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Sentinel 06-03-16

The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s public integrity unit is seeking documents and records from three High Desert governmental agencies going back three-and-a-half years.
The public integrity unit has requested or is going to request agendas and meeting minutes from the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority, Victor Valley Economic Development Agency and the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District, a reliable source has told the Sentinel.
The lawyer for the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District confirmed that entity received a request for meeting agendas and minutes, and that the district had already complied with the request.
Officials with the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority told the Sentinel that as of this morning, no request from the district attorney’s office had been received or processed.
No response to the Sentinel’s inquiry of the Victor Valley Economic Development Agency was forthcoming by press time.
Karen Novak, the counsel for the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District told the Sentinel on June 2 that the district attorney’s office had asked for records and documents “which we treated as a public records request. They wanted the agendas and meeting minutes for the board going back to November 2012.”
Novak said the district attorney’s office’s inquiry arrived at the district on May 24 and “was in the form of a public records request. It was not a subpoena.” She said the district had already met the request.
This morning, Kristi Casteel, secretary to the board and general manager of the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority, said she had not seen any such request. She referred the Sentinel to Robert Caromina, the authority’s director of administration. Caromina told the Sentinel, “I am not aware of any request for records or documents from the district attorney’s office. Kristi Casteel has not received one either and if there was that kind of request it would have come across at least one of our desks.” When asked, Caromina said it was possible the request had gone to the authority’s attorney. He said he would check. He called back less than an hour later and said that the authority’s counsel had not been contacted either. “So as of today, we have not received those requests,” Caromina said.
That the district attorney’s office’s inquiries had not yet progressed to the stage of issuing subpoenas is telling, indicating that at this stage of the investigation, probable cause to indicate a crime had definitely occurred has yet to surface.
One report was that the public integrity unit’s inquiries were outgrowths of complaints filed against First District San Bernardino County Supervisor Robert Lovingood, who is locked in a reelection campaign against four opponents – Bill Holland, Rick Roelle, Paul Russ, and Angela Valles. Well prior to the campaign, Valles, who was formerly employed as the director of administration with the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority, had alleged Lovingood was involved in a series of conflicts of interest growing out of his ownership of ICR Staffing Services and his position on the board of supervisors. In particular, Valles claims that ICR’s contract with the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority to supply temporary personnel has pushed Lovingood into the area of illegality. Since the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority is a joint powers agency that includes the County of San Bernardino as one of its participants, Valles maintains the $560,000 in fees ICR has received from the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority during his term on the board of supervisors is an instance of Lovingood profiteering by using his official position.
According to the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority’s charter, one of its board members is the First District Supervisor. Valles has extrapolated upon what she perceives as the conflict-ridden circumstance involving Lovingood and the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority and has drawn the inference that Lovingood serving as a board member on the Victor Valley Economic Development Authority, which has long overseen the conversion of the former George Air Force Base to civilian use, as well as with the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District, entails a further conflict of interest.
The so-far unsubstantiated implication is that ICR also has contractual arrangements, either directly or indirectly with the air quality district and the economic development authority.
Lovingood and his supporters have refuted the insinuations with regard to the Victor Valley Economic Development Authority and the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District outright, stating ICR has had no contractual relationship with either of those entities. Moreover, they have labeled Valles as being plain wrong when it comes to her accusations regarding the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority. ICR’s contract with the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority was in place prior to Lovingood being elected to the board of supervisors, they point out. And from the outset of his assuming office, Lovingood and his advisers were conscious of the potential conflict. Accordingly, Lovingood avoided being seated on the authority’s board, conscientiously and fastidiously remaining above such a conflict. Instead, Lovingood pointed out, his fellow board of supervisors colleague, James Ramos, has served in his stead on the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority Board. For a legal conflict of interest such as Valles suggests to take place, he and his supporters assert, Lovingood would have to participate in a vote in which he awarded a contract to his company. No such vote has taken place, they contend.

Upland’s Finance Committee this week rebuffed city manager Rod Butler’s effort to hatch a budget for the upcoming 2016-17 fiscal year that would have diverted nearly $1 million earmarked for road improvements to the general fund, while the city’s personnel costs overall would have zoomed upward by 10.02 percent or $2,745,425 over the total compensation paid to the city’s employees during the current 2015-16 fiscal year.
The 2016-17 budget Butler had finance director Scott Williams prepare envisioned revenues of $45,727,220 and operating costs of $46,685,000. Buried within that budget were increases of 20.3 percent – $1,171,145 – into the city’s pension fund; 20 percent – $549,7217 – for so-called fringe benefits; and 5.39 percent – $1,024,553 – for salary increases. Into the mix were hefty increases for both the fire department and the police department – 12.5 percent and 11 percent, respectively – as well as the city’s administrative services division.
The spending plan was formulated with what the finance committee members made clear they felt was insufficient regard to the Upland Fiscal Responsibility Act adopted by the city council on a unanimous vote in January. The fiscal responsibility act was an idea put forth by Jason Gaudy, a member of the Upland Fiscal Task Force that was formed in 2013 to analyze the city’s options for dealing with its financial challenges.
The Upland Fiscal Responsibility Act mandates that the city “base its operating capital on demonstrable sources of revenue. The city shall maintain cash balances to adequately provide for economic uncertainties, local disasters or catastrophic events, and other financial hardships or downturns in the local or national economy or contingencies for unforeseen operational needs. The city shall retain, per policy, a minimum unassigned fund balance of at least 12.5 percent of general fund operating expenditures, with a goal of bringing the total level of reserves up to 25 percent. Once the 12.5 percent reserve goal is met, the city finance officer will provide recommendations to the council for assigning any additional reserves to reduce or eliminate deficit fund balances for funds supported by the general fund or operating needs… into an IRS Section 115 Trust for the sole purpose of funding future pension and other post employment benefit liabilities.”
This week’s meeting was intended to focus on the expenditure element of Upland’s upcoming 2016-17 budget. Last week, at the previous city finance committee meeting where the major focus had been on revenues into the budget, the committee’s chairman, councilman Glenn Bozar, had inquired as to the how roughly $978,000 in gasoline tax the city is due to collect, which traditionally and by previous city council mandate is earmarked for road and street improvements, had been transferred into the general fund. Butler, the city manager, at that time said the money was to be used to pay the city’s electrical bill, which Bozar interpreted as being rerouted to operations, and by extension, to salary and benefit hikes for employees.
