(June 24)  TWENTYNINE PALMS — The Morongo Unified School District Board of Trustees abruptly placed superintendent Cecelia English on paid administrative leave on June 21.
That move came almost a month after the board balked at giving English a 5.77 percent raise over her $175,000 annual salary, while conferring the same 5.77 percent raise on the district’s three assistant superintendents, Doug Weller, Tom Baumgarten and David Price.
English’s one-year tenure with Morongo Unified was rocky from the outset. The director of academics at the Newark School District in Northern California, English was hired on a 3-2 vote of the board of trustees in June 2013, with trustees Karalee Hargrove and Ronald Palmer in opposition.
English possesses a doctorate in education and seemed intent upon leading the district forward in the aftermath of Jim Majchrzak’s departure as superintendent.  Majchrzak remained with the district for the last six months of 201 as a special assignment administrator applying for grants.
Elements of the community, including Hargrove, Palmer and some members of the Morongo Teachers Association, were critical of the salary provided to English, which was $25,000 more than Majchrzak received and a substantial raise over what English was making in the Newark School District.
English did not hit it off with Morongo Teachers Association President Terri Weitz and her relations with the Morongo Teachers Association never warmed.
With the dawning of 2014, things grew decidedly worse. At a board meeting in March, with emotions running high over teacher compensation, approaching 200 members of the Morongo Teachers Association turned their backs on her as a show of contempt and protest while she was speaking.
In the face of concerted and vigorous opposition by members of the public and a group of teachers, the school board appeared intimidated out of providing to English the same raise as was given to Weller, Baumgarten and Price.
In a special closed session held on Saturday, English was suspended. No reason for the board’s action was given.

By Ruth Musser-Lopez
June 27, 2014.  If you want to see a “glimpse” of Hinkley before it is too late, you should go at once to see what was once “a boomtown,” now just a “doomed town.”
Near Hidden River Road and Highway 58, Pacific, Gas & Electric’s (PG&E’s) bulldozer crews are currently hard at work tearing down farmhouses and dairies that once sat above Hinkley’s trophy “hidden river” now a polluted giant toilet of ever spreading underground hexavalent chromium waste contamination.
The epitome of corporate water heists, PG&E’s “take” of the Hinkley aquifer and now much of the property that sits above it, was unconventional, but effective.   Though it may have been unplanned…it was still a water heist.
First they polluted the water, then by indirect action they polluted the people…many got sick, some have died, and most simply up and left—either bought out by PG&E or simply in hopeless abandonment.
The Hinkley hexavalent chromium contamination came about as a consequence of Pacific Gas and Electric’s operation of a compressor station there beginning in 1952. The compressor station was a facility located on a pipeline that ran between Texas and Canada and delivered in excess of three billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. The compressor station in Hinkley was one of eight such stations along the line in California. Natural gas available in the line was used to fuel compressors which repressurized the gas to push it through the pipeline. At Hinkley, the compressed gas was cooled with water circulating through two cooling towers. From 1952 until 1966, hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium 6, was added to the cooling water to prevent corrosion to the cooling towers and the water circulation system. Wastewater from the cooling system was disposed of in unlined ponds at the Hinkley site. Beginning in 1964, after the danger of chromium 6 was recognized, the cooling water was treated to remove the chromium before it was disposed in the pools and a non-chromium-based additive was substituted into the cooling system in 1966. As of 1972 the cooling water was pumped into lined evaporation ponds.
These improvements to the system, however, did not undo the ecological havoc that had occurred up until 1972.
In 1988, the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, which oversees water quality issues in that portion of the desert, issued a cleanup and abatement order to PG&E to investigate a plume of chromium 6 in the water table. In 1991, the water board issued permits to treat the contaminated groundwater using land treatment units.
In 1993, attorney Ed Masry, with whom Erin Brockovich, a Hinkley resident, was working, filed a multi-plaintiff direct action suit against PG&E, alleging contamination of the town’s drinking water and untoward consequences of that pollution. In 1996, the case was settled for $333 million, the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit until that time. In 2000, the matter became an international cause célèbre, with the release of the blockbuster movie Erin Brockovich, which related a substantially accurate version of events in Hinkley. Contrary to widespread public assumptions, Pacific Gas & Electric’s payment of the $333 million did not redress the underlying problem. Masry and his law firm netted over $100 million in legal fees. Only a few of the plaintiffs received more than $100,000. No physical solution to the contamination problem was effectuated.
In 1997 and 2004, the water board reissued follow-up permits to PG&E for the use of land treatment units in the treatment of the contaminated groundwater around Hinkley. In 2006, with the Hinkley groundwater contamination issue fading from public consciousness, the water board gave permits for two subterranean remediation systems to clean up the source and central areas of the plume. In 2008, however, the issue was resurrected as one of regional and local concern when, amidst the water board’s provision of a permit for Pacific Gas & Electric to apply additional cleanup measures, it issued redrafted cleanup and abatement orders. Steadily over the last six years, the condition of the lingering contamination in Hinkley has grown into a larger and larger public issue as evidence of how the underground plume of chromium 6 continues to migrate through the water table into the area from which local wells draw water used for household purposes has emerged.
The best hydrological data now available indicates the plume is more than six miles long and two miles wide and gradually expanding.
Chromium is the 21st most abundant element in the earth’s crust and as such naturally occurs in rocks, soil, ground water and plants.
Under current guidelines, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency specifies 100 micrograms per liter as the maximum acceptable total chromium contaminant level acceptable in water to be consumed by humans. On July 1, the state of California will reduce the permissible amount of cancer-causing hexavalent chromium to 10 parts per billion.
