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Sentinel 05-13-16

The United States Forest Service and the Forest Service’s San Bernardino National Forest Superintendent Jody Noiron find themselves in the middle of an escalating controversy between environmentalists and the Swiss-owned company, Nestlé Waters North America, relating to the expired-but-yet-in-effect permit that company has to extract millions of gallons of water annually from a pristine spring in the San Bernardino Mountains.
On one hand, environmentalists maintain the U.S. Forest Service has been remiss in allowing Nestlé to continue to tap into a spring system in Strawberry Canyon in the San Bernardino Mountains despite the expiration of that company’s permit to do so in 1988. The environmentalists claim the U.S. Forest Service has exercised at best laissez faire regulation of Nestlé, the largest water user in the San Bernardino National Forest, over the years, and that Nestle’s year-round diversion of substantial amounts of water have reduced the vegetation and the large diversity of riparian species associated with Strawberry Creek. They say the situation has been exacerbated by the ongoing drought and that the U.S Forest Service has neglected its duty to protect the ecology and life the Strawberry Creek watershed supports.
Conversely, Nestlé maintains that the Forest Service’s undertaking of an environmental review process of the impact of the continued channeling of water out of the canyon is one that intrudes on the multi-national corporation’s established water rights and entitlement to do business. Nestlé maintains it should not be subject to the review process for the renewal of its special use permit in Strawberry Canyon and that the federal agency’s action violates California procedures related to the pumping of water.
The water in question ends up as a product widely recognized, being commercially available as Arrowhead bottled water. The questions that have evolved are 1) should a company be allowed to monopolize a natural resource that if left in place would sustain a natural ecosystem on public lands; and 2) even if the corporate utilization of that water wreaks environmental havoc, does the company possess superseding water rights that perpetuate its ability to continue to draw that water?
Nestlé of North America, a corporate subsidiary of the Swiss-owned Nestlé Corporation, inherited an expired United States Forest Service permit, which it assumed from Perrier, when it bought out that entity in 1992. Perrier had acquired the permit when it purchased the Arrowhead Puritas Water Company in 1987. That permit allowed the holder to extract water from a significant below-ground source in the San Bernardino Mountains. The Arrowhead Springs Company formed in 1909, drawing surface water from Strawberry and Coldwater Canyon near the old Arrowhead Resort at approximately 2,000 feet. In the 1930’s, a special use permit was obtained from the Forest Service and tunnels, boreholes and horizontal wells were placed at the higher elevation of 5,200 feet at the headwaters to Strawberry Creek.
The Arrowhead Springs Company merged with the Los Angeles-based Puritas Water Company in 1929. In 1978, Arrowhead Puritas renewed its permit for the removing of water by means of groundwater harvesting boreholes and horizontal wells from Strawberry Canyon, for which it paid the U.S. Government $524 per year, a standard fee for such uses in all National Forests. That permit expired 27 years ago, but the corporate successor to that company continues to pay the miniscule fees associated with that permit and utilizes for commercial purposes water thousands of times in excess of that used by local domestic users who even before California Governor Jerry Brown’s executive order limiting water use statewide had their access to mountain water cut off.
During the early and middle part of the 20th Century, the Arrowhead Water Company and then the Arrowhead Puritas Water Company enlarged the pipes used to tap into the aquifer below and around Strawberry Creek and over the years built the company into the largest purveyor of bottled water on the West Coast based upon the quality of that water and a successful marketing strategy.
According to industry analysts, Perrier, which was then a privately-held company, paid over $400 million to acquire the Arrowhead Puritas operation 28 years ago. Among some in the know, it was believed Arrowhead Puritas had hornswoggled the French company, given that the permit on the Strawberry Canyon spring water was due to expire the following year.
The U.S. Forest Service, however, did not bring the curtain down on Perrier’s continued drafting from the source nor on Nestlé when it inherited the operation in Strawberry Canyon from Perrier in 1992. Furthermore, the Forest Service did not undertake a review of the permit. Rather, the company simply stayed current on its permit fee and neither the Forest Service nor any other arm of the federal government interfered with the operation, which entailed Nestle/Arrowhead continuing to have free rein over the Strawberry Canyon water. Following the elapsing of the permit in 1988, Perrier and then Nestlé continued to pay the $524 annual fee attached to the permit, and continued to extract water unabated from Strawberry Springs, conveying the water away in a stainless steel pipeline.
There is no limitation imposed on Nestlé’s water withdrawal from Strawberry Canyon. Efforts to quantify how much water, precisely, Nestlé is using have yielded inexact results and Nestle has until only recently asserted that it need not give figures because it is proprietary information. Neither the U.S. Forest Service, nor the state of California, nor the County of San Bernardino nor any local water agency has required that the water being taken from Strawberry Canyon, which is drawn not from a naturally occurring spring but wells and tunnel borings into the side of the mountain which feeds a spring, be measured.
Headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, Nestlé is the largest food company in the world measured by revenues. According to its 2014 report to its stockholders, bottled water accounts for seven percent of the company’s revenue. Much of that is from the Arrowhead brand, although the company does market filter purified water under the Nestlé brand and it owns the Perrier, Aquarel, Aqua Panna, Contrex and Vera brands. Extrapolating from Forest Service records, up until the current drought the company appeared to be drawing upwards of 100 million gallons from Strawberry Canyon annually. An extrapolation based upon internal Nestlé documents puts the company’s Strawberry Canyon water consumption significantly beyond the 100 million gallon mark.
The Center for Biological Diversity, The Courage Campaign and the Story of Stuff Project, represented by attorneys Lisa T. Belenky, Justin Augustine, Rachel S. Doughty, Matt Kenna and Douglas P. Carstens, on October 13, 2015 filed a civil complaint in U.S. District Court in Riverside alleging the U.S. Forest Service has allowed the Nestlé Corporation, functioning as the Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water Company, to continue to take water from the San Bernardino National Forest, despite the expiration of its permits to do so in 1988. Named in the suit are the United States Forest Service, Randy Moore, in his official capacity as the Pacific Southwest Regional Forester and Jody Noiron, in her official capacity as forest supervisor for the San Bernardino National Forest. Nestlé and Arrowhead Water are not named in the suit.
According to the suit, Nestlé and Arrowhead Water are utilizing a system known as the West Strawberry diversion structure, consisting of eleven access points that are tunnels, boreholes, and horizontal wells drilled as deep as 490 feet into the mountain, to collect and then convey the water in a metal pipe that travels several miles down the mountain, including within the bed of Strawberry Creek and its tributaries and their adjacent riparian habitat as well as outside of these areas. “The majority of the diverted water is then piped into trucks, eventually to be bottled and sold throughout the United States under Nestlé’s signature premium brand name: Arrowhead Springs,” the suit states. “Removal of large amounts of water at the highest elevations of the watershed is having an environmental impact at the well, borehole, and tunnel sites as well as throughout the entire downstream watershed.”
Since the filing of the lawsuit, the U.S. Forest Service has evolved a protocol for undertaking what environmentalists have maintained is a long-overdue analysis, under the guidelines of the National Environmental Policy Act, known by its acronym NEPA, of the past, current and potential future impact of the pumping taking place under the auspices of Nestlé Waters North America’s special-use permit in Strawberry Canyon.
