By Mark Gutglueck
The city of Montclair evolved out of what was originally called the Monte Vista Land Tract, which was created by Los Angeles land developer Emil Ferth. The Monte Vista Land Tract was 1,000 acres that extended from the wash on the north, to the railroad tracks near State Street on the south, eventually expanding southward to Phillips Avenue. A settlement nearby was that of Narod, at a latitude 34.058 and longitude of 117.685, located between what is today Benson Avenue and Vernon Avenue just north of Mission Boulevard. Narod included a dry goods store, a hotel, a packing house and the Little White Church of Narod. Two pumping plants provided water along with cisterns. About fifteen families were spread around in various locations in the land tract. Most of the houses were wood frame duplicates of those from back east Most were hidden by orange groves. The roads were oiled rather than paved. Mission Avenue was a through street. Horses and buggies were the most common form of transportation at that time, although a local train from the Salt Lake Line would stop and take passengers to Pomona or Ontario. The quality of goods at Narod Market attracted shoppers from Ontario and Pomona. Farmers provided local markets with fruit and vegetables. Old Monte Vista School was in place during the first decade of the 20th Century, but was moved to Holt Avenue around 1911 or 1912 . Afterwards parents hired a man to take children to Chino Schools. The following year Ontario sent out busses for the students.
The Monte Vista Land Tract grew on the northwest but the northeast boundary with Ontario remained sparse. The constantly overflowing wash on the north made that area an unpredictable place to reside. Twenty inches of rain caused it to overflow in 1916.
In 1927, the Monte Vista area was covered with orange and lemon groves. Houses were no closer to one another than a half mile away . A group of men headed by C. Earl Wetherbee, who was the secretary of the Limited Mutual Water Company, which delivered irrigation water to the orange and lemon groves, concluded that water should also be furnished for domestic purposes. Those in Monte Vista were drinking, cooking with and bathing in irrigation water stored in their own cisterns normally located at the high end of their groves. This would give each house about five pounds of water pressure.
The service area of the Limited Mutual Irrigation Company was bounded by 8th Street , known as Arrow Highway, on the north, Central Avenue on the West, Benson Avenue on the East and San Bernardino Avenue on the south. The remaining area now known as the Monte Vista County Water District bounded by the Santa Fe Rairoad tracts on the north the San Bernardino County line on the west, Benson Avenue on the Ontario City Limits on the east and Francis Avenue on the south were served by the Palomares Water Company, the Monte Vista Water company, the Century Water company and the Monte Vista Irrigation Company and several privately owned wells. Many of those in the area who were not served by the Limited Mutual Water Company heard of the creation of a domestic water company and asked to be included.
Petitions to form the new entity were sent out on June 1, 1927. seeking permission to set up a water district under the general laws of the state of California. The original name of Narod for the district was dropped and the name Monte Vista was adopted. The initial elected board members of the district were C. Earl Wetherbee, V.C. Wecks, G.W. Naftel, O.V. Barr and A.B. Tato. Wetherbee was selected board chairman. W. Hartley, manger of the West Ontario Citrus Association, was appointed secretary of the board. The board obtained a 122 to 2 vote of those within the district to pass a $75,000 bond. The money was used to build a reservoir on land owned by the Limited Mutual Irrigation Company with a 49-year lease. Also purchased were 60 shares of water stock at $100 per share in the Limited Mutual Irrigation Company, which entitled the Monte Vista Water Company to fill the reservoir. On May 28, 1928 a contract was let for main lines and services to the West Coast Pipe and Steel Company. L. H. Kreigh was hired as field superintendent and secretary of the company During the month of November 1928 those lines that were under contract were completed and paid for. That month the district sold 3,501,000 gallons of water for domestic use. In 1929, the district operations had grown to the point that it had insufficient reservoir capacity and had to undertake to build another reservoir.
In 1937, the worst freeze in the history of Montclair hit in January. The fruit was saved by smudge burning. In 1938 a huge flood racked the area, bringing debris down from Mount San Antonio. Water damage to homes and underground tanks occurred.
In 1946, the Limited Mutual Water company was unable to supply the district with enough water, so it was necessary for the Monte Vista Water District to develop it own supplemental water supply. A new pump and gas engine was installed to obtain water form a well drilled in 1935 and which had never been used. The district began pumping water directly into its system.
In 1950, the Monte Vista County Fire Department opened its first fire station on land provided by the Monte Vista County Water District and the West Ontario Citrus Association.
