/computer labs, wiring, classroom technology; repairing, constructing, acquiring educational facilities, sites [and] equipment.”
The mere size of the issuance is remarkable. The $750 million requested is one of the largest bond issuances in San Bernardino County history.
Public bonds are instruments of finance. Public agencies, such as municipalities and districts issue, that is create and sell, bonds which carry a value and duration. The public agency uses the proceeds from the sale to undertake a whole host of public improvements. The investors, variously referred to as the bond buyers or bondholders, are paid a specified percentage of the bonds’ purchase price (typically ranging from four percent to upwards of six percent) over 25 to 40 years. Thus, a typical bond investor will see a return of roughly 150 percent to 180 percent of the original investment.
In the case of the purchasers of the bonds that would be issued as a consequence of the approval of Measure G, investors and those entities engaged in the transactions would stand to net about $1.6 billion by the time the bonded indebtedness is retired in full in 2058.
Those inveighing in favor of Measure G maintain “If we want to attract and retain quality teachers, we must provide competitive, 21st Century learning by investing in our aging schools, technology and classrooms. Measure G promotes strong careers by upgrading and expanding school career education programs that train students for jobs – allowing students to acquire real world skills and effectively compete for employment in health care, computer science and automotive repair following graduation. Measure G addresses the whole needs of the child by ensuring students’ basic social, emotional and academic needs are met and their families get the support they need to succeed.”
In the argument against Measure G contained in the sample ballot now being sent to Chino Valley voters, those opposed to the bond issuance maintain “The board wants to us to increase our property tax. They want money that we don’t have. The board gets a share of the money from property tax that we pay to the State. The board also gets a share of lottery money from the State. What is the board doing with all that money? It is not the taxpayer’s fault that the board can’t manage the money. This board does not deserve any more money from us. They need to work with the money we already give them.”
Moreover, the opponents decry the consideration that the measure had not specified “what type of bond they are going to use” or “what the interest will be. The board is not telling us what the total cost of the bond will be. Has the board repaid the last bond that was approved by the voters? Did the board extend the last bond without voter approval? Are we still repaying on the last bond?”
Based on the $1.6 billion cost of debt servicing the bonds envisaged in Measure G, a combined current population of 156,000 for both Chino and Chino Hills, an average household size of four people and a 40-year life of the bonds, it would appear that Measure G would impose assessments of roughly $1,000 per year on homeowners in Chino and Chino Hills.
That burden is one residents in Chino are not likely to gladly bear.
An indication of that was that two elected Chino city officials, councilmen Glenn Duncan and Earl Elrod, have gone on record as being highly skeptical about the need for the bonds if not outright opposed to their issuance.
Both Duncan and Elrod have referenced the City of Chino’s collection of development impact fees from the builders of residential subdivisions within the city. Those development impact fees are intended to offset the impact of the influx of population into the community as a result of the residential growth and partially defray the cost of new infrastructure, infrastructure improvements or infrastructure augmentations. A portion of those development impact fees collected over the years have been passed through to the school district. Thus, from the perspective of some, the district should have been able to stay abreast of maintenance to its facilities, obviating the necessity of such a large bond issuance at this point.
Of note is that in recent years, the district has actually shrunk, with the district having shut down two of its campuses because student population has over the last five years stabilized or declined. As a consequence, developer impact fees that in years past would have been used to build schools could have been devoted to refurbishing existing ones.
In addition to Duncan and Elrod’s expression of reservation, Chino’s city attorney, Jimmy Gutierrez echoed the concerns of many members of the community with regard to the lack of specificity with regard to how the district will utilize the bond windfall.
The district’s superintendent, Dr. Wayne Joseph, said it was his preference that the district use the lion’s share of the money that will become available if the measure passes to carry out renovations at the district’s high schools, particularly Chino High, the district’s oldest and most dilapidated high school campus. It was not clear whether the school board is in concurrence with Joseph.
