By Ruth Musser-Lopez
6-13-14.  Some were fortunate enough to be able to attend our county’s sentinel cultural event of the year–the San Bernardino County Fair–held May 24 through June 1 at the fairgrounds, 14800 Seventh Street in Victorville.   It’s a temporary one-week “affair” so if you missed it, make sure you mark your calendar for next year.  It’s an annual event–a time when our friends and neighbors gather together to display or trade produce or other goods, to parade or display animals and enjoy the associated carnival or fun zone entertainment.
Our fair is actually an extraordinary event, first of all because it is all about us, here in the largest county of the lower 48 contiguous states.  It’s not just clowns, concerts and cars, but a huge variety of our local arts and crafts, showing off the array of products from our gardens, farms, vineyards and orchards, plus a large assortment of poultry, farm animals, livestock and show horses.
The word fair comes from the archaic term fayre, “of pleasing appearance” and it is things that are pleasing in appearance that you will see here, no matter what age you are.  As a matter of fact, as you probably have already learned, what is fun and pleasing changes over the years of a human’s life span.
For example, I can recall when I was a girl in the 1950s, being escorted along with my mother and siblings to both the L. A. County and San Bernardino County fairs by my Dad.  We had to first be promenaded by the livestock pens, see all the pigs, horses and cows before being allowed to spend a dime at the fun zone.  The anticipation was sometimes unbearable and obviously our minds were not on cows and pigs which we saw every day at the dairy.  It was understandable on the part of my dad, of course, however since he was chief herdsman at the Musser family’s Shady Grove Dairy then on 7th Street between Upland and Ontario.   Seeing the competition was a first priority and he would often look for potential new purchases to improve the herd stock.
When we were young we were taught to be thrifty and learn to do for ourselves or Shady Grove.  My dad, Alvin Musser, or Shady Grove Dairy,  would often donate calves to the 4H Club for the purpose of providing an opportunity for young members to learn “the ropes,” raise them, groom them and feed them.  He would then buy the heifers, back at the SBC fair auction.   The young people would compete for highest auction price and then were awarded for best in show.   Not only was this a learning experience for the young people, it also helped raise funds for the 4H Club and was good publicity for the local dairy business to boot.  It was a win-win situation all around.
My Dad, bless his heart, also set us up in our own business….we politely called it the “manure bagging business.” It was actually a business that he thought up for my brothers—selling bags of steer fertilizer at the “cash & carry” corner store, the Shady Grove Dairy market on 7th and Grove just a block from the dairy in the late 50s, early 60s.  My brothers would sell a bag for 25 cents but paid me a nickel for every bag I filled.  That’s what you call “pecking order.”  Later, they replaced me with a bagging machine.  That is what you call “progress.”  With pecking order and progress working against you, “ya’ jes’ gotta move on.”
Oh, but I must first tell you about the new equipment by brothers were so excited about.  It was an entire operation complete with all of the latest technology:  a conveyor belt to carry up the “dried material” to the grinder, which would release the pulverized product into the bagger when a lever was pulled.  When I bagged we were using a stapler, but with the new operation–there was a hand held zip “sewer.”  The boys were really in business then with a professional looking product all neatly sewed up at the top.
Well, back to the fair.  Its funny how people change, as they get older.  Just like my Dad, I am an animal lover and now enjoy the animal exhibit more than anything else at the fair.  I don’t particularly enjoy seeing birds or animals in cages and small pens temporarily while they are on exhibit, but I do like seeing the animals treated as pets, being cared for and respected while the young people are learning animal husbandry and what it takes to run a business, the costs and work involved.   The animal section for sheep, cattle, and pigs is still a really big deal at the San Bernardino County Fair even today.   There are strict rules including 120, 90 and 30-day weigh ins, tagging and ownership deadlines for livestock entries.   “Most of the entrants are 4H and Future Farmers of America (FFA) with the animals being judged when the fair isn’t even open, and of course Barstow Country Butchery does 40-60% of his yearly business after the animals are sold” a fairgoer informed me.
