(June 2)  Nineteen months after Adelanto rolled into the history books as the  location where the controversial parent-trigger option was first actuated in California, there is no subjective empirical data to determine if taking control of the school targeted in the movement has actually benefitted the students there.
Desert Trails Elementary School in the Adelanto Elementary School District was long one of the most severely underperforming schools in the state of California.
In late 2011, a parent union was formed by parents at Desert Trails Elementary, in large measure at the instigation of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Parent Revolution, which is devoted to challenging the traditional authority of school districts.
In January 2012 the parent union submitted 466 signatures on petitions asking the district to undertake a set of what the parents union maintained would be reforms at the academically challenged school, where students had for years consistently scored near the bottom of state-mandated standardized academic tests.
The petition was based upon the Parent Empowerment Act, authored by former state senator Gloria Romero and passed by the legislature in 2010. The Parent Empowerment Act enables a majority of parents at a school at which students score as low-performers on state academic tests to force a district to implement significant reforms, ranging from replacing the principal and up to half the staff to reopening the school as a charter academy. That process is known by the colloquialism “parent trigger.”
A group of parents opposed to the parent takeover of the school formed and went to work obtaining rescissions of many of the signatures on the petitions.
Those petitions called upon the district to sack the school’s principal, David Mobley, and surrender to the school’s parents authority in hiring his successor, infuse in the new principal hiring authority for the school’s faculty, reduce class sizes and increase the number of school days and instructional hours, and include more science, history and art in the curriculum.
In February 2012, the school district, to whom the parent trigger petitions had been entrusted, announced that it had validated the signatures of only 301 of the 466 signatures on the petitions and declared that the parent trigger petitions were thus 20 signatures short of the 321 needed. The Desert Trails Parent Union, represented by Mark Holscher, a lawyer with the firm on retainer with Parent Revolution, Los Angeles-based Kirkland & Ellis, filed a petition for a writ of mandate and a complaint in Victorville Superior Court seeking a court order that the district verify the signatures and allow the Parent Trigger process to advance on behalf of five of the members of the parents union – Doreen Diaz, Kathy Duncan, Teresa Rogers, Olivia Zamarripa and Bartola Del Villar. Holscher maintained that the district did not make an impartial tally of the signatures and “engaged in a systematic effort to invalidate the petitions.”
Judge Steve Malone, to whom the case was assigned, restored 97 of the signatures tossed out by the district. Malone ruled the district did not have the authority or a basis in law to discount signatures that proponents gathered and he ordered the Adelanto Elementary School District to accept the petition as filed by the parent union.
The parent union modified its demand to having the school converted to a charter academy offering an intensified curriculum. Delays prevented the school district from converting Desert Trails Elementary into a charter school at the initiation of the 2012-13 academic year.
The Adelanto Elementary School District thus became the first district in the state in which the “parent trigger” law had been successfully applied.  In the same time frame, the district’s superintendent, Darin Brawley, resigned.
At about the same time as Dr. Lily Matos DeBlieux was hired as superintendent in January 2013, the school board voted to accept LaVerne Preparatory Academy as the operator of Desert Trails Elementary School.
Under DeBlieux, who took the helm as superintendent in March 2013, the district achieved having Desert Trails converted to a charter school, although that transition resulted in hard feelings and controversy, as well.
A central component in LaVerne Preparatory Academy’s approach consists in engaging parents in their children’s educational process.  That parent involvement had been consistently lacking at the school. Many of the parents and educators opposed to the takeover pointed out that a significant number of the students at Desert Trails Elementary have parents whose first language is not English and nearly all of the instructional materials used by LaVerne Preparatory are in English. Whereas 466 parents at the school signed the petition to move forward with the parent trigger process in late 2011 and January 2012, when the parents union held its election in October 2012 to determine which of the charter schools that had submitted proposals should be chosen to educate their children, only 53 parents participated in that vote.
With the first school year with LaVerne Perparatory Academy in place at Desert Trails, now known as Desert Trails Preparatory Academy, concluded, inquiries have been made to determine whether the parent trigger effort at the school had a positive impact.
Some parents of students at the school were leery about having their children taken out of a traditional learning environment, and roughly 22 percent of them enrolled their sons or daughters in a different school in the district. Seventy-eight percent of the students who had been at the school remained, however, and it was the academic performance of those that educators, interested parents and others contemplating the future of the parent trigger option want to examine.
Unfortunately, a strict apple-to-apples comparison of student performance of those students is not possible.
The California Department of Education, which designates which tests are to be administered at schools and within districts up and down the state, this year abandoned its traditional California Standards Test in favor of the  new Common Core state standards testing regimen, the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessment developed by the Northwest Evaluation Association. In this way, results from the California Standards Test which were formerly used to derive Academic Performance Index scores at each of the state’s schools and which would have provided a common baseline to measure possible improvement at Desert Trails Elementary School, were not available this year.
While advocates of the parent trigger phenomenon are naturally hopeful that the movement will succeed, there are interest groups opposed to its success. Some education reformers, in particular Parent Revolution, as well as Parent Revolution’s financial backers such as the Gates Foundation and its service providers such as  Kirkland & Ellis, are anxious to see students brought under the wing of parent trigger actions have their test scores improve.
Others, however, such as some parents devoted to traditional education methodologies as well as the California Teachers Association, would prefer to see statistics showing such students did not achieve any greater academic success following the changes initiated by parent trigger actions. Early on, a counter-parent trigger group formed in Adelanto, initially consisting of parents from Desert Trails Elementary who questioned whether the parents of poor-performing students in the district had the education, understanding, intelligence level, expertise or sophistication to take on the function, individually or collectively, of school administrators. In time, though, that group would find its independence questioned, when it was demonstrated that it was being assisted by the California Teachers Association.
Nevertheless, the belief persisted among a contingent of Desert Trails Elementary School parents that the parent trigger drama in the Adelanto School District was an unseemly spectacle, with agitators in the parent trigger movement seeking to exploit large numbers of parents at Desert Trail Elementary School whose own educational shortcomings, including a lack of facility in the English language, contributed to the poor academic performance of their own children. They resented the intrusion of outsiders into their neighborhood school, and asserted that those agitators had a wider and largely political agenda that was not consistent with their children’s best interest.
Ultimately, that counter-movement foundered, when two of the leading advocates opposing the parent trigger implementation, then-Adelanto Planning Commission Chairwoman Lori Yuan and another parent, Chrissy Guzman, last year were faced with the resolution of the matter in favor of the Adelanto Desert Trails Parent Union and apparently overreacted
Yuan and Guzman, who were both parent volunteers at Desert Trails and were thus given relatively unfettered access to the school’s classrooms, on June 25, 2013, allegedly in a fit of disappointment and protest did $7,700 worth of damage to a Desert Trails classroom while they were disposing of old art supplies in the PTA meeting room at the school. Both were charged with felony vandalism and Yuan was removed from the planning commission.
This week, Yuan and Guzman appeared in court with Yuan’s attorney, Graham Donath. After a closed conference involving deputy district attorney Joel Buckingham and Donath in Judge Miriam Morton’s chambers, Guzman and  were ordered to return for a preliminary hearing on June 23 wwith regard to  PC 594(B)(1) charges, vandalism of $400 or more.
Frustration over the underperformance of instructors and students at the district and the interference of outside entities in the process accompanied by a less than coordinated response from state education officials has not been limited to solely to Yuan and Guzman.
Indications that not all is well in the Adelanto Elementary District as well as at Desert Trails Elementary was given when DeBlieux abruptly announced in March that she will be leaving as superintendent at the end of the school year this month to become the superintendent of the Pendergast Elementary School District in Phoenix.