On April 10, 1956 the residents in the district voted to incorporate the municipality of Monte Vista District as a general law city, and selected five men to form the first city council James West, who was an orange grower and pest control company operator was chosen mayor. Paul Fremo, a real estate broker and builder; Miller Buchanan, a poultryman; Dana Pankey, a minister; and Glen Wolfe, the proprietor of an equipment sales and rental business were elected to the council. Two years later the city’s name would be changed to Montclair. The council held informal meetings at West’s home. The city’s first address was Post Office Box 867 in Pomona. After several meetings at West’s home, the council met with representatives of the League of California Cities. They selected a building owned by Phil Hurst at 5326 San Bernardino Avenue as the council’s meeting place. They hired Henry Busch as Montclair’s city attorney, setting up May 8, 1956 as the first official meeting date of the city council. On April 25, 1956 Montclair was certified by the state of California as a general law city.
The council chose Larry O’Rourke, who had been acting as city administrator in Tehachapi for fifteen months, to serve as the city administrator and clerk.
West subsequently praised O’Rourke as “a brilliant young Irishman who not only proved to be an excellent administrator but also a hard worker who was willing do such menial tasks as painting the floor of the city hall one weekend, Kelly green, of course! He was a patient and thorough teacher of government procedures. None of us were schooled in the field of government.”
That council at its maiden meeting did a “voluminous amount of work,” adopting such resolutions as certifying the boundaries of the city and creating a planning commission and adopting several emergency ordinances setting up a special gas tax fund, creating wholesale and retail business licenses and setting a retail sales tax and a use tax. “We had to have income to run our new city,” West said in 1963.

Darkling beetle is the common name of the large family of beetles, Tenebrionidae. Tenebrionidae are cosmopolitan, living on every continent with the possible exception of Antartica, though through human transport this bug may have spread there as well.
The number of species in the Tenebrionidae is estimated at more than 20,000.
The name Tenebrionidae was given to these beetles by Linnaeus in his 10th edition of Systema Naturae in1758-59 and means roughly: “those that seek dark places.” Darkling beetles are thus beetles which dwell in the dark.
Most species do inhabit dark places, but there are exceptions. Some species of Tenebrionidae in genera such as Stenocara and Onymacris are active by day and inactive at night. The family Tenebrionidae includes a large number of species in an immensely varied range of forms, thus presenting challenges in making comprehensive classifications. As of 2005, Alleculinae Laporte, 1840; Cossyphodinae Wasmann, 1899; Diaperinae Latreille, 1802; Lagriinae Latreille, 1825 (1820); Nilioninae Lacordaire, 1859; Phrenapatinae Solier, 1834; Pimeliinae Latreille, 1802; Stenochiinae Kirby, 1837; Tenebrioninae Latreille, 1802; and Zolodininae Watt, 1974 were largely accepted as subfamilies for taxanomic purposes.
The Tenebrionidae may be identified by a combination of features, which include 11-segmented antennae that may be filiform, moniliform, or weakly clubbed, its first abdominal sternite entire and not divided by the hind coxae, eyes notched by a frontal ridge, tarsi which have four segments in the hind pair and five in the fore and mid legs, with simple tarsal claws.
Many darkling beetles feed on plant matter, some on fresh and some on decaying vegetation; some are generalist feeders on detritus, whether of animal or plant material.
Species within the Tenebrionidae occupy various ecological niches and accordingly are important resources for ranges of predators and parasitoids in the food chain, including birds, rodents, reptiles, and arthropods such as sun spiders, Hymenoptera and Acari.
Some species live in intensely dry deserts, and have evolved adaptions by which they collect droplets of fog that deposit on their elytra. As the droplets accumulate the water drains down the beetles’ backs to their mouthparts, where they swallow it.
In the Mojave Desert, a species of the genus Eleodes (particularly E. obscurus) are well known as “pinacate beetles” or “desert stink beetles.”

Do you have special knowledge about San Bernardino County’s wildlife? If you want to share what you know with others, you can do so by becoming a Sentinel contributor and writing an occasional county wildlife corner column. Call Mark at (909) 957 9998 to see how you can become a published columnist.

By clicking on the portal below, you can download a PDF of the December 26 Edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 12-26-14

(December 22) San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon was the highest-paid county elected official in California in 2013, according to state controller John Chiang. During his first full year in office as sheriff, McMahon received a total compensation package of well over half of a million dollars.
According to Chiang, McMahon received $363,986 in total wages in 2013, which included $225,499 in regular pay, a $121,579 lump-sum for cashed-out leave time following his appointment in December 2012, and another $16,908, described as “other pay,” which covered his car allowance and cell phone usage. In addition to his salary, McMahon was provided with another $170,780 in retirement and health benefits, which included a $114,812 defined benefit plan, a $11,215 retirement contribution, $31,804 in deferred compensation and $12,949 provided for health/dental/vision coverage.
McMahon’s total compensation surpassed that of then-Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, the state’s second-highest paid elected county official in 2013, with $347,786 in total wages and more than $140,000 in benefits that pushed his total compensation package to roughly $490,000.
