The county, through its real estate services department, has finalized the sale of the Chino Courthouse to the city of Chino.
The move was roundly condemned by court access advocates, who see the sale as an indication that last year’s San Bernardino County court system realignment which centralized a major portion of court services in San Bernardino will become a permanent arrangement rather than a stopgap fix to redress a temporary budget crunch besetting the statewide court system.
The sale of the courthouse delivered an immediate $2.2 million cash infusion to the county, $1,1257,400 of which it must pass along to the Judicial Council of California. But the sale also lessens the prospect that court services at the county’s southeast end will be available to the sizeable population there any time in the foreseeable future. The cost of replacing the facility, both in terms of land acquisition and construction costs would dwarf the price Chino paid to acquire the 47,251 square foot structure, which is situated on 2.98 acres.
The Chino Courthouse had been in existence for a generation. On July 20, 1976, the county board of supervisors, then consisting of Daniel Mikesell, James Mayfield, Dennis Hansberger, Nancy Smith and Robert Townsend, approved a joint powers agreement between the city of Chino and the county to construct facilities at the Civic Center located at 13220 Central Avenue in the city of Chino. The development included county offices, the Chino Court, a city police facility, City Hall and city-developed grounds. Subsequently, the county conveyed a portion of this land containing the city-owned and operated facilities to the city, pursuant to a vote of the board on February 23, 1999. The county retained a portion of the land containing the courthouse, which is located at 13260 Central Avenue. In February 2009, the board of supervisors approved a memorandum of understanding with the city outlining the parties’ shared responsibilities and costs related to the landscape and hardscape maintenance services at the civic center. In 2002, the passage of the Trial Court Facilities Act, Senate Bill 1732, required the transfer of responsibility for funding and operation of trial court facilities from the county to the Judicial Council of California on behalf of the State of California. As a result, the county was required to transfer the responsibility and equity interest of the portion of the Chino Court used exclusively for court purposes to the Judicial Council of California, or 51.17 percent. The county reserved the responsibility and equity interest in the portion of the building used exclusively for county purposes, or 48.83 percent. The Trial Court Facilities Act provided sufficient authority to convey a portion of the equity interest to the Judicial Council of California, though the county retained fee ownership to the land and the improvements on the title. In December 2008 the county entered into a joint occupancy agreement with the Judicial Council of California for the Judicial Council of California and county’s shared possession, occupancy, and use of the Chino Court. The county became the managing party for operations and maintenance of the building and the Judicial Council of California was to reimburse the county quarterly for its share of maintenance, utilities, and insurance costs.
As of 2010, the state began imposing on the Judicial Council of California and the entire court system in general substantial economies, including several successive years of operating capital reductions. In response, San Bernardino County Superior Court Presiding Judge Ron Christianson and his successor, current San Bernardino County Superior Court Presiding Judge Marsha Slough, instituted a series of court closures, including shuttering the Twin Peaks, Redlands, Needles and Big Bear courthouses, as well as the Chino Courthouse, which was closed in 2012.
Inadequate funding for the county’s courts continued to be a reality and in 2013 Slough conceptualized and in May 2014 implemented a county court realignment which entailed transferring all civil cases countywide to the newly-constructed 11 story-San Bernardino Justice Center with its 35 courtrooms, located in downtown San Bernardino. San Bernardino district criminal cases and some Fontana District criminal cases, which were previously heard in the San Bernardino Central Courthouse built in 1927 and in Fontana, respectively, were rerouted to the new San Bernardino Justice Center. The West Valley Superior Courthouse in Rancho Cucamonga, which was formerly a venue for both civil and criminal cases originating on the west end of the county, was redevoted almost entirely to criminal cases and hearings on both civil and domestic violence restraining order matters, including those arising on the county’s west end and a portion of other felony and misdemeanor cases from the county’s central district which were previously heard at the Fontana Courthouse. The historic San Bernardino Courthouse remained as the forum for family law cases countywide. The Fontana Courthouse became the stage for all small claims, landlord tenant disputes and traffic/non-traffic infractions from the San Bernardino, Fontana and Rancho Cucamonga districts. The Victorville Courthouse remained a venue for High Desert criminal and family law cases. The Joshua Tree Courthouse remains in operation for criminal cases. The Barstow Courthouse, where previously all order of criminal and civil cases were heard, is now open two days a week exclusively for traffic cases.
From the time she first proposed the realignment as a way to deal with dwindling revenue provisions from the state for court operations in October 2013, the wisdom of Slough’s transformation of the county court system and the centralization of all civil courts in downtown San Bernardino has been sharply questioned.
Far flung San Bernardino County, which spans 20,105 square miles, is the largest county in the lower 48 states, with a land mass greater than the states of Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. Slough’s change has imposed a tremendous logistical burden on many of the county’s citizens who need to access the courts. Driving distance from Needles to San Bernardino is 212 miles, with an average one-way traveling time of three hours and nine minutes.
In the months prior to and after the initiation of the realignment, a group of legal professionals, including lawyers and former judges, importuned Slough to reconsider what she was contemplating and then what she had done. Their entreaties failed.
There remained, however, a flicker of hope that as the state’s financial picture improves, cuts to funding for the court system would be restored statewide, and in San Bernardino County this would translate into reinstituting operations at the several closed court venues around the county. Those hopes were largely dashed, however, when Terry Thompson, the director of the county’s real estate services department, last week presented the board of supervisors with a recommendation to make the sale of courthouse to the city of Chino. Thompson termed the sale an “equity rights purchase.” Accordingly, Thompson proposed, and the board of supervisors approved a “relinquishment of equity interest and termination of transfer and joint occupancy agreement between the Judicial Council of California and the county of San Bernardino” along with “declaring the county-owned property located at 13260 Central Avenue in the city of Chino (Assessor Parcel Number (APN) 1020-272-15), formerly the site of the Chino Courthouse, surplus and authorize its sale to the city of Chino upon payment of $2,200,000.”
