(September 14) Ed Graham, the only member of original Chino Hills City Council remaining in office, said he is seeking reelection to the council “because I think I’ve been a pretty effective leader. I love what I do. I love my community. When we started in 1991, we were looking to form a family-oriented community, not a city that had a lot of major industry. We wanted to develop a tight-knit family community. Since then, we’ve grown to a population of 75,000 but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels much smaller.”

When asked what challenges Chino Hills faces, Graham said “We’re like every city in California. We are always worrying about money and the state taking away more of our tax base. That is always a challenge. Our other structural challenge is the Proposition 218 requirements. Our lighting and landscaping districts need funding We have been backfunding that with some of our federal funds and our reserves are drawn down.”
Graham said he merits reelection and he also plugged the two other incumbents in the race, Ray Marquez and Peter Rogers. “Anyone who looks around town can see our parks and that we are a family oriented community and knows we should stay the course with the people from the council who are running with me. People know I can work with them and we can make decisions and move the city along without problems. We have been able to do that over the years. I am one of the members of the original town council. I have been here since 1991. If people enjoy living in the city and raising a family, that speaks volumes. I have been leading this city for 23 years. This is a safe community. We have great shopping. We don’t have tension.”
Graham is a retired school administrator and basketball coach. He is married with three children.

By Mark Gutglueck
Desert Woodrats that live in the Mojave Desert engage in a behavior that at first seems woefully dangerous and antithetical to their survival as a species. They eat deadly poison.
These rodents have an affinity for the creosote bush, a low-lying shrub whose leaves are rich in toxic resins, one of which is nordihydroguaiaretic acid or NDGA—a chemical that wrecks the liver and kidneys of lab mice. Strangely, the NDGA has no seeming effect on the woodrat. For months at a time, a woodrat will consume on a daily basis resin in quantities that would kill a normal mouse.
According to science writer Ed Yong, the reason woodrats are resistant to NDGA and other resins is because their guts are so filled with bacteria, they can digest the deadly chemicals in their diets with no problem.
According to Yong, the microbes in the intestines of the woodrat allow it to detoxify a whole host of chemicals. Researchers found that Mojave woodrats, which have been dining on creosote for something like 17,000 years, have different gut microbes than other desert mice.
In this way, according to Yong, the bacteria in the intestines of the Mojave woodrats have evolved as much or more than the woodratss themselves.
Desert woodrats are relatively small pack rats, measuring 11 to 15 inches in total length, including a 4.7 to 7.9 inch tail. They weigh from 4.3 to 12.3 ounces, with males being larger than females. Their coloring varies between individuals, and can be anything from pale gray to cinnamon to near-black. Regardless of the color on the rest of the body, however, the animal’s underparts and feet are always white, while the otherwise pale fur on the throat region is gray at its base. The tail is distinctly bicolored, and has more hair, and fewer visible scales, than the tails of brown rats. Desert woodrats have a narrow snout, long whiskers, and relatively long ears that are almost the length of the hind feet.
Desert woodrats proliferate in the Mojave Desert but also range as far north as southeastern Oregon and southwestern Idaho and as far south as Baja California and extreme northwestern Sonora in Mexico. They are present in Nevada and western Utah and elsewhere in California.
Desert woodrats generally inhabit sagebrush scrub areas, in chaparral, and in deserts and rocky slopes with scattered cactus, yucca, pine/juniper, and other low vegetation, at elevations up to 9,500 ft. They are most abundant in rocky areas with numerous crevices or rock piles in which they can seek shelter from predators.
Twenty three subspecies are recognized, many of them restricted to small islands in the Gulf of California.
They feed on beans and leaves of mesquite, on juniper, and on parts of available cacti, apparently without getting injured by the spines. They also eat creosote bushes, thistles, Ephedra, Mustard plants, sagebrush, and buckwheat. They will also eat other green vegetation, seeds, fruits, acorns, and pine nuts. In desert habitats, they are highly dependent upon prickly pear cacti for water balance, although they can be sustained on creosote year-round. Although they are capable of eating food containing high levels of resins and oxalic acid, such as the leaves of creosote bushes, these affect their water balance and limit their ability to eat other foods, limiting the growth of the woodrats’ population in areas where such plants are common.
Predators include snakes, owls, hawks, coyotes, and other carnivorous mammals. They are also commonly parasitized by bot fly larvae.