The controlling factor that rocketed McMahon to the top of the field among the state’s elected county officials was the $121,579 lump sum for cashed-out leave time he received. The lump sum was for vacation, holiday and sick time he had accumulated before he assumed the sheriff’s position. As an elected official, a sheriff is not permitted to maintain leave balances.
McMahon fared particularly well in 2013 in that San Bernardino County ranks as 23rd out of the state’s 58 counties in terms of pay and benefits provided to employees. San Bernardino County, which employs 21,985, paid them an average of $48,997 in total wages in 2013 and provided them with another $20,321 in retirement and health benefits on average. The state average on per employee pay was $58,521 and $22,546 in benefits.
District Attorney Mike Ramos was the fifth highest-paid district attorney in the state, bringing down $259,451 in total wages, which does not include benefits.
That was par for the course, as San Bernardino County is the fifth largest county in the state. Four of San Bernardino County’s supervisors, none of whom was identified by name, received salaries that ranged from $168,000 to $173,000, which was more than all other supervisors in California except their counterparts in Los Angeles. A fifth San Bernardino County supervisor earned about $163,000.
McMahon was appointed to the sheriff’s position in late 2012 and, running as an unelected incumbent for sheriff this year, was elected to a four-year term in his own right. While the inflated salary and benefits he received in 2013 was shocking to some, there were many other public employees in California who were paid more. McMahon was the highest paid elected county official, but nine unelected county officials throughout the state earned more. And some state of California employees were extremely well paid.
The UCLA football coach was the highest paid state employee in California at $2,639,609. The UC Berkeley football coach was paid $2.3 million. In addition, the chief investment officer for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System was paid $784,616; the senior investment officer for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System received $598,983; another senior investment officer for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System received $592,887; the president and CEO of the State Compensation Insurance Fund received
$587,675; a senior psychiatrist supervisor with the state earned $580,776; a staff psychiatrist with the state earned $546,116; and another senior investment officer with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System earned $541,540.
Chiang released the update to his database on December 15, 2014, adding the 2013 data.
He said it was his intent to provide “the public with a broader picture of public compensation. California must not only restore public confidence that their governments are responsive and accountable, but provide the necessary information and tools to empower citizen participation in civic decision-making,” Chiang said.

SAN BERNARDINO—(December 24) Depending on your perspective, the city of San Bernardino’s first place position in a nationwide internet voting contest that has a stretch of E Street being recognized as typifying the “best urban street transformation” nationwide in 2014 is either a vindication of the sbX project or a further indication of how desperate its supporters are to justify an indefensible squandering of taxpayer money.
The sbX bus line was the offspring of the San Bernardino County Transportation Agency, the cities of Loma Linda and San Bernardino, and Omnitrans, all of which cooperated to create an interurrban high speed transportation service.
The $192 million project was originally intended to run 15.7 miles from near the Veterans Administration Hospital in Loma Linda to just north of Cal State San Bernardino, the sbX line features 60-foot long articulated buses that use clean-burning compressed natural gas as fuel. Each bus on the route was to touch down at just five stops between its starting points/end destinations and complete its run in just under 25 minutes, rivaling or actually bettering what a commuter utilizing a car typically encounters over the same span utilizing the freeway during the morning or evening rush hour.
Like the unconventional capitalization and spelling used in its acronym – sbX stands for San Bernardino Express – the route embodies unusual features such as a dedicated lane for more than a third of the route that has been fashioned from what were once street medians. And each sbX bus driver has been given virtual command of the traffic lights encountered along the route so that the busses will rarely if ever encounter a red light.
But compromises from the original plan were made in which the number of busses that were to cover the route each hour dayling hour – three to six – were reduced and the number of stops along the route were increased to 13, pushing the duration of each excursion from 24 to 41 minutes.
That 41 minute duration still compares favorably with the 65 minutes that Omniitrans – the local mass transit provider – previously provided with its busses along the same route. Nevertheless, critics have been vociferous in their objection to the expense of the news system that has only marginally more ridership than the previous bus service. And sbX was widely opposed by many of the businesses along its route running along Hospitality Lane and then up E Street through the southern portion of San Bernardino because of the negative impact they anticipated the project would have on commerce.
Part of the negative imposition of the project that was anticipated indeed played out. This imposition consists of the elimination of the turn lanes along Hospitality Lane and E Street, such that motorists are now unable to make left turns and are now obliged to continue further down the street to make a U-turn where that is possible and then retrack back to access businesses, including many of the restaurants in that area. The owners of several once-thriving businesses located along the route, including Ammons Diamond & Coin Gallery, Burger Mania, Pride Envelopes and Barber Shop 215, saw patronage of their businesses diminish. Some closed.
Some critics of the sbX system have inveighed against it on the basis of the traffic hazard represented by the buses traveling at speeds in excess of the speed limit for passenger vehicles along the same span of roadway.
