More than six months after Chino Hills City Manager Mike Fleager was granted an 18-month contract extension by the city council, he abruptly announced that he will remain in the city’s top administrative position a full year less than what the contract extension provided for.
Fleager, 57, who became city manager in 2008 upon the retirement of his predecessor, Doug LaBelle, apparently came to the decision to retire on his own without any prompting from the council. Indeed, the council seemed to be caught flatfooted by his announcement.
The community safety director for the affluent Los Angeles County city of Cerritos in the 1990s, Fleager went to work for Chino Hills as community services director in July 1999. His original contract as city manager was set to expire today, May 31, 2013. Last November 13, however, a week after Cynthia Moran had been elected to the city council but before she was sworn into office, the council voted 3-1, with Mayor Art Bennett and councilmen Ed Graham and Peter Rogers in the majority and then-councilwoman Gwen Norton-Perry in opposition, to extend Fleager’s contract until November 30, 2014. The council at that point was depleted to four members following former councilman Bill Kruger’s September resignation. He would not be replaced until a special election earlier this year. Norton-Perry, who did not seek reelection in November, opposed the appointment because it deprived Moran and current councilman Ray Marquez, who was elected in March, of any input in the decision of who would manage the city.
The move to extend Fleager’s tenure was defended as one that would give the city stability as it is making a case with the California Public Utilities Commission to rescind its 2009 decision to allow Southern California Edison to erect 197-foot high towers through the heart of Chino Hills for the Tehachapi Line, i.e. electrical cables to carry electricity from what is to be the world’s largest wind power field in Kern County to the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The public utilities commission’s decision is due in July.
Fleager, in making his announcement, said he would retire this November, with one year left on his current contract. The timing of Fleager’s announcement triggered widespread speculation as to what had prompted it, including suggestions that he was privy to information presaging a decision by the public utilities commission that would be unfavorable to Chino Hills.
Fleager offered testimony on behalf of the city to the Public Utilites Commission in March. In some quarters he was criticized for having provided impolitic statements in the course of that testimony which were seen as strengthening the position of Southern California Edison, which wants to leave the electrical line above ground through Chino Hills rather than laying it below ground as large numbers of residents in the city are demanding.
Simultaneous with Fleager’s announcement, the city’s second-in-command, assistant city manager  Kathy Gotch announced she will retire in June. Gotch likely would have been a likely candidate as Fleager’s interim replacement.

(May 31) The city of Los Angeles last week rejected a claim by the city of Ontario that Ontario International Airport has been mismanaged while under the stewardship of the larger city and that the aerodrome should be returned to the custody and management of an agency Ontario and the county of San Bernardino created last year to assume operation of the airport. .
In April, the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Sheppard Mullen Richter & Hampton, on Ontario’s behalf filed an administrative claim, considered to be the precursor of a lawsuit, against the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports, charging them with chronic mismanagement of the airport.  That claim sought to dissolve a 46-year-long joint powers operating agreement between the two cities for the management of the airport.
In 1967 Ontario and Los Angeles entered into that joint powers agreement to allow Los Angeles to use its clout with airlines to increase flights into and out of Ontario International, which at that time was servicing fewer than 200,000 passengers per year. Under Los Angeles’ guidance, the airport grew, more airlines began flying out of the facility and improvements were made to its runways and terminals. In 1985, after all of the conditions set down in the 1967 joint powers agreement had been met, Ontario deeded the airport to Los Angeles for no consideration.
Maintaining that in recent years Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that manages Ontario International, Los Angeles International and Van Nuys airports for the city of Los Angeles, has stifled Ontario International in a deliberate effort to benefit Los Angeles International, the city of  Ontario  has undertaken an aggressive campaign to force Los Angeles to redeed the airport back to Ontario. Ontario officials publicly insisted that LA should relinquish the airport for no consideration because the airport is considered a public benefit property which has no sale value. Privately, however, Ontario has offered Los Angeles $246 million for the airport as Los Angeles has sought potential private and public buyers for the aerodrome at reported prices ranging from $225 million to $650 million. In the sometimes acrimonious back-and-forth between the two cities, Los Angeles revealed the existence of Ontario’s offer, to both the chagrin and embarrassment of Ontario officials. Last year, Ontario, with the county of San Bernardino, formed the Ontario International Airport Authority, an entity intended to take over ownership and operation of the airport once Los Angeles relinquishes it.