(June 4) The county of San Bernardino this week moved to hire the Superior Court staff member who oversees the administration of the county courts’ conflict indigent defense representation, just as the position he held was eliminated by the court system itself.
In San Bernardino County, indigent defense is handled by the public defender’s office. In some criminal cases, however, a conflict between defendants charged in the same case crops up in which the defense of one or both asserts the other defendant is responsible for the act or acts alleged in the criminal complaint. The defense of one or the other of these defendants is then assigned to a criminal defense conflict attorney.
San Bernardino County currently contracts with a single law firm, Earl Carter & Associates, to handle indigent defense adult criminal cases in which the public defender’s office declares a conflict. The Carter firm’s contract is budgeted in the county’s indigent defense budget unit. Beginning in 2004, the administration of the criminal defense conflict contracts were handled by the courts. Recently, the courts informed county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux that they are going to end their administration of the criminal defense conflict contract and return that responsibility to the county.  The courts had for the last several years employed Craig Congdon as the contract administrator.
According to Gary McBride, the county’s chief financial officer, the county offered to pick up Congdon’s contract for the indigent defense conflict contract administration.
“Given the extended period of time that the courts have administered these contracts for indigent defense, finance and administration has no staff with the needed experience to take on this task,” McBride said. “Further, hiring the current contract administrator will allow for a smooth transition of the oversight from the courts to the county and will maintain the good working relationships with the affected judges.”
Congdon’s contract calls for a compensation package of $111,811 per year, consisting of a salary of $75,210 and benefits of $36,601.

By Fritz Koenig
(June 4) As the political birthplace of a string of successful politicians such as Paul Cook, Karalee Hargrove, and Chad Mayes, is the region around Yucca Valley a trend setter that can not be ignored?
Perhaps the latest Yucca Valley push to liberalize government controls and empower government bureaucrats may provide a roadmap for radical changes of residential living across the entire county of San Bernardino.  Or, hopefully not.
Citizens and homeowners may have an interest in an issue that is soon to be decided by elected officials of the Town of Yucca Valley. While many actions taken by town officials have only minimal impact on citizens as a whole, this one, relating to the activities to be permitted next door to homes and residences, could directly impact the quality of life people can enjoy.
In many ways the Yucca Valley lifestyle is quieter, more peaceful, less dangerous, and slower paced than that of busy urbanized areas of Los Angeles or Orange counties.  At issue is whether the town should continue to protect people at home from the noise, commotion, dangers, and visual display of daily business activities originating right next door to them.
Gun dealers and industrial users (indeed heavy industrial users with forklifts, cranes, and diesel trucking, that are not legally permitted under Yucca Valley’s codes) are currently using a few selected homes for such business operations and proposals exist to expand those operations.
On occasion, the town’s code enforcement division has been prompted to confront circumstances where illegal business activity is ongoing in residentially zoned areas of Yucca Valley. In recent months there has been some back-and-forth between residents seeking to prevent the intrusion of business activity into their neighborhoods and those individuals who believe the community’s standards should indulge a few who want to perform gun sales, heavy product manufacturing, diesel trucking, and metal welding and fabrication on their residential compounds and also use public property to support such operations.
In response, town officials, led by Acting Town Manager Shane Stueckle, are seeking to liberalize the town’s code to permit such industrial and commercial activity in all the town’s home neighborhoods similar to communities who pride themselves on being “Industrial City” California. (City of Bell, CA; Industry, CA, South San Francisco, CA)  Along with the revision is proposed a massive increase in the discretion of the bureaucrats and commissioners of the Town to allow activities that do not meet the standards adopted by the Town.
The Town’s planning commission and town council is holding hearings which are now well attended with citizens promoting their viewpoint about the desired character and identity of Yucca Valley.  The next hearing is on June 10, 2014 6 PM at Town Hall.  Your viewpoint may not matter unless you contribute your thoughts and feelings by mail or in person. The feedback the planning commission receives may have a bearing on the non-binding recommendation it will make to the city council.

How do you feel about this issue? Do you want to continue to conduct industrial type of activities at your home, including welding and finished product construction? Do you own, drive or operate heavy pieces of equipment exceeding the town’s current 10,000 pound weight limit which you want to be allowed legally to drive, park and operate on public pavement and in your residential neighborhood? Do you want the town to liberalize its codes so industrial activity can take place in residential areas? Or would you rather that the city maintain the zoning standards and protections it now has? Do you have safety concerns about industrial uses in areas where vulnerable elderly and children reside? Do you want more stringent enforcement of the town’s zoning codes to prevent the proliferation of annoying commercial or industrial activity in residential areas?
Whatever your view, it can count if you contact Yucca Valley Town Council members at the following phone numbers and email addresses:

Regarding Home Occupation Code Update and HOP 11-05 Permit:

Robert Lombardo, (760) 228-1733, rlombardo@yucca-valley.org;

George Huntington, (760) 365-4253, ghuntington@yucca-valley.org;
Merle Able, (760)-792-2090, mabel@yucca-valley.org,