When the US. Forest Service announced in March that it would undertake the NEPA study, it said that it would take as long as five years to complete and that in the meantime, that is, for the five year duration, Nestlé would be able to continue to operate under the auspices of its expired special use permit. This induced howls of protest from environmentalists and pointed criticism of Moore and Noiron. Under the terms of the protocol, the Nestlé permit will be perpetuated unless the five-year study demonstrates there is demonstrable ecological harm occurring as a consequence of the operations.
Despite the perception of the environmentalists that the U.S. Forest Service is being far too permissive with that protocol, Nestlé is taking the diametrically opposite tack and submitted on May 2, 2016, comments to the USFS regarding the proposed renewal process. According to a press release heralding the 82 pages of comments, Nestle Waters North America is “concerned that the action proposed by the Forest Service would disrupt established water rights and the long-standing legal process of regulating water use in the State of California. The proposals currently being suggested by the Forest Service would create a situation in which the federal government overrides more than a century of California law. This would have potentially far-reaching consequences for businesses, agencies, individuals and other water rights holders throughout the state.”
Within the comments, Nestlé Waters North America notes that the Forest Service in 1929 issued a special use permit for the taking water in Strawberry Canyon to one of Nestle’s corporate predecessors and that succeeding special use permits related to the Strawberry Canyon water were reissued in 1931, 1934, 1946, 1960, and 1976. The comments then reference Special Use Permit #7285, which was issued by the Forest Service in 1978 with regard to the water in question, “and continues to govern Nestle Water North America’s use of Forest Service land with in the right-of-way across the San Bernardino National Forest.”
Furthermore, according to the comments, “Nestlé Waters North America has legal concerns with the Forest Service’s proposed action. The state’s governing legal framework, which is designed to allocate and manage water supplies within its boundaries, should not be superseded by federal permit actions. The Forest Service’s proposed action is a significant departure from the prior special use permits for the right-of-way, and from Nestlé Waters North America’s request to reissue Special Use Permit #7285, and thereby raises significant legal, technical, and practical implications.
According to Nestlé, “The Forest Service’s adaptive management plan as drafted imposes subjective standards, sets triggers based on arbitrary considerations, and lacks a valid, scientific basis for determining the effects of water withdrawals from Strawberry Canyon. Due to the fact that timing and flow can be more important than volume, there is no scientific basis to assume that a reduction in Nestlé Waters North America’s water collection will have any impact on the triggering conditions in the proposed adaptive management plan, much less constitute the sole impact.”
Nestlé further maintains, “The 1978 special use permit remains In effect as a matter of law. Pending issuance of a new special use permit, Special Use Permit #7285 automatically remains in effect as a matter of law. The Forest Service’s proposal is a substantial departure from prior permits and Nestle Waters North America’s use of the right-of-way. The Forest Service’s proposal is inconsistent with Its own regulations. The processing of an application for renewal of an existing use of National Forest lands, such as Nestlé Waters North America’s application, ordinarily follows a streamlined process for renewal. The Forest Service’s proposed restrictions on Nestlé Waters North America’s water collection would be ‘arbitrary and capricious.” The proposed action would create problematic precedent nationwide. The vast majority of public land in the United States is located in the West, where water is too often in scarce supply. The Forest Service, in particular, owns approximately 20 percent of the land in California and between five and 40 percent of the land in other western states. If the Forest Service asserts a right to regulate third party use of state-regulated water within national forest boundaries (a right it does not have under federal or state law), all parties with state-based water rights will be threatened, the hierarchy of senior water rights undermined, and long-term economic expectations thrown into doubt.”
Buried in its comments, Nestlé did make reference to a issue that environmentalists would likely seize upon in making their case that the special use permit should not be renewed. In a reference to categorical exceptions within the renewal process, the comments state, “the Forest Service’s scoping process is required to analyze whether an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ would result from reissuance of the special use permit that would preclude its use. The determination of whether an ‘extraordinary circumstance” would arise is based on whether reissuance of the special use permit ‘may have a significant effect on the environment,’ including an effect on certain specified resource conditions such as flood plains, wetlands, or wilderness or national recreation areas. There is no information or data demonstrating that Nestlé Water North America’s use of the land within the right-of-way (within the scope of the Forest Service’s regulatory control and discretion) results in an ‘extraordinary circumstance.’”
Some environmentalists may contest that assertion.
The pending Nestlé application has forced some degree of disclosure, such as it is. In response to a report that Nestlé had been drawing in excess of 100 million gallons of water from Strawberry Creek annually, the company recently put out that it had taken 36 million gallons from that source in 2015 and had taken nearly eight million gallons less in 2014, when it captured 28 million gallons. The company did not reveal how much water it had taken down from the mountain in previous years.
The Forest Service’s Robert Hawkins, who is working on the Forest Service’s adaptive management plan, said the service was assimilating the comments received from the public, including from Nestlé, and incorporating them into the penultimate draft of the plan. He said the Forest Service would withhold its statements until the next draft of the plan is completed.
Steve Loe, a retired Forest Service Wildlife Biologist with over 30 years of working in the Strawberry Creek Watershed, told the Sentinel,“The public, including individuals and conservation groups have been attempting to get Nestlé and the Forest Service to voluntarily protect the stream, riparian habitat and wildlife for over two-and-a-half years during this historic drought. Nestlé refuses to meet with the public to work on protecting the stream and the Forest Service has been intimidated by Nestlé ‘s threats. The Forest Service finally is making Nestlé pay for and provide for analysis to see how much water the National Forest needs to be healthy.”
Loe said, “This huge amount of water removal is having an adverse effect on the stream during this drought. No stream in Southern California has excess water at this time.”
Loe continued, “This is public land and there are many laws, regulations, policies and a land management plan that say permits need to comply with all of these and protect the National Forest. When the Forest Service first issued the permit in 1929, 87 years ago, the Forest Service had no idea what the effect would be on the stream. Now we have come so far in better understanding the surface water/groundwater relationships and what is needed to protect streams and natural resources. The Forest Service never promised Nestlé or their predecessors all the water they could take forever regardless of impact. That is why they were 10 year permits, in case something changed. Something has changed for sure. There are threatened and endangered species, including the Least Bell’s vireo, southwestern willow flycatcher and southern rubber boa. These animals would be stressed already by the drought, but the continued removal of as much groundwater as possible is pushing the ecosystem to the limits. Climate change is affecting this area and there has been significantly less rainfall and snow. Species habitat requirements and their need for water is much better understood. It is time to see how much water can be taken and still protect the public resources. It is time to stop water removal to let the watershed recover from the drought and conduct the needed studies.”
Loe said, “Nestlé now appears to be building a case for a large damage claim against the Forest Service if they try to use ‘their’ water, based on Nestlé’s friend of the court documents and NEPA input. Thank God, the federal government and State of California and Water Resources Control Board have strong laws, policies and regulations to protect natural streamflow and fish and wildlife in the use and allocation of the state’s water. It is the people of the state who own the water, not Nestlé. It is the Forest Service’s job to protect the National Forest.
I believe the State and Federal Government are going to stand up and defend the right of the State and Federal Government to protect our public resources from US and foreign corporations only interested in their profits.”