District representative Jim DiCamillo said it is his recommendation that the $750 million in bonds be issued in four or five installments of roughly $150 million to $200 million each. He said the money would be spread around the district to do needed improvements and modernizations at all of the campuses and that the district could simultaneously apply to obtain matching modernization funds from the state that would make the money go twice as far. Improvements would include fixing or replacing modular buildings that are more than 20 years old and permanent buildings that are over 25 years old.
Overall, the inexactitude of the bond issuance advocates as to the improvement program and the slightly varied priorities they have among themselves has provided fodder for the bond issuance opponents.
Moreover, there is widespread concern that the imposition of the taxing/assessment regime that would be needed to debt service the $750 million issuance would sour residents on any further local tax increases for another generation.
In Chino Hills, which is a more affluent community than Chino, there appears to be less resistance to the idea of the homeowners saddling themselves with another $1,000 per year assessment on their property tax bill.
On the same November 8 ballot as Measure G the state school bond Proposition 51 will also be considered.
Measure G’s proponents have said of the opposition to the measure “Opponents clearly didn’t bother to read Measure G’s official language, and to our knowledge, they haven’t visited our schools or classrooms, nor have they spoken to our students or teachers. For over a year, our district has engaged the community by holding more than 150 meetings attended by 2,000 educators, parents and community members, and conducted an additional community outreach process with over 3,000 residents providing feedback on school needs and community priorities in order to develop Measure G. Local realtors know that improving neighborhood schools strengthens local property values, and makes our community a more desirable place to live.”
Some have suggested that district officials from the outset had no realistic expectation of Measure G’s passage, but put it on the 2016 ballot as a strategy to make the passage of a $500 million bond in 2018 more likely, as such a scaled-down proposal at that time would, by comparison, seem more conservative and reasonable to a cross section of the electorate.

Summer was officially over on Labor Day in San Bernardino County’s smallest and without a doubt hottest city, but temperatures were on the rise again at the Needles City Council meeting on Tuesday, September 13. In a packed room that included most of the nine candidates running for three seats on the city council and their supporters, some ugliness emerged in what was supposed to be a topic concerning beautification of the town. An ignited debate ensued about how to literally clean up the town’s blight and unsafe conditions using the county sheriff’s department to enforce city codes.
Shawn Gudmundsen, who requested the discussion item be included on the agenda, suggested that a path to obtain the assistance on the county sheriff’s deputies on code enforcement be found, especially in consideration of the amount the city is now paying them over and above that which was budgeted for. Earlier in the evening an agenda item had been voted on to increase the payment on the Sheriff’s contract by roughly $140,000 due to salary increases as an outcome of the negotiations with the union over payroll.
Rick Daniels, city manager, explained that in anticipation of pay raises this year, the city had budgeted for an extra $60,000 to $70,000, but that amount was insufficient. Both council members Louise Evans and Shawn Gudmundsen voted against the increase, reasoning that $2.4 million dollars for police services on a total town budget of just a little over $5 million was more than the city can afford. Gudmundsen added an objection to the effect that he knew of activities the sheriff’s department was engaged in at the Needles substation that were unrelated to the city’s service needs he did not think the city should be paying for. Councilman Tom Darcy, on the other hand voted for the increase even after making the pronouncement “They should be doing a better job closing the excess over what we budget for.”
One un-uniformed deputy Pat Murch, a former council member, was present in the audience in plain clothes. He took note of Gudmundsen’s suggestion that the deputies begin to enforce local civil codes and indicated his distaste for the idea by approaching the lectern. He let Gudmundsen have it, saying that anyone who thinks that the sheriff’s department is there to enforce civil matters needs to go “get an education. We don’t do civil matters. We do criminal law.” Responding to Mr. Murch, the city attorney, John Pinkney, formerly with Best, Best and Krieger, suggested that he be tasked with looking into the matter with regard to areas of law in which the contracted law enforcement agency might be able to assist with local code enforcement. Daniels interjected that “it is not a crime to have an ugly house, but if the situation rises to a level of public safety or nuisance then local government can do something about it.”