Pacific Gas and Electric has been wrestling with the contamination issue and has applied a number of experimental cures to the problem which have proven inadequate, including pumping groundwater through a subsurface drip irrigation system and organic matter in the soil around plant root zones to create conditions, which Pacific Gas & Electric hoped  would “chemically reduce the level of chromium 6 in the water [reducing] the hexavalent chromium  to insoluble trivalent chromium.” Pacific Gas & Electric sought ways of keeping the contaminated water from migrating to other areas of the aquifer and tainting the water there. One effort Pacific Gas & Electric made to prevent the spreading of the plume entailed drawing up to 80 gallons of water per minute from supply wells south of the compression station, pumping it north through new underground pipes and injecting the water outside the northwestern plume boundary. This strategy, Pacific Gas and Electric claimed, was intended to “create a hydraulic barrier designed to prevent spreading of the plume.” While partially effective, that measure did not achieve the goal of reducing the chromium 6 in the water supply to an acceptable level.
As a practical means of ensuring that the tainted water does not end up in the drinking glasses, cooking utensils, showers, baths, toilets and garden hoses of Hinkley residents, PG&E offered to provide every household and business in Hinkley with either a filtration/treatment system to capture the chromium before it would be dispensed at the tap or in the alternative, commercial bottled drinking water.
But with no certain, final and comprehensive cure of the problem in sight, Pacific Gas & Electric in April 2012 began surveying homeowners with regard to their willingness to sell their property and move elsewhere. When roughly two-thirds of those surveyed indicated their readiness to depart the community, PG&E began making offers to individual property owners and undertook appraisals of their properties.  As soon as mutually acceptable terms between PG&E and the individual homeowners were arrived at, purchases were made. Since February, houses in Hinkley are being sold to PG&E at a rate of two to four per week.  Once the houses are empty, Pacific Gas & Electric has not spared time in having those homes razed, foreclosing any possibility that squatters or anyone else will be tempted to take up residence therein ever again.
In September 2013, the Santa Ana-based law firm Callahan & Blaine filed suit against PG&E in San Bernardino County Superior Court on behalf of a substantial number of Hinkley residents who were not a part of the litigation brought by Masry. Callahan & Blaine are seeking that the plaintiffs be recompensed for the damages they have sustained as a consequence of the continuing contamination and the ongoing expansion of the toxic plume and its threat to the area’s groundwater.
Of issue is that PG&E, in offering “fair market value” for the properties, is benefiting by its deliberate efforts to convert Hinkley to a ghost town. Under various theories, PG&E should be required to pay more for the homes than they are currently offering, since the company is responsible for the depression in Hinkley’s land values. In early 2012,  Hinkley’s population stood at 1,900. Today it has dwindled to an estimated 1,300, as residents continue their exodus. Earlier this year, the Barstow Unified School District moved to shutter Hinkley School at the end of the 2012-13 school year last month. The town is down to one market, a post office and a tavern.
Now, by court order or in an effort to avoid further court orders, PG&E in a process of buying out property owners and systematically destroying dwellings and other structures that will forever be no more.  Yes, our State of California Department of Water Resources and the Department of Toxic Substances Control has seen fit over the last 20 years to allow PG&E  to monitor its own clean up measures.  Instead of seizing the property and taking over clean up as the public has repeatedly prayed for as relief, the State has instead acquiesced to corporate influence.
How twisted would it be that just as PG&E has completed the purchase and leveling of Hinkley that suddenly a solution to the chromium  6 pollution problem is found.
Though with “The Destruction of Hinkley” it would seem that the county of San Bernardino and the State of California would have suffered significant losses with a local economy that appears to have entirely collapsed, we have yet to see or hear of any action by our state or county officials for compensation from PG&E for lost revenue in the form of income tax, sales tax, property tax and lost federal funds for public facilities such as schools, post offices, etc.

By clicking on the portal below, you can access a PDF of the June 20 SBC Sentinel.

Sentinel 06-20-14

(June 18)  A confluence of events and circumstances has put the status quo of one of San Bernardino County’s major franchise contracts in doubt, as county officials contemplate ending the 33-year-long hold one company has had on the exclusive provision of ambulance service in the nation’s most expansive county.
Since 1981 American Medical Response, and its several corporate predecessors including Mercy Ambulance, has been the county’s ambulance service provider. Its current ten-year contract is coming to an end. County Chief Executive Officer Greg Devereaux and the board of supervisors have not yet decided on whether to simply extend the contract as it is and continue to lock out all other competitors in the 20,105-square mile county, renegotiate the franchise contract or put the contract up for bid.
The board of supervisors, per se, will not be making that decision, but will need to ratify it after the board’s members, acting in another capacity, pass judgment. In actuality, major policy decisions with regard to the county’s emergency medical services are made by ICEMA, of which all five supervisors are board members. ICEMA is an acronym for the Inland Counties Emergency Medical Agency, which serves Inyo, Mono and San Bernardino counties.
A myriad of factors is militating against American Medical Response retaining its exclusive – and very lucrative – status as the sole licensed ambulance provider in the vast unincorporated areas of San Bernardino County and in Inyo and Mono counties as well.
Known by its acronym AMR, American Medical Response has proven over the last three decades to be a major donor to the political war chests of members of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors. AMR’s primacy in the jurisdiction the supervisors rule has led to the perception that a pay-to-play ethos dominates San Bernardino County. A series of scandals and political corruption prosecutions aimed at San Bernardino County politicians, including ones that resulted in convictions, have incentivized rebidding the franchise contract to end the unseemly appearance of a single, and politically well-connected, company enjoying a monopoly that has moved into its fourth decade.
