(August 2) If the much-delayed preliminary hearing for Dr. Stephen Kinzey goes on as scheduled next week, the public is likely to get a glimpse of several sophisticated and here-to-now sensitive and/or secret methods of investigation now being utilized against suspected and actual domestic narcotic rings.
Kinzey, a tenured professor of kinesiology at Cal State San Bernardino, garnered national and international attention when he was indicted along with ten others and charged with being the kingpin in a methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution network. Kinzey’s circumstance invited comparisons to the Sony Pictures Television production Breaking Bad telecast on AMC, a fictional depiction of a struggling high school chemistry teacher who with the aid of a former student produces and sells methamphetamine.
In relatively short order, seven of those charged with Kinzey pleaded guilty to elements of the criminal case brought against them. Less than two months ago, another of those charged entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to commit a crime.
Kinzey and the two other defendants remaining in the case, Holly Vandergrift Robinson and Jeremy Disney, had been present in court on June 20 for their combined preliminary hearing, which was postponed to August 6 by Judge Kenneth Barr when it was learned that defense co-counsel Stephen Sweigert had been involved in a car accident.
Kinzey, now 47, was charged with drug dealing, running a street gang and possessing illegal firearms. Robinson, his girlfriend and a former Cal State San Bernardino student, is accused of helping him run a handful of meth dealers in what law enforcement officials saw as a small-time operation that was on the verge of expanding.
Kinzey, a
PH.D
in kinesiology, obtained his doctorate from the University of Toledo, and previously earned his masters at Indiana State and his bachelor’s at Wayne State. He began teaching at the University of Mississippi in 1995 and transferred into the California State University system in 2001 and eventually became the chairman of the San Bernardino campus’s kinesiology department’s curriculum committee. Kinzey was considered a serious academic who had performed research into ergonomics and the health effects of videogame playing on children. He also had an interest, bordering on an obsession, with motorcycling and motorcycle clubs. A Harley-Davidson owner, Kinzey joined a local chapter of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club while he was a professor in Mississippi in 1997.
Subsequently, after coming to California, Kinzey intensified his biker club associations. It is unknown whether Kinzey landing in San Bernardino County, the birthplace of three of what are referred to as outlaw biker gangs – the Hells Angels, the Vagos and the Devils Diciples – was calculation or coincidence.
After his relocation from Mississippi, Kinzey started two local motorcycle clubs in Southern California while he was teaching at San Bernardino State. Curiously, his status with each of the clubs he founded eroded and it he founded eroded and it appears he was invited to leave or was forced out of both.
In time, Kinzey moved on to form a new chapter of the Devils Diciples, a biker gang that originated in Fontana in 1967 but which now has its national headquarters in Detroit. Kinzey formed a San Bernardino Mountain chapter of the club and until his arrest was actively promoting the affiliation, selling Devil’s Diciples shirts, helmets and rider paraphernalia from a website.
Prosecutors have suggested a nexus between Kinzey’s alleged drug manufacturing activity and his ties with the Devil’s Diciples and possibly other motor cycle enthusiasts. Those suggestions have been vague, though, and little in the way of concrete information with regard to those associations has motorbeen provided.
Unanswered questions, at this point, run to whether the alleged drug ring Kinzey headed had a connection to a wider network paralleling the national structure of the Devil’s Diciples or if the conspiracy prosecutors say Kinzey headed was endemic to a handful of small scale local operators and users.
A preliminary hearing, also known as an evidentiary hearing, is a proceeding that takes place after a criminal complaint has been filed by the prosecution in which the judge hearing the matter is to make a determination whether there is enough evidence to warrant having the matter proceed to trial. While sufficient evidence to convict need not be demonstrated, enough evidence to satisfy the judge that there is probable cause to conclude that a crime was committed and those charged are responsible must be aired in open court. All evidence and witnesses brought forth are subject to examination by counsel for the defense, making it likely that more than a cursory vetting of the evidence will occur and that prosecutors, to some degree, will be locked in on the case they will need to present to a jury.
What is known is that the Kinzey ring was the focus of a joint task force that involved the FBI, the San Bernardino Police Department and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deparment. There is at present some mystery as to how the investigation into the Kinzey ring evolved, that is, whether investigators worked the case from the top down or ground up. A ground up investigation would have involved local investigators coming across indications of drug activity, potentially drug dealing at the street level, and tracing that activity up the ladder ultimately reaching Kinzey. A top down investigation would have entailed an investigation that began with Kinzey as the target, most likely based upon his Devil’s Diciples affiliation.