This week, Bozar revisited the issue of the transfer of the gas tax money into the general fund, essentially asserting that this amounted to what he felt was a way of violating the city’s fiscal responsibility act, if not explicitly, then in spirit. The act was intended to impose fiscal discipline on the city, Bozar reasoned, and Butler was robbing Peter to pay Paul by avoiding depleting the city’s reserve account through sleight of hand involving consigning the road maintenance money to general city operations, which Bozar maintains have have been bloated by salary and benefit increases to staff.
“This is a non-starter,” Bozar told Butler. “You are transferring $977,663 from the gas fund, which is supposed to pay for roads and sidewalks, into the general fund, which is really to cover staff salary increases. You said it is going to pay [Southern California] Edison. I don’t understand that at all. Did our Edison bill go up some unexpected amount? We’re just playing a game of ‘I don’t want to take anything out of the reserves so instead I’ll transfer this other money to cover those expenses.’ When I look at the individual department budgets, my jaw dropped.”
Bozar suggested that Butler had to show more resolve in holding those departments to no or minimal growth in their operating expenses. He directly addressed police chief Brian Johnson and Fire Chief Paul Segala. “Sorry Chief… Sorry Chief,” he said, indicating that the 11 and 12.5 percent increases in the operating budgets tentatively carved out for their departments would not be forthcoming. He focused in particular on the arrangement entered into with the City of Montclair over the merging of the two city’s respective fire department management divisions, which was sold as a cost saving move. He asserted that Upland had not saved on its fire department operating costs as a consequence of the merger. His suggestion seemed to be that the fire department would need to streamline its function further and there should be no increases to its operational funding.
Bozar then turned to the expenditure of money through all of the city’s funds, including the general fund and its various enterprise funds, a total of $126,378,485, covering the water, sewer and trash collection utilities. He decried the 14 percent increase from around $8 million to $9,239,650 in the administrative services department budget. One upshot was his basic premise that the city could not and should not be hiring further staff.
One Upland resident in attendance at the meeting, Robert Nelson, referenced the budgeted hiring of another development coordinator, suggesting that was a luxury the city could not afford. “We have two on the payroll now,” Nelson said.
Bozar then dwelt upon the increased personnel costs – i.e., total salaries and benefits – envisioned in next year’s budget. This year – 2016-17 – the city is paying out $27,388,975 to cover salaries of current workers, their benefits and pensions for past workers. In 2016-17, the city will lay out $30,134,400, an increase of $2,745,425, or 10.02 percent. The breakdown on that shows that salaries will jump from $19,013,622 this year to $20,038,175 next year, a hike of $1,024,553, or 5.39 percent. The city, which paid $5,626,388 into the California Public Employees Retirement System this fiscal year, will see that contribution jump 20.8 percent to $6,797,533 in 2016-17 – an increase of $1,171,145 to cover the living costs of people no longer working for the city. And the city upped the fringe benefits – consisting of medical coverage, dental coverage, vision coverage, free life insurance and vacation pay provided to current workers – by 20 percent in 2016-17, from $2,748,965 last year to $3,298,692, an increase of $549,727.
Bozar and city treasurer Dan Morgan locked onto the issue of the city’s obligation to participate in the California Public Employees Retirement System, which has its own investment accounts against which it draws money to cover pension costs. When those investments reach their target earnings – 7.5 percent annually – the pension system is solvent and self-sufficient. But when earnings do not reach the 7.5 percent threshold, the state and all the municipal, county and agency entities that utilize it to provide pensions to their retirees must chip in to make up the difference. This arrangement will in time drive the City of Upland off a financial cliff, both Bozar and Morgan opined, as more and more employees retire and begin to draw pensions, coupled with the California Public Employees Retirement System continuing to miss its investment earnings goals. The retirement system formula allows employees to retire and draw as pensions yearly stipends that are equal to anywhere from 40 to 100 percent of their highest yearly salaries while working. Projections are that by the mid-2020s Upland will be paying more money in retirement benefits than in salaries to its employees.
This point was amplified by Upland resident Larry Kinley, who said, “You might think of a policy that temporarily freezes salaries until unfunded pension liabilities are reduced to a supportable level. Salary increases just compound the unfunded liability issue. You have a circulatory round robin on your hands that needs to be addressed.”
Bozar asserted that it is absolutely essential that the city avoid increasing the number of its employees. Though he did not use the term hiring freeze, Morgan did. Bozar acknowledged that in the current year the city had hired four police officers and four part-time police department technicians, but maintained those positions were to be paid out of available funding created as the result of the outsourcing of the city’s animal control division. Further hiring, Bozar intimated, should not take place as it would create more pensionable positions.
Bozar referenced a chart showing a red and a blue line representing, respectively, city spending and revenues over the last five years. Despite dwindling revenues from the still lingering economic downturn that persisted during the first two years represented on the chart, the blue revenue line remained on a trajectory above the red expenditure line until 2013. In 2014, however, the red line began a steady incline upward until at present the lines have nearly intersected. Bozar suggested the upward movement of the red expenditure line corresponded with staff hirings, compensations and benefits over the last two years.
“We have to take a pause and have a discussion about where this red line is and where the blue line is and where this red line and blue line are going to be in five years,” Bozar said. “With just about each one of these department managers’ requests you are in danger of going into the red. You need to show the council and employees where this is going. Let the facts speak for themselves. If we plugged in from this presentation what your totals are, we are going into the red with just this budget. You need to reevaluate your numbers for every department. This is not a responsible budget. You are thinking that with these transfers in [i.e., the gas tax previously earmarked for road repair], you can do it. But this budget is out of whack big time. It comes down to this hiring business. You have to review whether you can afford this. An 11.5 percent increase for the police department, a 14 percent increase for administrative services, a 12.5 percent increase for the fire department is off the charts.”
Bozar appeared to be steadily steering the discussion toward the fiscal responsibility act, but before he got there, councilwoman Debbie Stone, who with Morgan and Bozar rounds out the three-member finance committee, beat him to the punch.
“I think we really need to reconsider this,” she said. She told Butler, “We should have Scott [Williams, the finance director] put this together and bring it back to the finance committee. I do believe we have to look at this ordinance [the Fiscal Responsibility Act]. It was put there for a reason. It was like a promise to the residents. We need to do our job. l want staff and everyone to understand we’re not here to make a lot of money. We are beginning to dig into the reserves. It scares me to death to think that if we dip here and dip there and then we have a major catastrophe… I don’t want to go down that road. What road are you taking us down? I’m seeing red. We need to figure out what are we going to have to do to live up to what we signed and put in place.”