Simultaneously, the county fire department finds itself faced with both challenges and opportunities to meet those challenges by, perhaps, flexing and expanding its authority and service capability into the areas previously dominated if not entirely controlled by the private sector, namely emergency medical support.
Last year, the cities of Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley and Adelanto resurrected a more-than-20-year-old proposal to unify their police and fire services and the four municipalities sprung for putting up $200,000 collectively to determine the feasibility of creating unified police and fire services under the aegis of a public safety joint powers authority involving all four municipalities.
For law enforcement service, Adelanto pays the county $4,706,459 to have the sheriff’s department serve as its police department, which features 28 sworn and non-sworn employees. Apple Valley is now paying $11.255 million to have the county sheriff  provide a 71-employee presence of both sworn and non-sworn personnel, vehicles, equipment radio and dispatch. Hesperia pays $12.77 million for the sheriff’s department to serve as that city’s law enforcement provider.  In Victorville, the city is paying $19,417,318 annually to the sheriff’s department under its contract with them to provide law enforcement services.
Under its contract with the San Bernardino County Fire Department, Adelanto pays $3,117,634 per year for a force that consists of one battalion chief, six fire captains, six engineers, six firefighter/paramedics and one paid call firefighter.
The Apple Valley Fire Protection District is an entity that is independent from the town and currently functions on an annual budget of $7.72 million.
Hesperia expends $8,253,243 annually on fire protection service, including a contract with the San Bernardino County Fire Department and maintaining the vehicles and facilities of the Hesperia Fire Protection District.
Victorville’s budget for its fire department, which is also a division of the county fire department, is $13,643,541.
The study was undertaken to determine if the cities could save money and perhaps enhance services by pooling their financial resources and creating a valleywide public safety district with police and fire divisions, and terminating their contracts with the fire and sheriff’s departments of San Bernardino County.
Depending on what conclusions the decision-makers in Adelanto, Apple Valley, Hesperia and Victorville come to, San Bernardino County’s sheriff’s and fire departments may or may not retain their current contracts in the Victor Valley. Thus, the county fire department faces the potential prospect of seeing its contract with three of the county’s cities being terminated.
In the meantime, sources have told the Sentinel, San Bernardino County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig is on the verge of making an energetic proposal that would intensify the level of service his agency provides while simultaneously providing revenue to the county and his department by shifting emergency medical transportation away from the private sector.
Hartwig, a paramedic firefighter who rose through the ranks of the county fire district and then spent six years with the Rancho Cucamonga Fire District as a battalion chief and deputy fire chief before he was selected as county fire chief three years ago, is seeking to convince Devereaux and the board of supervisors to allow county fire to put non-fire suppression personnel, i.e., emergency medical technicians and paramedics, on ambulances owned and operated by the county and have the county assume authority to provide ambulance and paramedic service in all of the county transport areas now franchised to AMR.
One estimate was that through this program the department could generate a $50 million revenue stream per year that could then be reinvested in fire protection programs throughout the county.
A report received by the Sentinel is that Hartwig’s proposal has so alarmed American Medical Response’s corporate officers that they have offered to pay the county an annual $30 million exclusive franchise fee if the county will simply reject Hartwig’s proposal and essentially extend the current arrangement for AMR to continue operating for ten years.
Thus, if the county accedes to AMR’s offer, Hartwig and the fire department would avoid the level of activity associated with converting the fire department’s current operations to accommodate countywide emergency medical transport. At issue is how the county would use the $30 million per year to be put up by AMR and whether all of that money, or at least a substantial amount of it, will be routed to the fire department to augment current operations within it.
To ascertain the authenticity of these reports, the Sentinel went directly to Hartwig, who said that it is inaccurate to state his department has made a formal bid on the emergency medical transport function for the county.
“We don’t have a proposal,” Hartwig told the Sentinel. “The current emergency medical services contract will be up soon and while they are negotiating an extension what I am attempting to find out is does it make sense for the fire district to bid on it. We are the second largest ambulance provider in the county. We run about 20 ambulances a day depending on time of year. It is not like we would be entering into a business with which we are not familiar. We will position ourselves so if the county chooses to put it out to bid, we can take a look to see if it makes sense for us to make a bid.”
Whether his department would operate its ambulances in just unincorporated areas of the county or whether it would cross over into covering areas that fall within the city limits of the county’s 24 municipalities, Hartwig said, “all depends on how the bid is written. ICEMA would write it [the bidding parameters] and we would determine our interest based on what is in the bid, if in fact they put it out to bid. The board may just renegotiate it or continue the contract as it is.”
Hartwig stopped far short of confirming that his department could generate $50 million a year through the provision of ambulance service to paying customers.
“I’m not sure where you got those numbers,” he said, adding that his department has yet to make a calculation to estimate the revenue that could be realized through taking on the emergency medical transport franchise. “To determine what revenue could be available would be a simple exercise where we would take our current transport fee, multiply it by the number of calls, multiplied by our collection rate and then subtract our costs. That is the way we would figure out how much net revenue would be available. At this point, I don’t know if it makes sense to bid. There is some federal finance participation (FFP) money available to us from Medicare for performing medical emergency transportation. Medicare has started to reimburse public agencies for certified public expenditures. If people are discussing large revenue figures, that is likely because there is new Medicare financing available to public agencies delivering healthcare and transport.  Through the new program the fire department is collecting about $800,000 per five thousand transports.  County Fire has collected that revenue for the last three years. Once you figure out how many transports there are in the county and you determine what the reimbursement per transport is, then you can figure out how much all of this is worth.”
Hartwig said he did not believe that as a potential competitor in the bid process the county fire department would have a leg up on any others bidding.