Daniels further asserted that in light of all of the new construction involving the erection of buildings to be used for “grow houses” in conjunction with the emerging cannabis farming industry in the community, the demand upon the city’s sole code enforcement officer’s time is becoming problematic since he also doubles as the building inspector. Daniels reiterated a plan that he had previously presented to the council involving a firm that would be contracted to do just the building inspection for the marijuana industry construction projects, saying that the cost of the contract would be borne by the cannabis growers and cooperatives.
Jeff Williams, whose brother, Dan Williams, is the code enforcement officer for the city, objected to a contractual arrangement that could take from potential local employment. Evans also indicated her desire for more local employment and her objection to contracting the work.
Ruth Musser-Lopez, the administrator for a local association calling itself the “Needles Fire Auxiliary,” suggested that the council consider the potential of returning the fire protection services to a local fire department where the fire chief functions as a code enforcement official enforcing codes pertaining to fire safety and hazards as well as inspecting operations, equipment and appurtenances such as fire hydrants. She said that the hiring of a fire chief would relieve the current code enforcement officer of some of his duties so that he could act in the capacity of building inspector.
Musser-Lopez thanked the council for removing an agenda item concerning the declaration of the city’s fire station as “surplus” and beginning the reception of proposals for lease or purchase of the structure. She said that the fire station cannot be considered surplus until an election takes place on the voter initiative. She claimed that 160 signatures had been collected on the petition and that it those were sufficient to bring the initiative to a vote at the next election but that the auxiliary is considering collecting 80 more signatures to a total of 15 percent of the city’s voters, which by law would hasten that time by forcing a special election. She said that because of the cost of a special election, the auxiliary is waiting to see if a new council in November would approve the initiative on its own authority and de-annex the city from the taxed county fire district while reinstating the city’s fire department. She said that should the new council decide to reinstate the fire department, it would need a fire chief and that the charter requires that the fire chief be responsible for code enforcement as it pertains to the fire protection and safety services. She noted the fire hydrant at the Chestnut Street fire that was non functional and said that this could have been avoided by regular inspections and flushing of the system. Musser-Lopez, one of nine candidates for Needles City Council this November, has made public the pronouncement that the re-instatement of a local fire department was something that she hoped to usher in if elected to the council.
Daniels, in defense of the takeover of the fire protection services by the county fire district said that the county’s fire chief, Mark Hartwig, had begun a program of regularly inspecting the fire hydrants. A retired water treatment and distribution operator has anonymously informed the Sentinel however, that “it is unlikely that county is inspecting the valves since the city’s system is aged and valves in aged systems break with regularity. In most American cities, the water utility is traditionally responsible for exercising all valves in its water distribution system including the exercise and testing of fire hydrants.” In addition, this retired operator suggested that “any testing for minimum fire flow in the Gates Subdivision of Needles would reveal inadequate fire flow in the hydrants. The lack of adequate fire flow would definitely affect the insurance rating of homes in the Gates Subdivision in Needles, causing their rates to increase.”
Daniels maintained at the council meeting that the county fire district will offer work days by prisoners. He said that there will be 18 people on a crew to work 3 days in the community to clean up and remove debris as well as cut back the brush and a carry out a variety of other tasks, including cutting and trimming the hedges at the El Garces train depot. He said that he is working with the fire chief to get those areas cleaned up. Daniels also said that there were 200 illegal dumps in the community that the city has allegedly cleaned up and he also described two programs: a no-cost welfare-to-work county program where the human services department will provide employees to the city at no cost while the workers receive job training; and a bulk trash pick-up program offered to sanitation customers at no extra charge.