Christina Volkers, Court Executive Officer, confirmed to the Sentinel on August 4 that “I don’t expect we will have a full service courthouse in Chino or Chino Hills, although we might have a facility where some ancillary court services are performed. The need for a courthouse in Chino and Chino Hills is not as pressing as in the rest of the county, such as in Barstow.”
Volkers signaled that the sale of the Chino Courthouse was a deliberate and thought-through move and not one forced upon her and presiding judge Slough.
“We worked with the county and approved the sale,” Volkers said.
The finality of the sale makes the move irreversible, Volkers said, meaning that the prospect of a court being reestablished in the southwest portion of the county in the foreseeable future is virtually non-existent.
“I can’t say I don’t see one being built there for another generation but I don’t see it for another three to five to seven years,” Volkers said.
Thompson confirmed that neither the county’s real estate division nor the county had pressured the Superior Court to divest itself of the unused Chino Courthouse. Rather, he said, it was the other way around. “That decision wasn’t made here [i.e., in the real estate division],” Thompson said. “It was my understanding that decision was made by the judges.”
Thompson said he was told “the courthouse needs were not going to be coming back to that location.”
He said there had been no real discussion about the cost considerations with regard to replacing the courtroom space contained in the Chino Courthouse in the event that a decision was made to reestablish court facilities in the county’s southwest corner. “We never did that cost survey,” Thompson said. He said he did not know, precisely, how much it would cost to replace the courthouse in today’s market but that it would be more than the $2.2 million Chino paid to acquire the vacant courthouse.
“My guess is it would cost more than that,” he said.
Moreover, he said, there would be a considerable wait for such quarters to be built.
“Assuming you had the land, to go through the entitlement and development process you are looking at about 30 months from start to finish,” he said.
In his written report to the board of supervisors making the sale recommendation, Thompson said the decision to sell was driven by the consideration that “in 2012, the Chino court discontinued its operation due to the court system’s budgetary shortfall and the property has since remained vacant.” He said “The county and the city propose to enter into a purchase agreement to transfer the fee ownership of the Chino Court to the city for $2,200,000, which is the agreed upon ‘as is’ value based on two appraisals prepared by Villegas Appraisal on behalf of the city. The real estate services department and Judicial Council of California staff reviewed the appraisals and determined the agreed upon purchase price to be reasonable.”
James Banks, a past president of the Western San Bernardino County Bar Association who has been at the forefront of the protest to Slough’s realignment, told the Sentinel, “The counties of California surrendered to the state of California all control over courthouses. This was done by 2002 legislation that became fully implemented about 2007. The state agency in charge of the court system is the Judicial Council. This body is composed of the judges appointed to it. As best I can tell, with regard to courthouses and the deployment of personnel, this body had absolute, unchecked power. They answer to nobody and it appears that nobody (including our state senator and assemblyman) is willing to modify the authority of the Judicial Council. Thus, they can do whatever they wish and none of us has anything to say about it. It is a foolish concentration of power but until I find a state senator or assemblyman willing to lead the effort to correct the concentration of power, we’re not going to change it.”
Banks continued, “Closing the outlying courts can be claimed to be an economy move. The previous financial status of the Superior Court in San Bernardino County does not support that claim. This is a terrible disservice to the people of Chino and Chino Hills, made even worse by the closing of the civil courts in Rancho Cucamonga. The government should be estopped from claiming that these courts waste taxpayer money. The courthouse in Rancho Cucamonga was designed and built so that it could easily accommodate 27 court rooms. The building is still being operated but at less than half capacity. One retired judge who visited it recently told me he thought it looked like an inner city bus station.”

An alleged extortion and bribery conspiracy that took place nearly a decade ago and compromised San Bernardino County’s governmental structure at the highest level by  facilitating what prosecutors say was a $102 million act of larceny took center stage at the Fourth District Court of Appeals in Riverside on Tuesday. That afternoon, justices Thomas E. Hollenhorst, Art W. McKinster and Douglas P. Miller heard oral arguments relating to a criminal case and three civil actions that have grown out of the matter.
At the basis of the appeals under consideration is a vote taken by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on November 28, 2006 in which then-supervisors Bill Postmus, Paul Biane and Gary Ovitt conferred a $102 million payment on the Colonies Partners to settle a lawsuit brought by that company against the county over flood control issues at the Colonies at San Antonio residential and Colonies Crossroad commercial subdivisions in northeast Upland. That project had been built on land traditionally used for flood control purposes by the San Antonio Water Company and upon which the county’s flood control division held three flood control easements recorded in 1933, 1934 and 1939. The city of Upland had granted the Colonies Partners approval for the development projects but had also contracted with the county flood control division to construct a project known as the 20th Street Storm Drain, which was intended to carry away flood waters from the northwestern extreme of the city. The lawsuit the Colonies Partners filed grew out of the county flood control district vectoring the water from the 20th Street Storm Drain onto the Colonies Partners’ property.
The county constructed a legal defense of its action, utilizing deputy county counsel Mitch Norton and the law firm of Jones Day. Relatively early on in that legal battle, Judge Peter Norell ruled that the county had abandoned the flood control easements on the property the Colonies Partners had purchased from the San Antonio Water Company for the development but Norell was overturned by the Fourth District Court of Appeals, the same court now entertaining the current appeals, which ruled that the easements were still intact but that the county might need to make compensation to the Colonies Partners if the amount of water channeled there exceeded the capacity of one of the existing basins there. When the case went to trial before Judge Christopher Warner, Warner ruled that the county had exceeded the terms of the easements, thus extinguishing them. Warner had ruled in favor of the Colonies Partners but had made no finding as to the amount of damages. In this atmosphere, with the county’s lawyers urging a further appeal of Warner’s ruling extinguishing the easements, the board of supervisors, with supervisor Josie Gonzales and then-supervisor Dennis Hansberger dissenting, settled the case for the $102 million payout.
The politically-imposed settlement was followed up with a validation procedure carried out before Judge W. Robert Fawke in which any challenges to the settlement were to be heard. An attorney from Upland, Marjorie Mikels, submitted such a challenge which was accepted by Fawke’s court clerk. Subsequently, however, Fawke ordered the acceptance of that challenge rescinded and had his court clerk white out the court’s file stamp on the document Mikel’s had submitted. Fawke then ruled that the settlement had not been adequately challenged and he certified it.