“I don’t think it gives us any leverage,” he said. “The county  has the responsibility to provide ambulance service countywide except in those areas where prior to June 1, 1980 ambulance service was already being provided by some other jurisdiction. In this county that means  everywhere but Rialto and Hesperia.”
Hartwig said he is giving careful consideration to his and his department’s options, but said no decision or commitment has been made, primarily because he does not have all of the information required to make such a decision and it is not yet clear whether the county will put the ambulance franchise out to bid.
“If it is advantageous for the fire district and those that we serve, and bidding takes place, then absolutely, we would bid,” he said. “We know what our costs are. We don’t know what the revenue, or potential revenue, is. It is safe to say county fire is in a holding pattern until we find out what ICEMA and the county board of supervisors will do. County Fire is the second largest provider of medical transportation in the county. The county is the largest provider of pre-hospital care in San Bernardino County. If we could streamline the service and provide a revenue stream, reduce the costs for the users of medical service and provide better service for the taxpayers, sure, we would be interested on bidding.”

(June 17)  TWENTYNINE PALMS—Twenynine Palms has lured Andy Takata. the former Yucca Valley town manager and Banning city manager who is currently serving as the interim city manager in Calexico, to temporarily replace recently fired city manager Joe Guzzetta.
Takata will officially begin as Twentynine Palms interim city manager on June 24, and be paid $100 per hour for his services.
He was offered the position on a unanimous city council vote, four weeks after Joe Guzzetta was terminated on May 13 by a unanimous vote of the council, slightly less than a year after he assumed the city manager position. Guzzetta, the former director of the Joshua Basin Water District,  was provided with a one-year severance package by the city, such that he was essentially paid two years’ salary for one year of work.
Guzzetta replaced Richard Warne, who was likewise terminated by the city council in April 2013 just one month shy of his two-year anniversary with the city. He too was given one year’s worth of pay to depart, so he was in effect paid with three years’ salary for two years of work.
Takata is to relieve finance officer Ron Peck, who has been serving as acting city manager since Guzzetta was fired.
No commitment to Takata was made beyond having him in place as temporary city manager who will work at least 20 hours per week was made, and it is not known whether he will be in the running to compete among those candidates being considered for the full-time city manager’s post. That selection process could take up to six months.
Takata was with Yucca Valley from 2004 to 2010, and Banning from 2010 until February. He has been in Calexico since last month. Two weeks ago, the Calexico City Council voted to extend Takata’s contract as interim city manager there, staking him to a six month contract running until November 30. Reached at Calexico City Hall on June 16, however, Takata told the  Sentinel, “I never signed the contract. I am just on a short term assignment here and I leave Thursday [June 19].”
Takata said he is situated to be able to fill the Twentynine Palms position relatively easily. “I live in Banning and I have a house in Yucca Valley,” he said.
Takata said he will “work forty hours a week until I get up to speed and then probably 20 hours a week after that.”

(June 18)  The events that led to the resignation of Upland City Manager Stephen Dunn were a comedy of errors, miscommunication, misunderstandings and rash acts that were exacerbated by the secrecy surrounding the process in which most or all of the parties involved were unsure of or had no inkling of the actions of the others, the Sentinel has learned.
Though no clear consensus to remove Dunn as city manager ever emerged organically among the city’s five ultimate decision makers, i.e., the city council, events transpired in such a way as to make Dunn’s exodus a fait accompli. There were multiple levels of irony in the string of events, including the consideration that legal requirements which exist as part of the government code intended to protect public employees, together with other restrictions on the open exchange of information or a dialogue between the council members, worked against Dunn’s continued tenure as city manager.
In the end, Dunn’s intemperate reaction to the admittedly awkward and aggravating circumstance he was put in  resulted in three members of the council concluding that his remaining as city manager was no longer tenable.
On May 27, when Mayor Ray Musser announced Dunn’s pending departure at the end of that evening’s city council meeting, a full two weeks after his employment separation agreement was signed and thirteen days after it was approved as to form by city attorney Kimberly Hall Barlow, the story behind what had occurred remained shrouded in mystery. Over the last three weeks, the Sentinel has pieced together the events that led up to and resulted in Dunn’s departure.
Dunn, who in early 2011 was promoted from his position as finance director to serve as first acting and then actual city manager in the wake of the suspension of former city manager Robb Quincey in the wake of fallout from the events preceding the indictment of former Mayor John Pomierski, long enjoyed the support of the city council.
Among his early acts as city manager was the discharging of four of the city’s department heads and the cutting of 25 staff positions at City Hall. That prompted a campaign of anonymous letters sent to the city council, community leaders and the press attacking Dunn on a multitude of issues personal and professional. The council did not accede to the calls, stated both directly and indirectly in the letters, for Dunn’s dismissal. Through more than three years in his function as city manager, the city council had Dunn’s back.
What might be seen as a major turn toward Dunn’s demise as city manager occurred in February when Dunn, who had been working for three years with a salary and benefit package significantly below what was provided to his predecessor Quincey, asked for a raise. The city council, which is struggling with the city’s beleaguered financial condition, deliberated with regard to his request and turned him down.
The following month the council initiated Dunn’s routine annual review. After a first closed session discussion, the review was delayed for two weeks while the council undertook to fill out written forms providing their individual rankings of Dunn’s performance. Dunn’s contract ran through June 2015 and his continuing tenure seemed assured.