Thank goodness for liberation and change–“back in the day” in the fifties and sixties, in our public schools, female students were still ushered into domestics, home economics, sewing and cooking and male students filed into wood shop and mechanics.  The 4-H Club on the other hand was always pretty good about allowing young people to pursue the path of their desired training. I recall my first cousin Bernice, who I am very proud to be closely related to, being awarded with her picture in the paper with the cow she raised.  Who would have ever guessed that she would eventually go on to become the “Quilt Queen” of Upland, auctioning off quilts mid May every year at the historic Upland Academy gym to benefit the needy as part of the Mennonite World Hunger Relief project.
Speaking of quilts, the San Bernardino County fair is a great place to show off domestic products of all kinds and a good place to look for quilt donations for next year’s World Hunger Relief auction.  I understand that the entire Building #4 where the Domestic Arts are displayed is filled with quilts hanging from the 30-foot ceiling.
Linda DeLuca-Snively, of Newberry Springs, tells me that she went to the fair twice before she found that building, after which she decided to enter into the fair herself.
“It’s really fun to attend and see your items on display” she told me.  I guess so—she won!  First Place in Peach Preserves, Second Place in Cherry Preserves, Third Place in Prickly Pear Jelly, Honorable Mention in Pineapple/Peach Jelly.  She also won “Best of Division” in the ceramics section plus two 1st places, three 2nd places, two 3rd places and one honorable mention.   For joy!  Bradley YardArt of Arizona gave her one of his art pieces, a clay turtle from his garden display that he sets up each year, and she received $32.00 in award money, plus two $20 gift certificates from an Italian Restaurant in Hesperia “only 65 miles one way” she said, “but what the heck.”
Its pretty amazing, too, to see the wonderful produce that comes out of San Bernardino County from the Inland Empire to the High Desert to the Colorado River – the corn from Chino, the citrus from Upland to Redlands, the grapes from Rancho Cucamonga and Guasti, the pistachio nut crop from Newberry and all of the alfalfa, cotton and okra being grown north of Needles on the Mojave Indian Tribe’s farm. Sometimes you will see exotic fruit or giant zucchini, watermelon or pumpkins that were grown in someone’s back yard.
I don’t know how much of all this is being displayed at the fair this year, but it should be and I plan to look for it next year—especially a display of the organic crops being grown right smack in the middle of the desert with just a little water brought to the surface there at Cadiz just south of the southern most point of Route 66 between Barstow and Needles–incredible amounts of citrus and grapes by the tons.  These crops add to our San Bernardino County economy and tax base while the transfer of fifty thousand acre feet of water a year as the Cadiz Corporation proposes, for use outside of our county on the Orange County coast, only acts to transfer jobs, resources and growth elsewhere, not to mention the strong potential of the downdraft causing subsidence and further drying and warming of our desert.
I missed the fair this year, committed to an archaeological “dig” out in the Mojave Desert that had long before been scheduled for the same week.  I am not trying to make an excuse, but the work was important–the prehistoric site had been looted and destroyed by pothunters in 1997 through 2001.   The looters were first caught up with in Death Valley, arrested, served time and fined about $345,000.  You can read about it by looking up “Operation Indian Rocks” on the internet.
I was part of a team of archaeologists who were following up on the damage assessment and strategy to mitigate or repair the damage done by the looters at two particular archaeological sites evidenced to be well over 2000 years old.  Measures had been implemented around 2004 by a damage assessment team, to restore the site to “normal” appearance.  In the restoration work, bails of straw had been placed in the huge pits dug by the looters and then covered with the vandals’ “back fill” (also described as the piles of cultural soil the looters had removed from the holes while looking for relics).