Bob Leone, 760-369-7207 x6, rleone@yucca-valley.org,

Dawn Rowe, (760-369-7207 x6, drowe@yucca-valley.org

Town Hall

57090 Twentynine Palms Highway
, Yucca Valley, CA 92284

760-369-7207 extension 226

(June 5) Failed district attorney candidate Grover Merritt on June 4 sounded calm and resigned when queried about his losing effort the previous day.
Merritt postponed vying for the county’s top prosecutor’s job for two election cycles. He was contemplating running for district attorney in 2006 but when the incumbent, Mike Ramos, caught wind of that in 2004, he fired Merritt, who was at that point the head of the office’s appellate unit, alleging he had been leaking confidential office documents to the press. Merritt fought back, filing a lawsuit and seeking the return of his job through the civil service commission.
At his civil service hearing in 2005, it was determined that the documents in question had actually been leaked by assistant district attorney Mike Risley, then Ramos’s closest political associate, and Ramos was forced to rehire Merritt with back pay. Merritt’s lawsuit was settled without going to trial for $297,000.
Ramos subsequently removed Merritt from his position overseeing the appellate union, assigning him to garden variety financial fraud cases.
Merritt, who in recent years has been increasingly critical of Ramos’s management of the prosecutor’s office, declared his candidacy for district attorney last September and promised a campaign that would highlight what he said were his boss’s various and sundry shortcomings. And while Merritt lived up to that promise on the campaign stump, voicing disapproval of the way the office was being run in public appearances promoting his candidacy, he failed to make penetration with the county’s electorate through other means. He did not, for example, carry out a direct mail campaign with high propensity voters, and his sign campaign, which in an innovative twist featured his first rather than his last name, was lackluster at best and did not cover the county’s 20,000 square mile expanse effectively.
When reached by the Sentinel on Wednesday, Merritt was asked if he had spoken with Ramos to congratulate him and offer him an olive branch. “I haven’t talked to him,” Merritt said.
Asked for his post mortem on the election, Merritt said, “The whole campaign was based on a certain assumption, which was that people who disliked Ramos were going to provide independent expenditures to bring out his considerable baggage, and that didn’t happen. No real negative case was made and I got whomped.”
Asked if he would run if he had it to do over again, or if he know saw his candidacy as an exercise in absurdity, Merritt said, “It was an interesting experiment. I met a lot of very nice people. I had a good time, of sorts. I discovered you can’t do a pincer movement if you only have one claw.”
As to his future plans, Merritt said, “I’m not going to do or say anything. I assume I will do identity theft [cases] here in Rancho [Cucamonga] until I die or Mike Ramos leaves office, which theoretically won’t be for another four years.”
Asked if he was concerned about what might be visited upon some of his office colleagues who had supported him in his campaign against their boss, Merritt said, “Retaliation would be an invitation for a civil suit on First Amendment grounds. I don’t see him [Ramos] doing that.”
As to what had been accomplished by his running, Merritt said, “I would like to think we all learned something from this experience and we will be improved by it. I would hope we’ll work from here and move forward.”

(June 3) Third District County Supervisor James Ramos has removed David Peach from his position on the Morongo Basin Municipal Advisory Council.
Municipal Advisory Councils are impaneled in the county’s unincorporated areas. As a collective of local residents, the councils, known as MACs, offer non-binding recommendations to the member of the board of supervisors overseeing that particular jurisdiction.
MAC members are appointed by the supervisor and serve at his discretion.
Peach is an outspoken member of the community who on and in various forums, including blogs, commentaries and letters to press outlets, has proven critical of some of the Morongo Basin’s elected and appointed political leadership, as well as city staff members in Twentynine Palms and Yucca Valley.
Peach was appointed to the Morongo Basin MAC last October.
Most recently, Peach offered up criticism of the Hi-Desert Water District’s board of directors. The Hi-Desert Water District is serving in the capacity of the lead agency pursuing the construction of a water treatment system in Yucca Valley. The town of Yucca Valley is under a mandate from the state to undertake that project.
Peach suggested that the Water District board is arranging financing and construction of that project in a way that is showing favoritism to friends and political associates of those board members.
This triggered a backlash from the board members and other local officials and movers and shakers, resulting in Ramos’s decision to remove Peach from the MAC.
Margo Sturges, an activist in the Morongo Basin, lodged a protest over Peach’s removal
“While most of us in the Morongo Basin may not always agree with Mr. Peach, we fully support and defend his rights to express his opinions,” Sturges said. “The fact Mr. Peach is a member of the San Bernardino County Municipal Advisory Council should not disqualify him from voicing his valid concerns and giving up his First Amendment rights.”
Sturges asserted that Peach had provided the community with “honorable service” and had himself been subjected to “a culture of bully tactics taking place in the Morongo Basin, specifically in Yucca Valley…  the tactics of a small group of self-appointed citizen vigilantes conspiring to remove or silence anyone who speaks up or speaks out.”
Sturges suggested that Peach had been maligned by former Yucca Valley Town Manager Mark Nuaimi, former town councilman Isaac Hagerman  Timothy Humphreville, the chairman of the Yucca Valley Planning Commission for having opposed Measure U, a tax proposal the city sought in 2012 and which was defeated by town voters.
Sturges insisted charges that Peach was opposed to the concept of Yucca Valley complying with the state’s mandate that it complete the construction of a water-treatment system in stages beginning in May 2016 were false.
“Mr. Peach has always been in support of protecting the groundwater of the Warren Basin and only questions the process to assign the sewer costs equally among his fellow citizens,” she said.