The claim filed on Ontario’s behalf by Sheppard Mullen Richter & Hampton was intended as a crucial step in the effort to wrest the airport back. In that administrative claim, Ontario castigated Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports as responsible for  the reduction of passenger traffic through the airport since 2007, when 7.2 million passengers enplaned there. The decline of passengers to 4.2 million last year, according to the claim, is a direct result of the Los Angeles World Airports’ favoritism toward Los Angeles International, where extensive facility improvements have been ongoing for the last seven years and where passenger traffic has been on the upswing.
If Ontario officials had hoped Los Angeles would make a substantive response to that claim, they were disappointed. In a terse, seventeen word sentence, the city of Los Angeles rejected the claim, giving no grounds for doing so. That puts the ball into Ontario’s court, and city officials have six months to respond with a lawsuit based upon the issues outlined in the claim.
This is not the first time Los Angeles has rejected an airport takeover overture from Ontario. Last October, the Los Angeles City Council voted 12-0 to decline the $246 million bid Ontario submitted in December 2011.
The lawsuit set up by the administrative claim would likely seek the dissolution of the 1967 joint powers agreement relating to the airport between the two cities, a tall order given the city of Ontario’s 1985 action in deeding the airport to Los Angeles, which included a finding that Los Angeles had lived up to its end of the original agreement. The matter is complicated by Los Angeles having rerouted over the years scores of millions of dollars in passenger fees collected at Los Angeles International Airport to improvements at Ontario International. Moreover, the city of Los Angeles is in discussions with several private sector entities possessing airport management credentials, both foreign and domestic, with regard to a sale of Ontario Airport.
Earlier this week, the president of the Los Angeles’ Board of Airport Commissioners, Michael Lawson, firmly stated “There is no sound, legal or factual basis for this claim.”
Lawson and other Los Angeles World Airports officials referenced a recent report done by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which found that there has been a steady decline in passenger traffic at midsize airports all around the country and that market forces are driving the declines.

(May 3YUCCA VALLEY—In an unexpected move, Hi-Desert Water District Assistant General Manager and chief financial officer Frank Luckino resigned his position effective next week to take a lower paying position with the city of Blythe.
A former Yucca Valley councilman, Luckino in making the announcement suggested he was making the transition as part of a strategy to eventually achieve his career goal of becoming a city manager.
Luckino’s departure from the water district comes as that entity is struggling with the financial challenges of having Yucca Valley comply with a state mandate to convert from its traditional septic systems to a sewer system in several phases over the next decade.
Town voters last year voted down a sales tax measure put forth by town officials which those officials said would be primarily devoted to funding the sewer program. The water district is set to be the lead agency in the provision of the new sanitation system. As the water district’s chief financial officer, Luckino was faced with the daunting assignment of meeting capital improvement goals for the district while keeping its operational funds solvent.
Luckino, who was hired as the Hi-Desert Water District’s chief financial officer in March 2009,  has continued his education and is due to receive a masters degree in public administration with an emphasis in policy and governance this year.
He will go to work as finance director in Blythe. The position he now has with the water district pays $139,000 in salary plus benefits. The bottom rung salary for finance director in Blythe is $94,000 per year. The current top pay salary level for the same position after accruing experience and seniority is $117,000.
With the combination of his seven years on the city council, his experience with the water district and his masters degree, Luckino is hopeful he can eventually parlay his position in Blythe to a promotion to deputy or assistant city manager, putting himself in position to land a top administrative post with some municipality.
Luckino is now finalizing the water district’s proposed 2013-14 budget. He is set to leave for Blythe, where he intends to move his family, on June 6.
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(May 31)FONTANA — The city of Fontana has shortchanged three of San Bernardino County’s school districts by millions of dollars by finagling the formula being used to pay the districts their share of property tax revenue due them in the aftermath of the dissolution of the North Fontana Redevelopment Agency.
In 2011, after the failure of a municipal coalition’s final legal challenge of the state’s AB XI 26 and ABXI 27, which shuttered all of California’s redevelopment agencies, Fontana, like all other California cities, closed down its redevelopment agency, and created in its wake a successor agency to extinguish its debts.