As the meeting drew to a close councilman Darcy resurrected the topic of the return of the fire department to the city’s control, counseling those in attendance who would suggest that the fire hydrants were in disrepair. He said it was a problem of a homeowner who kept a disconnected fire hydrant in his yard for ornamental purposes. On at least two previous occasions at council meetings, the issue of problematic fire hydrants at the “Chestnut fire” had been discussed and at this meeting Daniels corrected Darcy repeating that there were two problematic fire hydrants involved at the Chestnut fire—both the ornamental hydrant and another one that was non-functional due to breakage during manipulation of the valve. Darcy shrugged the fire hydrant issue off and redirected his “counseling” saying that the fire station was old and its useful life was gone. He further discouraged the idea of a city-run fire department, saying that the community composition was such that those who volunteered at one time were now old and retired and that a volunteer fire department would cause everyone’s insurance costs to skyrocket because of the lowering of the safety rating. Darcy’s pronouncement made no reference to language in the voter initiative calling for a professional full time city fire department with an ISO rating the same or higher than what it currently has with the county operating it.
After the meeting’s adjournment, a melee broke out after some residents got involved in a heated exchange in which it was alleged that a local news organization was uncritically accepting and publishing one-sided information that originated with government officials, while another contingent suggested that yet another news organization was exhibiting an anti-government bias. At issue in the argument was an accusation that Needles city government is acquiescing in the proliferation of an extremely unhealthy environment in the city’s downtown area, including the so-called “shooting gallery,” i.e., Needles’ skid row where users of the drugs heroin and methamphetamine congregate to share syringes and intravenously inject those drugs. This has led to an AIDS epidemic that is going unaddressed, one resident stated. This circumstance either coexists with or is exacerbated by city officials’ acquiescence in calculated neglect of the area which has redounded to the financial benefit of property owners of the dilapidated property, one individual said. Specifically, it was stated, the owner of one building that was destroyed in an apparent arson fire is a former city official who had the house insured for $500,000 through the Jernigan Insurance Company when the value of the property could not have been more than $50,000. It was alleged city officials were doubly complicit in this fraud by both allowing the underlying conditions that led to the fire and an orchestrated cover-up after the fact. According to this version of events, city manager Rick Daniels ordered that the crime scene be bulldozed before the arson investigator visited the site, thwarting any possibility that the fraud would be uncovered.
All of this talk, including such accusations against city officials, was apparently too much for some of those present to take, and when one of those involved in the heated exchange advanced upon the other, councilman Jeff Williams valiantly waded into the fracas between the two, preventing them from inflicting mayhem upon one another. Both then retreated into the steamy, moonlit desert.
“Red tag” is the term used locally to denote what is done at residences where the electric and water bill has not been paid. A red flyer is left by the city informing the occupants that their electricity and water will be shut off. One dilapidated abode along the shooting gallery had been red tagged.
An informed source told the Sentinel that earlier this week there was a death related to methamphetamine use in a local Needles hotel and that the electricity, which had previously been turned off at one of the properties within the “shooting gallery,” had been turned back on.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
I have been told, by an extremely well-placed individual, that the most recent effort to legislate reform with how California’s hopelessly corrupt Public Utilities Commission does business failed because our equally hopelessly corrupt governor threatened to veto any meaningful reform legislation that would be passed. Since no legislation was actually passed and these supposed veto threats occurred on the QT behind closed doors, no one, and that includes me, is in a position to prove anything. What is well known, however, is that last year, when a raft of reform bills was passed and placed on his desk, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed them all. His justification? They were contradictory and unworkable, he said…