Nevertheless, legal prohibitions against the council members communicating with regard to official city business in any forums outside of the public or closed door sessions of the council led to a degree of uncertainty as to the outcome of the review. In particular, councilwoman Debby Stone, who was close to Dunn in part because of their shared membership in the Rotary Club, was Dunn’s greatest champion on the council. The advent of Dunn’s job review, which was routine in nature but followed closely upon his turned-down request for a raise, seems to have been misinterpreted by her as a preparatory move toward terminating him.
In reality, at that point only councilman Glenn Bozar held any significant reservations about Dunn’s management of the city, and he clearly lacked the political muscle, i.e., the accompanying votes, to force Dunn out. Stone, however, because of the spotty communication afforded the council under the rule of law, perceived that Musser and perhaps even Filippi and Brandt might join with Bozar to hand Dunn a pink slip.
Actually, Filippi was solidly behind Dunn, Brandt was philosophically and temperamentally opposed to making any drastic personnel changes at City Hall, and Musser, though smarting from some public criticism leveled at him by the city manager, felt obliged to keep Dunn in place at least until his contract expired some 15 months thereafter. Because of her misgivings about the others’ intentions toward Dunn, however, Stone balked at completing the written evaluation form relating to Dunn, possibly because she believed the delay would forestall any action the council might take toward terminating him.
Ironically, this suspension of the delivery of what would most certainly have been on balance a positive review for another two weeks had the exact opposite effect of what Stone intended. At that point, Dunn appears to have misinterpreted his review having been held in abeyance for nearly a month as, at best, hesitation at or strong differences over giving him a positive review, or at worst, a sign that he was about to be cashiered. Intemperately and ill-advisedly, he issued a memorandum stating he was taking, on his own initiative, a leave of absence.
This caught the council by surprise and Musser interceded to convince him to return to work at once. Nevertheless, the council’s review of his job performance languished, and Dunn at one point cleared his office of his personal effects, sending a signal that he anticipated being fired.
Word of the contretemps between the city manager and the city council at that point wafted beyond the confines of City Hall. Though statements were made for public consumption to the effect that whatever misunderstandings that occurred had been cleared up, that the long delayed job review had been concluded in Dunn’s favor and that Dunn was now back at the city’s helm and coolly in command of municipal operations, a crucial milestone in the Dunn drama had been eclipsed. The council was now faced with negative publicity – negative publicity for the city and negative comments vectored their way by some of Dunn’s supporters.
Despite efforts to make it appear as if City Hall was back to functioning as normal, the tension that existed behind the scenes of power in the City of Gracious Living was palpable.
With his future seemingly hanging in the balance and suspended by the slimmest of threads, Dunn inexplicably escalated the crisis, doubling down and demanding that in order for him to remain as city manager, a member of the city council – thought to be Bozar – would need to resign.
That threw Upland City Hall into full blown crisis mode. Councilman Brendan Brandt, whose previous Sphinx-like support of Dunn had long been the key to Dunn’s continuing viability as city manager, was jolted by Dunn’s histrionics. Yet another corner had been turned, with Brandt having been pushed over the edge. Shortly thereafter, Dunn was overheard demanding that the city council fire him, knowing full well that his resignation would excuse the city from having to fulfill all payments due to him under his contract and that being terminated would trigger the requirement that the city pay him the full $192,768 due him during the final year of that contract. By the second week of May, a consensus among Musser, Brandt and Bozar that the city would best be finished with Dunn had formed. On May 13, a separation agreement had been drawn up and it was signed by both Dunn and Musser.
Dunn, whose primary line of municipal operations expertise is finances, agreed to assist the city in finalizing its 2014-15 budget before departing on June 30.
This week, the council hired Martin Lomeli, the former city manager of La Verne, to serve as interim city manager most likely until November, by which point the city hopes to have hired Dunn’s permanent replacement.
Filippi offered up a wistful post mortem of Dunn’s managerial tenure.
“I supported him from day one,” Filippi said. “We had going on three-and-a-half years of working closely together. We came in almost a month apart. I took the oath as councilman on December 13, 2010 and he was asked to accept a promotion from finance director to the position of acting city manager in January 2011. I have always had positive relations with him and looked to him for guidance. I think he did an excellent job. I did not support his leaving. I do not know, exactly, what he was thinking toward the end there. The road has not been easy for him. He entered [the position of city manager] at a difficult time and so much upset. The mixed signals the council was sending and the actions being taken by three of them and the divisiveness probably created insecurity in Stephen. I’m speculating. I know he was working very hard to lead the city and trying to push through his own recommendations and those of the fiscal task force. I think he grew very frustrated going through delays.”
The end stage was particularly harsh, Filippi said. He said he could not describe what set of events proved to be the final straw. “You would have to ask the three members who wanted him to not continue,” Filippi said. “Three of the council voted to provide him an exit agreement. Obviously, he accepted it and the majority of the council provided it. I can’t tell you what happened in closed session.”
Filippi concurred that a whole series of misunderstandings, miscommunications and mistakes precipitated Dunn’s departure, which Filippi said at this point is irrevocable. “I didn’t want that,” Filippi said. “Stephen’s on his way to retirement. I hope he is satisfied with that. I am now looking toward working with Marty Lomeli.”

(June 19)  The supporters of 31st Congressional District Candidate Lesli Gooch will pursue a recount after the posting of the certified election count that found her trailing the second place finisher by 209 votes.
Under California’s open primary arrangement, the two top finishers in the June primary election face each other in the November General Election.
Gooch, a Republican, polled  9,033 votes or 16.96 percent. Another Republican, Paul Chabot, was the top vote-getter, with 14,163 votes or 26.6 percent. Pete  Aguilar, a Democrat and the best financed candidate in the seven-candidate field that competed on June 3, captured 9,242 votes or 17.36 percent.