Our assignment was to determine if this restoration measure worked—but ten years later the straw had been scattered all about by the wind and rodents.  It was obviously a failed mitigation attempt.  The site looked like a nativity scene manger–all we needed was a baby Jesus.  We had to scrape up and sift the straw mixed with the looters backfill to check for any remaining clues of the prehistoric past.  We then set about installing a barrier fill of block tile between what undisturbed deposit was left and the holy mess the looters had made.  It was not an easy task to remove the straw from the soil mix.  On further thought, if only we had one or two of those lowing fair cows and perhaps a goat to eat all the straw that had scattered about, it would have saved us a lot of work.

Copyright 2014 Ruth Musser-Lopez All rights reserved.

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Sentinel 06-13-14

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Sentinel 06-06-14

(June 3)  San Bernardino County appears set on a course to become the last of Southern California’s counties to implement the provisions of Proposition 90, which will allow elderly and disabled homeowners from outside of San Bernardino County to locate within its confines and transfer the state of California’s Proposition 13 property tax protection to their new property.
Proposition 13, which was officially named the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation, was an amendment of the Constitution of California enacted as part of the statewide voter approval process in 1978. It survived a challenge on constitutional grounds, and was declared fully enforceable by the United States Supreme Court.
The proposition decreased property taxes by assessing property values at their 1975 value and restricted annual increases of assessed value of real property to an inflation factor, not to exceed 2 percent per year. It also prohibited reassessment of a new base year value except in cases of (a) change in ownership, or (b) completion of new construction.
In addition to decreasing property taxes, the initiative also contained language requiring a two-thirds majority in both legislative houses for future increases of any state tax rates or amounts of revenue collected, including income tax rates. It also requires a two-thirds vote majority in local elections for local governments wishing to increase special taxes.
Proposition 13, however, did not lock in the tax advantage to the homeowners but to the property. Those who purchased homes after 1978 did not enjoy the full benefits of Proposition 13.
Subsequently, voters passed propositions 60 in 1986 and 90 in 1988. Proposition 60 allowed homeowners who had Proposition 13 protection to sell their home and purchase another within the same county and transfer the Proposition 13 protection to the newly purchased home. Proposition 90 allowed homeowners to purchase a home outside of the county where the home with Proposition 13 protection was located and transfer the Proposition 13 protection there.
Both propositions 60 and 90 required that individual counties implement their provisions for them to be applied in each prospective county.
San Bernardino County implemented Proposition 60 but it remains as the last major Southern California county to not have an ordinance implementing Proposition 90.
Last month the board of supervisors directed the county administrative office, with the assistance of county counsel, to prepare a report describing the process of implementing Proposition 90 tax benefits in San Bernardino County and analyzing the impact on the county and other governmental entities.
On the basis of that report, it is anticipated county counsel will ready an ordinance initiating the applicability of Proposition 90 in San Bernardino County by summer’s end.

(June 4)  All of San Bernardino County’s incumbent politicians competing in Tuesday’s primary prevailed, either winning reelection outright or qualifying for a run-off in November.
In all of the other races involving competition for open seats on the ballot, the best funded candidates consistently won, with few exceptions.
Results available mid-week included tallies from mailed-in ballots and Tuesday’s polling but were unofficial as countywide some  28,080 mail ballots received Tuesday at polling places and 4,513 damaged ballots requiring duplication still had not been counted as of early Thursday.
In the county district attorney’s race, three term incumbent Mike Ramos turned back a challenge by one of his deputy prosecutors, Grover Merritt.  Of the 116,467 votes cast, Ramos captured 71,553 or 61.44 percent. Merritt garnered 44,914 votes, or 38.56 percent.
Sheriff John McMahon, who was appointed to that position in 2012 following the resignation of former sheriff Rod Hoops, received 72,889 of the 116,432  votes cast, or 62.6 percent. Paul Schrader, who works for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, picked up 25,830 votes or 22.18 percent. Cliff Harris, a former deputy sheriff in both San Bernardino and Riverside counties who now publishes a newspaper, received 17,713 votes or 15.21 percent.