By Ruth Musser-Lopez
June 5, 2014.  I had a chance this week to speak personally with an expert on prehistoric lithic (stone) tool technology,  master flintknapper and authority on “arrowhead” production, Dr. J. Jeffrey Flenniken, about what he thought of one of the most famous landmarks in San Bernardino County–the “Arrowhead.”  I had an ulterior motive as I am trying to convince the editor of the Sentinel to adopt the shape for the paper’s logo (more about that at the end of this story).
The local landmark is a natural arrowhead shaped landform on the slope of the hillside above the city of San Bernardino north of Wildwood Park on 40th Street and Waterman Avenue.  The Arrowhead can be seen for miles around being described as 1,375 feet in length and 449 feet in width.
The outline of the arrowhead is so close to the exact shape of projectile points actually used by prehistoric Native Americans that it appears to be a man-made unnatural landscape, but it is not.  The “face” of the shape is light in color due to the growth of low white sage on light colored decomposing quartz offset by the dark contrasting outline created by the surrounding darker colored creosote chaparral.  The shape of the Arrowhead is similar to what some experts consider to be the first projectile point shape used as an arrowhead in the Mojave Desert–the “Rose Springs” point, after the bow and arrow was introduced 1500 years ago.
Not to Flenniken however—that shape he said was also used for atlatl dart points that predated the arrowhead.  In some parts of America the dart was used concurrently along with the bow and arrow up into the time of Euro-American contact.
For this reason archaeologists prefer the term “projectile point” rather than “arrowhead” since it cannot be assumed that a point was used as an atlatl dart or arrowhead.  Flenniken explained that points were used over and over again and simply reworked if a tip or the “ears” or “tang” at the shoulder or base broke off.  He likened projectile point reshaping to a No. 2 pencil.  A prehistoric hunter would simply rework a point into a new shape.  “Notches at the shoulder of the point had a dual purpose—for both hafting it to the shaft of an arrow but also to create a weak location where the point would break first.  The tangs on the base of a dart or arrowhead make the point hard to pull out so it continues to cause damage when the game runs.  What would be left of the point if it breaks at the notch is a triangular shape that could be refashioned above the break with new notches for a dart or arrow or worked into a lanceolate point for attachment to a thrusting spear.
“Have you ever seen what is referred to as a ‘Gary Point’?  Flenniken asked.  “These are a type of projectile point used for knives and thrusting spears in the southeastern part of North America, long before the bow and arrow came into vogue in the Americas, they are found back east—they look similar in shape as the San Bernardino ‘Arrowhead.’  When the bow and arrow was introduced, the same lithic reduction technology that was used to produce knives, spears and dart points was used to produce arrowheads.  There are differences in size and exactly where the notches are located, but generally the same ‘biface’ technology was being used to produce the oldest spear points and the newest arrowheads—and this technology was passed down from generation to generation.”
Gary points are reported to be associated with artifacts dated 1000 to 4000 years ago.
According to Flenniken, there are numerous technologies, but the “biface technology” is one that was pervasive throughout the Holocene or post Ice Age in North America.  “Actually the biface technology in general is very old world wide, well over a million years old,” Flenniken said. “It entered the Americas through Alaska from Siberia at the end of the Wurm glaciation.   A variety of shapes were being produced for different purposes at the same time using the same technology.  You cannot depend upon the shape of a projectile point to tell you how old a site is.  You might get a thrusting spear which could be a leaf shaped lanceolate, along with a notched dart point and smaller arrowhead all in the same archeological site being used at the same time.
“The Aztecs used atlatls to defend themselves at the onslaught of the Conquistadors,” Flenniken continued. “Desoto was killed in Arkansas by the Tula Indians in 1541, killed by darts from an atlatl.  His scribe discusses it in detail.  The darts could probably penetrate armor.”
Flenniken, began “chipping stones” when he was six following the instructions in an old Boy Scout manual.  He was recommended by his school teachers, then taken under the wing of local archaeologists working on archaeological “salvage” projects in Arkansas during the 1960s.   He went on to college and received his PhD in archaeology at Washington State University, specializing in what was once a worldwide industry, the now dying art of stone projectile point production.  So obscure was the field at the time he graduated that he knew more about the subject than his professors. They were learning from him, participating in Flenniken’s field school.  He taught lithic technology to archaeology students at Washington State University from 1975 to 1986 and then was sent to Australia on a Fulbright scholarship to study aboriginal stone tool production and use where he spent two months in the field and taught at Sydney University.  He then taught lithic technology throughout Brazil on a second Fulbright scholarship and later took over master flintknapper Don Crabtree’s technological field school.
The “biface” or double face technology is different than other technologies such as the prismatic core reduction technology used to produce the long obsidian blades found throughout Mesoamerica (prehistoric Mexico). There are thousands of flake stone reductions technologies that were used in North America, such as bipolar flaking and heat treatment.  Flenniken looks at the waste flakes at an archaeological site and can decipher what type of technology was being used.
One type of waste flake that Flenniken looks for is that of the “channel” flake from the flute of a Clovis point.  Clovis is a unique technology used only during a particular period of time, so it is a time sensitive cultural marker.   The Clovis points with a flute or channel down the middle of the face about 1/3 of the way up from the base, is an example of a technology that only existed in north America during a certain period of time and are associated with deposits 10,000 to 13,000 years old.
“I looked in Russia and Siberia and others have also looked for evidence of the fluted point in Europe and Asia but fluted points simply have not been found there.  The Clovis point is an American invention and one must be skilled to replicate it” Flenniken said.
Clovis points are made out of quartzite, jasper, cherts, chalcedony and glassy obsidian, are long lanceolate in outline and without notches.  They are designed for use on a thrusting spear–a deadly weapon, according to Flenniken.  He said that Paul S. Martin showed that Paleoindian hunters likely played a role in the extinction of large ice age mammals and by association they probably used the Clovis point.
A particular form of projectile point called the Lake Mojave point is named after a place in San Bernardino County.  Pleistocene Lake Mojave for which it is named, includes the area surrounding Soda Lake, Baker and Zzyzx where the Bechtel Corporation currently proposes to install a massive solar plant threatening hundreds of acres of pristine habitat.
Lake Mojave points, first identified and described in 1967 by Dr. Claude Warren of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, In outline, the Lake Mojave points looks very similar to the Gary Point and the San Bernardino “Arrowhead” except that the stem at the bottom is much longer. Warren considered the Lake Mojave form are as old as the ancient 9,000 year old lake shoreline where they were found.  Flenniken stresses that just because you find a point at one site and it is dated at a certain age, you cannot automatically assign that age to a point found elsewhere.  “It is not morphology, it’s the total technological reduction assemblage that one must look at from a particular site,” he said.
Another very old point shape found in San Bernardino County is the Pinto Point. Archaeological materials reported to be associated with that form indicates that it was predominate around 7,000 years ago and persisted until about 4,000 years ago.   These forms were named after the place that Archaeologists Elizabeth W. Crozer Campbell and William H. Campbell first found them in the Pinto Basin of Joshua Tree National Park, just south of our county line.    A concave base rather than a protruding, long stem base, as seen on the Lake Mojave points, characterizes the Pinto point.  Flenniken explains that this difference is more of an indication of how the points were being hafted (tied on to the shaft) rather than any indication of age or typological distinction.
Flenniken says that percussion flaking was used for the initial production and pressure flaking for the final product. Individual flakes could be taken off of a biface core to turn into points using pressure flaking for the finish work.  The biface core could eventually become a projectile point as well.  Biface cores were carried about and a flake was taken off as needed to produce a projectile point or any other cutting edge, knives, scrapers, etc.
Another form called the Elko point is also found in the Mojave Desert.  They have an outline shape that looks very similar to a classic arrowhead but are actually dart points, so serve as a good example of why archaeologists use the all-encompassing term “projectile point” instead of “arrowhead.” Elko points are associated with archaeological deposits dating between 4,000 and 1,500 years old, so they are thought to predate the bow and arrow.
Flenniken understands the various technologies because he practices flintknapping himself.  He uses the same biface technology to make both classic and eccentric forms which you can view on his website, AnachronisticArts.com.
Prior to the arrival of euro-American settlers when it became symbolic of San Bernardino Valley, the Arrowhead landmark was and continues to be recognized by the Native Americans in their local folklore and legend.  The arrowhead is said to have been given by the Great Spirit to point the way to the hot spring below with its healing qualities. It is thus considered to be holy ground.  The intriguingly, romantic version of the legend of the Arrowhead was published in the June 17, 1876 issue of the San Bernardino Weekly Times and can be found at the City of San Bernardino’s website at http://www.ci.san-bernardino.ca.us/about/history/the_arrowhead.asp.
Though many forest fires have blazed the area, the Arrowhead landmark has survived.
—————–
Upon occasion I have attempted to persuade the editor of the Sentinel to upgrade his newspaper’s logo to the use of the “Arrowhead” arguing that its imagery is associated with historic defensive weaponry used by sentinels down through the ages in San Bernardino County and that the current logo, the “Minuteman,” has become ideologically debased.
He typically resists saying that the county of San Bernardino already has laid claim to the Arrowhead icon and that there may be copyright violation threats.
I have now assisted him in jumping over this hurdle by producing an artistic rendering of the San Bernardino Arrowhead of my own.  I did this by capturing a photo image of the Arrowhead, cutting it down the middle and taking the southeast side and doubling it back over to make for a perfectly uniform outline on both sides of the image.  I then rotated the Arrowhead 180 degrees so that point is up and the base is on the bottom, which is the protocol for displaying projectile points in professional archaeological journals.  Here it is:

Now Mark simply needs to think of a logo quip, like “UP in the SBC.”