Desert woodrats breed in the spring and summer, and give birth to litters of up to five young after a gestation period of 30 to 36 days. The young weigh about 0.35 ounce at birth, and are blind, with only the tips of their hairs visible. Their eyes open after about ten days. The teeth of newborn desert woodrats are initially splayed apart, creating a hexagonal opening between them, with which they clamp themselves to their mother’s teats so firmly that they are difficult to separate. The teeth achieve their normal shape after about twelve days, but the young are not completely weaned until around four weeks of age. They live up to five years in captivity.
Desert woodrats are primarily nocturnal and are aggressively solitary. They may defend water sources, such as succulent plants, against other species, and perhaps prevent other species from obtaining water during droughts.
Desert woodrats sometimes appropriate the burrows of ground squirrels or kangaroo rats, and will fortify the entrance with several cubic yards of sticks and joints collected from jumping and teddy-bear chollas. This provides a formidable defense against predators. Living quarters are also often built against rock crevices, at the base of creosote or cactus plants, or in the lower branches of trees. Rock crevices appear preferred where available, but pack rats generally adapt to any situation.
Woodrats construct houses for nesting, food caching, and predator escape. These can have up to six entrances and eight internal chambers, including both nests and food caches. Houses 14 inches high and around 39 inches across at the base are not unusual. Nests are constructed of dried vegetation, usually fibrous grass parts or shredded stems.
Males mark their territory by rubbing themselves on the ground, depositing musky sebum secreted by large sebaceous glands on their abdomen. Females, however, scent mark by first digging, and then rubbing their flanks, legs or cheeks on the excavated soil. They are active year-round.

By clicking on the portal below you can download a PDF of the September 12 San Bernardino County Sentinel

Sentinel 09-12-14

(September 9)  The long dormant conflict within the administrative level of Upland’s government has now manifested into an actual crisis that has impacted a significant number of employees in the police department and which threatens the continued tenure of either police chief Jeff Mendenhall or administrative services director/city clerk Stephanie Mendenhall, or both.
In 2010, Jeff Mendenhall, then a captain in the police department, was elevated to the position of acting police chief when then-police chief Steve Adams took what was expected to be a temporary stress leave. Adams’ stress leave continued well into 2011 and in September of that year, he retired. Shortly thereafter Jeff Mendenhall was elevated by then-city manager Stephen Dunn to the position of police chief, and that choice was approved by the city council.
Meanwhile, Jeff Mendenhall’s wife, Stephanie, who was Upland’s city clerk, had likewise advanced professionally, having been given the added assignment of administrative services director. Stephanie Mendenhall remained in the post of city clerk in the newly created assignment of administrative services director, which carried with its authority oversight of the city clerk’s office, human resources, information technology, and risk management, and provided her with  a base salary and add-ons of $175,606, plus benefits of  $55,624 for a total annual compensation package  of $231,230.
There was concern at the time that the promotion of Jeff Mendenhall to the position of police chief created a circumstance that was fraught with conflict and peril for the city and its taxpayers. Essentially, filling the administrative services/city clerk  and the police chief positions, which on occasion require some degree of articulation with one another and/or superintendence of or answerability to one another, with individuals who were married to one another raised the specter of favoritism or the possibility that standards that would otherwise be applied to conduct, actions and the review thereof might be compromised.
City officials, however, sought to downplay such concerns, indicating that arrangement would be permitted, since such conflicts were merely theoretical or potential. They suggested that if such a conflict were to manifest, it would be addressed at that time and Dunn, as city manager, would intervene to alleviate the conflict.
The city had no nepotism policy in place. Previously, the city had faced similar, though not identical circumstances. In the 1980s, while Frank Carpenter was a member of the city council, his wife Dee had been city clerk. In the 1990s, while Gail Horton was a member of the city council, her husband, John Scanlon, was fire chief.
Despite what government reform and open government activists decried as unhealthy arrangements, no scandal over these incestuous relationships in Upland has, until now, erupted.
Within the last two months events have manifested that are threatening to put the Mendenhalls and the concentration of authority over internal municipal administrative processes in their hands in sharp relief, to the embarrassment and potential legal detriment to the City of Gracious Living.
In recent years, the Upland Police Department, like nearly every other law enforcement agency in California, has outfitted its patrol cars with high powered shoulder fired weapons to augment the sidearms their officers carry. In the case of Upland, each patrol car carries an AR-15, a lightweight, intermediate cartridge magazine-fed, air cooled rifle with a rotating-lock bolt, actuated by direct impingement gas operation or long/short stroke piston operation.
The officers almost universally endorse the AR-15 as a highly practical back-up to their 9 millimeter or .45 handguns, which have proven, in some cases, to be inadequate in the face of the heavier weaponry often in the possession of criminals. The AR-15 provides officers with adequate response capability in those circumstances where they encounter armed and determined resistance.