County Treasurer/Tax Collector Larry Walker, who has held that post for five years since it was merged with the position of auditor-controller and has served in the capacity of auditor-controller since 1998, defeated Ensen Mason in the race for all four posts. Walker polled 86,189 of the 115,452 votes cast, or 74.65percent. Mason claimed 29,263 votes, or      25.35 percent.
The other county government incumbent in the race, Second District Supervisor Janice Rutherford, cruised to an easy victory over her opponent, retired sheriff’s department scientific division forensic technician Randolph Beasley, gathering 16,633 or 67.86 percent of the 24,510 votes cast. Beasley claimed 7,877 votes, or 32.14 percent.
Incumbent 8th Congressional District U.S. Representative Paul Cook, a Republican, comfortably outdistanced his three challengers, fellow Republican Paul Hannosh and Democrats Bob Conaway and Odessia Lee.
Cook received 29,269 votes or 59.03 percent to Conaway’s 8,952 votes, or 18.05 percent, Hannosh’s 6,396 votes or 12.9 percent and Lee’s 4,969 votes or 10.02 percent.
In the 47th Assembly District, incumbent Democrat Cheryl Brown overwhelmed challenger Gil Navarro, pocketing  9,953    votes or 68.25 percent to Navarro’s 4,630 votes or 31.75 percent    14,583    votes were cast in that race.
In the 52nd Assembly District race, incumbent Democrat Freddie Rodriguez with 5,662 votes, edged Republican Dorothy Pineda with 5,218 votes, 52.04 percent to 47.96 percent. Despite their second place finishes, Pineda and Navarro qualify for the November runoff.
The incumbents in three of the county government posts up for election this year chose not to seek reelection – county assessor Dennis Draeger, county superintendent of schools Gary  Thomas and Fourth District Supervisor Gary Ovitt.
Draeger endorsed his second-in-command, Dan Harp, who put on a spirited and well-mannered campaign against former State Senator Bob Dutton. Dutton, who likewise conducted an intense but gentlemanly campaign, narrowly won with 58,102 votes, or 50.14 percent of the 115,868 cast to Harp’s  57,766 or 49.86 percent.
In the race for county schools superintendent, Ted Alejandre, who was promoted to vice superintendent last year by Thomas as a ploy to increase his electability, gained the position by pulling 60,585 or 55.01 percent of the 100,144 votes cast, and dousing the electoral hopes of Rita Ramirez Dean, whose candidacy was endorsed by 32,721 or 29.71 percent of the voters, and Frank Garza, who managed to land 16,838 votes or 15.29 percent.
In the election for Fourth District Supervisor, two well-known and well-financed candidates, Congresswoman Gloria Negrete-McLeod, a Democrat, and State Assemblyman Curt Hagman, who is also chairman of the county Republican Central Committee, are seeking to replace Ovitt. Two others, Democrat Paul Vincent Avila, an Ontario city councilman, and Republican James Na, a Chino Valley Unified School District board member, also ran.  The race proved a tight one between Negrete-McLeod and Hagman, with Negrete McLeod capturing 7,796 votes or 42.99 percent and Hagman hauling down 7,276 votes or 40.12 percent. Avila boasted the support of 1,370 or 7.55 percent. Na, who withdrew from the race early and did not campaign but remained on the ballot, drew 1,694    votes or 9.34 percent.
In the 31st Congressional District race, which was thrown wide open when incumbent Republican Gary Miller elected not to seek reelection earlier this year, anti-drug crusader Paul Chabot, a Republican launched himself well ahead of the pack, which was composed of two other Republicans and four Democrats. Democrats actually have a seven percent registered voter advantage over the Republicans in the 31st. Chabot’s 11,329 votes, or 26.79 percent, placed him well in front of the second place finisher, Pete Aguilar, the Democratic mayor of Redlands, who claimed 17.42 percent of the vote, or 7,368. Aguilar only slightly edged Lesli Gooch, one of Miller’s Congressional office staffers. Gooch had 16.5 percent of the vote, i.e., 6,978 votes. The other Republican in the race, Ryan Downing, had the weakest showing, copping 1,421     or votes or 3.36 percent. The three other Democrats, Eloise Gomez Reyes, Joe Baca and Danny Tillman, polled 6,746 votes or 15.95 percent,  4,799 votes or 11.35 percent and 3,648 votes or 8.63 percent, respectively.