The 31st District leans Democratic, with 42 percent of the district’s voters registered as Democrats and 33 percent registered as Republicans. Despite that, two years ago the seat was captured by Republican Gary Miller, who won after he and another Republican, Bob Dutton, captured the most and second most votes in the primary. They bested four Democrats in that race, including Aguilar, the mayor of Redlands. In this year’s primary race, four Democrats and three Republicans competed.
Gooch, who was a staffer in Miller’s office, was endorsed by him, the Redlands Tea Party Patriots and the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee. Despite Republican hopes that she and Chabot could capture the two top spots in the race and perpetuate the GOP’s hold on the 31st District despite the Democratic registration advantage, the early unofficial, late unofficial and certified official election results showed her close but yet behind Aguilar.
Gooch was damaged by a vitriolic campaign against her that was waged by Chabot, a ploy which steered the lion’s share of the district’s Republican vote his way but ultimately had the effect of allowing Aguilar to capture second.
Among those indicating the Gooch campaign would seek a recount were Tea Party activist and Gooch supporter John Berry and  Gooch’s campaign manager Jeff Stinson.
An analysis of the results in several of the district’s precincts reflected voting patterns that were at odds with the Gooch campaign’s expectations given the demographic and historic voting patterns there. The recount, which will be paid for by the Gooch campaign, will begin with and concentrate on those suspect precincts. If significant shifting of the counts take place in those precincts, the recount will be widened.
A recount is permitted under state law. Nevertheless, the posted certified results are now considered final and can only be overturned by a certification of different numbers reflecting a different result as a consequence of the recount. That recount will be done manually.
San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Michael Scarpello and his staff already performed a one percent manual audit of all of the county’s election results, finding that all results were verified.

(June 19)  Concern is growing that Upland city officials are using a survey of city residents to maneuver around the provisions of state law aimed at preventing taxpayer money from being used to promote a ballot measure.
To guide it in redressing its financial problems, the city of Upland last fall created a fiscal crisis management task force which cataloged a host of cost savings and revenue enhancement options. One of those options the city is now contemplating is the imposition of a half cent sales tax coupled with an increase in business fees.
To put the city sales tax regime in place, approval of the tax by the city’s voters must take place. City officials favoring the tax hope to place a ballot measure before the city’s voters in November during the general gubernatorial election.
In April, the city council voted to appropriate $75,000 from the city’s general fund reserves  for the dual purposes of engaging  a firm to survey city residents about their support for the potential sales tax and business license tax measures and to engage the services of a public relations firm to assist staff in providing the public with what city manager Stephen Dunn called “accurate and correct information on many of the task force recommendations that will be addressed over the next 12 months.”
The city intends to pay $27,000 for the survey and $48,000 for the public relations campaign. It has been disclosed that there would be no bidding on the contract to lobby the public with regard to passing the half percent sales tax and other city revenue enhancement or cost cutting moves and the contract would be conferred upon the 20/20 Network, a communications firm specializing in media and community relations, branding, strategic planning and crisis management headed by Steve Lambert and Tim Gallagher. Lambert is the former editor of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the most widely circulated daily newspaper in Upland.
In early May, Lambert and Gallagher huddled with Dunn for a strategizing session. The precise details of what was discussed are not publicly known, though a central subject was enhancing the prospect that the sales tax initiative will pass.
The firm that will be conducting the resident polling with regard to the sales tax has not been identified. Councilman Glenn Bozar was the sole member of the city council to vote against the $75,000 expenditure in April  because, he said, “I don’t think it is necessary and it is an unwise use of public funds.”  At the June 9 council meeting, Bozar pressed Dunn to provide the council with the language that is to be contained in the survey questions. Dunn turned down Bozar’s request.
Even before Bozar’s request was made there was some level of concern in the community about what direction the city would be going in with the survey and its lobbying campaign. As the task force was undertaking its deliberations late last year, a number of vocal city residents began advocating against any tax increases, asserting that past decisions by the city council have conferred upon city employees salaries and benefits that are too generous and which are leaving the city in the position of having to pay exorbitant  pensions to employees upon retirement. In recent months the ranks of those voicing this concern have grown and they are calling for a renegotiation of the employment contracts with municipal employees to reduce ongoing and future operating costs and pension obligations before residents are called upon to cover those costs in the form of new taxes.
Bozar’s request of Dunn on June 9 appeared aimed at determining whether reports that the survey’s purpose was being suborned to further the public relations campaign relating to having the tax initiative passed were accurate. Ostensibly, the survey is being conducted to determine if city residents would be likely to pass the tax. Placing the measure on the November ballot would cost the city somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000.  So, before going to that expense, Dunn and the city council wanted to determine whether seeking that approval would be an exercise in futility.  What has been suggested, however, is that the 20/20 Network had a hand in formulating the form of the questions to be asked in the survey, blending into the questions suggestions that would “push”  those responding to the survey toward a preconceived answer, i.e., that they are inclined to support the tax measure.  Poll results to this effect would then be used to persuade the council to not only put the tax measure on the November ballot, but would be used in the public relations campaign to be put on by the 20/20 Network to convince voters to support the measure, some have suggested.
Dunn’s refusal to provide Bozar or his colleagues with the survey language heightened already lingering suspicions that the survey to be carried out would be a “push poll.”
California’s Political Reform Act prohibits public financing of campaigns. In addition, Gov. Code Section 8314 and Penal Code Section 426 prohibit the use of public resources, such as office equipment, staff time, consultants or government-paid contractors or personal for campaign or political purposes.
Government Code Section 54964 prohibits an officer, employee or consultant of a local agency from expending or authorizing the expenditure of any local agency funds to support or oppose a ballot measure or a candidate.