In rerouting that portion of the property tax revenue formerly exclusively devoted to the redevelopment agency, known as tax increment, to other governmental entities with a claim to the property tax generated in the area, the city apportioned to the Fontana Unified School District, the Chaffey Joint Union High School District and the Rialto Unified School District a revenue stream utilizing a formula that used fiscal 1997-98 as the base year for making its calculations for what would be provided to those districts from the North Fontana Redevelopment Project Area, which covers roughly 8,900 acres.
Mindful that significant development occurred in North Fontana over the previous two decades with a commensurate substantial increase in property tax revenue, Chaffey Joint Unified’s financial division raised with the city of Fontana its use of the 1997-98 figures, maintaining the computation of what the district was owed should be based upon a later tax-year baseline. Chaffey Joint Unified notified Fontana Unified, which also raised the issue with Fontana officials.   The city, however, in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, utilized the 1997-98 tax year as its pass-through revenue model.
Fontana Unified did have representation on Fontana’s redevelopment successor agency in the form of former associate superintendent of business services Alex Alvarez, who last year sought to have the successor agency resolve the base year calculation discrepancy for the North Fontana Redevelopment Project Area funding relinquishment but was outmuscled politically by the city’s two representatives on the successor agency board, Mayor Aquanetta Warren and councilman John Roberts.
North Fontana lies within the jurisdiction of not only Fontana Unified, but Chaffey Joint Union High School District on the west side and Rialto Unified School District on the east side.
With Fontana Unified School District in the lead, a lawsuit against the city of Fontana, along with the county of San Bernardino and San Bernardino County Treasurer Larry Walker was filed, contending that the inappropriate 1997-98 tax year baseline had been used in calculating the pass-back revenue due the three districts.
According to the suit, the formula should have involved a baseline of the 2004-2005 tax year. Using their own accounting methodologies and the 2004-05 tax year baseline, lawyers for Fontana Unified contend that from fiscal year 2006-07 through fiscal year 2010-11, Fontana owed Fontana Unified $11,475,014 and made good on $7,407,447 of that amount, leaving $4,067,567 unpaid.  Chaffey Joint Unified, according to the suit, was due $4,339,558 and actually received $2,058,556, leaving an unpaid balance of  $2,281,002. Rialto Unified was supposed to have received by now $662,555, of which it was paid $453,863, entailing an arrearage of $208,692, according to the suit. Moreover, if the current formula is left in place, the city will continue to shortchange the districts in future years, according to the suit, with Fontana Unified losing $23,352,614 owed it between 2012 and 2034, Chaffey being shorted $15,216,399 and Rialto missing $1,362,309.
Because AB XI 26 mandates that legal questions relating to the dissolution of the state’s redevelopment agencies be litigated in Sacramento Superior Court, the lawsuit was lodged there. The county is named as a defendant because of its function in overseeing the disbursements of payments from the successors to the redevelopment agencies. Walker, who as treasurer oversees the maintenance of the accounts from which the funds are disbursed, is also named in his capacity as the county controller, auditor and treasurer.
The city of Fontana denies the allegations in the lawsuit, according to city attorney Jeffrey Ballinger.

(May 310 San Bernardino County law enforcement agencies will hold a massive gun buyback tomorrow, Saturday  June 1. The sheriff’s department, which provides contract police services to fourteen of the county’s 24 cities – Adelanto, Apple Valley, Big Bear, Chino Hills, Grand Terrace, Hesperia, Highland, Loma Linda, Needles, Rancho Cucamonga, Twentynine Palms, Victorville, Yucaipa, and Yucca Valley – and also serves the county’s unincorporated communities, will trade gift cards for guns between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Joining the sheriff’s department in the program, which is being funded by Proposition 30 funding, will be the Chino, Montclair, Ontario, Upland, Fontana, Rialto, Colton, San Bernardino Barstow, and Redlands police departments. Proposition 30, which passed by a thin margin, increased personal income taxes on high-income taxpayers for seven years and sales taxes for four years. It was represented by proponents as one that would shore up public school funding but had provisions to make the tax revenue available to fund other state programs, such as the gun buyback.
The buyback is the first comprehensively planned event of its type in San Bernardino County involving all 11 of its local law enforcement agencies simultaneously. It is being celebrated as an effort to get guns off the street.