Three years later, in February 2010, the California Attorney General’s Office and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office filed a criminal complaint charging Postmus, who at that point had left the board of supervisors to become county assessor and then resigned that position in 2009, along with one of his political associates, former sheriff’s deputy union president Jim Erwin. The criminal complaint against the pair alleged conspiracy, extortion, bribery, fraud and perjury in connection with the 2006 Colonies lawsuit settlement vote. Both Postmus and Erwin pleaded not guilty to those charges. However, a little over a year later, in March 2011, Postmus pleaded guilty to 14 felony charges, including all of those lodged against him in the February 2010 criminal complaint and other charges relating to malfeasance in office when he was assessor. Postmus then turned state’s evidence and served as the star witness during a grand jury impaneled in April 2011. In May 2011, that grand jury indicted Erwin, one of the Colonies Partners’ managing principals, Jeff Burum, Paul Biane, and Gary Ovitt’s chief of staff, Mark Kirk. The indictment alleged that Burum, using Erwin as a consultant, first extorted Postmus and Biane by using public relations consultant Patrick O’Reilly to create mailers revealing Postmus’ homosexuality and drug use and Biane’s insolvency and threatening to post them to voters during the 2006 election year. The mailers were withheld, according to the indictment, and Postmus and Biane fell into line in supporting the $102 million settlement. Kirk was brought into the conspiracy, according to the indictment and prosecutors, in that he used his position of influence as Ovitt’s chief of staff to cozen Ovitt into supporting the settlement. Ovitt was not charged. After the settlement vote, in the first six months of 2007, Burum or his co-principal in the Colonies Partners, Dan Richards, wrote three separate $100,000 checks to political action committees controlled by Erwin, Biane and Kirk and two $50,000 check to two political action committees controlled by Postmus. These checks were, according to prosecutors, in the case of Postmus, Biane and Kirk, bribes and in the case of Erwin payment for orchestrating and facilitating the extortion and bribery scheme.
All four of the defendants – Erwin, Burum, Biane and Kirk – have pleaded not guilty and put on spirited defenses, including the filing of demurrers on a number of charges, some of which were sustained by Judge Brian McCarville and then appealed to the Fourth Appellate Court in 2011, with most but not all of those demurrers being upheld by the appellate court in 2012. Last year, the trial court judge, Michael A. Smith, dismissed the conspiracy charge lodged against all four defendants, while upholding the lion’s share of the remaining charges. The conspiracy charge lies at the heart of the case, upon which the primary narrative propounded by prosecutors is hinged, including 43 overt acts. This conspiracy allegation represents the gravitas of the case, in particular that pertaining to Burum, considered the linchpin of the entire matter as he is the prime mover in all of the criminal action alleged. The prosecution last year appealed Smith’s dismissal of the conspiracy charge against all four defendants to the Fourth Appellate Court.
In the meantime, the Inland Oversight Committee and Citizens for Responsible and Equitable Environmental Development, represented by attorneys Cory Briggs and John McClendon, filed suit against the Colonies Partners in San Bernardino County Superior Court in February 2012, seeking the return of the $102 million. That lawsuit was followed up with two similar actions. Those matters, too, have wended their way before the Fourth Appellate Court in Riverside.
Because of the complexity of both the criminal and civil cases and their basis in the same set of events and personalities, the troika of Hollenhorst, McKinster and Miller are considering all four cases, in effect simultaneously.
Tentative decisions have been rendered on all matters but on Tuesday, the attorneys for all parties came to Riverside to make oral arguments and perhaps change the justices’ minds.
Smith’s July 2014 decision to toss the conspiracy charge was based on his determination that the charge, lodged in May 2011, came too late, nearly four years after the last overt act in the conspiracy – the writing of the last check alleged to be a bribe. The statute on conspiracy is three years, Smith ruled.
Not so, contended Supervising Deputy California Attorney General Melissa Mandel, who is prosecuting the case with San Bernardino County deputy prosecutors Lewis Cope, Michael Abney and Reza Sadeghi. Mandel insisted that the statute of limitations for the crime of conspiracy runs to four years if the crime around which the conspiracy revolves relates to a crime by a public official.
A violation of the public trust involving conspiracy, Mandel said, “is completely covered by the statute.”
Burum’s attorney, Stephen Larson, countered that conspiracy is a stand-alone offense and as such is subject to a three-year statute of limitations.
The prosecution is under severe challenge, however, as the record has developed beyond the initial allegations contained in the indictment as the case is proceeding toward trial. The lion’s share of those developments cast doubt on key elements of the prosecution’s contentions.
Ovitt, whose vote like that of Postmus and Biane was crucial to the settlement, has rejected the prosecution’s assertion that he was persuaded or in any way influenced by Kirk to vote in favor of the settlement.
A central premise of prosecutors is that the $102 million payout was not justified and as such constituted an illegal gift of public funds. County officials, however, in an adjudicated claim brought against the California State Association of Counties Excess Insurance Authority to force that entity to make good on its obligation to provide partial reimbursement of the $102 million payout, represented the settlement as reasonable and necessary to offset the potential liability the county faced in the lawsuit brought by the Colonies Partners. Costa Mesa-based lawyer Todd Theodora and Mitch Norton, the in-house county attorney who defended the county against the lawsuit brought by the Colonies Partners, represented the county in its indemnification claim against the California State Association of Counties Excess Insurance Authority. Theodora and Norton stated in court papers filed with a panel of arbitrators with the Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services based in Ontario and before the Orange County Superior Court Judge Franz Miller that San Bernardino County had engaged in actions or “offenses or wrongful acts” against the Colonies Partners which resulted in “physical damage” to the Colonies Partners’ property and/or assets, such that the $102 million settlement was a reasonable one given that the value of one of the basins constructed on the Colonies Partners’ property to hold the storm water was $85 million, the Colonies Partners had estimated the cost of managing the basin over time at $75 million, the Colonies Partners valued at $43 million the lots the company claimed were devalued due to the cloud on the company’s title which came about because of the county flood control district’s interpretation of its easements, the $36 million cost of the three-year delay the construction of Phase II of the project, and the $11 million loss the Colonies Partners claimed to have sustained because of higher infrastructure development costs as a result of the county’s action.