Law enforcement agencies are required to keep their officers up to date in both training and certification for the equipment and weapons they utilize.  In California, the Commission on Police Officers Standards and Training is the state entity that provides the criteria and protocol by which law enforcement officers are given training and certified.
To remain employable in the field, officers must undergo periodic training and certification for the firearms they are issued and use in the course of their employment.
Because the city of Upland through its police department had obtained the AR-15s for its patrol cars, traditionally the department had paid for the periodic AR-15 use training the officers had to undergo, provided them with the means, i.e., the ammunition and shooting range availability, required to complete that training, paid its officers for the time they attended the range certification and the classes related to the AR-15 use, and  reimbursed them for whatever mileage costs they accrued in driving to the range and the class.
This summer, police chief Mendenhall, in keeping with budgetary restraints imposed on his department, informed the officers under his command that they would need to complete their retraining and recertification with regard to the AR-15 entirely at their own expense and on their own time, and that the department would not cover the cost of their ammunition used in the training and certification, that they would not be reimbursed for their mileage in achieving recertification and that they would not be paid for the time they spent attending AR-15 classes and the certification testing.
An individual officer’s failure to attend the training and obtain certification would result, without exception, in his/her disqualification for patrol duty in any department patrol car  outfitted with the AR-15s.
While the change in policy dictated by chief Mendenhall without conferring with the police union was not gladly received by the rank and file, the predominant attitude among officers was that they would comply with the new order of things and that the AR-15 is too important of a tool for them to function without. The officers  begrudgingly agreed to attend the classes at their own expense to obtain the necessary certification.
The officers learned, however, that the sergeant conducting the training for the department was, per chief Mendenhall’s orders, being paid for conducting the classes and was being reimbursed for all his incidental expenses.
The Sentinel has learned that several of the department’s officers, angered by the apparent favoritism shown toward the sergeant, consequently took exception to chief Mendenhall’s order, asserting that he had violated not only the employment contract the city has with its police officers through its union, the Upland Police Officers Association, but California labor law as well.
A law enforcement professional who was in contact with the Sentinel said that what he characterized as a “significant minority” of the department’s officers – as many as a dozen or more – expressed a belief that the filing of a grievance over the matter was called for.  No such grievance was filed, however, the Sentinel is told, because the individual with whom such grievances are lodged would be Stephanie Mendenhall, who in her capacity as administrative services director is the head of human resources, i.e., personnel.
“No one wants to go into her office and say, ‘Your husband just did this to us and we don’t think it’s right,’” a law enforcement officer told the Sentinel. “If it wasn’t his wife, people would go right down there and complain. But they can’t because of who she’s married to and the fear of retaliation and harassment. No one believes they could really get a fair hearing in that situation. People just have to accept it. In this case there really isn’t a grievance process.”
Stephanie Mendenhall declined the Sentinel’s invitation to discuss the matter.
“I don’t have a comment for you,” she said. “Sorry.”
As chance had it, however, at this week’s city council meeting, the council was poised to consider the proposed reorganization of the city’s executive staff, which included the elimination of an executive assistant in the city manager’s office, filling the vacant position of accounting supervisor in the finance department and arranging it so that the finance manager reports directly to the city manager.
When that item came up for a vote, councilwoman Debbie Stone made a motion to amend the reorganization proposal such that the city would eliminate the position of administrative services director altogether. Saying he believed elimination of the administrative services position would, ironically, help to meet chief Mendenhall’s call for the hiring of more police officers, Councilman Gino Filippi seconded Stone’s motion and supported it with his vote. The motion died, however, when Mayor Ray Musser and councilmen Glenn Bozar and Brendan Brandt voted against it. They approved the reorganization proposal, as originally put forth by interim city manager Martin Lomeli and incoming city manager Rod Butler.
Lomeli, who is vacationing in Hawaii, was not present at the meeting. Chief Mendenhall was filling in for him as stand-in city manager. Chief Mendenhall did not appear pleased at Stone’s motion to terminate his wife, nor at Filippi’s support of the gambit.
After the meeting, Stone told the Sentinel, “I want to make it clear on why I made the motion that I did tonight in regards to the administrative services director. The position of administrative services director was created in 2011 to justify the high compensation of the then city clerk, by creating a position.   Now that the finance manager directly reports to the city manager and is adding another employee in the form of an accounting supervisor to the tune of approximately $90,000, it seems that further reorganization is in order.  We are on this council to make the hard calls and this is one of them.”