In its comments, Nestlé stated it would likely comply with restrictions the Forest Service might place on the drawing of water from Strawberry Canyon, but did not concede that it was legally obliged to do so. “Nestlé Waters North America will commit to adhere to an objective and scientifically sound adaptive management plan, but must do so voluntarily in order to comply with the law,” the comment document says.

The California New Business Bureau has prevailed in its nine-month challenge of San Bernardino County’s anti-solicitation ordinance.
That ordinance – Ordinance 4282 – added Chapter 30 to Division 1 of Title 4 of the San Bernardino County Code to prohibit solicitation to market or advertise products, services, or property by any person, association, group or other entity on county property.
The ordinance was framed with the California New Business Bureau in mind. The company has offices in Norwalk in Los Angeles County, Santa Ana in Orange County and San Bernardino in San Bernardino County, and offers a full line of services to start-up and existing businesses with regard to filing for corporation or partnership status, permits, licenses, establishing trademarks, registering and other applications with regard to operating a business. A major line of service at the company’s San Bernardino location, which is located across the parking lot from the county’s Hall of Records, is assisting those applying for fictitious business names in the county recorder’s office.
Because of the California New Business Bureau’s proximity to the Hall of Records and its practice of stationing its employees near the county facility and approaching those going into or coming out of the county clerk/recorder’s office, which is located on the ground floor of Hall of Records, it was seen as an interloper by many newspapers in the county. Bonafide newspapers derive a major portion of their income through the publishing of legal notices, such as those for fictitious business names, which are registered at the county clerk’s office. Some newspapers, such as the Sentinel coordinated with the California New Business Bureau to publish those notices. Other newspapers did not.
As a consequence of complaints from some of the newspapers, the county passed Ordinance 4282. In September the county began enforcing the ordinance. Four California New Business Bureau employees were cited for being in violation of the ordinance and were hit with fines. In some cases, those fines totaled several thousand dollars.
California New Business Bureau owners Eleazar Duque and his son Steven retained the services of Pasadena-based attorney Oscar Acosta. Acosta filed an action in San Bernardino Superior Court in which he challenged the ordinance on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and tortious interference grounds.
This week, the matter came before Judge David Cohn who found the ordinance unconstitutional.
“Judge Cohn’s ruling was quite narrow in scope,” Acosta told the Sentinel. “This was a straightforward question of whether the ordinance passed by the board of supervisors was constitutional or not. After hearing from both sides, he issued his ruling. There was no vacillation. He said the law is unconstitutional, which we maintained all along. The issue was clear. This is commercial speech and that is protected. He said the ordinance was overly broad and impermissibly vague. He ordered that the fines be vacated.”
Acosta said there is a parallel case that has yet to be adjudicated relating to action the district attorney’s office took against the employees that were cited. He said he anticipated that “those cases will be set aside. The district attorney’s office’s action related to the same course of conduct that was at issue in Judge Cohn’s ruling. The district attorney’s action has to be predicated on a valid law and the law here is unconstitutional.”
Acosta said “They could appeal but I would expect both parties will adhere to the ruling.”
Emilio Mendoza, who manages California New Business Bureau’s San Bernardino office three days a week, told the Sentinel, “The fight out here with the County of San Bernardino was vicious. They used all the tools they had to destroy our company, the DA, PD, and sheriff. The PD and sheriff were always respectful toward us. When they got code enforcement involved, their last attempt to destroy us was almost successful. They began to compile tickets on the company in the thousands of dollars. Thank God the judge said what we knew all along, which is that the ordinance was unconstitutional.”

By Mark Gutglueck
Dissatisfaction with Upland’s public works director, which has been mounting for months, manifested full blown this week when the former chairman of the city’s tree committee came before the city council to resign, saying he was driven to leave over what he characterized as deliberate mismanagement of the city’s premier public amenity.
Rosemary Hoerning, who has been Upland’s public works director since August 2011, had already encountered rough sledding earlier this year when a council member obliquely questioned her work ethic. That questioning arose as a consequence of her recommendation that the city hire engineering consultants to undertake assignments such as plan and spec drawing for road paving, which some residents believe Hoerning, a certified engineer with several licenses, should have carried out herself, with a cost savings of more than $150,000 to the city.
At the center of the contretemps this week is Upland’s tree-lined Euclid Avenue and its median, one of the most impressive and physically lengthy such features in the world, one which compares favorably with similar such enhancements in Palo Alto in Northern California and Dearborn, Michigan.
The Euclid median was the conception of the founders of the Ontario/Upland Colony, George and William Chaffey, who laid out Euclid, running some seven miles from the south end of Ontario north to San Antonio Heights north of Upland at the foothills below Mt. San Antonio, in the 1880s. Originally, the 53-foot wide median boasted a horse-drawn trolley. The trolley has given way to what is referred to as a bridle path but which is utilized mostly as a walking or jogging trail lying between dual rows of trees, including fern pines, silk oaks and California peppers. In South Ontario, both sides of Euclid serve as a dense commercial zone. As Euclid progresses northward, in north Ontario and through most of Upland, Euclid traverses several designated historic districts, with craftsman homes and civic buildings, including some dating from the late 19th Century lining either side of the avenue. Throughout that span of Euclid, the median composes, with the trees standing along both sides of the street, what its aficionados refer to as the “urban forest.”
Historically, Upland, or a major part of it, was considered, along with Redlands’ Smiley Heights and some of the neighborhoods in unincorporated Lake Arrowhead, to be among San Bernardino County’s most upscale and resplendent areas. At one time, Upland laid claim to being host to the most affluent population in the county as measured in per capita or per household income, a title it has now surrendered to the City of Chino Hills. But it remains at the forefront of the county as one of its more prestigious municipalities, and much of that cachet consists of the urban forest corridor that is Euclid Avenue, which is bordered by ever more impressive single family homes as one goes northward, giving way to ever more stately abodes which in turn give way to mansions intersticed with occasional manors.
This week, on Monday, May 9, the city council in closed session took secretive action with regard to a number of trees located on either side of Euclid Avenue or in its median. Reports were that the closed session was held using the justification that the council’s action pertained to potential legal liability and that liability consisted of drought-stricken trees which represented a danger because of the possibility that limbs from the trees might break off and fall, potentially raining down on a passerby, passersby or vehicles. Accordingly, the trees were to be taken out. Reportedly, the recommendation to remove the trees came from a consultant, retained by the city at Hoerning’s request.
Even before the council met, word of what was about to happen had emanated beyond City Hall.
Two days before Monday’s city council meeting, on May 7, John Ickis, an Upland resident and licensed arborist sent an email to the mayor, all four council members and Hoerning. “I noticed some orange dots on the 80 foot 100+ year old giant fern pines that line the edge of State Route 83 on my morning run,” the email began. “There is nothing wrong with these trees and do not remove any of those trees or you are bound to have enormous community uproar. This behavior is not going to be tolerated by me nor the multimillion dollar property owners along Historic Euclid Avenue. These trees are of very high value and should not be sold as furniture or sculptures by your unethical tree contractor.”
City officials, however, did not put much stock in Ickis’ warning, and Monday night retreated into closed session. According to city attorney Richard Adams, during that closed session there was a “conference with legal counsel concerning anticipated litigation. In closed session, special counsel Robert Gokoo made a presentation to the council concerning the urban forest report that covered risk management liability issues with regard to the city’s urban forest. The city council received the report, however took no action in closed session.”