Bozar said that in raising salary and benefits of city workers by 10.02 percent and upping expenditures by 8.13 percent, the proposed budget was overrunning the projected 0.47 percent sales tax growth and 6.3 percent property tax increase the city would experience
To Bozar’s inquiries about what was behind the fringe benefit and salary increases, Butler responded, saying the salary increases came about as a consequence of much of staff’s normal advancement up the “step” ladder, meaning that they were due legally binding salary increases as a consequence of their having met service time milestones that were part of the city’s collective bargaining agreement – i.e., its employment contract – with its personnel that was worked out with their unions. The hefty fringe benefit increases came, Butler said, as a consequence of an earlier council mandate that any staff compensation enhancements be structured in such a way that they not increase the pensions employees will be due upon retirement. Since the formula to calculate pensions uses highest salary levels as a multiplier, Butler said compensation increases that were handed out came in the form of increased fringe benefits, which do not impact pension levels.
Butler momentarily sought to dissuade the committee from mandating that the economies be applied to the 2016-17 budget by telling its members that the city anticipated getting a windfall in 2016-17 in the form of a commitment from the state to reimburse municipalities across the board for a raid the state made on city coffers during the height of the recession to balance its budget. “The state has said it will backfill the cities with property tax it withheld in years past, which will artificially inflate our revenues,” Butler said. The the committee, however, did not see that as grounds for allowing expenditures to escalate at this point.
“We are not going to rubber stamp this proposed budget,” Bozar said. “I do not feel comfortable recommending this to the full council.”
Butler relented, bowing to the edict that the budget be reworked.
“I agree that we need to be really careful about our revenue projections,” Butler said. “We will go back into the details of what are the scenarios of how we do business.”
The committee voted unanimously to not present the budget proposal to the full council and instead have it revised to come into compliance with the fiscal responsibility act.
Shortly after the Tuesday meeting, finance director Williams told the Sentinel the mandate given to Butler to, as Bozar phrased it, “give the budget a haircut,” will likely result in the elimination of staff positions.

The mother of Nathanael Harris Pickett filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Riverside Federal Court on May 31. Nathanael Pickett was the 29-year-old Barstow man fatally shot by a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy last year.
Named as defendants in the case are San Bernardino County, the sheriff’s department, sheriff’s deputy Kyle Hayden Woods, and an as yet-unidentified civilian reserve deputy.
Based on Woods’ statements and his police report, the sheriff’s office maintains the shooting was a justified use of deadly force in which the deceased tempted fate through his own behavior.
The incident began after Pickett, according to the department, was observed making an unconventional entrance onto the property where he was residing. When he was approached, he offered a false name to Woods and a reserve officer accompanying Woods on his patrol rounds that evening. Pickett remained uncooperative and then fled when the Woods attempted to place him in handcuffs, the department maintains. A scuffle ensued, during which, according to the sheriff’s department, Pickett repeatedly punched Woods in the head.
Woods and the citizen volunteer were on duty the evening of November 19, 2015 when they witnessed, at approximately 9:07 p.m. a man, subsequently identified as Pickett, jumping over a fence at the El Rancho Motel in Barstow. When the officers moved to question Pickett, he furnished the pair with a “false name and became uncooperative. As the deputy attempted to handcuff the suspect, he attempted to run and a fight between the two broke out. Pickett struck the deputy numerous times in the face and refused to comply with the repeated verbal commands to stop hitting him and move away. The deputy fired his weapon, striking the subject, at which time the assault ceased.”
Pickett was pronounced dead at the scene.
Woods, according to a sheriff’s department news release at the time, suffered multiple injuries, including broken bones. Furthermore, according to the sheriff’s department, Pickettt has a history of resisting arrest, such that he merited the use of deadly force against him.
Pickett was twice convicted, in 2006 and again in 2011, of “obstructing an executive officer.” In 2012, Pickett was sentenced to three years of conditional and revocable release stemming from the 2006 misdemeanor obstructing an executive officer arrest, court records show. He was simultaneously sentenced to three years of supervised probation following a no contest plea to two counts of felony obstructing an executive officer and a felony false impersonation charge stemming from a 2011 arrest.
Video footage captured by a security camera at the El Ranho Motel, where Pickett had been living, does not bear out, however, the department and Woods’ version of events. The video depicts Woods talking to Pickett, then Pickett running from the deputy, who pursues Pickett off camera. A few minutes later, Pickett reappears on video, running down the motel corridor and being chased by Woods. Picket trips and falls. Woods, seen on the video from behind, at that point appears to be pointing his gun at Pickett. Pickett scoots back, away from the approaching deputy, but does not appear to be hitting or in any way striking Woods. A single flash of gunfire briefly flickers and Pickett is then seen prone on the ground. At no point is Pickett seen striking Woods. Woods, however, can be seen punching Pickett repeatedly. At one point, the reserve deputy can be seen assisting Woods.
Pickett’s mother, Dominique Archibald, is the plaintiff in the case. She is represented by Victorville attorneys Jim Terrell and Sharon Brunner. Archibald, Terrell and Brunner acknowledge that Pickett suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness, most likely schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. But Pickett’s condition in no way justified the treatment he received at the hands of Woods, according to the suit, which lists among its causes of action unreasonable search and seizure, excessive force, deliberate indifference to Pickett’s medical needs, and violations of civil rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Moreover, the suit paints a picture of out-and-out sadistic brutality and criminal acts perpetrated by Woods. Woods acted “unlawfully, improperly and maliciously shot” Pickett, the suit states. After Pickett was shot, according to the suit, Woods reholstered his gun, and he and the reserve deputy punched and kicked Pickett as he lay on the doorstep of death. Woods merits being prosecuted by the district attorney’s office for murder, Terrall and Bruner maintain. The district attorney’s office, which routinely deems uses of force by law enforcement officers as legally justified within the circumstances police officers face and applicable law, has yet to make its determination in this case.

The City of Ontario and San Bernardino County, through its flood control district, are cooperating in designing a set of trails for the semi-urban area in southern Ontario.
Under a 20-year common use agreement with automatic yearly renewals, the city will use portions of the district’s right-of-way for County Line Channel and Cucamonga Channel for the creation of recreational multi-use community trails.