When she was informed about the looming controversy in the police department relating to officers’ reluctance to utilize the grievance process because they must file those complaints with the police chief’s wife, Stone said she had not been aware of the matter.
“We are all professionals here and if there are emotions or personal relationships involved  then we should still expect that those people have to be able to look beyond that and do what their job requires,” Stone said. “If we have people who are not willing to file a grievance because of that relationship, then it is a problem and we are going to have to do something about it.”

(September 9) Susan Berk said she is running for the Upland City Council because “Upland needs strategic and experienced leadership focused on getting our financial house in order.   The water and sewer privatization issue spurred me to action; I realized we are going down the wrong track and we can no longer maintain the status quo.   Returning the same council members or electing the former city manager to the city council is not a good path forward.   These people are the ones who put us where we are now.   They say they have unfinished business.   Their business is not unfinished; it’s an approach that has moved us in the wrong direction and it must be stopped.”
Berk told the Sentinel “Protecting management of our water and sewer asset  is the most significant issue facing us today, and I am disappointed that a vote on it has been pushed out until after the election.    Outsourcing management of our water and sewer assets is a bad idea and it is an end run around securing rate increase approvals.   This concept will do nothing to reduce our costs; in fact, predictions are it will more than double our water and sewer bills.   It’s a ploy to get more money to cover past management mistakes.   We need look no further than Claremont or Rialto to understand the negative long-term effect on the city.   I am against outsourcing management of our water and sewer assets.   It’s a shortsighted, bad idea with severe ramifications for the people of Upland.”
At the same time, Berk said, “I am firmly against any tax increases and any new taxes.   If there’s anything we don’t need, it is more taxes.  I will use the management skills I’ve honed in industry to identify cost reduction opportunities and assets with which we can generate cash, and to build our fund reserves.  We have to learn to live within our means.”
While Berk said the city should maintain ownership of its water division, she said the city did possess property and operations it could conceivably dispense with.
“Upland has land and other assets that are not being used to our advantage,” she said. “We need a complete list of all city assets including our land holdings, and we need to either find ways to put these to work for us or sell them.  This information has been hard to obtain; it won’t be when I am on the city council.”
Berk called for reducing the city’s reliance on consultants.
“Our senior city executives are extremely well paid to manage and to do their own analysis,” she intoned. “That’s their job – it’s not to hire consultants every time a tough budgetary decision comes along.   We recently threw $27K away by having a team of consultants ask Upland citizens if they were in favor of higher taxes.    There are many troubling things about this, including the city’s initial decision to not release the survey results.   The city initially claimed attorney-client privilege as the reason for not releasing this information, which is outrageous.   It required the involvement of the First Amendment Coalition to make the report public.”
The city has been plagued by less than diligent government oversight, she maintained.
“I view the city council’s job to be the same as a board of directors in a publicly-held corporation,” she said. “The council is there to provide strategic oversight, to guide the city manager, and to always have the best interests of the citizens of Upland, who are the shareholders of the city, as their number one priority.   That hasn’t happened in recent years.   I see the failure of our city council to prevent or even detect the unethical and unprofessional behavior that has occurred in Upland city government as the most pressing reason for significant change.   I owe nothing to the special interests.   I will work for the citizens of Upland, and I will answer to them.”
In identifying her game plan for governance if elected, Berk said “Upland needs to get its financial house in order, and that will be my first priority.”
Berk said the city should leave well enough alone and not even consider  water and sewer privatization. “We’re not having problems in these areas,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to ‘fix’ something that isn’t broken.    I will oppose this backdoor tax increase.   We aren’t going to get out of our current situation by digging deeper into our residents’ wallets.”
Berk said the city can avoid the need for sales or business tax increases by “getting our spending under control.   That starts with defining budgets for every department and holding those department managers accountable.   If they feel they don’t have enough, it will be up to them to find solutions, and the default answer cannot always be ‘I need more money.’   My industry experience is that when people realize there is no more money, they find solutions.   That’s what I believe has been missing in Upland.  We have a lot of good people a level or two below top management and I know they are interested in finding solutions to our budget problems if we engage them in the process.”
Berk said Upland, as other cities, must come to terms with having made unrealistic and financially onerous commitments to provide its employees with overly generous pensions.
“We have a huge issue with our pension obligation,” Berk said. “It’s growing and Upland can’t solve this problem on its own; it’s a state-wide problem.   We certainly need to honor the pension obligations we have already made.  Upland has a two-tier pension system for new employees, but that’s a solution that will only start to work 20 years or more down the road.   We are where we are now because of terrible prior management decisions.  In order to address this problem now, we need to take a very hard and very public look at our future negotiations in the upcoming contract renewals.   One of our former city managers and his finance director worked a deal where their compensation was based on what the public safety unions negotiated, so that if the  public safety folks got more, these executives got more.   That’s a blatant conflict of interest and it should have never happened.   That’s the kind of unethical behavior I won’t allow, and which I’ll make sure the public knows about.”