Federal authorities and other law enforcement agencies have been striving, for some time, to make drug trafficking cases against the Devil’s Diciples. Federal Prosecutors in 2009 charged the club’s national president, Jeff Garvin “Fat Dog” Smith and 17 other Diciples members with drug trafficking, but then dropped the case six months later. In July 2012, 41 members and associates of the Devils Diciples, including Fat Dog Smith and national vice president Paul Anthony Darrah, were indicted on a variety of criminal charges, including racketeering, drug trafficking, illegal firearms offenses, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling, and other federal offenses. Eighteen of the defendants, including Smith and Darrah, were charged with violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Kinzey was the target of an investigation that involved intense surveillance which tracked his movements and saw his communications, both telephonic and via the internet, closely monitored.
As the president of the local chapter of the Devil’s Diciples, Kinzey administered a website that was utilized to promote the club. In his representation of the group, Kinzey was known by the moniker “Skinz.” Undercover agents analyzed the postings to and from the website Kinzey controlled and took particular interest in purchases made, ostensibly for Devil’s Diciples t-shirts and other regalia, utilizing the website or e-Bay, with law enforcement officials seeking to determine if the sales masked or signaled drug buys or pick-ups.
Agents also shadowed Kinzey during his occasional meetings with Devil’s Diciples members when those confabs took place in public, including ones that took place at Chad’s Place, a bar in Big Bear frequented by bikers of all stripes.
Investigators obtained warrants to listen in to conversations or overlook text messages involving the rings members. Several of those communications piqued officers’ attention, giving them leads on his suspected network of drug distributors. For example, one text message sent to a suspected distributer read: “Bring whatever cabbage u got for my soup cuz ingredients are low.”
Despite the net of surveillance that had been stretched around Kinzey toward the end of the investigation, he eluded it when the task force made its move and served arrest and search warrants on the accused and their places of residence. When police descended on Kinzey’s upscale East Highlands Ranch home, they nabbed his live-in girlfriend, Robinson, and found a pound of methampetamine, loaded handguns and rifles and Kinzey’s biker leathers, but Kinzey was not there and he did not return. Instead, after an all points bulletin went out for his arrest in which it was reported that he was to be considered armed and dangerous, Kinzey days later came forward with his lawyer and $300,000 in bond money, which was posted without him being booked, photographed or fingerprinted. It was not until he turned up for his arraignment where he pleaded not guilty that he was subjected to the formalities of arrest, and then was immediately set loose.
Of peripheral interest is just how far beyond the confines of the motorcycle club and the circle of eleven people indicted the drug manufacturing and distribution activity extended. One indication was that Kinzey was not the “cook,” i.e., the chemist who manufactured the drugs, but rather the first link in the chain between the lab and the eventual end users who bought it at the street level. At least for a time, investigators were intent on determining the relationship between Kinsey and Denver Cooley, the owner of Monumental Bronze & Granite in San Bernardino and also the pastor of the Roadhouse Biker Church in San Bernardino. It is not known whether the investigation into Kinzey and the ten others indicted with him turned up any evidence to confirm investigators’ theories that the Roadhouse Biker Church was being used as a front in illicit activity by the Devil’s Diciples and other motorcycle clubs.
If the preliminary hearing indeed gets under way by August 6 as is scheduled at press time, in the docket with Kinzey will be Robinson and Jeremy Disney, who have consistently maintained their innocence. The eight others originally indicted with them have all agreed to turn state’s evidence.
Wendi Lee Witherell pleaded guilty September 2011 to reduced charges.
Elaine Linda Flores, Stephanie Danielle Padilla, Chelsea Marie Johnson, and Eric Cortez all pleaded guilty in October 2011 to reduced charges.
Edward Freer and Christopher Allen Rikerd pleaded guilty to reduced charges in November 2011.
Hans Robert Preszler pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit a crime in June 2013.

(August 2) In Rancho Cucamonga, the fire department has become a symbol of prestige and pride that distinguishes it from most of its counterparts within San Bernardino County.
Currently, three of Rancho Cucamonga’s city council members – Mayor Dennis Michael and councilmen Sam Spagnola and Bill Alexander – are retired firefighters, partially accounting for the elevated status the fire department has in the community.
There are even more historic factors that explain the reverence accorded the fire department.
Fifty-seven years before the incorporation of Rancho Cucamonga, the community of Alta Loma in 1920 bought its first fire engine. The Cucamonga Fire Department formed in 1948. The Alta Loma and Cucamonga fire departments merged in 1975 to become the Foothill Fire District.
When the communities of Alta Loma, Cucamonga and Etiwanda combined to form the city of Rancho Cucamonga in 1977, the Foothill Fire District remained independent, with its own governing board. Twelve years later, the fire district became a subsidiary component of the city, named the Rancho Cucamonga Fire Protection District, with the city council supplanting the fire board. The fire district now functions as part of the city government, but is a separate legal and fiscal entity.