In October 2012, the county board of supervisors gave go-ahead to the trail concept with the approval of a memorandum of understanding with Ontario to cooperate in the development of a “multi-use regional trail system.” Things have progressed to the point, according to San Bernardino County Public Works Director Jerry Newcombe, to proceed with “the development of two segments of the recreational multi-use community trail system within portions of district right-of-way in the city. The trails on district lands are located as follows:
• Along the north side of County Line Channel, in between Merrill Avenue to the north and Limonite Avenue to the south, and approximately from Harrison Avenue, westerly to Archibald Avenue [and]
• Along the east side of Cucamonga Chanel, which is approximately a third of a mile west of Archibald Avenue, from Riverside Avenue to Chino Avenue.”
Newcombe continued, “Construction plans for these improvements have been submitted for review and approval through the district’s permit process. The city’s proposed trails will enhance the areas of common use with features such as improved access roads, signage, landscaping & irrigation, and measures that preclude access to motorized bikes and similar items. The proposed segments of trails will therefore make the district’s right-of-way aesthetically pleasing to the community.”
In accordance with the memorandum of understanding, the district agrees to the city proposal of constructing, operating, and maintaining the trails on the district’s property. Newcombe said the development and operation of the trails, which will be at the city’s sole expense and responsibility, will not interfere or conflict with any structures, facilities, operations or uses which the district has, or intends to have.
“Although the district will not receive a fee from the city for allowing use of the district lands for the trails,” said Newcombe, “the district will benefit from reduced maintenance costs in the areas of common use, as well as from the city improvements.”

On Memorial Day, May 30, 2016 at approximately 3:00 p.m., two members of the Fontana Sheriff’s Station, Jon Anderson and Jim Landry, were dispatched to Mt. Baldy. They had been summoned there by hikers in the area who had heard the cries for help from Martha and Joshua Banuelos, along with Hugo Orellana and another unidentified individual who had been hiking along the Devil’s Backbone near Mt. Baldy but imprudently left the trail to scale down the south wall of the precipice toward an extremely steep and unstable cliff. After climbing down approximately 150 yards, three of the four became stuck on a cliff due to the terrain, and were unable to move.
Anderson and Landry located the stranded four on the cliff at the approximately 8,700 foot level. Martha Banuelos was stuck with her back against the cliff, unable to move. Sheriff’s Air Rescue 306, with a crew of pilot deputy Ryan Conner, crew chief sergeant Daniel Futscher, SBCFD captain Jack Dejong, SBCFD medic Mike Demoff and air medic Jerry Modlin, responded to the location.
Conner brought the helicopter into a hover approximately 200 feet above Martha Banuelos and his crew used a pick-off hoist to pluck her and her three trapped companions to safety.

San Bernardino County will subsidize clean up efforts in Trona to the tune of $3,000.
Last month, in one of the board of supervisors’ last meetings prior to the onset of the new fiscal year on July 1, an amendment to the First District’s discretionary fund spending plan was made. The amendment obligated a total of $83,000 in board discretionary funding in varying amounts to several organizations in the High Desert.
The First District is the largest supervisorial district in San Bernardino County, covering a major portion of the Mojave Desert.
$3,000 was earmarked for Trona Care, Inc. to support a community cleanup effort.
Trona is an unincorporated community at the extreme northwest corner of San Bernardino County, lying at the southwest entrance into Death Valley, and at the western edge of Searles Dry Lake, with Inyo County to its north and Kern County to the west. In 2000 it had a population of 2,742. Soda ash processing is the major economic engine of the economy there, along with evaporative salt extraction from the dry lake bed’s surface, and a lime quarry. Though it is host to some remarkably nice neighborhoods featuring modest but stylized homes, an arsonist or arsonists have wreaked havoc with a least a dozen of those houses.
In addition to routing the $3,000 to Trona, the county designated $5,000 to support the operation of the Adelanto Senior Center; $5,000 to support operations of the Apple Valley Senior Citizens Club and purchase equipment such as a used golf cart to transport residents to and from their cars over cracked pavement; $5,000 to support operations of the Victorville Senior Citizens Club, including the purchase of a commercial refrigerator for use when serving meals to over 300 seniors; $25,000 for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Citizens on Patrol Program; $2,500 for the High Desert Community Foundation’s Orenda Foundation; $25,000 for the High Desert Community Foundation’s Streams in the Desert Foundation’s summer internship program; $5,000 for the Hesperia Recreation and Park District’s Percy Bakker Senior Center operations; $2,500 for the Daggett Community Services District to purchase playground equipment; $2,500 for the Big River Community Services District to purchase playground equipment; and $2,500 for the Victor Valley Animal Protective League to support adoption costs during the San Bernardino County Fair event.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
The California Legislature needs to act with alacrity in eliminating the lax regulation of charter school operations. In recent years there has been a disturbing tendency of the individuals who found or otherwise create or start charter schools to structure them so that they dominate their operation and management, and from that perch of power direct to themselves or secondary companies they have created contracts for the provision of all order of things schools use – pencils and pencil sharpeners, erasers and pens, chalk and chalkboards, desks, tables and chairs, books and instructional materials, computers and monitors, keyboards and printers, and the like. This has created scandal after scandal, resulting in the closures of a succession of charter schools…
It should not come as too much of shock that charter schools have, in practice, had at best checkered success, as the impetus behind them is of somewhat dubious pedigree. In theory, charter schools are intended to fill a few crucial gaps that exist in the conventional public school system. Some charter schools are intended to cater to students who stand outside the mainstream: either as underachievers or as overachievers. Some charter schools are designed to offer a curriculum that is better suited to the academically challenged than what is available in public schools, utilizing more basic and less challenging material buttressed by instructional assistance, tutoring or resources intended to assist the slow learner in coming up to speed. Other charter schools are designed to offer a curriculum that is better suited to those who are academically advanced, utilizing more challenging material and applying more exacting and accelerated standards than exist in the typical public school setting. Other charter schools offer concentrations in subjects that traditionally lie outside the focus of normal public schools such as in the performing arts or, more mundanely, that are intended to offer intensified vocational training, such as in the area of woodworking and carpentry, fabricating and welding, construction, or firefighting, or law enforcement. Others still are intended as relatively typical academic training grounds that are simply devoid of the cultural and social elements normally present in public schools which some parents find objectionable. A question exists, of course, as to why these elements, or most of them, cannot be provided by the public school system. But, the legislature, in its wisdom has determined that the charter school experiment or option or whatever it is, as it were, should be explored. So, if enough parents in a given area petition for a charter school to be formed, such a school can be “chartered” under the authority of a school district. At that point public money which would otherwise be directed to public schools is diverted to the charter school. It is how that money is ultimately used that has become the issue…