Berk said “We need to critically review all city assets and all planned expenditures.   We need to determine what we can afford, and which of our assets we either need to sell, thereby raising cash, or put them to good use.   Some might argue that privatizing our water and sewer management will do this, but it won’t.   It will just increase the price of these services to our citizens, even though the cost of providing these services hasn’t gone up.”
If entrusted with a position on the council, Berk said, “I’ll take a very hard look at the proposed use of any consultants.   My first question to any manager who wants to hire a consultant will always be:  ‘Why can’t you do this?’”
Berk said she has the moxie to take on the job of directing the city through the rough times ahead.
“I didn’t get to where I am today as a senior executive by being timid,” she said. “I will work with the other council members and the mayor to develop solutions that benefit Upland residents and to ensure that the city manager follows our direction.”
A program manager with Raytheon for the last 17 years who previously worked at  Lockheed for four years, TRW for 10 years, and Honeywell for four years, Berk said she is qualified to serve on the council, because “I’ve run large defense and commercial programs with budgets of up to $200 million with diverse stakeholders – those to whom I report, those who report to me, subcontractors, and customers.    Our primary stakeholders here are the residents of Upland and I’ll never forget that.  I have a strong management and operations background.    I’ve written five books on management and financial analysis.   I’m tireless and I’m relentless in doing the right thing.   And, I love Upland. I’ve lived here for 30 years.   I want the next stories in The Daily Bulletin and The San Bernardino County Sentinel to be about something good going on in Upland City Hall.
I’m the only city council candidate with the financial management experience to dig us out of the hole our prior poor leadership put us in.   I want the residents of Upland to know that I will answer to them and not the special interests.   I won’t allow the city to keep secrets from the people who live here.   Most importantly, you won’t be making a mistake when you vote for me.”
Berk graduated from Arroyo High School in El Monte and obtained a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from Cal Poly, Pomona. She returned to Cal Poly to obtain a Master of Business Administration degree after she had been employed for a few years. She is a member of the  Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association and Leadership California, a group of senior woman business leaders who address California business issues.
She has been married for 31 years and has two adult children.

(September 10) Public employees’ continuing use of  the tactic of pension spiking, a practice  that has now been made inapplicable to their colleagues hired since January 1, 2013, will cost California’s taxpayers and local governments close to $800 million over the next twenty years, according to California Controller John Chiang.
Chiang said he came to that conclusion based on his office’s most recently completed audit of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which provides benefits to 1.7 million retired state and local government workers and their spouses out of what is currently a $301.5-billion investment portfolio funded by taxpayers.
The audit that focused on eleven state and local government agencies turned up no direct evidence of illegal pension enhancements, or “spiking,” but found that the California Public Employees’ Retirement System has not conscientiously monitored the payroll records of its  3,100 constituent agencies.
Pension spiking is the process whereby employees inflate their compensation, either by promotion or the reception of long accumulated benefits in the years or even final year preceding their retirement in order to receive larger pensions than they otherwise would be entitled to. The California Public Employees Retirement System calculates its members’ pensions based upon the compensation they received during the three years of  highest compensation.
Public pension spiking in California was outlawed in 1938, but that law went largely unenforced. In 2012, the state legislature prohibited its practice by any government employees in California hired on or after January 1, 2013.
Chiang highlighted his concern with regard to 97 local agencies which he said routinely increased  a worker’s pay during his or her final year of employment when the collective bargaining agreements in place in those jurisdictions call for the agency to pay both the employer’s and the employee’s share of the total pension contribution.
This is projected to cost the state and local agencies and taxpayers roughly $796 million in additional pension costs over the next two decades, Chiang said. .
In its response to Chang’s audit and accompanying remarks, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System  said it has no discretion to prevent such legal spiking when the local agency has complied with the law. It said that the subject of pension spiking fell “outside the stated scope of the audit.”
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System lacks sufficient audit capacity, said Chiang, who stated, “On the current audit schedule a local government that contracts with the California Public Employees Retirement System, for example, would only face an audit once in every 66 years.”
In recent years there has been increasing concern that the cost of funding the retirement benefits of public employees is consuming an ever greater share of the revenue available to both local and state government to the point that the traditional function of local governments, i.e., the provision of services at all levels, are being neglected.