Omnitrans, the public transit agency serving the San Bernardino Valley which operates the sbX line, and SANBAG, the county transportation agency which acted as the lead agency in obtaining $75 million in federal funding which was applied toward the $192 million project, hailed the line as a major leap forward for beleaguered San Bernardino, which declared municipal bankruptcy in 2012.
Omnitrans and SANBAG officials are hopeful that bus ridership along the 15.7 mile route will increase significantly over the next several years, demonstrating the gamble all of the participants took in the effort toward modernizing public transportation option was one that will pay off.
With the end of an urban monitoring website’s competition over the selection of what its readers deem to be the country’s most significant vignette of urban improvement fast approaching, sbX supporters are confident they will at last see some recognition – in this case national recognition – that their faith in the fast bus line project was well placed. In its annual competition to have the readers of streetblog.usa weigh in on what they consider to be the “best urban street transformation,” throughout the 50 states, the site’s competition committee selected portion of E Street which was made over with a number of improvements in conjunction with the sbX undertaking as one of five finalists. As of late this week, San Bernardino’s span of E Street is leading the pack of this year’s nominees. Voting in the competition ends on December 28.
At press time, E Street in San Bernardino was out in front with 43%, or 616 votes, leading Western Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which had 27% or 380 votes, Washington Avenue in Minneapolis with 19%, or 267 votes, Broadway in Seattle with 7% or 106 votes and Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh with 4% or 60 votes.
While the results of the balloting are by no means scientific, the first place ranking does indicate that the work on E Street carried with it an aesthetic plus.
San Bernardino city officials, Omnitrans officers, and San Bernardino Chamber of Commerce members all hailed the streetblog vote as a positive reflection on the city and sbX. The city is looking to create a synergy off the combination of improvements that have been made to the city of late, not the least of which is sbX and the new 11-story county courthouse that opened downtown in May.
Others, however, were unconvinced, pointing out that city and transportation officials may have stuffed the ballot box by a campaign that has promoted the sbX project and an effort to have locals cast ballots at the streetblog website in favor of the E Street nomination.

(December 23) A legal challenge to the legality and constitutionality of Victorville’s red light camera system – and by extension to all such programs throughout California – is entering a crucial stage after surviving a welter of efforts by the city to have the case dismissed.
Last week, Bob Conaway, the attorney in the proposed class action suit which has not yet been certified on behalf of three clients sought to convince the Fourth Appellate District Court in Santa Ana to allow him to move on to the discovery phase of the case to allow him to gather evidence from the system’s operators and Victorville to show the video images captured on the cameras are not always authentic and or reliable.
Conaway’s clients originally filed the case in San Bernardino County Superior Court in February 2012, naming the City of Victorville and Australian-based Redflex Traffic Camera Systems, which has a corporate office for the United States in Phoenix, Arizona.
Filed in Victorville Superior Court on February 14, 2012 on behalf of lead clients Carole Jaquez, Michael Curran, John Macias and who received red-light tickets issued as a consequence of the Redflex Traffic Systems camera devices mounted in Victorville, the suit propounded that in order for a peace officer to issue a citation for a misdemeanor or infraction, the offense must occur in that officer’s presence. Removing that requirement, as does the arrangement in Victorville, violates the California Penal Code, according to Conaway. Declarations for the red-light camera citations from the Redflex system issued in Victorville are certified under “information and belief,” which the lawsuit maintains is akin to hearsay, not a police officer’s personal knowledge.
The officer(s) who issued Jaquez, Curran and Macias their citations did not contemporaneously witness the alleged red light violations, rendering the tickets they received invalid, according to Conaway. In addition, according to the lawsuit, the proofs of service was signed by a Redflex computer operator and was bulk mailed, further rendering the tickets invalid.
Utilizing a computer controlled camera to initiate and carry out the citation process, Conaway asserts, deprives defendants of the opportunity to confront their accuser in court, a guarantee granted all citizens under the Bill of Rights. Beyond the Constitutional issue, Conaway contends Australia-based Redflex violated the California Business and Professions Code Sec. 17200 by engaging in unfair business practices that unjustly enriched the company. Moreover, according to Conaway, Redflex should be held accountable under the product liability doctrine because of the flaws in the design and operation of its system.
The suit sought $9 million in damages and more in punitive damages for the roughly 5,000 motorists impacted by the system.
That case was removed to federal court where the Redflex defendant was able to convince a federal trial court that California’s so-called anti-Slapp statute prevented the action from proceeding. SLAPP is an acronym for strategic lawsuit against public participation. In its anti-SLAPP motion the city claimed Redflex was exercising its first amendment commercial speech rights by taking pictures and selling the images to the city. The federal trial court indicated it would remand the case to State Court for the handling of the remaining claims against the city.