This year, Rancho Cucamonga boasts a $65,240,470 general fund budget, which covers all order of municipal operations except for its library and fire department. On a ledger separate from its general fund, Rancho Cucamonga has budgeted $28,449,220 for fire department operations in fiscal 2013-14.
Only one other city in San Bernardino County – Ontario, which has responsibility for fire suppression at Los Angeles-owned Ontario International Airport – has a larger annual budget for its fire department, at $39.7 million.
In the county seat of San Bernardino, where the fire department has a proud and storied history of ensuring public safety, morale in the fire department and the city generally has plummeted in the wake of years of municipal fiscal mismanagement that culminated in the city’s bankruptcy filing last year and the subsequent departures of the fire chief and his assistant chief who replaced him for a duration that was marked by unrest within a division that was called upon to severely curtail operations and expenses.
Conversely, in Rancho Cucamonga, with its population of 165,000 fire protection and emergency medical response provided by the Rancho Cucamonga Fire Protection District remains as the sine qua non of municipal services and the amount of money appropriated to the district by the city this year is more than the general funds of 11 of the county’s 24 cities.
The Rancho Cucamonga Fire Protection District employs more than 120 full- and part-time personnel preventing fires, fighting fires, rescuing victims, making emergency medical response and responding to hazardous material situations, including handling and disposing of such substances before a situation involving them becomes critical.
In addition to its standard firefighting corps functioning out of the department’s 7 fire stations covering the city’s 49 square miles, the department employs a team of firefighters specializing in wildland fire protection, given the city’s proximity to Day and Cucamonga canyons and the foothills below Cucamonga Peak, which is part of the Angeles National Forest. The department’s personnel work closely with the Rancho Cucamonga Fire Safe Council and homeowners to improve the defensible space around residences in order to give firefighters a chance to save such properties when in danger of wildfire. In addition, as part of the department’s emergency preparedness and response program, evacuation and travel routes in the event of a wildland fire emergency have been developed. This plan was practiced during a recent countywide preparedness exercise focusing on a wildland fire scenario.
The district has taken great pains to refine its state-of-the-art emergency medical service/paramedic program.
Each frontline Rancho Cucamonga Fire District response unit is staffed and equipped to provide advanced life support services in response to a variety of illnesses and injuries. Firefighters cross-trained as certified paramedics are responsible for patient assessment, contact with local hospitals and advanced treatment that includes the administration of controlled drugs. Department units carry defibrillators.
The Rancho Cucamonga Fire District’s technical rescue team is capable of making immediate response to calls requiring highly specialized rescue skills. The team is certified as a heavy level rescue team and was the first such team certified in San Bernardino County. Additionally, the tech rescue team is part of the California Emergency Management Agency, which allows for the team to be activated throughout the state if needed. The team is trained and equipped for confined space rescues, trench collapse rescue, building collapse and shoring response, swift water rescue, high angle rope rescue and large animal rescue.
The department’s hazardous materials team employs trained specialists supported by certified operational first responders. The Haz Mat Team responds out of Fire Station 173 in the city’s Day Creek area to incidents reported to involve potentially dangerous spills or releases of various hazardous materials.
The Haz-Mat/Fire Team participates in a joint powers authority with four other surrounding agencies including cooperative assistance from the Ontario International Airport Fire Department. This joint powers authority offers additional staffing or equipment as needed in the event of an incident. Rancho Cucamonga has also employed a small quantity conditionally exempt generator (SQCEG) program through San Bernardino County. The SQCEG program allows the fire district to mitigate small spills without delay, in so doing providing fast response so the businesses experience less down time and reduced clean-up costs.

CHINO HILLS –Foreclosure proceedings have begun on the home that was being used as an illicit maternity hotel in an upscale neighborhood here last year until adverse publicity and legal action by the city forced its closure.
What was originally a seven bedroom and six-and-a-half bathroom 7,964-square-foot home at 15250 Woodglen Drive owned by Hai Yong Wu had been converted into a 17-bedroom maternity hotel operation at which wealthy pregnant women from China would stay during the final stages of their pregnancies and would then give birth at local hospitals so that, under the 14th Amendment, their children could claim U.S. citizenship.
In September 2012 the home’s septic system became overloaded, resulting in a sewage spill, leading to the activity at the home becoming publicly known. There ensued a local protest targeting Wu and his business partner, Yi Wang, and complaints to the city and the sheriff’s department.
In November, Chino Hills officials obtained a court order allowing them to carry out an inspection of the premises, during which they discovered the non-permitted alterations to the home’s configuration, the addition of ten toilets and evidence that as many as 30 women were being housed there at one time. Numerous city code violations were noted and a public nuisance complaint was filed December 7.