In many jurisdictions, the cost of pension payments exceeds that of current payroll and in some jurisdictions, the cost of pensions exceeds the cost of all current operations

(September 10) On a split vote, the board members of the Chino Valley Unified School District moved to up the stipend they are provided for their service.
Board members Irene Hernandez-Blair, Charles Dickie and Sylvia Orozco voted to increase their compensation by five percent, elevating from $747 to  $784 each board member’s monthly pay.
Trustees James Na and Andrew Cruz voted against the raise.
The salary increase, which went into effect on September 5, will add $2,050 to the district’s annual $52 million budget.
Taking the raise was a symbolic show of confidence in the future, following more than half a decade of dwindling revenue to the district in the face of the stagnating economy that has beset the nation, state and region since 2007.  Because deficits of $8.1 million were projected for the current 2014-15 academic year and a $9 million deficit in 2015-16, the board was earlier reluctant to up its own compensation.
The raise means that members will get roughly $470 per meeting. The board met 27 times in 2012 and 27 times in 2013. In 2014 it has 20 meetings scheduled. Meetings typically last three hours, meaning the board members get about $157 per hour if meeting time alone is calculated.
Board members are provided with staff reports relating to the materials contained in the meeting agenda, which they are expected to review prior to the meetings. There is no set amount of time required of them to do such reviews.
The move came at the same time that the board approved a raise for district superintendent Wayne Joseph. The board agreed to increase Joseph’s contract, which had been providing him with an annual $195,575 salary,  to reflect a 3 percent salary increase for 2013-14, retroactive to July 1, 2013; a 2 percent salary increase for 2014-15. The board also agreed to provide Josephs with a 10 percent increase in the district’s contribution towards his benefits, which are provided in addition to his salary, for this school year.

(September 9) Former Yucca Valley Town Councilwoman Lori Herbel, who served a single term on the council from 2006 until 2010, said she is running to regain a position her position  to “address the concerns of the people and the business community by holding quarterly open Town Hall community meetings and to encourage the growth of local small businesses by making it the town’s primary goal to understand expectations and assist in making the permitting process easy.”
If elected, Herbel said she would “examine the annual budget line-by-line to justify all expenditures and restore the Hi-Desert Nature Museum to full service and honor its past contributions to community education and cultural activities.”
Herbel said it is vital that the town “expand and enhance community programs for our youth and seniors.” She said she was committed to “engage the community, the town council and Hi-Desert Water District in an immediate and intensive effort to make the sewer affordable for all.”
She elaborated on this last point.
“Our greatest challenge is the prohibition on septic discharge placed on property owners in Yucca Valley by the Colorado River Water Quality Control Board (CRWQCB),” Herbel said. “The Hi-Desert Water District (HDWD), the sewer authority, is doing their best to address this prohibition with plans for a town-wide sewer collection system and waste water treatment plant. In 1974 the CRWQCB warned Yucca Valley that it needed a sewer. With no enforcement, permits for septic systems continued. When the town was incorporated in 1991,  first priorities identified in the general plan was to work with the HDWD to ensure the town had a sewer. Unfortunately, this infrastructure was neglected, now property owners are dealt a huge financial shock and the daunting task of how to deal with the cost of the septic prohibition.”
Herbel said, “Compliance is the responsibility of individual property owners; the town isn’t responsible for individual compliance, and neither is the HDWD nor the CRWQCB. We must solve this together and it must be affordable for all, otherwise, we are going to suffer greatly as community.”
During her previous tenure on the council, Herbel said, “My votes were always informed, I came to each council meeting well studied and prepared with a listening ear to the voice of the people.”
She said the town needs to come to terms with “the cost of the sewer. Phase 1 is estimated at $146 million.”
She said solutions to the town’s challenges can be had by “engaging the community, the town council and Hi-Desert Water District in an immediate and intensive effort to make the sewer affordable for all.”
What qualifies her to be returned to the council, Herbel said, is that “as a resident of Yucca Valley for the past 11 years, a business woman, founder of Certified Farmers’ Market and communication trainer for companion animals, I am highly aware of the challenges facing our citizens and business community. I have the time, the will, to faithfully listen and serve the people of Yucca Valley.”
In touching on what she said she believes distinguishes her from the other candidates for town council, she said, “I have the highest regards for anyone that steps up to the plate to serve their community. It takes a lot of time and commitment. Each candidate is to be commended. Because of my experience as an elected town council member, I understand the workings of the town government and have kept abreast of relevant issues, I will be able to immediately focus on mitigating challenges facing our town. My business life keeps me in touch with the people. As a council member, I will listen to their concerns and respond.”