The Oxford Preparatory Academy offers a perfect illustration of how the charter school concept, which in its purest form represents an idealistic approach to improving upon the educational process, can be exploited …
At one point Oxford Academy was, or at least appeared to be, the model of what a charter school was supposed to be. Under the aegis of the Chino Valley Unified School District, it was founded by Sue Roche, the principal at Rhodes Elementary School, the highest-scoring school on academic tests in the Chino school district. The school board approved the two-year charter application unanimously in 2010, with what was obviously widespread community support that had moved into the realm of enthusiasm, as the number of student applicants to attend numbered over 600, well above the 350 student threshold needed to bring a charter school into existence. The school board gambled over $3 million on chartering Oxford for the first year. Roche and the staff she assembled did not disappoint them: In its first year of operation, Roche was able to apply her educational formula absolutely unfettered, and the academic performance of students at Oxford outpaced that of the students at every other school in San Bernardino County. Indeed, over the first three years of the school’s existence, 2011, 2012 and 2013, it was the top performing school academically in San Bernardino County. Students at Oxford Academy in Chino averaged Academic Performance Index scores of 958 out of 1,000 in 2011 and improved to 972 in 2012. In 2011, the school board unanimously extended Oxford’s charter for five years, from 2012-13 through 2016-17. So impressive was the school and its operation, that the Capistrano Unified School District invited Roche to extend the Oxford model into its jurisdiction in Orange County, where she set up a second campus in Mission Viejo. In Mission Viejo, the students there racked up scores on the state’s uniform academic tests that were even more impressive than what had been occurring in Chino – an almost unbelievable average 993 out of 1,000-point maximum on the state’s academic performance index during the first year the Orange County school was open. In Chino, fierce competition broke out among parents vying to get their children admitted to Oxford, with typically 1,500 applicants seeking admission to the school with 728 available slots for students…
With its robust academic scores, Oxford pulled the district’s average scholastic performance up, way up. The Chino Valley Unified School District consistently outperformed the state average. Only once in the years that Oxford was in existence did the Chino Valley Unified School District not outperform every other school district in the county on the standardized tests. Why then, did the Chino School Board this year vote against renewing Oxford’s charter?
Because Sue Roche, who seemed so dedicated to educating students, allowed that imperative to be overridden by her desire to make money. Last year, Roche withdrew from the position of executive director of Oxford Preparatory’s corporate entity and promoted Barbara Black to that position, while assuming an undefined administrative role in the academy. Roche simultaneously created a for-profit entity, Edlighten Learning Solutions, in which she is the central figure and prime mover. Then, apparently at Roche’s direction, Oxford Charter Academy entered into a contractual arrangement that would have paid Edlighten $1.5 million to, essentially, employ Roche as the school’s contract administrator/executive director…
Unfortunately for Roche, the district caught wind of that arrangement in the months prior to its scheduled vote in March to renew the charter for five years. According to Chino Valley Unified School District Superintendent Wayne Joseph, who had been instrumental in convincing the district to proceed with the original charter in 2010, Roche had betrayed the faith of everyone involved by seeking to exploit the non-profit Oxford Preparatory Academy and line her own pockets. Joseph said Roche had engaged in “arrogance, overreach and greed” by employing “machinations” to cynically manipulate the academy’s reliance on consultants to cash in. It was, Joseph said, “alarming” that the Oxford board had hired Edlighten Learning Solutions to operate the academy as part of a contract which called for ten percent of Oxford’s revenues to be diverted to Edlighten for that service, representing a radical increase in consulting fees the academy was being budgeted to pay out over the next several years, the lion’s share of which were to be steered to Edlighten. “This is a classic example in which a very, very successful charter school, somewhere along its journey, lost its way,” Joseph said. “It breaks my heart.” The Chino school board voted not to renew Oxford’s charter and Oxford is appealing that decision to the San Bernardino County Board of Education…
Somewhat belatedly, the relationship between Oxford Preparatory Academy and Edlighten Learning Solutions last week was terminated, although it is difficult to determine which party severed the connection. The move seems to be a calculated one on the part of Oxford to convince the San Bernardino County Board of Education that it deserves to have its charter perpetuated. On the other hand, it was Edlighten which put out a press release on May 25 that stated, “Acting in the best interests of the charter students it ultimately serves, the board of directors of Edlighten Learning Solutions voted Tuesday to propose terminating its business relationship with Oxford Preparatory Academy.”
Whichever entity drove the decision to terminate the contract between Edlighten and Oxford, the point that needs to be made here is that the contract from the beginning was a horrible idea. How horrible? So horrible that by my interpretation, though I am not a lawyer, it put Sue Roche, right up against the legal line, if not actually across it. There is a section of California’s Government Code – 1090 – which outlaws people involved in the government from having a personal financial interest in the decisions they make. Now, was Sue Roche, a government official? In a way she was, when she was the executive director of the Oxford Charter Academy. She was spending taxpayer money on behalf of the government, for sure. That makes her at least a quasi-governmental official, just like the superintendent of a school district or a principal of a school is a government official. A superintendent of a district or a principal of a school would not be allowed to arrange a contract in which he or she would be paid as a vendor for delivering equipment or materials to the district or the school or as a consultant to render some service to the district or school. How then was what Sue Roche did any different? Did she not set it up so that Edlighten would be hired by Oxford? Or did her successor, Barbara Black, whom she had promoted to take her place, come up with that on her own? What do you think, gentle reader?
The thing is, what Sue Roche did is not unique. Long before Oxford was chartered, Charles Steven Cox had likewise exploited the charter school system for all he could. In 2000, Cox convinced first the parents and then the school board members in the Snowline-Joint Unified School District in the High Desert communities of Pinon Hills and Phelan to allow him to establish the California Charter Academy. After he set up the academy’s first campus under the auspices of the Snowline-Joint Unified School District, Cox managed to expand the California Charter Academy in relatively short order into the largest charter school operation in California. He convinced Snowline to charter a second academy, then obtained two more charter sponsorships, one from the Orange School District in Orange County, and one from the Oro Grande School District, located in San Bernardino County’s High Desert.