This was buttressed by the testimony of Randall Teteak, who was qualified by the county as an expert witness based upon his extensive experience as a developer of master planned communities. In testimony obtained through questioning carried out by Theodora and Norton which was presented to Judge Miller, Teteak stated under oath that the Colonies Partners had a realistic claim of from $249 million to $276 million as a result of the flood control district’s channeling of water onto the Colonies Partners’ subdivisions.
Norton is of significance because he was one of the witnesses called before the grand jury which returned the indictments of Erwin, Burum, Biane and Kirk. Prosecutors made no effort to elicit from him the information he presented to Judge Miller about the liability the county faced in the lawsuit brought by the Colonies Partners or the reasonableness of the $102 million settlement.
Moreover, four months after the indictment was handed down, FBI agents acting in concert with the U.S. Attorney’s Office served search warrants at Burum’s office and numerous other locations, including the places of business and residences of the other defendants and their associates. The U.S. Attorney’s Office, after a review of the matter involving the $102 million settlement and the actions related to it by Erwin, Burum, Biane and Kirk, declined to file criminal charges in the matter.
Part of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s review involved the questioning of Postmus, considered to be the central witness for the prosecution in the state criminal case, carried out on October 14, 2011 by the FBI and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jerry Behnke. The transcript of that interview/interrogation reflects that Postmus’s drug use was more extensive than he had previously acknowledged, including use within the time frame around his testimony before the grand jury. Though he spoke of “promises” made by Burum to support his political career in the future after the Colonies settlement was reached and that he was being “pushed” to reach a settlement over the lawsuit by Erwin, at points in the interview he seemed to contradict or come very close to recanting his grand jury testimony and statements to district attorney’s office investigators with regard to the alleged bribery, expressing reluctance to embrace the term quid pro quo in reference to the settlement vote and the two $50,000 donations to his political action committee from the Colonies Partners that followed it.
At one point in the interview, Behnke asked him point blank “Now, did you hear from anybody prior to the settlement occurring that $100,000 would be contributed to you or anyone else after the settlement?”
“No,” Postmus responded.
While the defense is well prepared, if indeed the case goes to trial, to explore alternative theories as to the suggestions of criminal culpability in the indictment, the prosecution conversely is yet maintaining that Postmus’s admission that he was involved in the conspiracy and received bribes from Burum makes its case very compelling. Postmus was the chairman of the board of supervisors at the time of the vote and his vote was crucial to the settlement. He was also chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee at the time and had built his political career as a rock-ribbed conservative. He has told investigators that he was being subjected to threats that Burum and Erwin would make widespread disclosure of his homosexuality if he did not go along with them. This extends to the extortion element of the indictment.
Also making oral arguments on behalf of the Inland Oversight Committee and Citizens for Responsible and Equitable Environmental Development with regard to the three civil actions those groups brought to have the Colonies Partners disgorge the $102 million the plaintiffs contend represent the ill-gotten proceeds of a multi-faceted extortion and bribery conspiracy was Cory Briggs.
Larson has argued that the lawsuits should never have been filed and that the validation ruling by Judge Fawke with regard to the settlement is “forever binding.” Hollenhorst, McKinster and Miller have issued a tentative opinion siding with Larson, ruling that the Inland Oversight Committee and Citizens for Responsible and Equitable Environmental Development or any other entity or individuals do not have standing to challenge a settlement entered into by a governmental entity once a validation procedure is concluded and upheld by the court.
Briggs said the appellate court is on the brink of “making a very bad decision. What they are saying is that you can bribe public officials and just as long as you keep it secret until after a validation procedure is completed, then a bribe-tainted decision is bullet-proof forever after. If their tentative decision is confirmed, it will set a horrible precedent.”
A final written decision from Hollenhorst, McKinster and Miller on all issues is anticipated by early September.

BARSTOW —Barstow Community Hospital will no longer be an asset of the largest for-profit hospital system in the United States.
Barstow Community Hospital, which is owned by North Naples, Florida-based Community Health Systems, relocated to a newly constructed facility in Barstow from its old campus in October 2013.
On January 7, 2014 Community Health Systems announced it was absorbing its major competitor, Health Management Associates Inc. That takeover made Community Health Systems the largest operator of hospitals in the country.
In February 2014, Community Health Systems transferred Steven Foster, who had been the CEO of Community Health Systems’ Oklahoma City-based Deaconess Hospital, to serve as interim CEO in Barstow. At that time Community Health Systems said it was conducting a national search for a new CEO, using a selection committee consisting of the hospital board, medical staff and hospital management. But Foster has remained in place in Barstow and is now referred to as the permanent status CEO at Barstow Community.
This week, Foster informed the community that Community Health Systems has created a separate corporate entity to be known as Quorum Health Corporation and that Barstow Community and 37 other Community Health System institutions will be spun off to it.
According to a Community Health Systems, Inc. press release, Quorum Health Corporation’s headquarters will be in Tennessee. The new corporation will have a board of directors and management team independent from Community Health Systems, as well as a diversified portfolio of 38 hospitals located in 16 states comprising 3,635 licensed beds. Quorum’s hospitals for the most part possess, according to Community Health Systems “strong market positions,” including a significant number of monopolies, located in cities or counties having populations of 50,000 or less.
“In 84 percent of these markets, the hospital is the sole provider of acute care hospital services,” the release said. “In 2014, the Joint Commission recognized 74 percent of the hospitals that will become part of Quorum Health Corporation as top performers in key quality measures. The new company will also include Quorum Health Resources, which provides hospital management and consulting services to 150 non-affiliated hospitals across the United States, which are located in similar markets as Quorum Health Corporation’s sole provider hospitals.”