She vowed, “I will listen and represent the people with common sense, compassion and courage.”
Herbel graduated from Lowell High School in Whittier and obtained an A.A. degree from Fullerton College in Orange County.

(September 10) Former Upland City Manager Robb Quincey entered a no contest plea on September 9 to a single count of conflict of interest, bringing to a close the case lodged against him by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office in 2012.
Dismissed as a consequence of the plea arrangement worked out between Quincey’s attorney, Michael Zwieback, and prosecutors were two additional charges, perjury and  embezzlement/falsification by a public officer.
The case against Quincey in some measure grew out of the circumstances surrounding former Upland Mayor John Pomierski, who was himself indicted in 2011 and in 2012 was convicted of public corruption charges. Pomierski was instrumental in hiring Quincey as city manager and maintaining him in that position for more than five years. Quincey, who had a doctorate in public administration with an emphasis in economics and organizational development from the University of La Verne, was  handpicked by Pomierski in March 2005 to succeed Upland’s previous city manager, Mike Milhiser. Over the more than five-year span Quincey worked for Upland, he was provided, primarily at Pomierski’s behest, a series of salary and benefit enhancements such that by January 2011 he was  receiving a base salary and add-ons of $368,529 with benefits of $92,096, for a total annual compensation of $460,625, making him among the high-
est paid city managers in the state.
The seeds of his fall had been sown some two-and-a-half years previously, when on July 27, 2008 Quincey and his former fiancé, Jennifer Stelzer, became embroiled in a heated argument at Quincey’s Upland home, punctuated by  Quincey’s alleged vandalism to Stelzer’s car and a series of profanity-laced text messages to her. The Upland police were summoned and detective Craig Sipple under the supervision of then-sergeant John Moore generated an eight-page police report recommending that the matter be reviewed by the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution. Quincey contacted Stelzer and persuaded her not to press charges and then sought to have then-police chief Steve Adams intervene in the matter.
Consequently, the eight-page report Sipple originally authored was reduced to six pages and Sipple and Moore’s recommendation that the matter be referred to the district attorney’s office was changed to state that the case was given “Exceptional Clearance. Stelzer does not desire prosecution.” The redrafted six-page version of the report was buried in an inactive police department file that prevented it from being open to public scrutiny. When Moore later applied for one of two open lieutenant posts with the department and was passed over, he retained the services of attorney Dieter Dammeier of the law firm Lackie Dammeier McGill & Ethir to represent him. Dammeier worked out a solution to the problem by which Quincey and Adams upped the number of captain positions with the department from two to three, promoted a lieutenant into that new spot, thereby creating another lieutenant vacancy, into which Moore was promoted. Dammeier presented the city with a $57,816 bill for his efforts on behalf of Moore. To keep the matter quiet and from coming to the attention of the city council and the public, Quincey used his maximum $25,000 annual discretionary spending authority as city manager to pay Dammeier’s firm in two $25,000 installments, one in the midst of the 2009-10 fiscal year on January 25, 2010, and another shortly after the initiation of the 2010-11 fiscal year on August 23, 2010.
According to former Upland City Attorney Bill Curley, Quincey persuaded then-assistant finance director Ruby Carrillo, with whom Quincey was intimately involved, to miscode one of those checks to make it appear that the payment had been made for another police department-related matter the city was negotiating with the police, union, specifically payment to officers for the time they spent just before their daily assignments donning their uniforms and the time after their shifts ended doffing their uniforms.
In June 2010, FBI and IRS agents served search warrants at Upland City Hall as well as at Pomierski’s home and the homes and offices of Pomierski’s associates. As FBI agents were carrying out that search inside City Hall, Quincey had an impromptu conference with Curley, relating to him  the circumstance with regard to the domestic disturbance incident involving Stelzer, the Sipple/Moore report relating to it and the action taken by Quincey and Adams to create a third captain position within the police department to open a lieutenant’s slot for Moore.  Though Quincey thought what he had told Curley would be kept in confidence,  Curley informed the FBI of what Quincey had just related to him. After details relating to the train of events involving Quincey, Stelzer, Moore and Dammeier became public, the Upland City Council in January 2011 suspended Quincey and     placed him on paid administrative leave. Four months later, two months after Pomierski’s indictment, Quincey was terminated.
Quincey sued for wrongful termination and in the course of the hearings related to that suit, Quincey made what the district attorney’s office latter said were false statements, amounting to perjury.