By clicking on the portal below you can access a PDF of the May 30 San Bernardino County Sentinel

Sentinel 05-30-14

(May 29) A divided Upland City Council this week extended the terms of the trash hauling franchise the city has with Burrtec Waste Industries to ensure that company will have an exclusive contract to handle refuse in the City of Gracious Living at least until 2026.
Burrtec has had the trash hauling franchise since 2001, following the city’s last competitive bidding process  for trash hauling services the previous year. While the original franchise contract ran for a period of three years, at the direction of previous mayor John Pomierski then-city manager Robb Quincy retrofitted it with a seven-year “evergreen” clause, which extends the contract every year by one year if notice is not given by June 30. Upon notice, the franchise is to remain in place for seven further years. Before this week’s meeting, which was held on Tuesday because of the Memorial Day holiday, the franchise was guaranteed to last until July 30, 2021. The action of the council this week conferred the franchise on Burrtec until July 1, 2026.
In return for the contract extension, Burrtec will provide street sweeping services and medical waste pick-up. The language of the contract amendment approved Tuesday night states, “The term shall be for twelve years commencing on the execution of the third amendment. On July 1, 2019, and annually thereafter, the initial term will be automatically extended for one year so the remaining term of the agreement shall always be seven years, unless either party notifies the other in writing (the “wind down notice”) before June 30 in any year that it does not wish the term to automatically extend, in which case the agreement shall terminate at the end of the term, or seven years from the date of the last extension pursuant hereto, whichever is later (the wind down period).”
The contract amendment further states that once notice is given and the wind down period is initiated, Burrtec will no longer be obligated to provide the enhanced service, i.e., street sweeping service and  medical waste disposal.
The contract amendment was worth over  $60 million to Burrtec. The city, which handles the billing for trash service, currently bills the city’s residential and business trash customers roughly $10.13 million, $5.25 million of which is paid to Burrtec, $2.22 million of which is paid in tipping fees at landfills and $2.66 million of which the city categorizes as “city program expenses.”
Members of the public  expressed doubt about the wisdom of approving the franchise contract amendment. Jack Pieri, a 40-year Upland resident who has worked in the refuse industry, on Tuesday night before the vote told the council that extending the evergreen clause to 12 years will essentially bind the city to Burrtec indefinitely. “The extension of the evergreen clause will make it difficult to interest another company to seriously consider bidding on a new contract,” Pieri said.
Councilman Glenn Bozar, who opposed the franchise contract amendment, said, “The previous city manager got us into this perpetual contract, which in the private sector world you do not do. Things like this should be put out to bid regularly. The last time this went out to bid was 14 years ago. I think this should go out to bid and we should give notice now. This is a violation of our fiduciary and financial responsibility. I cannot support this. I have no problem with Burrtec or the quality of service it provides but this needs to go out to bid for the residents to really know what is out in the market right now.”
Councilman Brendan Brandt abstained and  the contract amendment passed on a 3-1 vote with Mayor Ray Musser and council members Gino Filippi and Debby Stone in support.