The hospitals slated to be part of Quorum Health Corp. include three in Alabama: Cherokee Medical Center in Centre DeKalb Regional Medical Center in Fort Payne, and L.V. Stabler Memorial Hospital in Greenville; two in Arkansas: Forrest City Medical Center and Helena Regional Medical Center; two in California: Barstow Community Hospital and Watsonville Community Hospital; four in Georgia: Trinity Hospital of Augusta, Fannin Regional Hospital in Blue Ridge, Clearview Regional Medical Center in Monroe and Barrow Regional Medical Center in Winder; eight in Illinois: Union County Hospital in Anna, Metro South Medical Center in Blue Island, Galesburg Cottage Hospital, Gateway Regional Medical Center in Granite City, Heartland Regional Medical Center in Marion, Crossroads Community Hospital in Mt. Vernon, Red Bud Regional Hospital and Vista Medical Center in Waukegan; three in Kentucky: Kentucky River Medical Center in Jackson, Three Rivers Medical Center in Louisa and Paul B. Hall Regional Medical Center in Paintsville; one in Nevada: the Mesa View Regional Hospital in Mesquite; two in New Mexico: Mimbres Memorial Hospital in Deming and Alta Vista Regional Hospital in Las Vegas; two in North Carolina: Sandhills Regional Medical Center in Hamlet and Martin General Hospital in Williamston; one in Ohio: Affinity Medical Center in Massillon; one in Oregon, McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center in Springfield; two in Pennsylvania: Lock Haven Hospital and Sunbury Community Hospital; two in Tennessee: Henderson County Community Hospital in Lexington and McKenzie Regional Hospital; two in Texas: Big Bend Regional Medical Center in Alpine and Scenic Mountain Medical Center in Big Spring; one in Utah: Mountain West Medical Center in Tooele; and one in Wyoming: Evanston Regional Hospital.
“Quorum Health Corporation is expected to have an enhanced ability to drive growth by capitalizing on acquisition opportunities consistent with its portfolio, developing facility specific operating strategies aligned with its community needs and better leveraging its management and consulting capabilities,” the press release states. “The spin-off will result in additional opportunities for profitable growth for Community Health Systems, as the company will focus primarily on larger markets and on investing in strengthening its regional healthcare networks, while maintaining the benefits of scale from being one of the largest hospital companies in the country. Community Health Systems stockholders will have the opportunity to realize the unique growth potential of two focused healthcare companies that will be better positioned to pursue their distinct business strategies.”

HESPERIA—The decline of the Hesperia Fire Protection District from an independent, stand alone entity into one that will no longer exist, now 27 years in the running, lurched forward this week.
On August 4, the city council requested the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission to look into the procedural process for dissolving the district entirely.
At a specially called afternoon meeting, the council voted to have the commission look at a comprehensive change in how the city provides fire protection for its residents, specifically contracting with the county to have its fire department expand its service area to include Hesperia. The Hesperia Fire Protection District was created in 1957 and continued for more than two decades as one of the community’s major institutions, existing as an independent entity for 21 years. Prior to cityhood, the Hesperia community had four high profile public agencies, entities and organizations that were strongly identified with it: the Hesperia Recreation and Park District, the Hesperia Water Agency, the Hesperia Chamber of Commerce and the fire district. When Hesperia incorporated as a city in 1988, the fire district was absorbed as a subsidiary district of the municipal government. The formerly independently elected members of its board were deposed and the city council took their places. The district technically continued to exist, but as a creature of the city.
The city was able to bag the fire department upon incorporation because the fire district’s boundaries were coterminous with the newly created city limits. It took a little longer for the city to swallow the Hesperia Water Agency, but did so in the early 1990s. There has been constant second-guessing of the city’s takeover of the water and fire protection functions, with suggestions that city officials have subjugated both divisions and the service they provide to other adverse interests, including charges that city officials diverted revenue obtained from water department operations to other city departments unrelated to the delivery of water and the maintenance of the water system.
In the mid-1990s, the city was dogged by the so-called “revolt of the Young Turks” within the fire department, which included resistance to city policy by upstart members of the department, including then-fire chief Bob May and then-fire marshal David Yegge, both of whom chaffed under the leadership of then-city manager D.J.Collins.
In 1994, amid considerable controversy, city officials entered into a contract with the county fire department to staff the fire department, such that the city’s firefighters were no longer employed by the city, although the department was still referred to as the Hesperia Fire Protection District.
The 2004 move to have county personnel provide fire prevention, fire suppression and  ambulance  services was justified at that time as a cost saving undertaking. The district continues to exist as a legal entity defined as a “subsidiary division” of the city, with the city council serving as its appointed governing board.
The dissolution of the fire protection district in its entirely is likewise being proposed as a cost saving move. In approving the city’s budget in June, the city council was informed by city manager Mike Podegracz that the district is in a “a serious deficit condition,” with retirement benefits being paid to retired firefighters seriously eating into the department’s operating and reserve capital, such that the stated goal of maintaining a ten percent reserve – $1.16 million – is not being met. Rather, the reserve cushion has dwindled to $232,038.
The state of the fire department is something of an embarrassment to the city of Hesperia, particularly one of its city councilmen, Mike Leonard, a former firefighter. At 72 square miles, Hesperia is the county’s second largest city geographically but is serviced by just four fire stations, including one that is partially funded by the county.

The city of San Bernardino will eventually save itself $2 million per year in pension costs alone by contracting its fire service to an outside agency or company, San Bernardino City Manager Alan Parker and assistant city manager Nita McKay have calculated.
In total, city officials believe dissolving the San Bernardino Fire Department and contracting for the provision of fire services in the county seat will provide savings to the city in the neighborhood of $7 million annually.
In 2012, after years of financial challenges and dwindling revenues, San Bernardino filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, citing $180 million in ongoing unfunded liabilities and a $49 million annual operating deficit. The city filed its bankruptcy exit plan on May 29 of this year, but that strategy calls for continuing to defer or delay the city’s payments to most of its creditors and vendors.