After the case was remanded, the action filed on February of 2012 was dismissed without prejudice and refiled in State Court making further allegations under 42 USC 1983 of the federal civil rights act and under a declaratory relief count that the Victorville system, which relies upon strobes to operate, was illegal under the California and federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and that the due process rights of the plaintiffs and those similarly situated were violated by the way the citations were being processed.
Conaway argued that the prosecutions were handled by unsworn peace officers with no personal knowledge of the offense having been committed, that the citations were served by a private corporation and not the citing entity, the confrontation right was being violated by there being no one actually observing the offense who could be cross examined and the so-called evidence was otherwise inadmissible on hearsay and foundational grounds. The trial court in the second case dismissed the case on the contention that none of the plaintiffs had standing to sue.
After the second case was briefed, the California Supreme Court handed down its decision in People v Goldsmith, another automated traffic light citation case in California, which the Court of Appeal asked for further briefing on.
In that briefing Conaway’s clients contended that Redflex edits and processes data in a backroom, compiles secret software whose reliability can’t be challenged in infraction trials due to Redflex and the city claiming it to be proprietary information and a trade secret that they do not have to (or want to) disclose.
In addition, Conaway argued that the city was able to change the duration of its yellow signals to increase citation volume. With regard to the integrity of the evidence the city and Redflex have been relying upon to make cases against defendants, Conaway asserted in his brief dated December 9 , “The photo is not just taken and retrieved. It is a product of three pieces of identified software. Is the image which is being shown the same as was created? That is not a trivial distinction considering what is known about the non-man-caused failures of software being used.”
.In the brief, he also raised questions about possible problems related to degrading software, image compression, image warping [which can change location of objects like cars in an intersection] and data corruption.
On behalf of his clients, Conaway also noted Redflex relies on the Window XP operating system, which is no longer supported by its creator, Microsoft, and is therefore vulnerable to outside manipulation, hacking, viruses and breakdown.“Windows XP data corruption can occur when the buffers in the computer get overrun,” Conaway wrote, and he noted that the ”data loss can occur with Windows XP even when attempting to reinstall, repair or upgrade.”
Assumptions are being made about the reliability and accuracy of the system that Redflex and the city have in place, Conaway asserted, but those assumptions have not been tested. He said the discovery he is requesting would allow such tests and verifications of the system’s accuracy to be carried out. Not allowing that verification to be made, he said, would entail a violation of the due process right & equal protection rights of those cited and adjudicated guilty under the red light camera system. He said such reliability verification and standards have been recognized by the courts and other branches of the government in similar and different contexts.
“Courts have compared computer animations to classic forms of demonstrative evidence such as charts or evidence that illustrates expert testimony,” Conaway’s brief states. The Supreme Court, he said, has required judges “to make a preliminary finding on reliability and that analysis effectively mirrors federal due process and confrontation clauses set out in appellants’ opening brief.”
One major issue to explore in discovery, Conaway said, is the editing that is done with the video images and whether exculpatory evidence is edited out. “Editing is such a problem and so difficult to detect the United States Postal Inspector commissioned Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab to write software to detect editing,” Conaway wrote.
Under the way Redflex and Victorville have been operating their camera and citation system, Conaway said, the “burden of proof is reversed” such that guilt is presumed. That approach is compounded by the inability of those cited to examine and bring into question the evidence being used to convict them, Conaway said.
“The notion that computer-generated data and stored information is presumed to be infallible and therefore any citizen-defendant is guilty discriminates against lower income citizens, seniors or fixed income and minority communities,” Conaway wrote. “The court is telling poor and low income people on fixed incomes who do not believe they ran a red light to just plead guilty as common sense as the City is well aware that most people cannot hire a lawyer and certainly don’t have the money in an infraction case for discovery with an out of state corporation (Redflex) to produce software, code, input procedures, batch controls, verifiable processes, input edit routines, system controls, library handling procedures and controls, accuracy of input method, proper conversion of machine readable data, capacity, reliability, software checks, samples tests of processing of source documents/data–all of which must be obtained to prove operational defects in or tampering of the system–making it even worse is the fact the city has agreed with the out of state vendor (Redflex) that the information needed on the software and processing in the backroom is proprietary. It’s an authentication issue because ‘is this the same photo?’ ” he said. “We’ve got to address that 500-pound gorilla in the glass shop.”
Redflex maintains that its processes are legal and constitutional and contribute to public safety. In a corporate statement, Redflex said “There’s no good excuse for running red light.”
The Court of Appeal indicated from the bench that plaintiffs had standing and then stated that they were taking the matter under submission to review presumably the other potential independent grounds to support the dismissal of plaintiffs’ claims.
The appellate court is tentatively scheduled to rule on Conaway’s clients’ appeal to open discovery by late March.

(December 22) Bob Blough, the former general manager of the San Bernardino County Public Employees Association, is relying upon the doctrine of unclean hands in his response to a lawsuit alleging he misappropriated or embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars when he was in charge of the union’s operations.