(May 27) YUCCA VALLEY—The clock is ticking toward a deadline, less than two years away, by which this desert town of 20,700 must complete the first phase of a large scale wastewater treatment system.
The imposition of that deadline three years ago was intended to avert a growing water quality crisis that will, if it is not redressed, severely impact all of the area’s residents.
If the town, its residents and the local water board do not collectively act to fund and begin building the sewer system that will eliminate Yucca Valley’s reliance upon septic systems that are now overwhelming the area’s water table, the state is threatening action that could reduce Yucca Valley to a ghost town by 2022.
Yucca Valley, which became the last of San Bernardino County’s 24 municipalities to incorporate in 1991, is likewise the last remaining city to function without a sewer system.
Long a remote and rustic desert area that attracted those wishing to remain well off the beaten track, Yucca Valley made its first lurch toward urbanization in the 1950s when Norman J. Essig promoted it as both a getaway to and private residency for entertainment celebrities. He ventured capital toward that end, acquiring hundreds of acres, which he improved with roads around the region’s major arterial, Highway 62, also known as Twentynine Palms Highway.
While attracting movie stars as well as recording and visual artists was only marginally successful, the improvements did succeed in luring others by virtue of the relatively inexpensive land prices, and Yucca Valley grew sporadically over the years, appealing to the independent minded and lovers of the remote desert beauty. As early as 1973, when the area’s population was hovering below 5,000, there was a push to outfit the core of Yucca Valley with a rudimentary sewer system, one that would extend only to the town’s modest commercial area and the relatively sparse residential neighborhoods that surrounded it. But a water treatment facility and skeleton sewer system to which future developments could connect carried a price tag of roughly $10 million, well beyond the tiny community’s fiscal means at that time.
After the town’s November 1991 incorporation, civic officials continued to reflect and embody the values of their constituents, who eschewed big government and excessive regulation and put a premium on maintaining the town’s rural character. There was little collective will to pave any roads other than the town’s main thoroughfares and many town streets remain dusty trails to this day. A modern, urban sewer system has been an imperative to few locals. At the same time, the town council has been accommodating of most developers who expressed an interest in Yucca Valley, and over the first 20 years of the town’s history as an incorporated entity, gave builders what has essentially been carte blanche to build aggressively without incorporating urban land use standards.
Thus, the septic systems that had proliferated in Yucca Valley for three-quarters of a century remained the accoutrement of homes and businesses built within the 40 square mile city limits.
Ten years after incorporation Yucca Valley’s officials were notified by the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board that the lack of a sewage treatment system had resulted in nitrates accumulating in the water table. Simultaneously, the Hi-Desert Water District, which serves the Yucca Valley community, experienced nitrate traces in district wells.
Local officialdom did not respond with alacrity. Rather, some feigned outrage that the state felt it necessary to involve itself in what many perceived as a local issue. As a good number of those who had moved to Yucca Valley were senior citizens and retirees living on fixed incomes who had been attracted to the area by cheap land, they were alarmed by the concept of having to defray the cost for the installation of a sewer system. They were heartened and to a certain extent lulled into a state of complacency by their political leadership, which asserted the town would not fall victim to overreaching regulation imposed on it by Sacramento. Thus, the water table contamination issue was kicked down the road.
In the early 2000s, monitoring carried out by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board and the United States Geological Survey demonstrated that residues left in the ground that seep into the aquifer had increased to levels that presaged health threats if the matter was not addressed. Those contaminants included nitrates and other pollutants including pharmaceuticals and salts.
Historic pumping increases from the 1940s to 1995 resulted in the water levels dropping faster than the nitrates from septic systems seeped downward. Thus, for years Yucca Valley was able to avoid the consequences of the contamination accumulating in the local soil. Eventually, however, as the water table dropped lower and lower as a result of greater utilization combined with limited recharge from rainfall, the water district began importation of state aqueduct water into Yucca Valley. Completion of the Morongo Basin Pipeline project and the accompanying completion and activation of recharge basins in Yucca Valley allowed the Hi-Desert Water District to begin percolating water into the aquifer and the water table began to rise. That water came in contact with the high levels of nitrates left over from decades of septic discharge and the nitrates found their way into some of the Hi-Desert Water District’s wells. Notice of the contamination triggered a scaling back of the Hi-Desert Water District’s recharge efforts, and the goal of reestablishing the Yucca Valley water table to the natural level present in the 1940s has not been achieved.
The imported water has actually diluted the nitrates so water tests now show nitrate levels below the maximum contaminant level allowed by the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In the meantime, the discharge of septic waste continues and the United States Geological Survey determined that nitrates accumulating beneath Yucca Valley are present in ever increasing concentrations and at depths that pose a threat to the groundwater, including a calculation that 880 acre-feet of septic discharge currently reaches the groundwater every year.
In 2007, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state agency responsible for protecting water quality, adopted a resolution identifying the town of Yucca Valley as one of 66 communities throughout the state with groundwater threatened by the continuing overuse of septic systems. The board further declared Yucca Valley as a top priority for eliminating the use of septic systems, meaning Yucca Valley’s is one of the five most seriously threatened significantly-sized water supplies in the state.
Nevertheless, local officials resisted taking immediate action, as they lacked the financial wherewithal to undertake the construction of a sewer system. Nor did the city have the will to impose any kind of building or development moratorium that would stabilize the problem.
For a while, town and the water district officials were able to delay the imposition of state mandates by forging a memorandum of agreement with the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Hi-Desert Water District to allow interim permits for new septic systems while planning for a wastewater system proceeded. But they could not suspend the consequences indefinitely.
By 2010, Yucca Valley’s population had zoomed to 20,700, an increase of 3,835 or 22.7 percent over the 16,865 town residents counted in the 2000 Census.
In 2011, the town was firmly informed that it had only five years to take a definitive step toward water quality compliance.
The Regional Water Quality Control Board has imposed three progressive phases of septic discharge prohibitions on Yucca Valley. Under the state mandate, phase 1 of a wastewater system must be completed or significantly on its way to completion by May 19, 2016 or enforcement action will be initiated. The first phase of the project is to cover the downtown area of Yucca Valley, the area most proximate to the heart of the groundwater basin.  Similarly, phase 2 must be completed or nearly completed by May 19, 2019 and phase 3 must be completed by May 19, 2022. The last two phases lie further out where future concentrated development is most likely to occur.
Eleven months ago, the State Water Resources Control Board’s sub-executive director, Jose Angel, told those gathered at the community center the state will be methodical and thorough in enforcing the prohibition, holding the town to account to complete each phase of the project by the succeeding deadlines and taking steps to ensure that each residential and commercial property within each phase’s geographical boundaries ties into the sewer system once it is in place.
In the last eleven months. the High Desert Water District, which is to be the lead agency on the project, has not completed anywhere near one third of the work needed to meet the first deadline on May 19, 2016. The tangible progress it can point to consists, basically, in having undertaken an effort to inform local residents of the problem and having completed cost comparisons on paper. The primary cost projection identifies the difference between having a contractor undertake building the system and having the water district manage the project – between $133,248,401 and $140,651,089 for the design and construction work to be performed by Atkins North America and somewhere between  $111.539.901 and $117,736,562 for the district to construct the project using Atkins North America’s proposed design. The system would consist of a water treatment plant and a collection system entailing over 400,000 linear feet of pipe.
The district has made some tentative projections with regard to obtaining grant funding, but has made no substantive progress toward actually receiving such grants, other than obtaining a $20 million authorization from the Bureau of Reclamation. It has also applied for a low to no-interest loan through a state revolving fund. Ultimately, there will yet need to be significant financial participation by the town’s residents. A dated calculation, using the assumption that the overall cost of the project will amount to no more than $125 million, is that each parcel in Yucca Valley will be counted upon to provide $16,700 toward the system construction debt burden.  If the cost of the project can be defrayed over 30 years, water district officials calculate the project can be financed through homeowner assessments of $20 to $40 per month to cover just the construction costs of the system.
Costs could rise due to unforeseen circumstances or complications with regard to easements, particularly on the north end of town, where the proposed trunk line will be laid alongside a steel natural gas line accompanied by electrical pumps. The cost of upgrading the trunk line to one consisting of steel seamless pipe could raise the cost.
Of tremendous moment is the community’s ability to pay for the system, which includes town residents’ willingness to embrace a debt servicing mechanism to cover the financing arrangement on its construction costs. One such effort was Measure U, sponsored by the town in 2012  and which appeared on the November ballot. If passed, Measure U would have imposed a one-cent sales tax within Yucca Valley. Town officials said the lion’s share of those proceeds would go toward building the sewer system. Measure U was defeated, however.
If the multiple issues with regard to the sewer system are not resolved, and resolved soon, Yucca Valley will have no conceivable prospect of meeting the May 18, 2016 deadline.
And the state has utilized draconian measures in the past against other communities that failed to come into compliance, such as in Los Osos, which was under a similar order from the California Water Resources Board and failed to heed it. The entire community of Los Osos became subject to an enforcement action, which was done in a lottery fashion, in which random property owners were selected to receive cease and desist orders with the potential of daily fines for non-compliance. They were ordered to discontinue the discharge from their septic systems, seal them off and pump them at regular intervals. If they did not, they were subjected to fines of up to $5,000 per day.