Previous civic leaders have been undone by San Bernardino’s financial morass. City managers Charles McNeely and interim Andrea Travis-Miller and finance directors David Cain and Scott Williams were casualties of the city’s economic slide. The current team at the top of San Bernardino City Hall – Parker, McKay and Mayor Carey Davis – are attempting to cinch down, constrict and eventually plug up the financial black hole that is sucking San Bernardino toward oblivion. Davis is a corporate controller and certified public accountant by profession, someone who fully understands income and outgo, expenditures and revenue, and the need to balance an organization’s books. A major issue in San Bernardino’s financial dilemma is its commitment to paying what are considered “competitive” wages to one particular class of its work force, i.e., its public safety employees.
Provisions put into the charter by means of a citywide vote in 1939 – which became known as Section 186 – require that the city’s public safety employees – firefighters and police officers – be paid on a scale equal to the average pay of police officers and firefighters in ten similarly-sized California cities.
Section 186 effectively locks in salaries for San Bernardino’s public safety employees that are at par with or greater than those salaries received by their counterparts in ten similarly-sized California cities. San Bernardino, the county seat and the largest city in the county, has a population of 213,708. Yearly, city officials and police and fire union heads start with a list of California cities with populations between 150,000 and 250,000. In turns, each removes a city from that list until ten remain. Salaries are then computated upon the average pay to that particular group – firefighters or fire department management or policeman or police management – in the remaining ten cities.
Despite the city’s bankruptcy filing it has continued to give firefighters and police officers raises in keeping with the provisions of Section 186 of the city charter. During his first year in office, Davis called for a referendum to remove Section 186 from the city’s charter. In response, the city council voted 4-3 with councilmen John Valdivia, Henry Nickel and Benito Barrios dissenting, to place two measures on last November’s ballot, asking city voters to repeal Section 186 as well as Charter Section 254, which requires that fired employees who are appealing their terminations to the civil service commission continue to be paid until the commission makes a decision on whether or not to reinstate the employee.
The city’s police and fire unions strongly opposed the measures, and in the face of their spirited campaign against them, the initiatives were defeated.
In the current fiscal year, police department and fire department operations represent 68 percent of the spending out of the city’s general fund. Salaries make up the lion’s share of those departments’ operating budgets. With a majority of the city council remaining convinced that the continuation in the escalation of public safety employee pay in a city that has declared bankruptcy and is stiffing its other creditors is not only unseemly but unsustainable, Davis, Parker and McKay formulated a strategy that included dissolving the city-run fire department and contracting with another local governmental agency or a private company to provide fire protection to the city.
The San Bernardino County Fire Department and a Florida-based private firm, Centerra, responded to the city’s request for proposals and an analysis of the two bids by a consultant, Citygate, is being carried out. Citygate’s recommendation will be provided to the council late this month or next month. It is unclear whether the city’s firefighters will be laid off or whether they will be taken on by whatever entity lands the contract with the city. If they are brought aboard by the fire service contractor, the level of benefits they are now being provided will be discontinued. This includes the generous pensions firefighters are eligible to receive at the age of 55.
If the county fire department is awarded the contract, a new law recently signed by Governor Jerry Brown, AB 868, would allow city firefighters, now in the state-run California Public Employees Retirement System, to keep their pension credits while transferring to the San Bernardino County retirement system.
For that reason, the city may be viewing an arrangement with Centerra more favorably. Lessening the pension obligations burdening the city – or getting out from underneath them altogether – is a prime goal of San Bernardino city management.
To drive home the point as to how the millstone of pension obligations is weighing San Bernardino down, city officials released actuarial projections showing pension costs for the next nineteen years.
In 2014-15, the city had $14.2 million in pension costs, equal to 11.9 percent of its general fund. According to the projections, in 2015-16 pension costs will be $19.3 million or 15.6 percent of the general fund; in 2016-17 pension costs will be $21.2 million or 16.3 percent of the general fund; in 2017-18 pension costs will be $23.5 million or 17.8 percent of the general fund; in 2018-19 pension costs will be $25.5 million or 18.6 percent of the general fund; in 2019-20 pension costs will be $27.5 million or 19.3 percent of the general fund; in 2020-21 pension costs will be $28 million or 18.8 percent of the general fund; in 2021-22 pension costs will be $28.7 million or 19 percent of the general fund; in 2022-23 pension costs will be $29.4 million or 18.9 percent of the general fund; in 2023-24 pension costs will be $30.1 million or 18.9 percent of the general fund; in 2024-25 pension costs will be $30.8 million or 18.9 percent of the general fund; in 2025-26 pension costs will be $31.5 million or 18.9 percent of the general fund; in 2026-27 pension costs will be $32.2 million or 18.8 percent of the general fund; in 2027-28 pension costs will be $32.8 million or 18.7 percent of the general fund; in 2028-29 pension costs will be $33.5 million or 18.6 percent of the general fund; in 2029-30 pension costs will be $34.3 million or 18.5 percent of the general fund; in 2030-31 pension costs will be $35 million or 18.4 percent of the general fund; in 2031-32 pension costs will be $33 million or 16.9 percent of the general fund; in 2032-33 pension costs will be $33.7 million or 17.1 percent of the general fund; and in 2033-34 pension costs will be $32.3 million or 15.9 percent of the general fund.
Eliminating the city’s obligation to continue to defray firefighters’ pension costs will assist it in turning a corner on the municipality’s runaway spending, Davis, Parker and McKay insist.
Pay for firefighters, who are generally perceived as blue collar workers, has moved into the financial stratosphere formerly reserved for middle and upper echelon white collar workers. The bottom third of the firefighters employed by San Bernardino receive an average total annual compensation package of $130,000, according to a consultant who audited the fire department for the city last year. The middle third of San Bernardino’s firefighters received an average of $160,000 in pay and benefits yearly. And the top 40 firefighters employed by the city bring in $197,000 in pay and benefits each year.

Former Chino Valley Fire District board member Winn Williams is making a bid to return to the board.