Simultaneous to his founding of the non-profit California Charter Academy, Cox created Educational Administrative Services Corporation (EASC), a for-profit company which was then hired by all four charter schools to manage the day-to-day operations of the charter schools and provide academic supplies such as books, paper, pens, pencils, desks, chairs, projectors, computers, etc. The rates charged by EASC reflected in the billings were inflated. In some cases, educational materials that were paid for by the charter schools were never delivered. By 2003, teachers at several of the schools were going public with accounts of how students’ educations were being neglected and books and other educational materials were not being provided. In 2004, the superintendent of the California Department of Education, Jack O’Connell, launched an investigative audit into California Charter Academy, alleging financial irregularities. In August 2004, four years after California Charter Academy’s creation, it ceased operations abruptly, throwing teachers out of work and forcing students to hurriedly matriculate back into public schools…
The audit O’Connell commissioned through the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Team was delivered in 2005, showing $23 million in taxpayer money paid to the private management company Educational Administrative Services Corporation was misappropriated. Among the findings were that Cox had hired several of his family members into what were essentially do-nothing clerical and non-productive administrative positions, that Cox, his family members, other EASC and Charter Academy employees were provided with luxury automobiles, and that among the expenses accumulated by the Charter Academy were accommodations in Las Vegas, at Disneyland and the Disneyland Hotel, studio musical recording equipment, spa visits, fishing trips and jet skis. The audit alleged multiple conflict-of-interest violations, the improper conversion of private schools to public charter schools, and the falsification of documents and claims to receive public funds. Ultimately, 147 yet outstanding criminal charges against Cox and his associate, Tad Honeycutt, were filed by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office. That case is supposed to go to trial later this year…
In 2009, the Adelanto School District chartered the Adelanto Charter Academy, based in large measure on the advocacy of a band of so-called political conservatives who maintained that an alternative to what they called the liberal public school system was needed in the High Desert. In 2011, the district revoked that charter after it was demonstrated that a number of public figures, including indicted and now convicted former San Bernardino County Assessor Bill Postmus, Hesperia School District board member Anthony Riley, the indicted former California Charter Academy founder Charles Steven Cox, Peggy Baker (Cox’s sister-in-law), then-San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, Mitzelfelt’s field representative Jessie Flores, indicted former assistant assessor Adam Aleman and indicted local businessman John “Dino” DeFazio all siphoned off money from the Adelanto Charter Academy or entities deriving money from the academy…
In March 2015, Excelsior Charter Schools, which is chartered under the authority of the Victor Valley Union High School District, serving students in grades seven to twelve and consisting of five campuses including two in Victorville and one each in Phelan and Barstow as well as in Norco in Riverside County, conferred severance packages upon former superintendent Bill Flynn and former assistant superintendent of student services Minda Stackelhouse. Unofficial reports were that the severance packages Flynn and Stackelhouse received were $635,000 and $298,000 respectively when they made their departure from Excelsior the previous month. Flynn and Stackelhouse resigned on February 19, 2015 with no indication being given as to why. Their lawyer, however, maintained they were due the remaining amount under the nearly four years unexpired in Flynn’s contract and the nearly two years remaining in Stackelhouse’s contract…
In April 2011, three Morongo Valley Unified School District teachers, including Jared Mecham incorporated Hope Academy, Inc as a charter school devoted to underserved at-risk students in the Yucca Valley region after originating a petition to create a charter school. Mecham convinced the Morongo Unified School District to charter Hope Academy to operate as a charter school for five years starting July 1, 2011 and running through June 30, 2016. Late last year, Morongo Valley Unified officials sought an audit into Hope Academy by the states Fiscal Crisis and Management Team. That audit revealed that without the district’s knowledge or permission, Hope Academy’s operations were expanded into several adjacent counties and districts located in San Bernardino, Kern and Riverside counties and that Jared Mecham arranged a $220,275 annual compensation for himself as the academy’s founder/administrator/superintendent and then promoted his wife, Christine, who was originally hired as a teacher, to senior director of programs in August 2013 at a salary of $159,583 during the 2014-15 school year with an increase during the 2015-16 school year to $195,666. Mecham also set up three companies that existed essentially to provide services to Hope Academy: SavantCo Financial, Inc. for automobile lease agreements; SavantCo Education, Inc. as a “back-office service” provider; and Savantech, Inc. for technology services. After canceling a previous $9,771.25 monthly contract with EdTec Inc. for accounting, finance, payroll, and attendance, grant administration, human resources, governance support, board presentation, compliance and accountability and facilities services, in 2014 the Hope Academy governing board at Mecham’s direction approved a master services agreement with SavantCo Education effective July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015 for a monthly fee of $58,000, almost six times the amount previously paid to EdTec for similar services. The fiscal crisis management and assistance team found $130,890.40 in unauthorized payments to SavantCo, including $103,440 for what was invoiced as a “monthly retained fee,” an apparent bonus paid to Mecham for just showing up. In all, the fiscal crisis management and assistance team conservatively estimated that Mecham and his wife and his various corporate affiliates had misappropriated more than $900,000 in public money…
My basic philosophy is that we already have enough laws. We may have too many laws, to be more accurate in paraphrasing my thinking. I think we ought to enforce the laws we have, generally, before we busy ourselves with making new laws. I think a full-time legislature is superfluous, actually. I am in favor of a part time legislature and I would go even further in saying I think that part-time legislature should be a voluntary and unpaid one. But I digress. The point here is that if I think there is a need for a new law, it is a safe bet that law is probably needed. And I think we need a law that explicitly states that anyone running a charter school cannot have a financial interest in its operations. The law should state that a founder or operator or superintendent or principal or teacher or employee or board member of a charter school cannot be a vendor to the school, cannot be a service provider to the school, cannot be a consultant to the school, cannot own a company that provides any goods, services or anything to the school. If, as I suggested earlier, such activity is already afoul of the law, it seems to me too many charter school operators are hiding in the thicket of liberality and goodwill and faith that attends our shared duty to educate our progeny and we need to be explicit in preventing them from abusing our trust…

Morton Everel Post is one of San Bernardino County’s historical figures who established his personal reputation before coming to this area. Once here, however, Post was, in the words of historians John Brown Jr. and James Boyd “in the most significant sense a founder and builder, and the splendid achievement that has been his in connection with the development and civic and material progress of Southern California marks him as a courageous and sagacious leader in thought and action.”
Post was born on a farm near Rochester, New York, December 25, 1840, the son of Morton A. and Alary (Wickware) Post, both natives of the old Empire State and both of New England ancestry. Morton A. Post was a substantial farmer in Monroe County, New York, and was ninety years of age at the time of his death, in 1895, his wife having died at the age of fifty-six years. Morton E was the fourth in order of birth in their family of three sons and two daughters.