In a ten-page response to the association’s suit, Blough denies the misappropriation and embezzlement allegations. He is countersuing, seeking $520,000 in general damages, compensation for the cost of litigation, and punitive damages.
In the summer of 2013, Blough abruptly parted ways with the San Bernardino Public Employees Association, which represents and handles collective bargaining for over 11,000 employees working for San Bernardino County and 3,000 others working for 16 of the county’s cities – Barstow, Big Bear, Chino, Chino Hills, Colton, Fontana, Hesperia, Loma Linda, Montclair, Needles, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Redlands, Rialto, San Bernardino, and Upland, as well as three cities in east Los Angeles County, Claremont, Pomona and West Covina, and Banning in Riverside County.
Publicly, that development remained shrouded in some degree of mystery for more than 14 months, though there were unconfirmed reports in the immediate aftermath of his departure that Blough was under investigation by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office for some form of undisclosed wrongdoing.
On October 17, 2014, a civil action was filed against Blough in San Bernardino County Superior Court on behalf of the San Bernardino Public Employees Association (SBPEA) by attorneys Dennis Hayes and Michelle Hribar of the San Diego-based law firm of Hayes & Cunningham.
According to the lawsuit, “In 2013 SBPEA hired new auditors Ahern Adcock Devlin LLP. In June 2013, during its audit of SBPEA, Ahern Adcock Devlin discovered that there was a large disparity in the amount of SBPEA’s recorded cash receipts and the amount of deposits made to SBPEA’s bank account at Security Bank of California. The amount of SBPEA’s recorded cash receipts appeared to far exceed the amount of cash deposits that had been made.”
The lawsuit continues, “Ahern Adcock Devlin asked Blough to provide the keys to SBPEA’s safe, where presumably cash making up the difference between SBPEA’s cash receipts and cash deposits would be located. Blough reluctantly provided Ahern Adcock Devlin with the key to SBPEA’s safe. Upon review of the cash in SBPEA’s safe, Ahern Adcock Devlin found only approximately $40,000 in cash, which was far less than the amount of cash received by SBPEA that was not deposited in SBPEA’s bank account. SBPEA immediately placed Blough on administrative leave without pay and shortly thereafter, terminated Bough’s employment. SBPEA also terminated from employment Blough’s assistant, Jeannie Marquez.”
The association undertook a more extensive investigation of the matter after Blough had departed, according to the lawsuit.
“SBPEA then hired Ahern Adcock Devlin to perform an audit of SBPEA’s records for the time period from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2013, in order to assist SBPEA with its investigation of Blough and Marquez,” the lawsuit states. “On October 1, 2014, Devlin provided the final results of its audit to SBPEA. Ahern Adcock Devlin’s audit revealed that between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2013, a total of $595,444.82 in cash received by SBPEA was missing because it was never deposited into SBPEA’s bank account and was not in SBPEA’s safe. SBPEA is informed and believes and based thereon alleges that Blough misappropriated, converted, and embezzled cash in the amount of $595,444.82 from SBPEA.”
In addition, according to the lawsuit, there were other financial irregularities that occurred during Blough’s tenure as general manager.
“Ahern Adcock Devlin’s audit also revealed that during the time frame of July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2013, there were numerous charges on SBPEA’s credit cards, including those held in Blough’s name, which appeared to be personal-in-nature,” the suit states. “The purchases appearing to be personal-in-nature amount to $108,345.14. SBPEA is informed and believes and based thereon alleges that in addition to the $595,444.82 in cash, Blough also misappropriated, converted, and embezzled $109,345.14 of SBPEA’s funds by using SBPEA’s credit cards in order to pay for his own personal expenses.”
According to the suit, there were other questionable credit card expenses by Blough for storage units, tools, paper, grills and other supplies, which had no supporting documentation available.
According to the suit, “Blough intentionally concealed his misappropriation, conversion and embezzlement of funds from SBPEA’s executive committee and members. SBPEA is informed and believes and based thereon alleges that Blough falsified and altered SBPEA’s records in order to conceal his misappropriation, conversion, and embezzlement of funds from the SBPEA executive committee and members.”
The district attorney’s office, which has been said to be investigating the financial issues at the association for more than 16 months now and which was given a full copy of Ahern Adcock Devlin extensive forensic audit more than two months ago, has yet to file criminal charges against Blough or Marquez.
The lack of action on the part of the district attorney’s office is an indicator that adequate evidence to prove that Blough is in possession of the money he is alleged in the lawsuit to have embezzled has not been turned up. Another indicator is that Blough is representing himself in response to the lawsuit against him and has not retained counsel. According to the lawsuit and San Bernardino Public Employees Association President Ron Dunn, during Blough’s tenure as general manager “unaccounted for money” was “misappropriated by Mr. Blough.” Neither Dunn nor current SBPEA General Manager Deidre Rodriguez nor Hayes nor Hribar would comment on Blough’s present lack of financial resources.