Three positions on the board of directors are up for election – those held by incumbents John DeMonaco, Brian Johsz and Sarah Evinger. Williams was a firefighter from 1969 until 2002, at which point he took a disability retirement. He had a berth on the board in 2005, but was unsuccessful in an election bid in 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2013.
In 2006, he applied for reinstatement with the fire district, claiming he was recovered from his disability. In October 2010, a court ruled that he should be reinstated. The district appealed and the appellate court found there was no legal grounds upon which to force his rehiring. The district sought to have Williams cover the district’s $5,368, in legal costs in opposing his legal action. Williams was ordered to do so by the trial court, but that ruling was reversed upon appeal.

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
I see two of the members of the Chino Valley School Board have become embroiled in a controversy over their constant religious references. Well, I am not about to be outdone. Here goes…
The Pope is touring the Philippines and is on his way to a remote province. His chauffeur has been driving along for miles and miles when he hears a tap on the glass.
He roles the partition down and asks his Holiness what he wants. The Pope informs him that he has been mollycoddled by all of those serving him and what he would most like to do is just drive a car again. The chauffeur reluctantly agrees to sit in back in the Pope’s place and let the leader of the Catholics drive.
After the Pope takes the wheel, he starts off somewhat gingerly, going five or six mile an hour. As he continues, he gains confidence and he increases his speed to ten miles an hour. Then 15. Then 20. He accelerates: 30 mph, 35 mph, 40 mph, 45 mph, 50 miles per hour, then 60, then 70, 80, 90, 100.
The limo blasts past a police officer, a provincial trooper, who uses his radar gun to see that the car is moving at 105 miles per hour and accelerating. The officer turns on his unit’s flashing blue and red lights, hits the siren and gives chase.
When His Holiness sees the flashing lights in his mirror he takes his foot off the gas and slows down, eventually coasting to a stop.
The trooper comes to the driver’s side window, looks in and let’s out a gasp. Saying nothing to the driver, he goes back to his unit and calls the station.
The trooper asks for the chief. When the chief answers, he tells him he has pulled a car over going 105 miles an hour but doesn’t think he should issue a speeding ticket.
“Anyone going that fast gets a ticket,” responds the chief.
“But this is a really important person,” the officer responds.
“Important!” intones the chief. “How important? It’s not my wife, is it?”
“No,” says the officer.
“The mayor’s son again?”
“No.”
“The mayor?”
“More important than that.”
“The Congressman?”
“No.”
“The Senator?”
“More important than that.”
The chief inquires, “It’s the Governor, is it?”
The trooper responds “No, even more important.”
“It isn’t the President is it?”
“No, more important”, replies the trooper.
“Well, WHO is it!”, screams the chief.
“I don’t know,” says the trooper. “But he’s got the Pope for a chauffeur!”

A young Methodist man had moved to a new town and was interested in joining the local Methodist congregation. He found the local Methodist church and saw the parsonage back behind the place of worship and around to the side. He wanted to introduce himself to the pastor so he went up to the front door of the house and knocked. There was no answer and he was about to leave, but he knocked again and then the door opened.
No one seemed to be there, but then he looked down and saw that the door had been answered by a young girl.
“Is your daddy home?” the man asked.
“He’s over in the church, praying,” said the little girl.
“He must do that a lot,” said the man.
“Not that much,” said the little girl. “it’s just that this morning he got a call and he is being asked to go to a city that is far away where the church is twice as big as this one to become the preacher there. They said they would pay him twice as much money, but he doesn’t know whether he should do it.”
“Why not?” asked the man.
“Well, he has been at this church ten years and he really likes all the people here and they really like him. He says he feels a calling to be here and he’s just not sure that he should go to the big city. So, he’s over in the church to see what the Lord wants him to do.”
“Oh,” said the man. “Where’s your mommy?”
“She’s upstairs packing,” said the girl.

Did you hear about the new liberal Episcopal church?
It has six commandments and four suggestions.

An Anglican minister walking along a cliff fell over. He managed to grab a branch and could see the rocks five hundred feet below him. So he decided he had better pray. He looked up to heaven and said, “Is there anybody up there?” A loud voice came from heaven “Let go thy hand and I will hold thee up.” The minister thought for a minute and looked up again “Is there anybody else up there?”

An Amish woman was driving her buggy to town when a highway patrol officer stopped her. “I’m not going to cite you,” said the officer. “I just wanted to warn you that the reflector on the back of your buggy is broken and it could be dangerous.” “I thank thee,” replied the Amish lady. “I shall have my husband repair it as soon as I return home.”
“Also,” said the officer, “I noticed one of your reins to your horse is wrapped around his testicles. Some people might consider this cruelty to animals, so you should have your husband check that too.”
“Again I thank thee. I shall have my husband check both when I get home.” True to her word, when the Amish lady got home she told her husband about the broken reflector, and he said he would put a new one on it immediately. “Also,” said the Amish woman, “The policeman said there was something wrong with the emergency brake.”

LANDERS—In the desert community of Landers, where water has always been a precious commodity and residents have long been conservative in their water use and consumption, the Bighorn-Desert View Water Agency board of directors voted 5-0 last week to impose even tighter restrictions on water use in reaction to Governor Jerry Brown’s emergency drought declaration.
Bighorn-Desert View is a special water agency. The residents it serves had already, on average, reduced their daily water consumption to less than 100 gallons per person. Nevertheless, the agency is not exempt from Brown’s dictate and so the board for the agency was faced with the option of reducing Bighorn-Desert View’s water consumption by 25 percent or enacting a water conservation plan responsive to the governor’s direction to conserve the resource.
In most other jurisdictions where efforts to meet the 25 percent use reduction goal have been or are being undertaken, there was an abundance of green landscaping. Very little traditional water use intensive landscaping exists in Landers. Thus meeting the 25 percent reduction mandate would have been very difficult or impossible. Ultimately, the board elected to adopt a new ordinance which prohibits daytime landscaping irrigation, directing that watering take place only between 5 p.m. and 10 a.m. and not more than twice a week and further prohibits watering within 48 hours of measurable rain. Watering may not cause any runoff into the adjacent roadway and a vehicle may only be washed with a hose equipped with a shut-off valve or a water-filled bucket. Any leaks to plumbing and fixtures must be repaired promptly. Decorative fountains that do not have a recirculating water system are prohibited..