During the meeting’s public comment section, Rusty Cushing, a member of and past chairman of the city’s street tree advisory committee, took the podium. Cushing, an agronomist whose professional experience included serving as a field agronomist and entomologist with the Air Force and who has taught within the discipline of ornamental horticulture at both Cal Poly Pomona and Mount San Antonio College, told the council, “I resign from the street tree advisory committee, effective immediately. In the last 45 years as a field agronomist with the United States Air Force and an entomologist serving all over the world during two wars, this is by far the worst professional experience I have ever had to endure, being on the street tree advisory committee for the City of Upland. When I first got on the committee, I went around and I visited with folks from other communities. We talked about their committees and their urban forests and what their requirements were and what their volunteer programs were and I came up with some really good ideas, some really good plans. Unfortunately, I was never able to initiate those plans. I got shut down the very first time I wrote an agenda with this bunch and it got worse from there. At one point we went 14 months without having a street tree advisory committee meeting. It’s beyond sad. The stated purpose and the duties of the street tree advisory committee is to study the proposed urban forestry management plan and make appropriate recommendations to the city council and staff regarding matters contained therein, provide an avenue for citizen appeal, special circumstantial tree problems, tree removals, street tree designations, spraying of insects and tree removal and other policies. Now you folks just had a private meeting regarding the removal of trees on Euclid Avenue. Your street tree advisory committee didn’t know anything about that. We were never informed. That’s one of our duties. You got hoodwinked. You got conned. The esteemed leader Rosemary Hoerning told you this was an emergency and this concerned liability, and so she kept it quiet, didn’t say anything to anybody, used that to get funds to go out and hire a consultant to tell you exactly what two members of your street tree advisory committee could have told you for nothing. I don’t know how many thousands of dollars you spent on this, but you had that information available in-house. That’s a perfect example of ‘Can’t Get No Respect.’”
Cushing said city officials had purposefully short circuited the tree committee and compromised its effectiveness.
“The street tree advisory committee has been a dumping ground for political hacks and supporters and friends for the last four years,” he said. “We used to have a requirement: To get on the street tree advisory committee you used to have to have a background and experience in horticulture and some form of what we dealt with. That requirement no longer exists. We now have people on the committee who really don’t care about trees, and they don’t know about trees. Periodically I would read the purpose and the duties of the committee to the committee and the city people who run our meetings. The city people would shake their heads and I had two of the committee members tell me they didn’t really join the committee to work on trees. I don’t know what that’s all about. I don’t know why they were there, but they were there. So, at any rate, if you are ever going to clean this mess up, you’ve go to put some restrictions on who you have on your committee. In all the years that I have been in business, and advised and worked all over the world, I have never, ever encountered a more dangerous individual in the workplace than Rosemary Hoerning.” Cushing said he considered her to be “dangerous, disruptive, deceptive.”
City attorney Richard Adams commented on the tenor of Cushing’s statements, saying, “It’s inappropriate for people to make derogatory comments about staff members but [they] can address issues of performance.”
Later during public comments, Heidi Hall, who has lived in Upland for 28 years, said she was likewise skeptical of the need to remove trees along Euclid Avenue.
“My husband and I moved to Upland from our home town of Pasadena,” she said. “Upland was a great choice, a lovely bedroom community with two very important components: the majestic view of the mountains and one of the most beautiful streets I had ever seen, Euclid Avenue.” Hall said that through social media she had “learned there are over 200 pepper trees lining Euclid that have been marked and will be taken down due to disease. I am asking the council to share the details with us, exactly what is wrong with our trees and how can we keep this from happening to our existing healthy trees. I understand if there is a botanist or a professional in horticulture who has identified tree disease, then they must come down. However I implore you to replace each and every one of the trees that are removed. I do not want to hear that as a city we are struggling financially and the funds are not there to replace the trees. Please think outside of the box.”
The Sentinel caught up with Cushing three days after his resignation from the tree committee. He enlarged upon his Monday evening statement, saying Hoerning “manufactured a phony liability crisis. This was very Machiavellian. That is not to say there were not problems with some of the trees, which is the result of a couple or three years of drought. But there are far more serious problem trees elsewhere in the city other than on Euclid Avenue. She cooked up this crisis and involved the city attorney with this liability question to, essentially, make herself look good. How do we know that? On the city street tree committee is a woman with absolutely impeccable credentials. Denise Jeanson is an arborist who is a longtime employee with the County of Los Angeles. Denise is that county’s liability specialist with regard to trees. Everyone with the City of Upland knows how good she is. She’s the one they have gone to for many years when they have these issues with trees when they don’t have the knowledge to deal with them on their own. Rosemary bypassed Denise and she bypassed me and she bypassed the committee. She kept it a secret from us. She declared an emergency to justify hiring a consultant, who did what all consultants do, which is tell whoever has hired them what they want to hear. As near as I can tell this whole thing was contrived. It was a set up. She [Hoerning] had Denise at her fingertips. Denise would have told her that yes, there were problems with some of the trees but there is no need to tear these trees out wholesale. She never asked Denise. She never asked me. I drive up and down Euclid at least three times a day. I would have told her the same thing. She could have had this analysis at no cost to the city. But this was orchestrated so Rosemary could come in and save the day. And the city manager backed her up and they used the term ‘liability’ and that gave the city attorney the chance to stand up and beat his chest. There were all sorts of other avenues she could have pursued to cure this. This was a manufactured crisis to take the heat off of her lack of performance and other problems.”
Two months previously, Councilman Glen Bozar had likewise taken issue with Hoernig’s affinity for bringing in consultants to undertake work within the public works department. In March, Hoerning requested authorization to hire an outside engineering firm, at a cost of $52,000, to draw up the plans and specifications for a road pavement project on 14th Street. Bozar questioned that requested expenditure, indirectly and somewhat elliptically suggesting that Hoerning – who holds a bachelors degree in civil engineering and a masters degree in public administration and is a registered professional engineer, civil engineer and land surveyor – was capable of drawing up the plans and specifications herself. Hoerning carries the title of public works director/city engineer and is paid $181,764 in salary, $60,511.21 in benefits and $14,098.12 in other pay for a total annual compensation of $256,373.87. City manager Rod Butler acknowledged that on a typical municipal employee compensation schedule, an engineer ranks higher than an administrator in the public works division, and that Hoerning was being paid at a level denoting she was functioning as an engineer. Thus, there appeared to be a basis for Bozar’s request that Hoerning perform the required engineering work for the street paving project. The city employs two engineers who work under Hoerning, but Hoerning maintained that they were engaged in performing project management tasks with regard to other city programs and thus were unavailable for engineering assignments. To the suggestion that Hoerning should be detailed to carry out the engineering work, it was pointed out that she was too engaged in administrative work in the public works division to do that. This led to an imputation that she should then sustain a one-third cut in pay and in benefits from her more than quarter of a million dollar compensation package, since she was not engaged in the more demanding engineering work.
Hoerning spurned repeated invitations from the Sentinel this week to provide a defense of both her action with regard to the trees on Euclid Avenue and her level of compensation.
Just prior to the public comment session at Monday night’s council meeting, as a prelude to the National 56th Annual Public Works Week celebration which is being held this year from May 15 through May 21, Hoerning gave a presentation outlining the scope of her department’s work.