Despite his relatively strong showing in the primary, Chabot yet faces an uphill battle in defeating the well financed Aguilar in November, given the district’s favorable lean toward the Democratic Party registration-wise. Overall totals this week showed the Democrat candidates in the 31st District outpolling the Republicans 53.15 percent to 46.85 percent.
In San Bernardino County’s Assembly District 33, one Democrat faced off against nine Republicans. The Democrat, John Coffey, led all of the others with 7,988 of the 33,694 votes cast, or 23.71 percent. But Coffee will yet need to face the second place finisher, big Bear Mayor Jay Obernolte in November. Obernolte with 6,295 votes or 18.68 percent, edged out Michelle Ambrozic, who took third place with 5,755 votes or 17.08 percent. Given the number of ballots yet to be counted, Ambrozic at press time had not conceded defeat.  Others in the race were Rick Roelle with 5,235 votes or    15.54 percent; Bob Buhrle with 651 votes or 1.93 percent;  Art Bishop with 4,674 votes or 13.87 percent; Scott Markovich with 782 votes or 2.32 percent; Brett Savage with 1,427 votes or 4.24 percent; Robert Larivee, with 222 votes or 0.66 percent and Jerry Laws, with 665 votes or 1.97 percent.
In the 40th Assembly District, which is very nearly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats in terms of numbers of registered voters, Rancho Cucamonga Councilman Marc Steinorth, the only Republican on the ballot, captured first place with 16,328 votes, or 53.73 percent. He will face San Bernardino Community College Board Member Kathleen Henry in November. She captured 5,197 votes or 17.1 percent. Melissa O’Donnell carried 4,739 votes or 15.6 percent, and Arthur Bustamonte gleaned 4,123 votes or 13.57 percent.
In the 42nd Assembly District, Republican Chad Mayes, the former Yucca Valley mayor, pulled in 5,156 votes or 48.78 percent to Democrat and Morongo Valley School Board Member  Karalee Hargrove’s 3,208 votes or 30.35 percent. Another Republican, Gary Jeandron, gobbled up 2,206 votes or 20.87 percent.
In the 20th State Senate District race, Republican Matthew Munson outpolled his four Democratic competitors with 9,415 votes or 33.53 percent. Those four Democrats, however, captured 66.47 percent of the vote, presaging a difficult race for Munson in November, when he must face second place finisher Connie Leyva, who received 5,431 votes or 19.34 percent, which put her above Shannon O’Brien, with 4,913 votes or 17.5 percent, Alfonzo Sanchez, with 4,893 votes or 17.42 percent and Sylvia Robles, with 3,430 or  12.21.
Recently elected State Senator Norma Torres was the top vote-getter to replace Gloria Negrete-McLeod as Congresswoman in the 35th Congressional District. Torres, a Democrat, trounced the others, all of whom are Democrats, with 10,614 votes, or 65.68 percent. Anthony Vieyra had 1,303 votes or 8.06 percent. Scott Heydenfeldt captured 1,617 votes or 10.01 percent. Christina Gagnier attracted 2,627 votes or 16.26. There will be a run-off between Torres and Gagnier in November.
In State Senate 16, which covers a portion of San Bernardino County’s desert region and extends into Inyo and Kern counties, Jean Fuller, a Republican, ran unopposed and polled  8,262 votes in San Bernardino County.  Prior to that race, however, Ruth Musser-Lopez. a columnist for the Sentinel,  qualified herself as a write-in candidate, and with the 38 votes she received she has now qualified to compete in the November run-off against Fuller.

(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.