A request for a temporary restraining order was filed by the city against Wu and Wang on December 27 in West Valley Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga.
Wu and Wang, represented by attorney Stephen Shepard, initially moved to resist the enforcement action but eventually complied, such that maternity hosting activity at the home ended. At the end of January, Wang was dismissed as a party in the enforcement action, and in February Wu, represented by Shepard, entered into a “stipulated judgment” whereby nine of the building code violations were acknowledged and a correction plan was put into place. Under the terms of that agreement, which was confirmed as a court-ordered settlement issued by West Valley Superior Court Judge Keith Davis on February 11, Wu was required to remedy sewer line discharge violations, cover exposed electrical wires on the premises, outfit the single entrance bedrooms with emergency exits, provide ventilation, correct illegal construction of add-on rooms in the house, install smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and alarms, and ensure clearance of flammable materials.
On March 11, Wu, in an apparent attempt to get out from beneath the burden of the situation, had the home listed for sale with an asking price of $3.3 million. Despite the listing, the home has a more realistic appraised value of less than half that, at $1.6 million. The listing does not appear to have attracted any serious buyers and on May 31 it was taken off the market.
Despite the stipulated judgment, there is no indication that Wu has undertaken any of the improvements needed to bring the property up to code. No permits to undertake the agreed-upon changes to the structure have been pulled at City Hall.
Less than three weeks after the listing was discontinued, Wu was hit with a foreclosure notice. Title is further clouded by the city’s recording of documents requiring that the home cannot be cleared as a habitable structure until the inspectors sign off on the improvements referenced in the stipulated judgment.
The trustee sale will take place at 11:30 a.m. on August 16 at the Chino Public Library in the Chino City Hall complex.

(August 2) UPLAND –Belatedly, the Upland City Council will review and likely pass the city’s 2013-14 fiscal year budget on August 12.
This week the Upland Finance and Economic Development Committee reviewed city manager Stephen Dunn’s proposed spending plan for the ongoing fiscal year running from July 1 to June 30. That panel’s members, councilmen Brendan Brandt and Glenn Bozar, indicated they would recommend Dunn’s proposal to the entire city council.
Anticipating roughly $40 million in income over the entire year, Dunn had pressed the city’s department heads to budget for their divisions in such a way that the city would spend just $38.5 million through its general fund, which covers basic city operations. Dunn’s goal was to be able to salt away $1.5 million into a reserve account by the end of the fiscal year in June 2014.
After several goes at it in May and June, however, that goal was not achieved and Upland did not approve the 2012-14 budget prior to July 1, as is traditionally done. Twenty-two of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities had approved spending plans for the current fiscal year by or before June 30.
Ultimately, Dunn’s goal of preserving $1.5 million was not met. Instead, the city predicts it will take $39.37 million into the general fund while spending $38.6 million on basic operations, netting a reserve of $770,000.
Dunn acknowledged that a carryover miscalculation from last year hampered the city in meeting the $1.5 million reserve goal. He said that last year $980,000 in funding for the police department had been inadvertently withdrawn from the 2012-13 budget. That amount was restored to the baseline figures the police department had to work within in establishing its 2013-14 budget. Dunn said police chief Jeff Mendenhall succeeded in paring $300,000 of the $980,000 that had been returned to the police department budget.
Total operating funds for the city, including the general fund and spending outside the general fund such as Upland’s various enterprise and special funds, will total $106.23 million in expenditures.
The city will spend $8,759,670 on capital improvement projects.
The city will shell out $108,000 in merit increases, will increase its overtime budget by $130,490, increase fringe benefit payouts by $41,190, increase its contribution to the state employees retirement fund by $165,840, set another $164,780 aside for increases in retiree benefits, increase its outlay for fleet maintenance by $191,030, and up its contribution into its self-funded liability account by $300,000. The city will see its legal fees decrease by $1.5 million due to the settlement of litigation it had with the county over flood control issues at the Colonies Project,. The city also obtained, Dunn said, $1,047,950 in savings as a result of labor concessions.
While the city’s animal services division will generate $415,750 in income, its operating expenses will run to $895,540.
On the revenue side, while the city anticipates a $351,800 increase in property tax proceeds and a $569,850 increase in sales taxes due primarily to new retail outlets at the Colonies Crossroads Center, Dunn said the city will see a $69,890 decrease in fees due to the anticipated drop in fee-generating services provided by the police department and a $20,000 decrease in revenue from development services map and plan check activity.

(August 2) FONTANA – The city of Fontana has extended its contract with city manager Ken Hunt for another five years.
Hunt, the successor to a string of notable city managers in Fontana, including Jack Ratelle, John O’Sullivan, and Greg Devereaux, has been with the city in the capacity of top administrator since 1999. Prior to that, he was with the city for nine years, serving in the capacities of city auditor, budget officer, purchasing manager, finance director and human resources director.