She referenced the city’s public works staff, saying, “I’m very proud of the activities that they perform for the community of Upland.” She said her division engaged in “right of way maintenance” of “about 125 acres of right of way the city of Upland maintains. Some of it is done by a contract force, but a good portion of it is done by the staff itself.” She also referenced “park maintenance. The city has 13 parks and the public works department is responsible for improvements at those parks and the cleanliness of those parks. We also are responsible for public trees. Sometimes our trees fail and we have to go out and address the breakages that occur.”
She then cited “signage and lighting. We have almost 9,000 signs in the city. We have about 650 street lights that we’re responsible for and 83 traffic signals. And so the public works department is responsible for the upkeep of those facilities.”
With regard to “sidewalk maintenance,” she said “We have a number of areas around the city that have deficiencies and customers call our office and ask for public works to come out and mitigate the hazard that might be in front of their home. We’re responsible for filling potholes. Some of our roads have some of those issues, especially after the rain events, so it keeps our staff pretty busy filling potholes and making sure the road is safe for community residents.”
With regard to “capital improvement projects,” Hoerning said, “We have a number of roadway improvement projects planned for the summer and fall time frame. We talked about the paving of 14th Street from Euclid to Campus, 13th Street from Euclid to Campus, 22nd Street from Mountain to Euclid. There’s a number of slurry projects in the downtown area and up in the Colonies. Those are projects that are planned for the summertime. The capital improvement team does storm drain improvements. We are now finishing up our rehab of our water treatment plant in front of San Antonio Dam.”
With regard to “land development and transportation,” Hoerning said, “Through new projects that come into the city, we are responsible for making sure the development mitigates any growth-related activities, and so plans and specs are reviewed and approved through our department and also transportation-related permits are issued. We have utility services. We serve turnkey water services to 19,000 customers within the city of Upland. We repair the water main leaks found. We’re constantly taking water quality samples and we’re also monitoring the system on a seven day basis through our telemetry system, which allows us to see how high are our reservoirs or how low our reservoirs are, what pumps are on, what pump stations are running, things of that nature. We also have meter reading services and distribution repairs. We also have environmental services. A lot of the city customers don’t realize we have an old landfill in town, so part of our regulatory requirements are that we continue to monitor the groundwater and monitor methane gas that is generated by that landfill as it continues to age. We also have staff that goes out to regulate commercial and industrial users and what they put into our sewer system so it doesn’t impact the treatment plant or our collection system in a negative manner.”
With regard to “sewer services” she said, “We have a small group of people that clean our main sewer trunk lines throughout the city. We try to get through the entire city once every year. You can see some flow monitoring and improvements. For trash collection services we use Burrtec Waste Industries, but also the city runs a household hazardous waste program on Saturday from 9 to 2, where residents can bring their electronic waste, their old paint cans that still have paint, their gas cans that still have fluid but is no longer usable, fluorescent light bulbs, all those kind of things to include medical waste. We also give away mulch to our residents. For emergency response we’re available when the city has windstorms and rain events. We prepare in advance when we have advance notice and then we respond during the event and after the event.”
Of those registering complaints about Hoerning, none made complaints about her skill level or qualifications. Rather, the gist of the objections were to her work ethic and what was characterized as her unwillingness to carry out the more demanding assignments which justified her quarter of a million dollar per year compensation package.
Upland City Manager Rod Butler this week told the Sentinel that in her role as public works director, Hoerning functions as “both the administrator of the department and as an engineer,” and he suggested she was doing an exemplary job at both.
In addition to her administrative role over the division as a whole, Butler said, she had also taken up the administrative duties formerly carried out by retired assistant public works director Acquanetta Warren, who left the city last year, as well the work of the city’s water and wastewater division manager, which position is also currently vacant. Thus, suggestions that there is something lacking in her work ethic or that she does not have a full work load are entirely unfounded, Butler said.
Advocates of belt tightening and economies, such as councilman Bozar cannot have it both ways, Butler said. If the city reduces its payroll and achieves economies in that fashion, those belt-tightening advocates cannot assert that the city has no need of qualified, highly refined expertise when the time for project planning and management presents itself, Butler maintained. He said that he was personally in favor of eliminating specialty positions such as engineers whose presence at City Hall is not constantly in demand but said this means that the city is temporarily understaffed in terms of engineering personnel once energetic projects are initiated because it has shed itself of staff engineers and inspectors as part of City Hall’s overall downsizing. Butler said that when money does come available for certain capital  improvement projects, there is a need for engineering expertise and the most sensible, logical and cost efficient way of meeting that gap is through the hiring of consultants.
Butler said he valued Hoerning as “an excellent public employee” and he considered the exacting public scrutiny of her performance “very distasteful.”
Assistant city manager Jeannette Vagnozzi contrasted the public perception that Hoerning was not carrying out the full complement of her duties with her observation that “Rosemary often works after 6 p.m. and on Fridays.”
In Upland, city offices are closed on Friday.

BARSTOW — Two years after a rash of suicides beset Riverside Preparatory School in the Oro Grande School District, two high school students at Barstow High School fordid themselves last month.
School officials and law enforcement authorities have confirmed that a 15-year-old boy died on April 13, in the 1600 block of Church St. in Barstow, and an 18-year-old student died on April 30, in the 27000 block of Rimrock Road in Barstow.
According to Barstow Unified School District Superintendent Jeff Malan, the former was a freshman and the latter was a senior at the high school.
Malan posted a letter on the district’s website to parents of students at the school on May 5. “I believe that it is imperative that I reach out and partner with you and our community as a whole to keep our youth safe by providing encouragement, support, referral and intervention as needed,” Malan wrote. “This important responsibility requires the active involvement of the entire community which includes parents, families, educators, students and community members engaged with youth. The identification of ‘at risk’ youth for causing harm to oneself is important in preventing tragic events from occurring and one institution or organization alone cannot achieve this important goal.”
Malan said the community must focus on “Taking prevention steps with those known to be at risk to cause harm to oneself and identifying others at risk as well. We must reach out to others and refer our youth to appropriate community agencies for support when any may be suspected to be a potential harm to oneself or others. It is important that you gently and lovingly speak with your children regarding your concern about their emotional well-being, as well as the need to partner with them in keeping their peers safe by informing you or any responsible and trusted adult of any students that they believe to be ‘at risk’ for causing harm to oneself.”
Last year at Riverside Preparatory School, also located in the Mojave Desert some 36 miles away from Barstow in the community of Oro Grande, three students attending that accelerated learning facility took their own lives between February and May 2014.
Those involved the death of a 15-year-old girl in early February 2014 and that of a 16-year-old boy later that month, followed by the apparent suicide of a 13-year-old boy on May 21, 2014.
There was concern expressed at that time that the sheer academic intensity of the Riverside Preparatory School program may have been a contributory factor in the deaths. The father of the 15-year-old said he believed his daughter had been driven to suicide as a result of the bullying she was subjected to by her peers.

Ten law enforcement-affiliated agencies have gone on record as being opposed to the statewide proposition aimed at the legalization of marijuana that will appear on the ballot in November.