Reached by the Sentinel this week, Dunn said the survey would likely be conducted “beginning next week.”  He said the form of the questions had been set but was awaiting “review by the city attorney.”
Dunn said that upon his authority as city manager none of the members of the city council were being given prior access to the polling questions because he did not want any advance disclosure of the questions that would skew the survey results.  He said he was not going to comply with Bozar’s request to see the poll questions “because we don’t want the council to share them with anyone. We don’t want the question out in the public domain before the survey takes place.”
When the subject of the concern over the questions’ form and that they might contain language exhibiting a favorable disposition toward the proposed tax proposal was broached, Dunn abruptly ended the interview and did not clarify whether the 20/20 Network had any input with regard to the formulation of the survey questions. Nor did Dunn entertain questions about whether the survey was intended to provide a scientific analysis of voter attitude toward the proposed tax or, in the alternative, whether the survey had been designed as a “push poll.”
City attorney Kimberly Hall Barlow was unable to provide any clarification on the language to be used in the survey questions. While she said she was sensitive to the perception that the survey could be used to influence voters with regard to the contemplated tax proposal, she said it was within the purview of city management to withhold the questions to be asked and their precise wording from full public disclosure until the survey is completed.
Pressed about what the city would be driving toward in conducting the survey, Barlow said, “I think what the city council wants is an unbiased survey of its residents.” Barlow acknowledged, however, that members of the council had not been provided with the survey questions to make that determination for themselves.
Queried on whether the city could withstand a legal challenge by a resident or citizens seeking disclosure of the survey wording ahead of the survey being conducted, Barlow indicated the city would be able to do so.
Mayor Ray Musser told the Sentinel this week that it was his understanding the city manager and the firm doing the citizen polling are “not going to let us see them [i.e., the survey questions]. I’m not sure where I am on that.  I don’t want to at this point throw Steve Dunn under the bus. I think it would be wise that we at least know what they are. I guess he is afraid we will influence [the survey results] in some shape or form. I would like to know if it is normally the case that the city council in a city where a survey is being conducted doesn’t get to see the questions beforehand.”
Councilman Gino Filippi, who has given indirect indication that he supports the city sales tax concept, told the Sentinel “I am comfortable with the direction Stephen wants to go. I have not seen the questions but assume I would approve of them. This council has a tendency to micromanage and I don’t endorse that. I trust Stephen Dunn and I trust the level of professionalism of the firm he has selected to do the work. He is the hired executive and he hired a professional team to complete this. I am satisfied with that.”
Councilman Brendan Brandt told the Sentinel, “I think the our [the council’s] function is to direct policy and not micromanage every aspect of the city manager’s job and I have confidence  in Stephen Dunn that he will manage the polling in a fashion so that we get the data we need as a council to decide whether the sales tax issue should go on the ballot. At the end of the day the questions will come out and if they are deemed to be too biased, that will be part of the analysis of whether we have valid data. I don’t want to get into the drafting of the actual questions. I have taken no position as to whether we should put this issue out to a vote.”

(June 9)  Rod and Denise Pugh have purchased Best Lumber of Yucaipa  from former owner Margie Duval.
The new management of the business was commemorated in a a ribbon cutting with the Yucaipa Valley Chamber of Commerce on May 22.
Duval is to serve as a consultant to the Pughs, who currently reside in Rancho Cucamonga, during the next 12 to 18 months.
The first telling change to the store following the ownership transition is the introduction of a product line from Hawkeye Industrial Solutions.
Hours of operation at the store, located at 34789 Yucaipa Blvd., will remain 7:30 a.m. through 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and  from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday.

By Ruth Musser-Lopez
June 20, 2014  Believe it or not! As extraordinary as it may seem, our county is the home of a little known and apparently quite sturdy and long-lasting home construction technology that does not require metal or nails and surprisingly involves the use of a native arrowweed for the walls.  The technology is credited to our San Bernardino County local Native Americans, the Pipa Aha Macav (People of the River)—the Mojaves.  Reportedly, in 1910, it was adapted by Euro-Americans, the Tryon Family in Needles, who stretched the technology to the limits, creating a large, long standing, three-story framed, 22 room structure using what appears to be arrowweed rods or wattle for walls, located at the end of “Dead Dog Road” which eventually became one of the busiest intersections in town, River Road and K Street, a block from the bridge crossing over into Arizona.
In our county, along the lower Colorado River where it often forms dense impenetrable thickets, Pluchea sericea, commonly called arrowweed was used by the Mojave for rancheria type home construction long before the arrival of Euro-Americans in the 1700s.
Mojave winter homes were partly subterranean which allowed for natural insulation against the cold of winter.  The walls of the upper portion of the dwelling were built of the rhizomatous evergreen shrub, the arrowweed, harvested from the surrounding riparian shorelines and backflows of the Colorado River. Arrowweed, characteristically straight and strong, was commonly used in prehistoric times for arrow shafts and for thatching the roof of dwellings as well as for wattle or rod-shaped lath in the walls.
The colorfully dressed Mojave women in calico skirts, who sold bead necklaces, decorated clay dolls and vessels at the Needles train depot during the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s may have returned to traditional homes such as the “wattle and daub” dwelling shown at right made of arrowweed rod wall frames covered over with a clayish river mud and roofed with arrowweed thatch.  These homes were mainly occupied in the winter; partially subterranean, they were naturally insulated and easier to keep warm than the Euro-American Victorian style homes downtown Needles with all of their “gingerbread” trimmings.
The Tryon property has repeatedly changed hands over the years and recently in the past several months, the new owner Needles Mayor Edward Paget has sought information about the property and showed to me the photos of the house being constructed circa 1910 saying that the house is built of arrowweed.