In extending Hunt’s contract, his annual salary was upped from to $264,600 to $277,000.

(August 2) IVANPAH—What will be the largest solar plant in the world when it becomes operational in December is nearing completion at the northeast corner of San Bernardino County.
The $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a joint venture by BrightSource Energy, Google and NRG Energy, located 110 miles east of Barstow, five miles west of the California-Nevada border. According to the California Energy Commission, which licensed the Ivanpah project in 2010 in keeping with the state’s goal of promoting clean renewable energy and having 33 percent of the state’s energy produced from such sources by 2020, construction is 95 percent complete. The 377-megawatt plant, consisting of three 459-foot tall towers and 170,000 heliostats, i.e., mirrors reflecting solar energy to the towers, on 5.3 square miles of federal land, will provide sufficient energy for 140,000 households and will connect to both Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison’s systems.
A significant portion of the funding for the project consists of a $1.6 billion loan guarantee by the U.S. Department of Energy.

(July 26) With the dog days of summer upon us, the number of dying stray animals is on the rise, due in part to the region’s seasonal unforgiving sultriness.
In Hesperia, one of San Bernardino County’s hottest cities, the already-elevated incidence of neglected animals expiring due to exposure to the elements is exacerbated by the municipal code and city policy.
The city of Hesperia runs the Hesperia Animal Shelter, which despite admirable intentions, is inadequate to the task of humanely dealing with the demands of a 73-square mile city and the widespread desire that the facility be maintained as a no-kill asylum for lost pets, strays or unwanted animals.
Simultaneously, despite the consideration that Hesperia features as much or more property zoned for “residential agricultural” use as nearly any other city or town in the county, the city nonetheless enforces a strict limit on how many pets a homeowner may have according to lot size. Under the threat of draconian code enforcement action and heavy fines, homeowners have in many case chosen to abandon animals that have come under their care or ownership.
One case in point – that of the city’s code enforcement effort against Esther and Janet Duran –  illustrates how the city’s policies and overzealousness in the enforcement of its codes lacks sensitivity to not only humane considerations with regard to citizens efforts to protect animals but the ill-advised and ultimately costly lengths city officials have gone to in enforcing those coldhearted  rules.
In January 2010, the Hesperia code enforcement division took up a case that to all appearances was indistinguishable from the thousands of others in which the municipality used its authority, bankroll and control of the code enforcement process to overwhelm its citizens and obtain an inevitable adjudication in the city’s favor.
The division’s focus in this case was a property on Redwood Avenue owned by Esther Duran. which her daughter, Janet, was using as a temporary rescue shelter for horses that would otherwise have been sent to slaughterhouses for euthanization or processing for the dog food or glue manufacturing industries.
Janet Duran, an ambulance driver, in 2004 took up the cause of doomed horses, including wild mustangs run to ground by cowboys in Nevada and Arizona and ones being sold by their owners at auction, ostensibly to buyers interested in using them for horsemeat for as little as $5, $10, or $15 a head.
The Redwood property prior to city incorporation was zoned for agricultural use. The post-incorporation zoning was agricultural residential and the Durans were permitted under the city’s code to have up to six horses on the property per its acreage.
On January 13, 2010, a team of city employees that included two code enforcement officers, four armed sheriff’s department deputies in flak jackets and two animal control officers descended on the Durans’ property. One of the code enforcement officers served Esther Duran with papers and the team then seized three horses and five dogs, one of which was a stray whose owner the Durans were seeking to locate. Both Esther and Janet were cited and slapped with a total of $129,000 in fees, which upon the city’s processing protocol were ratcheted up into liens against the property. Those liens resulted in Esther Duran’s mortgage increasing from $1,400 to $4,700 per month.
Unwilling to take the city’s action lying down, the Durans hired Upland-based attorney Louis G. Fazzi. Fazzi brought several principles to bear which the city had in the past routinely overlooked in its enforcement efforts, including compliance with the city’s own codes, which actually allowed for the presence of up to three more horses than the Durans had on the property on January 13, 2010 and up to five dogs, as well as the right to due process. The city’s response was to seek a series of delays, which had the effect of increasing the Durans’ legal costs while the underlying issue – the return of their animals – remained unresolved.
Despite the cost, the Durans did not simply duck out of the fight. Fazzi persisted on their behalf, successfully removing the matter to federal court. Still, the city told the court the Durans were maintaining a substandard property and that the animals for that reason should not be returned to them. Fazzi maintained that the property was up to code and in compliance in all regards. In March 2012, a court-appointed independent inspector went over the Redwood property with a fine-tooth comb, concluding the property was indeed up to code.