A letter from those ten entities, dated April 22, was sent to the California Assembly. The letter states, “As you know a well-funded ballot initiative that would legalize commercial marijuana, entitled the “Adult Use of Marijuana Act” or “AUMA” is expected to be on this year’s ballot. Defeat of this initiative will be a top priority for the California Police Chiefs Association, California State Sheriffs’ Association, California Peace Officers’ Association, California College and University Police Chiefs Association, California Narcotic Officers Association, the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Assocition, the Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs Association, the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, and the Riverside Sheriffs Association, and we believe that, just like Prop 19 in 2012, it can once again be defeated.”
The letter continues, “The AUMA will not protect our children. In fact, those under the age of 18 will have greater access to marijuana than ever before. They will no longer need a black market when they can grow their own, smoke, or sell it without fear of any meaningful punishment. If marijuana is legal it becomes ‘normalized,’ and sends the wrong message to our teens.”

The San Bernardino County Superior Court remains committed to putting Tyler Technologies’ Odyssey case management and information system in place despite the considerable problems that have resulted in making the changeover from the previous on-line data base containing information relating to lawsuits and prosecutions being heard at the county’s six courthouses.
The decision to revamp San Bernardino County Superior Court’s online case information system was made by by former presiding judge Marsha Slough in accordance with a bidding process authorized by the California Judicial Council some two years ago. Tyler Technologies’ version 3.02.20.3 Odyssey system was selected and Tyler Technologies was given a $4 million contract to effectuate the change. While the previous information system pertaining to the county’s civil cases remains in place, on February 11, the criminal side of the Superior Court of San Bernardino’s open access website went offline to make way for the initiation of the 3.02.20.3 Odyssey version.
What happened thereafter has been described, variously, as a massive computer crash or a series of recurrent and persistent mini-crashes. One report was that half of a million files which were transferred out of the old system’s data banks into version 3.02.20.3 were erased. Overnight, access to the digitized minute orders on criminal cases, which had been routinely and easily navigated to on the old system, ended.
Officials nonchalantly gave assurances that what was occurring was a normal byproduct of making such a digitized transition and that in short order technicians would “get the bugs out of” the new software and all of the information previously available in an even more easily accessible format would soon be available. But a month and then two months and now three months has passed and the minute orders are yet unavailable, and further deficiencies in the new system have become apparent. Court records for hearings of criminal cases are no longer available. Follow-up information pertaining to fines paid or restitution made by defendants is no longer being entered into the system or otherwise can not be retrieved. In March, Superior Court officials acknowledged that not all elements of the information that had gone into the case management system was at that point available but that Tyler Technologies was working with court personnel “to make the criminal cases component fully operational as soon as possible.”
On April 14, Christine Volkers, the executive officer for San Bernardino County Superior Court, was placed on administrative leave, but there has been no official statement in response to suggestions that her abrupt exodus was related to the failure of the Odyssey system.
A report has persisted that approximately 500,000 digitized criminal case files loaded into the Odyssey 3.02.20.3 version were permanently lost, that is, are unrecoverable, and that when an effort to scan just a fraction of those missing documents into the system was begun, they were “eaten,” that is, rendered into a scrambled digital form that could not be translated or unjumbled back into any semblance of their original form. It was further reported that when the court’s clerical staff was tasked with the painstaking process of reentering court documents individually into the system, several simply quit, making the pending workload ever more unwieldy.
Dennis B. Smith, the risk and safety administrator with the San Bernardino Superior Court whose tertiary assignment is media relations, this week acknowledged to the Sentinel that a dozen court personnel had recently left their assignments, but he suggested this was no greater than what occurs as a consequence of normal attrition. “We have had clerks retire in the last few months as is typical turnover for any business,” he said. “A comparison of retirements for the first quarter of this calendar year compared to the first quarter of the last calendar year indicates identical turnover with 12 employees retiring in each of the quarters mentioned.”
Smith sidestepped questions relating to the superior functionality of the previous system but said the decision to undertake a complete transition to Tyler Technologies’ program was one that was driven by practicality and need. He indicated that the decision to go with the Odyssey 3.02.20.3 version was an irrevocable one and that there is no prospect current San Bernardino County Superior Court Presiding Judge Raymond W. Haight III will reconsider the decision to transition to Tyler Technologies’ Odyssey system and decide to jettison it and return to the previous system.
“Our court made the decision to migrate to the Tyler Odyssey case management system because our current vendor has notified us that they will discontinue support of the system,” Smith said. “The Odyssey system is operational throughout the court’s criminal and traffic courts. The court has experienced challenges such as the minute order functionality. However, we are addressing this and working towards continuous improvement of the product. As is the case with any new technology, the system was developed to grow to accommodate our ever-changing needs.”
Without getting drawn into a discussion about whether the transition to the Odyssey system had resulted in the wholesale deletion of the criminal court’s digital files, Smith nevertheless asserted that the court yet maintained hard copies of all court records.
“The court maintains a paper case file as the official record of the court,” he insisted. “For the convenience of our users, we do make available an electronic version of our records that complies with statute. All converted documents within our electronic records inventory are in place at this time and viewable as authorized by statute. No documents were lost.”
Of moment in the current difficulties besetting the on-line system is that at present not it does not offer documentation of whether those adjudged guilty and sentenced have paid fines or met other restitution requirements. Defense attorneys have expressed concern that some individuals have been returned to jail or prison because the system has not allowed the judges they have appeared before to ascertain whether those required to do so have met those obligations. While he did not speak to the possibility or actuality that some individuals who may have indeed complied with sentencing requirements had been re incarcerated because of the glitches in the system, Smith said there are alternate means of both paying fines and documenting their payment to the on-line registry.
“We answer inquiries each day regarding questions on payments of fees, fines and restitution,” Smith said. “These inquiries are made in person, by phone and by letter. Although we offer payment options on line, we are available by many means of communication to our public.”
It is up to the individuals paying fines or making restitution to keep the documentation of such and to assert their compliance with those orders when questions come up, Smith said. The court will accommodate those who do, he said.
“Our mission, as a court, is to preserve and protect the rights of our constituency,” Smith said. “Our case management system may have changed, but our business processes for serving the community remain the same. The court has and will always thoroughly research any discrepancies in payments or to the record brought to our attention, and we will address discrepancies if found to be sustained.”
The court has yet to have Tyler Technologies embark on having the court’s digitized civil case records migrated into the Odyssey system.

By Mark Gutglueck
Joseph B. Gill, was a businessman, banker and financier in San Bernardino at the turn of the 19th to the 20th Century, and he remained a prominent member of the community well into the Roaring Twenties. He was 37 years old when he made his way to San Bernardino from Illinois, where he had been the owner and editor of widely circulated newspaper when he was in his twenties and then a driving force in politics and statesmanship.
Whereas in Illinois he had been an advocate in his journalistic and political career for the poor and downtrodden, in San Bernardino he became a member of the entrepreneurial class and the economic establishment.
Joseph B. Gill was born on the 17th of February in 1862 at Marion, Illinois, the son of John Gill, the grandson of John Gill and the great grandson of John Gill. His mother was named Nancy as was his grandmother. Gill traced his genealogy back to pre-Revolutionary days, the Gill family having been established in America by members of that clan, who were of English and Irish ancestry, when they settled in Virginia shortly after the establishment of Jamestown in 1607.