Those turning in an inoperable weapon will receive a $50 Stater Bros. gift card. Those relinquishing operating hand guns, shotguns or rifles will receive $100 gift cards. Assault weapons will fetch $200. There is no limit on the number of weapons to be turned in.
Law enforcement officers said members of the public should unload the weapons and transport them to the purchase areas in the trunk or rear area of a vehicle. According to a sheriff’s department news release, officers will ask no questions of the individuals handing the weapons over.
The buy-back station in Barstow will be located at the Cora Harper Community Center, 841 Barstow Road in Barstow.
The buy-back station for Chino, Montclair, Ontario and Upland will be at the Stater Bros. parking lot at 919 N. Mountain Ave. in Upland.
The Colton, Fontana and Rialto police departments will stage their buy-backs at the Stater Bros. parking lot at 571 E. Foothill Blvd. in Rialto.
Redlands police will operate their collection site in the Stater Bros. parking lot at 11 E. Colton Ave. in Redlands.
In Victorville, the sheriff’s Department will collect guns at the Stater Bros. parking lot at 15235 Hook Blvd.
At the county seat, San Bernardino police will collect guns at the Stater Bros. parking lot at 444 E. Baseline in San Bernardino

( May 31) Montclair’s police chief, Keith Jones, is retiring today.
Jones, 58, is leaving as the city’s top cop after 32 years with the municipality.
He worked his way up through the ranks, having served in every sworn departmental assignment.
Jones was named acting police chief in early 2009 after the retirement of his predecessor, Chester Thompson. He was elevated to full chief in October 2009.
In September 2012, Jones was promoted once more, to the position of director of public safety, from which he also oversaw the fire department after  fire chief Troy Ament was given a two-week severance notice and eased from that position, a cost-cutting move engineered by city manager Edward Starr that saved the city nearly half a million dollars a year in wages and benefits.

BARSTOW—The most extensive vandalism ever done to the Western American Railroad Museum was the result of copper theft, according to authorities.
The museum sustained more than $100,000 worth of damage after thieves used saws and clippers to sever 160 feet of copper wiring and plating from inside the museum’s vintage 1925 California Arizona passenger  train car. That wiring lined both inside walls of the 80-foot-long green car and was part of the car’s radiant heating system.
According to Barstow police, Sean Michael Gilbert, 43, Erik John Kielty, 25, and John Phillip Blakenship, 46, were responsible for the theft. Authorities say that in addition to taking the copper cable from the California Arizona car, the trio removed the copper wiring in the car’s still-functioning electrical panel, rendering it non-operable, and made off with the railroad car’s two original 1925 light sconces, four  chairs, and the car’s collection of Mimbreno China.
The museum has been the target of at least 17 previous theft or vandalism incidents. This month’s was by far the most extensive.
The Western American Railroad Museum is a major tourist attraction and an international destination.
Gilbert, Kielty and Blakenship were nabbed by investigators and have a court appearance on June 5.

(May 24) As the July 11 deadline for the California Public Utilities Commission’s decision on whether the electrical transmission line for Southern California Edison’s Tehachapi project will be placed underground through a substantial portion of Chino Hills, some problematic issues remain for those advocates of having 18 of the 197-foot high electric transmission towers that have already been erected permanently removed.
Slightly over five miles of the 173-mile Tehachapi line, connecting what is planned as the world’s largest windfarm consisting of hundreds of electricity-producing windmills in Kern County with the Los Angeles metropolitan basin, will run through  Chino Hills. In 2009, the California Public Utilities Commission, over the city of Chino Hills’ protest, granted Southern California Edison clearance to erect a series of 197-foot high power transmission towers through the heart of the upscale, 44.7-square mile city at the extreme southwest corner of San Bernardino County along a long-existing power corridor easement owned by the utility.
Fearing a host of problems from the imposition of the towers, including significant negative impacts on property values in the city, the Chino Hills City Council authorized the expenditure of millions of dollars to employ attorneys and make other efforts to contest the Public Utility Commission’s action, including filing suit against Southern California Edison, alleging the company had “overburdened” the power line easements. That legal effort failed when West Valley Superior Court Judge Keith D. Davis ruled the California Public Utilities Commission has exclusive jurisdiction regarding the route used by Edison, and the suit was thrown out. Chino Hills appealed Davis’s ruling to the 4th District Court of Appeal, asserting the city had the right to have the case heard by a jury, but in September 2011 the appeals court affirmed Davis’ decision.