In April 2012, U.S. District Court Judge John E. McDermott ruled that the city’s action against the Durans was improper and that their animals would have to be returned to them. Fazzi immediately brought a motion to have McDermott consider whether the entire process the Durans had been subjected to was unconstitutional.
While McDermott’s ruling was pending, the city offered the Durans a $200,000 settlement. The tendering of that offer, and the Durans’ acceptance of it, put the matter to rest, preventing a potentially precedent-setting ruling that would prohibit the city from continuing to employ the same tactics against other city residents.
There is no shortage of half-acre, one-acre, two-acre and even five acre and ten acre residential agricultural properties in Hesperia. Those lot sizes have not prevented the large scale demise of abandoned animals to the brutal elements in Hesperia or them being put to sleep by animal shelter workers.
Meanwhile, agricultural residential property owners and advocates of a more humane approach toward animal control are campaigning to have Hesperia change its animal control regulations and code enforcement tactics. Specifically, those advocates want reform that would  relax the city’s regulations regarding the number of animals per acre, so that animal rescuers would be free to take in, care for, feed and potentially adopt more animals, including ones incarcerated at the city’s shelter facing inevitable slaughter.

(July 26) Nine San Bernardino County water agencies have obtained the backing of more than 400 of their counterparts from around the state in propounding an argument that the federal government’s expansion of the designated critical habitat of the Santa Ana Sucker Fish is unreasonable.
The Bear Valley Mutual Water Co. in Redlands; Big Bear Municipal Water District; the city of Redlands; the city of San Bernardino Municipal Water Department; the East Valley Water District in Highland; the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District; the San Bernardino Valley Water Conservation District; the West Valley Water District in Rialto and the Yucaipa Valley Water District last year joined with three of their equivalents in Riverside County,  the city of Riverside; the Riverside County Flood Control and Water Conservation District; and the Western Municipal Water District in Riverside; in making a case with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna’s approval of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plan for protective measures for the Santa Ana Sucker,  a fish that dwells in the Santa Ana River and which federal  biologists say is threatened with possible extinction. The Santa Ana River, which has its headwaters at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains and then winds 96 miles through San Bernardino County into Riverside County and through Orange County to the Pacific Ocean, is the highest quality habitat available to the Santa Ana sucker.
In October 2012, Selna upheld Fish & Wildlife’s December 2010 plan to double to more than  9,000 acres the land along the Santa Ana River in San Bernardino and Riverside counties that was designated as critical Sucker habitat. The agencies sued the service in 2011 over the approval of that plan, which calls for a limit on the amount of water that water districts can draw from the river, a limitation intended to protect the typically six-inch long fish inhabiting the river.
The nine San Bernardino County agencies and three Riverside County agencies are  represented by attorney Greg Wilkinson, who maintains that the Fish & Wildlife strategy of doubling what is deemed critical habitat for the fish will significantly complicate the water agencies’ functions of drawing water for domestic consumption and agriculture, groundwater recharge and flood control measures along the river. The limitations are most acute, according to Wilkinson, at the Seven Oaks Dam, some four miles northeast of Redlands and east of Highland.
The Fish & Wildlife agency insists sufficient water must be released from Seven Oaks Dam and remain in the river to maintain a flow to stir up the riverbed and allow the fish to reproduce and sustain itself.
But purveyors of water in both counties maintain they have already made herculean efforts to safeguard the fish and that the sucker’s numbers are not threatened at present. They contend they are keeping faith with a conservation plan previously certified by Fish & Wildlife as sufficient, which reserved 400,000 acres for sucker habitat and protects 145 other species. Wilkinson said that Fish & Wildlife officials impermissibly reneged on the acceptance of that approach and the agencies are being squeezed, on one hand, by federal officials, and on the other by the California Fish and Game Commission, which has listed the Delta smelt as endangered, leading to limitations on the importation of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in Northern California.
Wilkinson drummed up the support of 440 water agencies in the state, banned together under the aegis of the Association of California Water Agencies, which filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals on June 3, highlighting the water agencies’ collective misgivings with regard to the doubling of the critical habitat area for the Santa Ana Sucker, which dines in large measure on algae. Expansion of the habitat violates provisions within the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 [NEPA], the water agencies contend, in that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan relating to the Sucker approved by Judge Selna dispensed with the cooperation of the various agencies involved. NEPA requires that federal, state and local agencies cooperate on environmental plans.
Wilkinson charged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with having purposefully avoided consultations with the agencies impacted by the plan while the plan was being drafted.