Though tests were not available to prove that arrowweed is actually behind the green plaster walls in the Tryon structure, providing some evidence that arrowweed was used for the wall support framework, the diameter of the horizontal wall rod frame material roughly matches the diameter of the arrowweed used in the various wattle and daub structures shown in the images provided here as well as the diameter of the arrowweed being collected and carried by Mojave women in the historic photo image above.
In the 1970s, Gerald A. Smith of the San Bernardino County Museum worked with Fort Mojave tribal chairman Llewellyn Barrackman in providing an ethnographic documentation of the prehistoric past life ways of the Aha Macav.  He included in his publication, “The Mojaves” numerous photographs of “pole and mud” dwellings taken along the banks of the Colorado River that had been archived at the Museum of American Indian.   Smith called these structures “superior to those made by many of the other tribes of Southern California.”

Smith describes the winter house as this:  “They were rectangular in shape and covered with a sloping roof.  A shed-roofed structure projected from the front of the house to form a portico or covered porch.  Large cottonwood logs were used for the frame and for the horizontal beams of the houses.  Arrow weed was used for the roof thatch, and over this a covering of river mud was added.  Some of the houses were called mud and wattle houses because the walls made of logs and arrow weed, were filled solid with mud from the river sands.  The houses were constructed on sandy soil and were from twenty to thirty feet square.  The roof was very strong, and the Indians spent much time on top of the houses.  There were no windows, and, with the exception of the smoke hole, the door was the only opening.  Most of the fires for cooking were built outside of the houses.  The people spent most of their lives outdoors or in the shade of their ramadas.”
Having different dwellings for winter and summer was not uncommon for the Mojave since seasonal flooding of the Colorado River forced evacuation of the river bottom farm land.  For insulation and warmth, the winter house was made by excavating soil a few feet deep and building a cottonwood pole beam frame with arrowweed wattle and daub walls, and a roof of arrowweed thatch as Smith described above.
The Tryons large three story dwelling is also partially subterranean but apparently they did not take a lesson from the Mojaves and instead built a winter style home on the Colorado River floodplain.  According to a 1981 account published in the Needles Desert Star, when the Medleys owned the property during the period of 1947 through 1951 it was reported that the basement was often unusable due to frequent flooding.  Davis Dam was completed in 1951 creating Lake Mohave and channeling the Colorado River through the Mohave Valley at the east perimeter of Needles, thus controlling the river flow and for the most part eliminating floods.
Smith asserts that several families, ten to thirty individuals, could live together in an arrowweed winter house.  If someone died during the winter in the house, it might be burned down along with the individual’s personal property.  In the summer, people moved to be close to their farm lands on the river bottom where crude sheds were erected to provide protection from the sun while tending the crops.
The “pole and mud” or “wattle and daub” technology using arrowweed was still alive and well at the turn of the 20th century when the “Denair Subdivision” was laid out in Needles where the Tryons purchased their property.
According to the Needles Desert Star account (1981), “The House at the end of Dead Dog Road” was constructed by Claude and Anna Tryon after they purchased a quarter acre in the subdivision from John Warren in 1910.  It took 4 years to complete what was to become “The Desert’s Largest House” with a reported 3,600 square feet and “a total of 22 rooms, including 4 bathrooms, 2 kitchens, 5 bedrooms and 67 windows.”
“The Tryon Family remained the owners until 1947” the account went on to say.  “It was between 1914 and 1947 that the house acquired its notable reputation as a brothel, a gambling room, a speak-easy, and a haunted house.” (We’ll save the details of the haunt for the Halloween edition of the Glimpse).
It is interesting to note that the period of time that the Tryon family owned the home co-occurred with a rather reckless period in the wild west.  The gold mines at Oatman were performing at full blast and Needles was, at the time, a hub of gold mining activity servicing Oatman and was also the center of transportation across the desert and up and down the river.  During the prohibition and the “roaring 20s” Needles became what could be called  “bootlegging central” as well, with whiskey stills and hide outs at surrounding springs.   Evidence of an underground tunnel, now collapsed, has been reported which obscure thoroughfare is said to have once connected the Tryon basement with the business district around the railroad depot and is said to have been used to make unnoticed approaches and quick escapes to and from a reported brothel and whiskey supply.  After World War II, the Tryons apparently moved on, reportedly selling the house and property to the Medley Family.  The property changed hands numerous time over the years that followed.
It is unknown exactly when the plaster was applied to the arrowweed wattle—but sometime before 1963 when a new owner painted it and installed a tin roof.    The structure has had a coat of green paint at least since 1980 when I moved to Needles and it has over the years become locally referred to as “The Big Green House.”
In the early 1980s there was an attempt to commercialize it, and a new owner turned the first floor into a clothing apparel shop, “Clouds of Clothes,” with plans to open a bar and restaurant later.  New windows, floors and woodwork were to have been installed, but the enterprise was short lived.  During the 1980s, new markets were booming on the Arizona side of the river where sales tax isn’t as high, thus out competing markets on the California side.   That pattern has continued even into the present day.
The “Big Green House” property, a block away from historic Route 66, continued to change hands with the latest transaction being a sale by Anthony “Tony” Frazier, a Needles city council member, to the new proud owner, Mayor of Needles, Dr. Edward “Ed” Paget and his wife Jan.  Believe it or not, it may be safe to say that the beloved doctor-mayor, who has been actively looking to develop roadside attractions in Needles along Route 66, now owns what may become the biggest tourist attraction in Needles of all:  “The arrowweed ghost brothel and secret tunnel.”