(May 29) In the 33rd Assembly District, which covers a wide swath of San Bernardino County’s desert and mountain regions, nine Republicans are vying against a single Democrat to succeed Assembly two-termer Tim Donnelly. Donnelly, who would have been eligible to run once more for the Assembly under California’s term limit law, opted to instead run for governor this year.
While the district’s voter registration numbers heavily favor the GOP, given the sheer number of Republicans in the race, it appears likely that the Democrat, John Coffey, will pull in enough votes in the primary to gain a berth in the November election against the top Republican vote-getter. Under California’s open primary arrangement, the two candidates receiving the most votes in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, qualify for a head-to-head contest in November.
One of the earliest of the candidates to declare in the race was Scott Markovich, a self-described fiscal conservative and social progressive who offers what he says is a formula that will restore the Republican Party’s competitive edge.
A lifelong resident of the San Bernardino Mountains, Markovich has a general contractor’s license and owns and operates two companies, Empire Home Builders, a sole proprietorship, and Red Rooster Development, a corporation that specializes in building spec homes. He is a member of the Rim of the World School Board.
Markovich said a primary impetus in his candidacy is his desire to limit the influence of special interests.
“Because of my contracting background,” he said, “I understand what it is like to be taken advantage of by local or state or federal mandates. Government has infringed upon our ability to live freely as we choose, and government too often interferes with our ability to enjoy our lives. The United States came about to establish and protect our sovereign rights as citizens and individuals. Somehow our political leaders and rulers have lost focus on that. Most of the elected leadership in Sacramento are serving special interests and corporations rather than working at enhancing our freedoms and building the infrastructure of a society in which we can have businesses that succeed so we can have nice homes and the freedom to travel and do things that better our lives and the lives of our families and everyone around us. We have lost focus on the real reasons we elect officials to represent us.”
Government, which should facilitate providing resources to its people, Markovich said, is perversely serving to obstruct citizens from obtaining the resources they need.
“As a contractor, I have always known how to go to get a permit, pass the inspections, do a project on a budget, complete the project, achieve the goal. I know what mandates are and how they hurt us,” he said.
Markovich said he is not blindly opposed to regulation. He said he understands the necessity for order and the imposition of standards.
“There are things we do need to regulate,” he said. “I believe there has to be balance so we don’t overregulate. There has to be more pragmatic thinking about laws.”
He cited AB32, which is aimed at regulating exhaust emissions on commercial equipment, as an example of counterproductive regulation.
“My perspective is based upon my interaction with the truck drivers I deal with who deliver rock, gravel, and sand to the construction sites I work,” he said. “The law was supposedly aimed at huge operations, cement factories, other factories with smokestacks. Now those mandates are being applied to small vehicles and it is costing small operators upwards of $25,000 to comply with regulations and with superficial standards that have no helpful effect in terms of the environment or controlling pollution or any of the good things that were intended in the legislation. The trucks and the truck drivers were not the problem. Regulations have their role, but when all parties are not represented then they become mandates that inhibit the economy. The proper balance on this can only come from candidates who have been part of the middle class that have been subject to these misguided laws. We should not be throwing everyone into the same category.”
Markovich cited Thomas Jefferson as the ideal politician who was able to adhere to his principles while compromising with philosophical adversaries to permit progress. “Thomas Jefferson’s contemporaries said that he was the most pragmatic politician of his time,” Markovich said. “There are politicians and there are statesmen. Statesmen go beyond entrenched partisanship and work for the common good and promote people rather than ideology. My goal is to not become a politician and instead try to be a statesman.”
An example of regulation that is proper, Markovich said, is the modulation of land use policy. “I am a contractor, so most people think I am pro-development,” he said. Nevertheless, he said, “When your development has significant impact on the environment and sanitation and the health and wellbeing of the community, these things have to be thought through to see if they are fundamentally environmentally and economically sound. [A development project] might be good for the proponents and have some short term economic good for the community, but …we could all end up paying a huge price if we just let the developers have their way.”
Markovich said he believes he is distinguished from the other eight candidates by his “conservatism on fiscal policy and opposition to things that are regressive and do not expand the economy, and by my acceptance of freedom of choice on social issues. I am not against gay rights and I do not oppose a woman’s right to choose. I have personal values and ethics that I hold dear and there are things other people do that I would never engage in, but I do not feel it is my place or the place of government to infringe on people’s civil liberties and rights. In my life, early in our marriage when my wife became pregnant and then pregnant again, we were concerned about our careers and the burden of having children at that age. The right choice, we felt, was to choose life. We made the choice to have children. That was our decision. It was not dictated to us. There are things about other people’s lifestyles that I do not understand. But it is their right to choose for themselves. By putting restrictions on freedom into the law, it is counterproductive. I believe you should give people the freedom to make their own decisions.”
Markovich said his attitude extends to all Constitutional Rights, including those guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
“Instead of going after guns and ammunition and the people who have them, I think the government should work to ensure that there is responsible gun ownership,” he said. “If gun owners are reasonable and responsible citizens, they should have the right to possess guns. There is a responsibility that goes with that. We need laws to keep us all accountable with respect to the exercising of those rights and gun use. Guns allow us to protect ourselves until the government comes. Gun rights should stay as part of our lives and our country.”
The lone Democrat in the race, John Coffey, was his party’s standard bearer in 2012. He is again seeking election to California’s lower legislative house representing the 33rd Assembly District because, he said, “this area has been without legitimate representation since 2010.”
Coffey asserted his belief that the Republican domination of the district has done it no good, given the near supermajority the Democrats have had in the legislature over the last several years.
At 68 years old, Coffey said his life experience dwarfs that of most of the other candidates. He said he will “make sure that school districts stay on top of the entitlement of free and reduced lunches and I will expedite food stamp applications for households with minor children.”
Coffey said he more than any of the other candidates in the race is committed to maintaining the district’s ecological integrity.
“After 28 years of do-nothing hearings, it is time for the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] to declare Hinkley a Superfund site.  Barstow must also begin to deal with its perchlorate issues more effectively with the state’s help to avoid another water shutdown. In Cadiz the aquifer should only be used as an asset to protect and support environmentally sensible development and endangered species habitat conservation.”
He continued, “The Bureau of Land Management is in the middle of a land grab for private developers in the Silurian Valley. They must cease. The Silurian Valley is a national park quality park wilderness area that bridges the transition from Death Valley to the Mojave preserve.”
Big Bear Mayor Jay Obernolte is the most economically enabled of the candidates in the 33rd District race, having received $229,919.15 in donations alone from Charles Munger, Jr.’s Spirit of Democracy political action committee.
Obernolte’s primary message is that the state of California is staggering under the overregulation of business and he is determined to right the state’s overregulated business climate.
“If we solve the economic problems, a lot of the other difficulties will be eliminated,” he said.
Turning to the challenges to the state beyond the limited confines of the 33rd District, Obernolte said the major focus, “on the state level, should be preserving Proposition 13. I am appalled there have been recent attempts to chip away at the taxpayer protection provisions of Proposition 13. I find particularly galling the way we are attempting to modify Proposition 13 to increase the tax on business property. We are sending a message to businesses that they are no longer welcome in California. What I would like us to do is stand firm and protect Proposition 13.”