Wilkinson wants the matter heard by the entire Ninth Circuit Court Bench rather than just a three member panel thereof, as is normally the case. He intends to argue that the steps already taken to protect the Santa Ana Sucker have been extraordinary and that the additional measures the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is insisting upon  will have other equally, or even more, onerous consequences to the environment by depriving outlying areas of the watershed of water and/or entailing an expensive and potentially wasteful and damaging effort to import water from elsewhere, involving threats to endangered species at other locations  and “the entirety of the human environment, not just the protection of listed species.”
According to Wilkinson, the protective measures the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is calling for would in time result in the water agencies sustaining more than $4 billion in additional costs due to the individual and collective needs to make other arrangements to serve their customers, including but not limited to sinking wells and obtaining water elsewhere, such as from Northern California and the Colorado River.
While the Santa Ana River is the prime habitat and breeding grounds for the Sucker,  a genetically identical example of the fish is present in the Angeles National Forest’s San Gabriel River, in portions of its west, north and east forks, all of which are located in Los Angeles County.
Conservationists and environmentalists  believe the Fish & Wildlife Service’s designation is critical to the sucker fish’s prospects for long term survival in that the fish needs gravel-size rocks upon which to lay its eggs and the protection measures in the plan include areas that meet that criteria in both the perennial part of the Santa Ana River and the Santa Ana River Wash.

(July 26) Ontario Mayor Paul Leon on Tuesday outpolled all eight of his rivals in the race to succeed Norma Torres in representing Pomona, Chino, Montclair, Ontario and a portion of Fontana in the California Assembly, bringing in 25.1 percent of all of the votes cast across the district, which straddles portions of Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties.
Despite his showing, Leon cannot lay claim to a spot in the state legislature yet.  Because none of the nine running in Tuesday’s race captured a majority of the vote, a run-off between Leon and second place finisher Freddie Rodriguez will now follow.
Leon, formerly a Republican but more recently registered as an independent, bested  Rodriguez, a Pomona city councilman who is also a Democrat. In his strong showing, Rodriguez racked up 21.6 percent of the vote in both counties.
The special election was held on Tuesday, July 23 to replace Torres as assemblywoman after she was elected 32nd District State Senator in May. The May special election came about because Gloria Negrete-McLeod had to leave the State Senate when she was elected to Congress in November.
Though Leon prevailed this week, his work in beating Rodriguez in the run-off is cut out for him. Despite his being newly registered as an independent, Leon has long been identified as a Republican and in fact ran as a Republican in March and May against Torres in the race to succeed Negrete-McLeod. In that Senate race as in the-yet-to-be decided assembly race, Republicans are at a disadvantage because of the overwhelming registration lead Democrats have in both the 32nd State Senate and 52nd Assembly districts. In the 32nd, 48 percent of those registered to vote are Democrats and 28 percent are Republicans. In the 52nd, 46 percent are registered as Democrats and 29 percent are registered as Republicans.
On Tuesday, seven of the nine candidates were Democrats – Rodriguez, Jason Rothman, Danielle Soto, Doris Wallace, Manuel Saucedo, Tom Haughey, and Paul Avila. One, Dorothy Peneda, was a Republican.
For Leon to prevail in the September rematch against Rodriguez, he will need to make a convincing appeal to independent-minded Democrats, while maintaining his residual appeal as a former Republican to convert to his cause the voters Pineda picked up. Pineda placed third in the polling, capturing 2,211 votes in both counties, or nearly 14.5 percent.
The assumption of many political observers and strategists is that nearly all of the votes that this week went to Democrats Rothman, Soto, Wallace, Saucedo, Haughey and Avila – totaling 38.8 percent of the ballots cast – will fall to Rodriguez in the run-off. Prior to Tuesday, the Democratic Party heavily invested in Rodriguez, providing him with over $60,000 in direct contributions and facilitating independent expenditures that bankrolled mailers attacking Leon as a Republican wolf in an independent sheep’s clothing.
Leon did particularly well on Tuesday in San Bernardino County, capturing 3,041 votes, or 28.66 percent there. In Los Angeles County, he tied for second with Rothman, the son of Pomona’s mayor. Both pulled 787 votes or 18.99 percent. Rodriguez won in his native county, taking in 1,470 votes for an impressive 31.73 percent. In San Bernardino County, Rodriguez polled 1,822 votes, or 17.17 percent.

(July 26) The Needles City Council this week offered controversial Desert Hot Springs City Manager Rick Daniels a contract as its new city manager, though Daniels’ acceptance of that offer had not been made by press time.
Daniels, if he is hired, will replace David Brownlee, whose contract is not set to expire until next May.
Daniels will not be able to take on the helm in Needles, San Bernardino County’s smallest city population-wise at 4,844, until he resolves loose ends in Desert Hot Springs, a municipality of 25,938 in adjoining Riverside County.
Daniels’ pending departure from Desert Hot Springs comes in the midst of an increasingly rocky tenure there. While he appeared to maintain the support of three-fifths of the city council in the Riverside County City, two of that panel’s members have grown increasingly hostile toward him in recent months.