It was fairly obvious that he was trying to avoid bringing the house of cards down upon himself and so, earlier this year, he made it appear as if he was ready to seriously entertain signing off on a reform package the legislature might deign to put together this summer. This came in the aftermath of the Assembly’s passage by an overwhelming margin, in June, of a constitutional amendment to denude the utilities commission of a significant degree of its authority. The Assembly was set to layer into the mix the authorization of an independent internal auditor to review commission decisions. Another safeguard the Assembly wanted was the prohibition of former utility executives from leaving employment with a utility and jumping immediately onto the commission. The reform would have made them wait at least two years to do that. Those reforms were supposed to be placed into Senate Bill 1017 and Assembly Bill 2903. And the new law would have made it a misdemeanor for utilities commission employees or board members to release to anyone – including competing utility companies or their parent companies or their lawyers or their investors or their stockholders – information deemed confidential or proprietary by utility companies. But, it turns out, some of the current members of the commission didn’t like those proposed changes…
What I am told is Governor Brown let it be known, quietly, he was ready to use his veto power again on these laws. Supposedly, this veto threat was justified by the assertion that the new law might be in conflict with California Public Records Act provisions that require release of documents when they are requested. To me this seems a stretch because if things are confidential, they are immune from the Act…
There has been an ongoing criminal investigation into the California Public Utilities Commission for almost two years now over some of the commission members’ backchannel dealings with utility executives. Someone is protecting these miscreants, it seems…
Some food for thought: Our governor may not want people mucking around too deeply into issues involving utilities and energy policy in the Golden State and how licensing of energy projects is carried out. I also have it on the highest authority that last year our governor used his executive power to extract from California’s oil regulating agency maps, geologic surveys and records relating to oil and natural gas reserves beneath his family’s 2,700-acre ranch in Colusa County…

George William Garcelon, whose cowardice and lack of resolve will ever mark him in San Bernardino County’s Hall of Infamy, was born on May 18, 1832 at Oak Bay New Bruswick in Canada. He was the son of Harvey and Charlotte (Sutherland) Garcelon. George Garcelon was raised and educated in New Brunswick.At the age of twenty he went to Lewiston, Maine, where he operated a pharmacy. In Lewiston, he met Mary Frye Tobie, the daughter of Edward Parsons and Caroline (Frye) Tobie. Mary was born in Lewiston in February 1832. George and Mary were married there in 1858 and lived there until about 1872, raising an adopted daughter.
Toward the end of 1872 or early 1873, ill health compelled Mr. Garcelon to seek a more gentle climate and they came west to Riverside, where he settled for the remainder of his life. Here he regained his health and lived to an advanced age. He bought a block of two-and-a-half acres at the head of Seventh Street, between Vine and Mulberry and Sixth and Seventh Streets, besides buying twenty acres on Brockton Avenue. He was one of the most successful fruit growers in Riverside. He built the finest house at that time in Riverside and made that his home for many years. His home was the first lath-and-plastered house in Riverside. In the spring of 1877 the first citrus fair, the parent of the annual citrus fairs that formed one of the advertising features of Riverside was held there. It was in his house in 1887 that the excellent qualities of the navel orange was first tested.
Mr. Garcelon took a very active part in all of the citrus and fruit fairs of Riverside. He went large into lemon growing and encountered the many difficulties that the early settlers encountered in producing a marketable lemon. These difficulties were overcome by Mr. Garcelon and at a later period when he placed his cured lemons on exhibition at a citrus fair in Los Angeles, he won the first premium of $100 for the best exhibit of lemons and $50 for the best box. At the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 he received a medal and diploma from the manager of the fair for his lemon display. He took an active part in the formation of the Fruit Exchange at the time when the growers were nearly ruined by mismanagement in the marketing of their citrus fruits.
Mr. Garcelon, although not an office seeker, took an active part in public matters concerning the welfare of Riverside. This was unfortunate in that his lack of strength and character left San Bernardino County vulnerable to the forces militating against it. Politically, in the early days when feeling ran high and when the discord arising from the Civil War caused a great conflict between the two old parties, Mr. Garcelon was a staunch Republican and helped materially in turning San Bernardino County Republican. At that time, what is most of what is now known as Riverside County was the lower portion of San Bernardino County. The City of Riverside, before the formation of Riverside County in 1893, formed a very important part of San Bernardino County.