In his November 20 response, Blough denied he misappropriated or embezzled funds from the San Bernardino Public Employees Association while he was employed there. Rather, he suggested the association had itself engaged in improper conduct and is now seeking to scapegoat him. The lawsuit, which seeks the return of the missing money and interest on it as well as attorney fees and punitive damages, is meritless, Blough maintains. The association has “unclean hands,” he asserted.
In tort law, the doctrine of unclean hands holds that one party in a lawsuit, either a plaintiff or defendant, cannot obtain a judgment against the other party, either a defendant or a plaintiff, if the other has also engaged in wrongful, illegal or unethical behavior.
Blough said the association was complicit in any action it had alleged against him and that it was equally responsible for any loss or disappearance of money in that it had failed to address any outstanding circumstance related to the disappearance of the funds and had not taken any timely action to “mitigate and lessen damages.”

JOSHUA TREE—(December 23) Voters in the Morongo Basin will exercise the ultimate word over whether Tenet Healthcare will move in as the operational and management partner within all of the Hi-Desert Memorial Healthcare District ‘s facilities, which include the Hi-Desert Medical Center and Continuing Care Center.
On December 3 the Hi-Desert Memorial Healthcare District Board voted to begin negotiations with regard to entering into an affiliate relationship with Dallas, Texas-based Tenet Healthcare. The board voted 5-0 in favor of Tenet, a $4.2 billion company, which has a working relationship with 81 hospitals nationwide, over 200 outpatient centers and 36,000 physicians.
Hi-Desert Medical Center and the Hi-Desert Memorial Healthcare District in general have experienced falling revenues and continuous budget shortfalls over the last several year. In response, the board hired Jon Spees, the senior vice president of the Camden Group to serve as a consultant to map out a strategy for achieving economic stability while continuing to provide adequate and comprehensive care for patients in Twentynine Palms, Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley and Morongo Valley, including the hiring of more medical care specialists. Spees’ recommendation was that the hospital enter into a partnership with a large corporation that possesses the resources to help Hi-Desert Memorial achieve its goals.
After soliciting letters of intent from health care provision entities with regard to a potential working relationship, the district received responses from Strategic Global Management and Tenet Healthcare.
A previous article in the Sentinel may have left readers with the impression that the deal with Tenet has been conclusively closed. In actuality, the board’s vote cleared the way for negotiations with Tenet to begin in earnest.
At the December 8 meeting of the Morongo Basin Municipal Advisory Council at the Joshua Tree Community Center, some basin residents expressed concern about the haste with which the district was moving in affiliating itself with Tenet. There were questions about reliability of the company, the amount of profit it would realize in its operation and questions about its corporate practices, including the provision of incentives, which were interpreted by the U.S. Justice Department to be kickbacks in 2003 when three Tenet employees were criminally charged with delivering illegal inducements to doctors. Ultimately, the government dropped that case.
Robert Tyk, the hospital’s chief operating officer, dismissed those questions as ones that were irrelevant to the hospital and district’s precarious financial state and long term solvency.
Financial problems are going to continue, Tyk said, and if an affiliation partner is not brought in, the hospital most likely will be forced to close in a few years. The district was $4,765,135 million in the red in the last fiscal year, he said, and does not have the wherewithal on its own to turn its bleak financial circumstance around.
Tyk said that Tenet Healthcare has guaranteed the payment of $2 million a year to the district for 30 years as part of a lease and operation arrangement, and the provision of $17 million toward capital improvements, another $10 million toward revamping the hospital’s computer and digital system and $5 million for physician recruitment, all within the first three years of its partnership.
The partnership with Tenet will further assist the medical center in garnering an infusion of up to $26.3 million in federal Quality Assurance Funds within two years.
Pursuant to the hospital board’s December 3 vote, Tyk said negotiations are now ongoing to put the partnership agreement terms into a draft form. That agreement ultimately will come before voters in the district in May or June as a mail-in ballot. A simple majority vote would actuate the partnership.

YUCCA VALLEY —(December 23) Advocates for the availability of medical marijuana in the town of Yucca Valley have effectively overrun the town council’s procedural blockade of local marijuana clinics by getting the requisite number of voter signatures on a petition to direct the town council to adopt a new code allowing dispensaries or otherwise put the matter to the ballot.
An initiative calling for the town to allow two marijuana dispensaries to operate in the 20,700 population municipality was signed by more than 1,900 of the town’s registered voters. Of those signatures, 1,873 signatures were determined by the San Bernardino County Register of Voters Office to be valid, and that number of signatures was roughly 400 more than was needed by the petitioners to force the town council to act.
Town Clerk Lesley Copeland said she is now purposed to put the petition before the town council for certification at its next meeting on Jan. 20, 2015.