While the perjury charge and that of embezzlement was dismissed, a felony of conflict of interest by a public officer has been entered against him.  He agreed to make restitution of $50,000 to the city of Upland in accepting the plea bargain. He has already put up $25,000 of that sum and will provide the rest by June 30, 2015. He is scheduled to be sentenced on October 10. Under the terms of his plea, he is to serve three years of supervised probation and other penalties, one of which includes up to a year in jail.
His sentence could also carry with it his forfeiture of the $90,000 per year pension he earned as a five-year city manager of the city of Hesperia and his five year’s with Upland.  California has a law that is applicable to any person receiving a public employee pension elected or reelected to public office on or after Jan. 1, 2006, which provides for forfeiture of all rights and benefits under, and any membership in, any public retirement system in which the person is a member, effective on the date of final conviction for certain felonies, including those relating to accepting or giving, or offering to give any bribe; the embezzlement of public money; extortion or theft of public money; perjury; or conspiracy to commit any of these crimes.
Quincey was an elected member of the  Monte Vista Water District Board of Directors. He served as the president of that entity for more than 13 years.
The deputy district attorney who prosecuted Quincey, Reza Sadeghi, did not return phone calls seeking information about whether Quincey’s conviction would result in the forfeiture of his public pension.

By Mark Gutglueck
The city of San Bernardino played a somewhat regrettable role, ending up on what is now the wrong side of history, in the battle for desegregation.
Throughout much of its early history and lasting well into the 1940s, the Hispanic population of San Bernardino was subject to discriminatory practices that were accepted as par for the course by most of the region’s inhabitants.  Children of Mexican descent attended segregated schools, and Latinos in San Bernardino were permitted to use public pools only on Sunday, the day before the pools were drained and cleaned.
On August 1, 1943, the Mexican American Defense Committee of
San Bernardino held a meeting at San Jose Hall on Fifth Street and Pico Avenue.to discuss what could be done about these practices.
The meeting had been coordinated and was hosted by Eugenio Nogueras, the editor of a local Spanish language newspaper, l Sol de San Bernardino. The attendees resolved to meet the issue head on and confront city officials about the policies they had put in place or were perpetuating which subjected the entire Hispanic population of the city and in particular those living in the Westside barrio, along Mount Vernon Avenue to second and third class citizenship.
On August 19, 1943, the Mexican American Defense Committee sent a letter to Mayor W.C. Seccombe and the city council demanding that “Mexicans” be allowed to use the municipal pool at Perris Hill Park. Tommy Richardson, the city of San Bernardino’s municipal recreation supervisor and the coordinator of  baseball games held on Mount Vernon Avenue, voiced his support of the policy change. Nevertheless, the city council  rejected the Mexican American Defense Committee’s demands. Nogueras found further support in the person of Ignacio Lopez, editor of El Espectador, yet another local Spanish language newspaper. The information campaign with regard to the demand escalated and ultimately, on September 17, 1943, Los Angeles-based attorney David C. Marcus representing the  Mexican American Defense Committee and petitioners Ignacio Lopez, Eugenio Nogueras, Father Nuñez, Virginia Prado, and Rafael Muñoz filed a class action lawsuit against the mayor and the city council. Lopez vs. Seccombe  made issue of the segregated swimming pools in San Bernardino.
Marcus asserted that as as taxpayers and United States citizens, the Mexican Americans of San Bernardino were entitled to use parks and recreational facilities within the city and that barring their admittance was unconstitutional under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
The case was heard in District Court of the United States for the Southern District of California, Central Division (Los Angeles).
Seccombe and the city denied the allegations and stated that the city charter provided the mayor and the city council with the legislative and administrative “authority to acquire, own and maintain public libraries, common museums, gymnasiums, parks and baths,” and in so doing run them in any manner they deemed appropriate.
The district court’s presiding judge, Leon Yanckwich rejected the city’s assertion of overriding authority, ruling that the city had to abide by the Constitutional guarantees provided to all citizens, including San Bernardino’s Mexican American residents. Yanckwich  declared, in a ruling handed down on February 5, 1944, “…respondents’ conduct is illegal and is in violation of petitioners’ rights and privileges as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States… as particularly provided under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. That petitioners are entitled to such equal accommodations, advantages, and privileges and to equal rights and treatment with other persons as citizens of the United States, in the use and enjoyment of the facilities of said park.” Lopez v. Seccombe was among the earliest successful desegregation court cases in United States history. The decision desegregating the city’s recreational facilities set a precedent for other local desegregation challenges, including the much more celebrated Mendez v. Westminster, a school desegregation decision in 1947 involving a school district in Orange County, and influenced  the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

This narrative took as a primary source Mark Ocegueda’s tractate on the case Lopez v. Seccombe.