The ordinance stipulates penalties for violations of the conservation measures, which are triggered after the issuance of two written notices of non-compliance which exact no monetary fine. A third violation will result in a $100 fine, and further violations would be met with a fine of no less than $250 and no more than $500.
At present, the most profligate use of water in Landers appears to be evaporative coolers, also referred to as “swamp coolers.” These devices use the evaporative process to cool air in an enclosed chamber, which Is then forced into a duct system or directly into a structure. The constant evaporation results in the accelerated loss of moisture into the atmosphere.
Because they are a common form of providing summer air conditioning in the desert, evaporative coolers have not been restricted or prohibited.

Linda Mootry, the executive director of East Highlands Ranch Homeowners Association since early 2013, will be leaving that post, returning to take up a similar director’s position in Bakertsfield.
Mootry is an employee with the Management Trust, a national community association management firm.
Her family lives in Bakersfield and Mootry had to make a weekly commute for the sake of the post she’s in now.
Reviews of the Homeowners Association and Mootry are mixed. The amenities in East Highland Ranch are appreciated by most of the residents but security and enforcement of conditions, regulations and codes have bothered some residents, who have expressed dismay at being fined for parking their own vehicles in front of their houses. This has led to disputes with the homeowners association and Mootry when those residents have petitioned to have the citations and the expensive accompanying fines rescinded or waived. Those appeals are routinely denied.
Mootry attempted to be active in the community, joining the Kiwanis Club of Highland.
She voluntarily chose to return to the Central Valley to be closer to her family. Her resignation is effective as of October 15. The East Highland Ranch Home Owners Association Board of Directors is seeking to find her replacement, either through the Management Trust or separately by the time she departs.

Frank Huston Mogle was born on June 9, 1892 in Cucamonga, the son of Harvey E. and Myrmeta (Phillips) Mogle. In 1893 his family moved to Chino and was engaged in truck farming. Frank attended schools in Chino and obtained one year of college at the University of California in 1911. He later homesteaded some property 20 miles west of Victorville and in 1916 left that area for good when he went into the military service.
During World War I Frank was with the 23rd Engineers Battalion. From about 1918 to 1920 he was in France rebuilding and reconstructing roads and bridges. He was released from active duty in 1920 and returned to his family’s Chino farm and, in partnership with his brother, opened the Mogle Brothers Machinery Repair Shop. A short time later, as the business prospered, they added a sales line of farm machinery and pumping equipment and did contract well drilling. He continued to operate and manage the family’s walnut and produce ranch.
Frank and Marjorie Herricks, a Los Angeles school teacher, were married in Los Angeles on July 5, 1926. They resided in Chino where Mrs. Mogle continued to teach at the local school. They had no children.
Mr. Mogle made many friends in the Chino and Ontario areas and was active in civic affairs. Following the sudden death on May 17, 1933 of Fourth District Supervisor Milton P. Cheney, who had been ill for several months, many candidates were suggested to Governor James Rolph for appointment to fill the vacancy. Mr. Mogle’s chief supporter was Dr. Harold R. Miller, who stated: “I am supporting Frank Mogle of Chino for Fourth District Supervisor. His record has been one of political harmony and diplomacy. He is alert and capable and I deem him qualified and his appointment expedient and have so stated to the governor.”
Governor Rolph announced his selection of Frank Mogle on May 27, 1933, and he was sworn in on May 29. He was then reelected five times and was chairman of the board from 1944 to 1952. At the age of 62 he resigned his position effective October 1, 1954 and Paul J. Young was appointed to succeed him and took the office the following month.
Mr. Mogle was well acquainted with every area of the county through his various business associations. In 1951 the San Bernardino County Fair was dedicated to his honor. During an interview in 1949, the problems he recommended as needing the most attention were improved highways, adequate flood control, water, welfare, together with hospital and jail facilities. He gave these needs considerable attention while in office and many improvements were achieved. Several flood control and water conservation projects in the West End, outlined by R.V. Ward and sponsored by Frank Mogle during the 1930s, were approved. Among these were the Prado Flood Control Dam on the Santa Ana River, completed by the United States Corps of Engineers in 1941, improvements to the San Antonio, Chino, Day and Cucamonga creeks, the Turner and Red Hill basins, the College Heights Spreading Grounds, the 19th Street and Hillside Avenue storm drains and several other facilities.
In about 1950, the Mogles bought a ranch in Arizona which they developed for nursery stock. Except for occasional visits, Mr. Mogle supervised the venture from Chino. That property was sold in 1964 and they bought some property in Upland where their final home was built. Another venture was a bankrupt nursery in Palo Alto which they bought in 1959. This was a poor decision and it was sold in 1961. Having become an expert on water development in California, Mr. Mogle served as a member of water groups both locally and statewide. He was the owner and operator of Mogle Brothers Pumps and Wells Company of Chino for many years.
Mr. Mogle was a charter member and president of the Chino Rotary Club, and a founder and charter member of the Chino American Legion Post in which he had held all of the offices. He was a member of the Masonic Order and was a past commander of his lodge in Chino. He was chairman of the California Supervisors Association. He was chairman of the California Supervisors Highway Committee. He was a member of the State Legislative Committee for four terms. He was the chairman of the county’s flood control program for many years. Other organizations in which he held membership included the National Reclamation Association, the National Association of County Officials, the National Water Conservation Association, the National Rivers and Harbors Committee, the Sutter Club of Sacramento and he was a board member of San Antonio Community Hospital.
Frank Mogle died on June 8, 1982, just two hours short of his 90th birthday. He was survived by his wife, Marjorie, two sisters, Bette Simpson and Edith Mogle, both of Fullerton, and by several nieces and nephews.