Garcelon was elected Third District Supervisor and served from January 7, 1889 to December 8, 1891, which was less than a full term. His two years in office came during the agitation that resulted in the county division and the founding of Riverside County. This was fomented by an inveterate group of malcontents living in the south end of San Bernardino County.
Garcelon lacked the stomach to stand up to these rebels. Ill-equipped as he was, as a result of considerable dissension among the members of the board of supervisors, both Garcelon and W.H. Glass, the Fifth District supervisor, tendered their resignations from the board. Garcelon was succeeded on January 12, 1892, by Albert S. White of Riverside, the most disloyal and infamous traitor in San Bernardino County history. White would spearhead the final push that sundered Riverside County, or most of it, from San Bernardino County. The following year, lower San Bernardino and a smaller portion of northern San Diego County seceded from their respective counties to form Riverside County. Upon that act of perfidy, White resigned as a San Bernardino County supervisor and became a member of the maiden Riverside County Board of Supervisors.
If Garcelon had been made of sterner stuff, had he some steel in his backbone, he might have been able to bear the pressure put upon him to remain in office and prevent the viper White from entwining his serpentine self about the seat of power in San Bernardino and choking and twisting Riverside County into its fate separate from its rightful position as a part of San Bernardino County, which despite the departure of nearly 7,000 square miles of Riverside County, yet remains as the largest county in the Lower 48 States, a land are of 20,105 square miles, larger than the states of New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island combined.
Mr. Garcelon continued to enjoy the success of his citrus ranch until he died on March 9, 1905.
He had been a member of the Board of Trade, and was for many years a member and trustee of the Congregational Church of Riverside. He had joined the Masonic Order in Lewiston, Maine, and was a member of the Riverside Chapter #68, Royal Arch Masons and the Riverside Commandery #28, Knights Templar.

The yellow-breasted chat, known by its scientific name Icteria virens is a bird present in San Bernardino County. It is considered the most atypical member of the New World warbler family and is the only member of the genus Icteria.
Inhabiting dense thickets, scrubby habitats and woodland edges, the yellow-breasted chat is the largest species in the Paruline warblers, with an unmistakable song described as “an astonishingly loud jumble of harsh cackles, rattles, whistles and squeals.” Its call is similarly harsh and grating, sounding something lik “tchak.” The yellow-breasted chat has the lowest pitched voice of any of the warblers, which might be a consequence of its larger size.
Nesting from the southern-plains of Canada and throughout much of the United States to central Mexico during the summer, these birds migrate to lower Mexico and Central America in the winter, with some sporadically overwintering in mild-climated coastal areas.
This species reaches a total length of 6.7 to 7.5 inches and a wingspan of 9.1 to 10.6 inches. Body mass can range from 0.71 to 1.19 ounces. The relatively long, heavy bill is 0.51 to 0.63 inches. The tarsus is 0.98 to 1.22 inches. These birds have olive upperparts with white bellies and bright yellow throats and breasts. Other signature features of yellow-breasted chats are its large white eye-rings and blackish legs.
The yellow-breasted chat is a shy, skulking species of bird, often being only heard but not seen. The breeding habitats of this species are dense, brushy areas and hedgerows. The nests of these birds are bulky cups made of grasses, leaves, strips of bark, stems of weeds and lined with finer grasses, wiry plant stems, pine needles and sometimes roots and hair.
Yellow-breasted chats are ominvorous birds, and forage in dense vegetation. Mostly, this species feeds on insects and berries, including blackberries and wild grapes. Insects of up to moderate sizes, including grasshoppers, bugs, beetles, weevils, bees, wasps, tent caterpillars, ants, moths and mayflies, are typically predated and will be gleaned from dense vegetation.
These birds are not as monogamous as other warblers. In one study in central Kentucky, DNA fingerprinting revealed that 17% of 29 yellow-breasted chat nestlings were not sired by the male of the social pair and 33% of 9 broods contained at least 1 extra-pair nestling.

By clicking on the blue portal below you can download a PDF of the September 16 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

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