After his graduation in the high school at Medina, in Orleans County, New York, Morton E. Post came West and engaged in freighting from the Missouri River to various western points. As foreman of a wagon train he made many overland journeys across the plains and mountains. He finally engaged in the same line of enterprise in an independent way, and in several years of operation he won considerable success. In the spring of 1864 Mr. Post followed the gold rush into Alder Gulch, Montana, from Denver, Colorado, and he left Alder Gulch with $75,000 in gold. While in Alder he served as a delegate to the 1864 Democratic National Convention.
Alder Gulch was one of the most perilous parts of the plains, and the work was filled with hardships and dangers. Battles were fought with road agents and Indians, and in one encounter Mr. Post barely missed capture by what contemporaneous accounts referred to as “a band of nearly 100 redskins” who attacked his wagon train with fury, one of his men being killed and nine out of the thirteen being wounded.
Post married Amalia Barney Simons Nichols, a woman who was fourteen years his senior in October 1864. She had a business selling chickens and lending money and had been one of Post’s business partners before the marriage.
Late in 1866 Mr. Post opened a forwarding house in North Platte, Nebraska, then the terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad. In 1867 he joined the rush to Wyoming, then part of the Dakota Territory. Post used his mining profits to begin the Cheyenne area’s first general store in partnership with George Manning. He also raised livestock, and becoming active in banking. He was a member of the Laramie County Commission from 1870 to 1876, and he served in the upper branch of the Wyoming Territorial Legislature from 1878 to 1880. In 1880 he was the successful Democratic nominee for Wyoming’s non-voting delegate in the US House of Representatives and served two terms, 1881 to 1885.
Cheyenne was the capitol of the Wyoming Territory and during his time as a politician, the Wyoming Territory was at the forefront of the advance of women’s rights. The territorial legislature passed an act to grant women in Wyoming the right to vote and hold office.
Amalia Post became a leader of the women’s rights movement not only in Wyoming but nationally. In January 1871, she traveled to Washington, D.C., as a delegate from Wyoming to the annual lobbying conference of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and she conferred with such leaders of the national movement as Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhull and Isabella Beecher Hooker. She served in what for women was the unprecedented role of serving as a grand juror, rising to the position of forewoman. In the fall of 1871, the second Wyoming Territorial Legislature sent a bill to the governor to repeal women’s suffrage in the territory. Amalia Post is credited with making a personal appeal to Gov. John A. Campbell to veto the bill. Campbell returned the bill unsigned with a multi-page message refuting in detail the arguments against women’s suffrage. He defended women’s intellectual capacity. He cited the success of the experiments with women voters and jurors. He appealed to the injustice of giving some property owners more rights than others.
In 1884, Morton Post declined the unanimous nomination proffered by his party and was not a candidate for reelection. Thereafter he resumed banking and ranching.
Prior to 1888 his fortune was estimated at more than $1,000,000. In that year a storm destroyed nearly fifteen million dollars’ worth of property in Wyoming, and the catastrophe hit no one harder than it did Post. As the senior partner of the banking house of Morton E. Post & Co., he had interests in various mercantile, sheep raising and mining ventures. His diversified holdings and extensive speculations did not shield him from the economic strain caused by the impact of the bad weather and overgrazing on the cattlemen to whom the bank had advanced money. The bad loans multiplied, and at last, Morton E. Post & Co. failed in October 1887.
After passing a year in a tour of Europe he moved to Utah Territory, where he engaged in mining and real estate and coal speculation with varying success. He went to California in 1895 and shortly thereafter acquired the property which stands to-day as a monument to his genius.
Post came to Cucamonga in 1895, and his keen perception and foresight soon grasped the unequaled advantages the land represented.
Amalia Post died on January 28, 1897, in the midst of Morton Post’s effort to reestablish his life in the Golden State.
With tenacity, his energy, business ability and faith in the undertaking to which he set his head and hands, he succeeded in the development of a vast vineyard and model winery. That operation encompassed more than 1,000 acres of grape-producing soil, and over the years the winery grew to consist of the most economical and sanitary equipment the world then offered.
By 1915, the winery was a $150,000 per year enterprise, with roughly $100,000 annually being paid out by the winery to its labor force and to purchase materials and equipment. Post was among the major taxpayers of the region.
Post made other investments in Southern California.
An article that appeared in the Los Angeles Daily Times of January 1, 1915 said of him,”Among the untiring, strenuous men whose fertile minds have blazed pathways to success and supplemented the tales of the Arabian Nights with real performances, none can show a brighter record than Morton Everel Post, a giant factor in the Southland’s growth. His admirable achievements here are identical with the progress of the Mission Vineyard, a veritable garden of green, yielding vines planted on the level, rich ground where the patient padres began grape culture many a year ago. The great Mission Vineyard was developed by the perseverance of one man and his chosen associate, on an earth surface that a few years ago was scoffed at and considered absolutely worthless. Sagebrush, wild, rough plants of the silent, barren places and parched dust were the offerings to man, and every foot of land reclaimed from the white plain was won by vigilant toil. That the man who has achieved a victory in the long-drawn-out battle with the desert possessed indomitable courage and a never-say-die spirit is strikingly proved by the record of his life.”It is more than worth while to talk with the man who created the wonderful Mission Vineyard, a man who has never known such a word as fail. Let him tell how it feels to lose the result of years of work, how it strikes one to lose a million dollars in a night, and then let him tell how it feels to take heart again and win a fortune greater than he knew before. Such things as these give strength and fortitude to mankind. He has been identified with development and progress in many counties in this section of the state, and his interposition has invariably inured to the benefit of the various communities. He has lived close to nature’s heart, and nature has rewarded him by giving him the profit of requited toil. He has been a foremost figure in the development of both the vineyard and citrus-fruit industries in Southern California, as well as of the olive industry.”
In addition to his agricultural operation in Cucamonga, he farmed in Alhambra and had was was described as “large and important holdings, landed and industrial” elsewhere in Southern California.
Post built and maintained a splendid country home on Haven Avenue in Cucamonga, where his many friends were often entertained with lavish hospitality. He also resided at the Jonathan Club in the City of Los Angeles.
Mr. Post disposed of his vineyard and winery interests in 1919, at an enormous advance over the price which he originally paid for the property.