Joseph Gill’s grandfather, John Gill, was born in Virginia but was brought to Illinois by his parents while a small boy. John Gill’s wife, Nancy, came from a family that had live in America from prior to the Revolutionary War, but was of German ancestry. John and Nancy Gill were pioneers of the district around De Soto, Illinois. They had eight children, of whom Joseph B. Gill’s father, known as John, Jr. was the fifth. The couple lived near De Soto all their lives, reared their family and died in 1885.
John M. Gill, Jr. father of Joseph B. Gill, was born in Murphysboro, Illinois, November 23, 1833. He received what was in that region and at that time an exhaustive education, and assisted his father on the home farm. He married Nancy J. Wright, daughter of Washington Wright of Williamson County. They had two children, Joseph B. and one who died at an early age. In 1855 John Gill, Jr. began business in the merchandising line and in 1859 removed from De Soto to Williamson County, where he engaged in farming and dealing in tobacco and other produce of the farms. In 1863, a year after the birth of his son who is the focus of this narrative, he returned to De Soto where he resided until 1868. In that year he located in Murphysboro, Illinois, where he resumed his mercantile pursuits until fire swept away his store and he decided to take up milling. He soon became one of the prominent men of that district. A staunch Democrat. John Gill, Jr. in 1876 he was elected mayor of Murphysboro and filled the office two terms, establishing what was deemed “a record for the able discharge of his duties and rare judgment.” He was also a director of the public schools for many years and a Mason for twenty years.
He founded the town of Gillsburg on the narrow gauge railroad on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, about eight miles northwest of Murphysboro, which became a thriving and bustling place. He was noted as a business man of finest principle, and was adjudged “square and honest, and of strict integrity.” He died on February 27, 1886, outliving his father by less than a year.
Joseph Gill attended the public schools in De Soto and Murphysboro. In 1884 he graduated from the Southern Illinois Normal School in Carbondale and took a classical education in the Christian Brothers College, in St. Louis. After subsequent law studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and graduating in July, 1886, he was admitted to the Michigan Bar, passing an examination before the Circuit and Supreme Courts of that state. He never practiced as an attorney, however. Rather, he obtained a part interest in the newspaper The Murphysboro Independent, where he was active a journalist, co-editor and publisher.
In 1888 he was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives, holding that position for two terms. In both general assemblies, Gill proved a strong anti-corporation man, and espoused the cause of labor. He championed the passage of the Gross-Weight Bill, the Weekly Pay Bill and the Anti-Truck Store Bill, and did all he could to advance the Arbitration Bill to a successful issue. He was recognized as seeking to benefit a class of people who had few friends in the legislature.
After the Illinois General Assembly adjourned in 1891 there had been demand for his name to be placed on the state ticket. On the first ballot in April, 1892, Gill was nominated for the office of lieutenant-governor by the Democratic State Convention. He was then elected by an overwhelming margin, receiving the highest number of votes of any of the candidates on the ticket except the state treasurer.
He remained with the newspaper until the First of January 1893. At that point he embarked on his political career in earnest.
In their book, The History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, published in 1922, John Brown Jr. and James Boyd wrote of Joseph Gill’s journalistic and political career in Illinois that his “controlling motive was the protection of the poorer classes and the easing of their heavy burdens” and “his burning zeal for service, his espousal of the cause of the so-called lower classes made him a power to be reckoned with. With him it was noblesse oblige and all his actions were based on enduring justice and right, and he went down underneath superfluities to bedrock. Mr. Gill could think for the commonwealth, the proletariat, and he came to be their Moses, leading them out of the morass in which they were all but submerged.”
In the 1892 election Gill had run on the Democratic ticket with John Peter Altgeld, who was the first Democratic governor of Illinois elected since the 1850s. Gill would serve as vice governor of Illinois from January 1893 to 11 January 1897.
Altgeld suffered a nervous breakdown shortly after his victory, and nearly died of a concomitant fever. He managed to appear at his inauguration, but was only able to deliver a brief portion of his speech. Although the general assembly hall was so warm as to cause several men to faint, Altgeld, clad in a heavy topcoat, was pale and visibly shivering. The clerk of the assembly delivered the remainder of his speech.
On November 28, 1893, Gill married Miss Pearl Hall, the daughter of James W. and Augusta Hall, formerly residents of southern Illinois, and later of San Bernardino, where Mrs. Gill was living at the time of her marriage. Pearl Gill was described as “a lady of refinement and culture” who had “evinced decided talent in both music and painting.”
The Altgeld Administration would embark on what was the nation’s most progressive child labor and occupational safety laws, vastly increasing state funding for education, and appointed women to important positions in the state government.
Altgeld, however, was grievously ill much of the time, and so the actual governing of the state fell to Joseph Gill. Mindful of the interests of the people, and believing that vast sums of money belonging to the state had heretofore been sequestered, he therefore, by the authority vested in him as governor, directed the state attorney-general to institute suits against ex-state officials extending over a long period of years. While his action met with the unqualified approval of the tax-payers and common people of the state, it created consternation in the ranks of those politicians whose financial interests were directly or indirectly affected. His course was highly commended by the press of the state and by those who favored the economical administration of affairs.
In February, 1894, owing to Altgeld’s absence from the state, Gill as lieutenant-governor again assumed the gubernatorial chair, and as upon the previous occasion, discharged the duties of the office to the satisfaction of an overriding majority of the people of Illinois. Many compliments were extended him by the press of Illinois and other states, also by representative men of the state during his incumbency of the office. Despite his relative youth, his qualifications made him an equal in the discharge of his duties with those whose years greatly outnumbered his.
While serving as acting governor, Gill succeeded in bringing to a peaceful resolution a major miners’ strike.
Having already secured the adoption of the weekly pay bill for the miners, Gill had established credibility with those on strike. That strike occurred in the coal mines in the northern part of Illinois, and involved several companies and seven thousand miners. A large part of these miners, armed and in what was described in contemporaneous accounts as “an ugly mood,” had gathered at Toluca in Marshall County, and demanded what they considered their rights. One of the biggest mine owners impacted in the strike was Charles J. Devlin, who was also the sheriff of the county. Devlin, fearing the destruction of property, sent repeated telegrams demanding the Illinois State Militia be employed and holding acting Governor Gill responsible for any bloodshed and destruction that might follow if he did not use sufficient martial presence and force to put down the strike. Governor Gill refused to do so, and proposed rather that the companies furnish the miners free transportation out of the state, saying he would go to the strikers personally. This approach was agreed upon and Gill, accompanied by the assistant adjutant general, sojourned to Joliet. There they met the local representatives of the United Mine Workers. Upon arriving in Toluca, a consultation was held with Devlin who agreed to furnish transportation if Mr. Gill could get the strikers to proceed to their homes. Gill and union officials both addressed the miners and within three hours after they arrived the strikers were on the train homeward. All over the state the press regarded this as a remarkable performance and was unanimous in praise of Governor Gill’s tact and promptness.