Daniels gravitated into the municipal management field in a somewhat unorthodox fashion after having been an executive with Waste Management, Inc. He came to Desert Hot Springs officials’ attention after he founded a company in the late 1990s, Mine Reclamation Corporation, with which he proposed to operate a landfill within the abandoned Eagle Mountain Mine next to Joshua Tree National Park, into which he proposed depositing millions of tons of trash from Los Angeles transported to the site by train. The venture was dropped when the Supreme Court ruled against the environmental certification for the plan. Along the way Daniels had assumed the position of president and CEO of the Coachella Valley Economic Partnership, a consortium of business owners, financiers and developers. From that position he obtained the post of top administrator with the Salton Sea Authority. It was his experience in this public sector position that he used to leverage obtaining the Desert Hot Springs city manager position.
While with Desert Hot Springs, one of the poorest cities in the state, Daniels pulled a seeming rabbit out of his hat, undertaking infrastructure improvements that previously seemed beyond the city’s means, including paving 34 miles of city streets. He then undertook to build a municipal Health and Wellness and Aquatic Center. The cost of that project ran to $20 million, however. Daniels’ spending spree has ultimately left Desert Hot Springs with an intractable debt in the form of more than $30 million in delinquent bonds  and an ongoing yearly operation cost at the health center of more than $1 million.
In 2010, Daniels ventured $250,000 in taxpayer funds to lay the ground for and promote a music festival that never came off. Though he initially said the city would recover the money from the concert series’ promoter, the city never did so.
Also in 2010, Daniels narrowly averted being consumed by a scandal after he had a falling out with Linda Green, a woman he had brought to work in Desert Hot Springs first as a media liaison and later as community services director. At a conference in San Diego, an inebriated Daniels groped the married Green, resulting in a claim against the city which was ultimately resolved with Green departing from the city with $99,328.16 in severance pay and Daniels completing a two month stint in an alcohol rebab clinic while assistant city manager Jason Simpson filled in for him.
After  councilman Karl Baker was replaced by Adam Sanchez, Daniels’ support on the council began to erode. More aggressive questioning of Daniels’ policies took place, prompting Daniels to file a claim against Sanchez and councilman Russell Betts in which he claimed they were harassing him with emails and phone calls after official city business hours. The city’s insurance company formally rejected Daniels’ claim.
In June, city finance director Terrence Beaman resigned after a lengthy dispute with Daniels with regard to Daniels’ proposal to utilize $4 million in city reserves to cover a $4 million deficit. After the municipal and financial management consulting firm Urban Futures assessed Desert Hot Springs’ economic condition, it concluded the city was in a deteriorating financial state that would lead to insolvency within 12 to 24 months.
In April, Daniels, one of the highest-paid city managers in California with a total annual compensation package exceeding $300,000, sought to leave Desert Hot Springs, applying for the position of county administrator position in Clackamas County in Oregon. He was selected as one of three finalists in the competition for that position and as the interview process advanced, Daniels maintained a cover story to the effect that he was merely vacationing in Oregon, where he was raised and attended college. At the final stages of the Clackamas County selection process at the end of June, it appeared that Daniels had the job and it then became publicly known that he was gearing up to leave Desert Hot Springs. Daniels’ move to Oregon fell through, however, when Donald Krupp, one of the other two finalists, was given the county administrator’s post last week.
According to Needles City Clerk Dale Jones, Daniels was offered the position of Needles city manager but the terms of the hiring were not fully specified. Jones said negotiations between the Needles  city manager search committee, consisting of council members Linda Kidd, Jim Lopez and Tom Darcy were yet ongoing and that she anticipated a contract would be ready for the full council to vote on at its August 13 meeting.
It would appear that Daniels will be taking a substantial pay cut if he comes to Needles. The budgeted range for the city manager in Needles is $129,000 to $132,000 per year. Brownlee, who was elevated into a caretaker city manager post in 2010 when previous city manager Bill Way’s contract was not extended, is not paid according to that schedule, however, and receives $50.47 per hour based on furlough-truncated annual hours of 1,976. All employees in Needles are required to take furloughs. Brownlee’s annual salary is therefore $99,728.72. If the furloughs were to be discontinued and he were to work a full 2080-hour work year, he would be earning $104,977.60 per annum.
Brownlee was the city’s assistant city manager and utilities service manager at the time he was upgraded to acting city manager.
Brownlee’s current contract runs from June 1 of this year through May 31, 2014. The terms of that contract give him retreat rights to return to being a city employee with the title of assistant city manager/utilities general manager.
Multiple attempts to reach Daniels at his Desert Hot Springs office were unsuccessful.