He then moved into comfortable retirement in a luxurious home at 722 South Oxford Avenue, Los Angeles, though he continued to hold membership in the Jonathan Club.
Brown and Boyd said of him in their 1922 tome History of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, “His has been a life of action and productiveness, he has done big things, and his own bigness of mind and heart has marked him as a man among men and one worthy of the confidence and good will that are uniformly accorded to him by his fellow men. By his character and achievement he has honored the great State of California, and this commonwealth in turn grants to him appreciation and honor. He has been an apostle of progress in the West since his young manhood, and through him California has had much to gain and nothing to lose.
On March 19, 1933, at the age of 92, death found him.

The mountain lion, also known as a cougar (Puma concolor), puma, panther, or catamount, is a large feline native to the Americas. Southern California, particularly its mountainous regions, are within its range, which stretches from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes of South America. It is the second-heaviest cat in the New World, after the jaguar.
Secretive and largely solitary by nature, the cougar is properly considered both nocturnal and crepuscular, although there are daytime sightings. It is closely related to smaller felines, including the domestic cat.
The cougar is an ambush predator and pursues a wide variety of prey. Primary food sources are deer, mule deer, and white-tailed deer. Elk and even bull moose are taken. Other species such as the bighorn and Dall’s sheep, horse, fallow deer, caribou, mountain goat, coyote, pronghorn, and domestic livestock such as cattle and sheep are also primary food bases in many areas. It also hunts species as small as insects and rodents. This cat prefers habitats with dense underbrush and rocky areas for stalking, but can also live in open areas. The cougar is territorial and survives at low population densities. Individual territory sizes depend on terrain, vegetation, and abundance of prey. While large, it is not always the apex predator in its range, yielding to the gray wolf, American black bear, and grizzly bear. It is reclusive and avoids people. Fatal attacks on humans are rare, but in North America have been increasing in recent years as more people enter their territories.
Though capable of sprinting, the cougar hunts best by ambush, delivering a powerful leap onto the back of its prey and a suffocating neck bite. The cougar is capable of breaking the neck of some of its smaller prey with a strong bite and momentum bearing the animal to the ground.
Kills are generally estimated around one large animal every two weeks. The period shrinks for females raising young, and may be as short as one kill every three days when cubs are nearly mature around 15 months. The cat drags a kill to a preferred spot, covers it with brush, and returns to feed over a period of days.
Prolific hunting following European colonization of the Americas caused populations to drop.
Cougars are the largest of the small cats. At the same time they are the fourth largest cat. Slender and agile, adults stand about 24 to 35 inches tall at the shoulders. Adult males are around 7.9 feet long nose-to-tail and females average 6.7 feet, with overall ranges between 4.9 feet to 9 feet, nose to tail in general. Of this length, 25 to 37 inches is comprised by the tail. Males typically weigh 115 to 220 pounds, averaging 137 pounds. Females typically weigh between 64 and 141 pounds, averaging 93 pounds. Although cougars somewhat resemble the domestic cat, they are about the same size as an adult human.
The head of the cat is round and the ears are erect. Its powerful forequarters, neck, and jaw serve to grasp and hold large prey. It has five retractable claws on its forepaws (one a dewclaw) and four on its hind paws. The larger front feet and claws are adaptations to clutching prey.
Cougars can be almost as large as jaguars, but are less muscular and not as powerfully built; where their ranges overlap, the cougar tends to be smaller on average. Besides the jaguar, the cougar is on average larger than all felines apart from lions and tigers. Despite its size, it is not typically classified among the “big cats”, as it cannot roar, lacking the specialized larynx and hyoid apparatus of Panthera. Compared to “big cats,” cougars are often silent with minimal communication through vocalizations outside of the mother-offspring relationship. Cougars sometimes voice low-pitched hisses, growls, and purrs, as well as chirps and whistles, many of which are comparable to those of domestic cats. They are well known for their screams, as referenced in some of their common names, although these screams are often misinterpreted to be the calls of other animals
Cougar coloring varies but is typically plain or tawny, but ranges to silvery-grey or reddish, with lighter patches on the underbody, including the jaws, chin, and throat. Infants are spotted and born with blue eyes and rings on their tails; juveniles are pale, and dark spots remain on their flanks.
Cougars have large paws and proportionally the largest hind legs in the cat family. This physique allows it great leaping and short-sprint ability. The cougar is able to leap as high as 18 feet in one bound, and as far as 40 to 45 feet horizontally. The cougar’s top running speed ranges between 40 and 50 mph, but is best adapted for short, powerful sprints rather than long chases. It is adept at climbing, which allows it to evade canine competitors. Although it is not strongly associated with water, it can swim.
Females reach sexual maturity between one-and-a-half to three years of age. They typically average one litter every two to three years throughout their reproductive lives, though the period can be as short as one year. Females are in estrus for about 8 days of a 23-day cycle; the gestation period is approximately 91 days. Females are sometimes reported as monogamous, but this is uncertain and polygyny may be more common. Copulation is brief but frequent. Chronic stress can result in low reproductive rates when in captivity as well as in the field.
Only females are involved in parenting. Female cougars are fiercely protective of their cubs, and have been seen to successfully fight off animals as large as grizzly bears in their defense. Litter size is between one and six cubs; typically two. Born blind, cubs are completely dependent on their mother at first, and begin to be weaned at around three months of age. As they grow, they begin to go out on forays with their mother, first visiting kill sites, and after six months beginning to hunt small prey on their own. Kitten survival rates are just over one per litter.
The gray wolf and the cougar compete more directly for prey, especially in winter. Wolves can steal kills and occasionally kill the cat. One report describes a large pack of 7 to 11 wolves killing a female cougar and her kittens. Conversely, lone female or young wolves are vulnerable to predation, and have been reported ambushed and killed by cougars. Various accounts of cougars killing lone wolves, including a six-year-old female, have also been documented.
Life expectancy in the wild is reported at eight to 13 years.
Due to the expanding human population, cougar ranges increasingly overlap with areas inhabited by humans. Attacks by mountain lions on humans are very rare, as cougar prey recognition is a learned behavior and they do not generally recognize humans as prey. Attacks on people, livestock, and pets can occur when a puma habituates to humans or is in a condition of severe starvation. Between 1890 and 2004, in North America there were 88 incidents of mountain lions attacking humans, with 20 of those resulting in death. When encountering a cougar in the wild, it is not advisable to flee, as outrunning a mountain is impossible and the sight of someone taking flight may trigger the mountain lion’s predatory instinct.