Brown and Boyd wrote, “The youngest lieutenant governor Illinois ever had, and acting governor for years, a lawyer by education, Mr. Gill from the first showed all the qualities for triumphant leadership, and he was soon tested in the fires of experience. He was, however, accredited by his friends, constituents and the press, with so many brilliant and unusual qualities and talents it seems as though he possessed more gifts than any one man should have. Throughout his public life he was never accused of misconduct, untruth, ‘wobbling,’ cowardice, lack of initiative or nerve. Although he was the champion of the poor and oppressed he soon won golden opinion from all classes, and always those who favored good government were solidly behind him.”
In 1896 Gill renounced another candidacy as governor/lieutenant governor. He did however agree after his tenure as lieutenant governor ended to serve as a lead member of the Illinois Conciliation Authority, also known as the State Board of Arbitration. After remaining in that position several months, he pulled up stakes and headed to California, having had enough of the strain of politics, which he said he was through with. At his wife’s insistence over the possible damage that strain was doing to his health, the couple came to San Bernardino, where she had previously dwelt.
Gill was elected the first president of the Board of Trade of San Bernardino shortly after arriving in 1897, and was re-elected. He was made chairman of the San Bernardino County Highway Commission that apportioned a $1,750,000 San Bernardino County bond issue.
Mr. Gill was in the lumber business under the name of the Gill-Norman Lumber Company and had three yards: one in San Bernardino, one in Riverside and one in Redlands. He sold out his interests after being engaged in it for twelve years and then retired from all business for ten years.
His son, James W. Gill, who was born November 11, 1895, became engaged in the lumber business in San Bernardino and still owned such a business in the 1920s. James W. Gill saw active service in France with the 145th Field Artillery during World War I, then known as the Great War.
By 1920, Joseph Gill’s marriage to Pearl had ended or she had died. On April 27, 1920, Gill married Thelma Smith of Murphysboro, Illinois, daughter of Edward Smith and member of one of the oldest and most respected families of Murphysboro. Mrs. Gill was a member of the Christian Church.
The same year as his second marriage, Gill’s record and his aptitude for finance brought him out of retirement and he accepted the presidency of the San Bernardino National Bank and of the San Bernardino
County Savings Bank.
The San Bernardino County Savings Bank had J. B. Gill as president and H. E. Harris, first vice-president; A. M. Ham, 2nd vice-president; J. H. Wilson, cashier; J. C. Ralph, Jr., assistant cashier and directors: J. B. Gill, H. E. Harris, A. M. Ham, Victor C. Smith, T. A. Blakelv, W. J. Curtis, Howard B. Smith, Mrs. E. D. Roberts and R. E. Roberts were board members. On December 1, 1920, the capital was $150,000, with a surplus of $150,000 and undivided profits $42,000. The bank’s resources were $3,375,234.24.
The officers of the San Bernardino National Bank were J. B. Gill, president; H. E. Harris, 1st vice-president; W. S. Boggs, 2nd vice-president; R. E. Roberts, 3rd vice-president; J. S. Wood, cashier; Herbert Weir and V. J. Micallef, assistant cashiers. The directors were J. B. Gill, H. B. Smith, J. W. Curtis, J. S. Wood, W. S. Boggs, H. E. Harris. Jennie E. Davis, R. E. Roberts and H. P. Stow. The capital was $100,000 with a surplus of $100,000 and undivided profits of $235,086.95. The bank’s resources were $2,206,750.99.
The combined capital and surplus of the two banks in 1922 was over $800,000, the combined deposits $4,538, 059.74 and the combined resources, $5,624,924.20.
In 1922, Gill was also a director of the First National Bank of Rialto, and was vice-president of the Ocean Park Bank of Ocean Park, California. He was a director, of the American National Bank of San Bernardino but resigned when he accepted the presidency of the other two banks.
In 1922-23 Gill was president of the National Orange Show. Gill was a member of San Bernardino Lodge No. 836, B. P. O. E., and was one of its first trustees.
After 1924, Gill led a quiet life and there is very little note of his existence in available public sources.
He died on the 22nd of September, 1942.

The Coulter pine or big-cone pine, Pinus coulteri, is a native of the coastal mountains of Southern California and northern Baja California, and is present in both the Angles National Forest and the San Bernardino Mountains in San Bernardino County. Isolated groves are found as far north as the San Francisco Bay Area in Mt. Diablo State Park and Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. The species is named after Thomas Coulter, an Irish botanist and physician. Pinus coulteri is a substantial coniferous evergreen tree in the genus Pinus.
The Coulter pine produces the largest cone of any pine tree, ranging to over ten pounds in weight and measuring over a foot long. Although this tree has a limited range in the wild, it is a popular ornamental tree. Its wood is soft and weak, so is not used for much other than firewood by man.
Also known as the California Coulter pine, Big-cone pine, Nut pine, and Pitch pine, it is a slow growing species, reaching only 20 feet in 20 years. In optimal sites, it can grow as tall as 80 feet with a trunk diameter of 1 to 3.3 feet. Root depth is about 40 inches. These trees prefer deep, well-drained, acidic soils. Moisture requirements vary between moist and dry for the soil but it does require a considerable amount of rain annually and it has a low drought tolerance. Soils tend to be of medium texture, gravelly, or loamy. The minimum temperature for survival is 12 degrees Fahrenheit and more than 145 days of frost per year will threaten their survival. Large trees are resistant to low and moderately severe fires.
The bark is gray on young trees, becoming dark purplish-brown or black with thick, scaly, broad ridges. The trunk is vertical and branches horizontal to upcurved. The leaves are needle-like and stiff, in bundles of three, glaucous blue-green to gray-green, about 10 to 12 inches long.
The outstanding characteristic of this tree is the large, spiny cones which are 7.9 inches to 15.7 inches long, and weigh 4.4 pounds to 11 pounds when fresh. Coulter pines produce the largest cones of any pine tree species, although the slender cones of the sugar pine are longer. The large size of the cones has earned them the nickname “widowmakers” among locals, and people are advised to wear hardhats when working in Coulter pine groves. Coulter pine cones occur in whorls of 4 and stay on the tree for 5-6 years. Each cone contains many large, edible, brown seeds that are .8 inches in diameter.
The Coulter pine is closely related to the Jeffrey pine, with which it shares habitats, and the ponderosa pine, though Coulter pines tend to grow in drier environments than their cousins.
As an erect, medium-sized pine, the Coulter prefers south-facing slopes between 660 feet to 7,550 feet in elevation, and tolerates dry rocky soil. Pinus coulteri most often appears in mixed forests. The Coulter pine occurs in a number of forest plant associations, so that it will be co-dominant with the California black oak among other trees. Woodpeckers often forage on the species, peeling the bark to access insects underneath. Female Whiteheaded Woodpeckers feed almost exclusively on insects found on the lower trunks and the males eat seeds from the cones.
The life span of Coulter Pine is moderate for trees and most reach at least 100 years of age.

By Grace Bernal
This is May and there’s a lot going on this month with Mother’s Day being celebrated everywhere and birthdays, too. There were some spectacular luncheons going on this past weekend, all dedicated to Mother. The dress up was flamboyant, with hats and celebration of spring and mothers of all sorts. Moms always make an effort to wear color and pieces that they don’t always wear on this special day. The spring coat came in due to the chilly weather, and it was worn in bright and cheerful color. It’s all in the name of Mother, which happens once a year, and really is a breath of fresh air. Enjoy the weather and the fashion this month because things are cheering up.

“Without foundations, there can be no fashion.” -Christian Dior