Proposition 13 was an amendment of the Constitution of California passed by voters and enacted in  1978 that  decreased property taxes by assessing property values at their 1975 value and restricting annual increases of assessed value of real property to an inflation factor, not to exceed 2 percent per year.
“I have by far the most business experience,” Obernolte, who owns a computer game manufacturing concern, said. “I am in the best position to fight against the overregulation of business that is stifling the economy of our state. We need people in Sacramento who know what it is like to shepherd a business thorough upturns and downturns. We need them to understand how stifling the business climate is in California. We need lawmakers who understand that businesses face a lot of issues.”
Michelle Ambrozic is a Republican health insurance broker who has railed against President Barack Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act, maintaining hospitals are going bankrupt because, “Seven out of ten people are unable to pay for health care insurance or are now losing the health care insurance they had before Obamacare was put into place.”
Ambrozic said that “Doctors are increasingly reluctant to accept new Medicare patients at the same time that thousands and thousands of low income Medicare patients are coming along. They are not willing to accept new Medicare and Medi-Cal patients because they are not being paid adequately. It is not financially feasible for them to accept these new patients. We need to get money to expand Medicare and Medi-Cal. We need to make sure our state medical reimbursement rates are what they should be. We need to set up a program so that if after graduating from medical school and being licensed, primary care physicians can commit to a rural area for up to six years and have their medical school debt forgiven. This is already being done in several other states.”
Ambrozic said she wants to divert money that has been appropriated to the California Dream Act, which she said “is utilizing taxpayer money to further the education of illegal aliens and people who are not citizens of our state” and use it to fund medical student education.
Her campaign is being spearheaded by Donnelly’s former chief of staff, Gregg Imus, who has represented Ambrozic as a “gun-toting mother of three.”
Robert Larivee is running, he said. because “I feel our government has separated itself from the people. It is time to rebuild our nation from the ground up.”
Identifying a major issue facing both the 33rd District and the southern portion of the state as ensuring the availability of water, Larivee said, “My solution for the sustainability of the water supply is to first deal with the drought and educate the public in more detail on how to conserve water. We have been depleting our aquifers since the 1960s.” Beyond conservation and the installation of water saving devices, Larivee said the state water authority needs “to figure out a comprehensive plan to deal with water issues across the state. We basically need to open up the pump at the delta.”
Larivee said the state can protect the delta by augmenting its water with resources drawn from elsewhere.
“I think there are less expensive options to get water to where we need it,” he said. “We could bring water from various places and release it into aqueducts. We should have pipelines not built by a single contractor but multiple contractors that would be competitively bid, all the way down from Canada or Alaska. If we can build an oil pipeline be can build one for water. If it is a pipeline there will be no evaporation since it is a closed system. We should start the pipeline in spots where there is a major surplus of water. We should reach outside the state to Oregon or Washington or wherever we have water north of us and can bring it down. It is less expensive to maintain a pipe system than an aqueduct.”
Larivee identified “safety and education” as two other major issues facing the district and the state.
“I know a little bit about all of the issues and a lot about some of them,” Larivee said. “I know where to find the answers.”
Retired San Bernardino County fire captain Bob Buhrle said he is running for assemblyman in the 33rd Assembly District because “I believe I can use my more than 20 years’ experience in various elected positions to be of benefit in helping straighten up California.”
Buhrle has been on the board of directors at the Big Bear Municipal Water District, a board member of the High Desert Medical Center,  a board member of the Lake Gregory/Crest Forest County Water District, a member of the Arrowhead Lake Association Board of Directors, a board member of the Big Bear City Community Service District, which oversaw the budget and management of municipal sanitation, water, fire safety and  refuse disposal services, a member of the board of trustees for the Rim of the World Unified School District, and a member of the San Bernardino County Regional Parks Advisory Board.
Buhrle said “We need solutions” and that part of the cure is “having small businesses create new jobs. This can be done if we work together at all levels of government in cooperation with the private sector.”
75-year-old retired truck driver and former Marine Jerry Laws said “I’d like to see a flat tax rate in California. We can’t get the feds to do it.  I want the federal land in California turned back to the state. Right now the federal government will not let states drill or put pipelines in or anything along that line. The federal government should return most of what it took over back to the states.”
Laws said the county should be allowed to revive its mining industry. “Inyo County  was using its gold mines to pay their bills,” he said. “My main goals are to protect the Constitution and the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.”
Art Bishop, a retired Fire Chief with the Apple Valley Fire Protection District and current member of the Apple Valley Town Council, said he is running because “in order to change what is happening in Sacramento, we need to take a stand against politics as usual. Businesses, jobs and good people like you are leaving our great state every day. Burdensome laws, excessive government regulations and unnecessary taxation are damaging the great state that we love.”
Bishop said, “My experience and leadership skills will bring a common sense approach to our legislature. California was once a great place to live and raise our families.  I know, because I have lived here most of my life.  My wife of 43 years and I raised our two children here, and my grandchildren are growing up here. Our schools were among the best in the nation, and we welcomed businesses that provided quality jobs for our families.  It is my goal to bring stability, leadership, and experience to the legislature in its decision-making process. I am a firm advocate of local control and cooperative governance without sacrificing principles.”
Brett Savage, the youngest candidate in the race, said, “We need to support small businesses, reduce regulation, and support law enforcement. To save California we need to invest in the industriousness of its people, not big government. The High Desert needs a representative that is willing to fight for it.”
Savage said, “The growth of the High Desert economy depends on free enterprise.  We need to ease the burden on our communities’ small businesses.  We must lower the cost of starting and running a business.  We must reduce regulation and promote industry.”
According to Savage, “Our right to bear arms is under constant attack.  In Sacramento I will not only fight to protect the Second Amendment from further assault, but work to restore those rights that have already been taken away from us.”
Touting himself as a “staunch supporter of law enforcement, Savage said, “Serious crimes warrant serious penalties.  We need to protect those that protect us and support law enforcement and their families for the remarkable sacrifices they make every day.  I was born and raised in a law enforcement family and I personally know the sacrifices made both those in uniform and the families that love them.”
Rick Roelle, a sheriff’s lieutenant, said, ““I see our state dealing with the same issues that are big in this district – taxation, overregulation and public safety,” he said. “The reason we have overtaxation is because the voters keep voting tax hikes on themselves. Sixty percent of the people in surveys say they believe we are overtaxed but the voters still keep voting for tax increases. The solution is if they are going to keep shoving tax increases down our throats, we have to have more people on the payroll, with decent paying jobs paying into it. If there is going to be tax creation there first has to be job creation.
Roelle said he is distinguished from the other candidates , “obviously my 32 years in law enforcemen. I had eight years as an elected official on the Apple Valley Town Council. I am chomping at the bit to get involved with the Republican Party in California. I represent a lot more than just taking a stand against illegal immigration and gun rights.  I think I can assist my constituents by assuring that they are not gouged by the cuts government has to make.”