Unless the council can cite some reason for not certifying the petition – and there does not appear to be any such legal grounds available to the council – it must either adopt the initiative language calling for the granting of two dispensary permits into the town code without changes within 10 days or call for a report on how the new rules would affect the town or schedule a special election in which voters would be given a straight up-or-down vote on whether to approve the initiative.
The Alliance for Safe Access of Yucca Valley, led by Jason Elsasser, began circulating the petition this summer. The petition calls for the city to permit the opening and operation of one medical marijuana clinic per 10,000 residents living in the town under a set of rules governing hours when the dispensaries can be operated and within zones outside the proximity of churches and schools.
Elsasser and the Alliance undertook their effort after the closure of another clinic, which had gotten its operating charter from the city by applying for a business license as an ‘herbal shop.”
Upon town officials learning that the enterprise was a dispensary, they initiated efforts to close it but were met by the owner’s threat of litigation. The town and the clinic owner arrived at an agreement by which the owner was able to remain in business for a specified period. Before that deadline elapsed, the operation proved lucrative enough for the owner to reach his financial goals and he voluntarily closed.
Advocates for the availability of medical marijuana say that there is considerable demand for medical marijuana in Yucca Valley and that the town council, by its efforts to prevent the operation of dispensaries in town is forcing customers to purchase the product from criminals selling it illegally or travel to other cities where clinics are permitted and where those municipalities have tapped into the tax revenue available from the sales.
The demand for marijuana will remain whether the town facilitates local availability or not, and the city should take advantage of the potential tax revenue such operations present, advocates of the dispensaries say.
Those opposed to the cannabis clubs say those favoring them are a minority and a referendum will end with the ban on them being sustained.
Town officials were left calculating the prospect for approval if a referendum is held. The council, which has earlier displayed its opposition to allowing the clinics to operate, is conscious of the $30,000 to $40,000 cost of holding the election. Requiring an election would merely cost the town money if a majority of the voters support the ballot measure. Thus, simply adopting the initiative language might be attractive to some of the council members. Spending the money to hold the election makes sense, from their standpoint, only if the voters reject the initiative. Seeking a report would potentially delay the matter.
California Cannabis Coalition Director Randy Welty, who in addition to owning and operating marijuana clinics also owns adult businesses in several locations in and outside San Bernardino County, may have changed the complexion of the council’s decision. He has offered to have the California Cannabis Coalition foot the bill for the election if the council decides to go that route.

(December 26) Haggen Food & Pharmacy has moved to acquire a number of Albertsons and Safeway stores in Southern California, including at least three on thee west end of San Bernardino County.
In recent years, Albertsons has fallen into a vicious spiral, raising prices and thereby driving away customers, which has led to further raising of prices. Leaner and hungrier competitors such as El Super, Cardenas, Ranch King, WinCo and Food For Less have picked up business in the meantime.
Haggen Food & Pharmacy now operates exclusively in the Pacific Northwest. This week, however, it announced it has made arrangements to acquire Albertsons and Safeway stores in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and California. Haggen will eventually take over 146 Albertsons and Safeway stores, 83 of them in California.
The transition will come in stages. During the initial stage, which will come about in 2015, the Vons in Chino Hills at 4200 Chino Hills Parkway, the Albertsons in Rancho Cucamonga at 8850 Foothill Boulevard and the Albertsons in Upland at 1910 N. Campus Avenue will become Haggen Food & Pharmacies. Safeway currently runs Vons stores.
The Haggen chain was founded at the height of the Depression in 1933 by Ben Haggen, Dorothy Haggen and Dorothy’s brother Doug Clark in Bellingham, Washington. Haggen has grown to become Washington’s sixth largest company, operating 18 stores in Washington and Oregon and employing 2,000. Haggen operates 16 pharmacies and will pick up 106 more.
Through the Alberstons-Safeway deal, Haggen will increase its market share eight times. The company’s payroll will grow to 10,000 by the completion of the takeover deal.
According to Haggen, it is committed to supporting local farms, slaughterhouses and other food and product sources.
Haggen’s pricing is roughly in line with that offered by Safeway. .
Haggen is closely associated with another Washington-based company, Starbucks, becoming, in 1989, the first grocery store chain to include in-house Starbucks.
Haggen has engaged in some innovative marketing schemes in the past, such as operating 24 hours per day beginning in 1984. It abandoned that angle at most locations in 2010.
Haggen stores feature a bakery, deli and butcher.
The company had grown to 31 stores with revenue of $884 million in 2008, but was blindsided by the economic downturn, seeing its revenue dip by $144 million the next year. Weakened by trying to keep its entire operation intact, the Haggen family in 2011 lost majority ownership of their stores to a private investment firm, Comvest Partners.
Convest then embarked on a three-year conflation plan, closing thirteen of the company’s poorest performing stores.