In 2011, Edison, which has long had a 150-foot wide right-of-way for its power lines that runs for 5.8 miles from Tonner Canyon to the Riverside County line, erected 18 of the towers within Chino Hills before a city appeal to the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and Public Utilities Commission Chairman Michael Peevey in particular succeeded in obtaining a temporary halt to the towers’ construction in November 2011 while a potential undergrounding alternative is explored.
On February 28 of this year, the California Public Utilities Commission directed Southern California Edison to tentatively proceed with planning toward burying  its transmission lines for the Tehachapi Renewable Energy Project along a 3.5 mile portion of the five mile length the lines will run through Chino Hills. No final decision on whether the electrical cables will be undergrounded was made, with that determination now scheduled for July. In the meantime, the commission is taking testimony and considering all order of submissions from Southern California Edison, the city of Chino Hills and other interested parties related to the undergrounding issue.
In November, Southern California Edison (SCE) filed a proposal by which it would be able to recover any money it put into exploring the undergrounding options. The commission’s February 28 directive to have SCE seriously consider the undergrounding options  contained a provision for Southern California Edison to recover its costs in proceeding with the planning for undergrounding the cables in the event the commission this summer elects to remain with the already-approved game plan of utilizing an above-ground conveyance of the electricity.
Also on February 28, SCE provided the commission with a tentative contracting report relating to the undergrounding.
Per the PUC’s instructions, Southern California Edison, which would yet prefer to leave the power lines above ground, is proceeding with planning to underground the cables, even as the PUC is gathering information, engineering and financial data, and testimony from involved and uninvolved but informed parties in order to arrive at a decision on whether to leave the line overhead through  Chino Hills or have Edison bring the towers down and place the cable underground for a three-and-one-half mile stretch within the city.
What it comes down to is whether a majority of the members of the PUC board can be convinced that the untoward elements of the imposition of the towers on the community of Chino Hills outweighs the complication, interruption, expense, and further delay that undergrounding effort will represent to Edison’s effort to complete the project.
In their headlong rush to convince the PUC to force Southern California Edison to underground the line through Chino Hills, activists and city officials have risked the PUC’s rejection of their position by overlooking, downplaying or ignoring entirely critical issues that the PUC must resolve in making its decision.
One of those issues is the expense of the undergrounding remedy and who will be called upon to bear it.
While Southern California Edison has been accused of inflating the cost estimates for the undergrounding project, undergrounding advocates have likewise been accused of underestimating the cost.
Last December, Edison submitted cost estimates for various undergrounding alternatives ranging from $486 million to $807 million. Edison previously maintained the cost of trenching out a six-foot wide and six-foot deep, 3.5-mile long swath through town and undergrounding a single line would be $300 million to $473 million, and undergrounding a double-circuit line to be $703 million to $1 billion. Edison claims it could erect the towers along the same span and string the cables between them for an estimated $172 million.
Some of those calling for the burial of the lines maintain the job could be done competently for as little as $200 million. The wide discrepancy here is one that is fraught with hazard for the undergrounding advocates. Even if Southern California Edison is  highballing its cost estimates associated with the burying of the electrical cable, the utility company operates from a position of strength in doing so by being able to rely upon decades of experience in laying and stringing electrical lines, including recent projects that give a realistic assessment of the technical and financial challenges associated with similar jobs. Opponents of the towers lack the expertise and credible authority with the PUC to contradict Edison in this regard.
Moreover, undergrounding advocates take it as an article of faith that Edison’s added cost of undergrounding the lines instead of stringing them from the above-ground towers will be defrayed across the spectrum of the roughly 12 million customers Edison serves. Not everyone feels that to be an entirely equitable or justifiable arrangement.
Christopher Chow, a spokesperson for the California’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates, which has its office in the PUC’s San Francisco office, summarized the difference of opinion by saying, “The people in Chino Hills want those lines buried rather than having those very high towers, which may impact their property values. They think Edison should bear the cost for having ignored them when the application was made. Then there are other ratepayers in the state who see that as Chino Hills’ problem and they do not want to pay for their problem.”
If Edison customers in Chino Hills, both commercial and residential, were to be called upon to defray the cost of the undergrounding project, one projection is that individual households, i.e., residential customers, would see a rate boost or excise fee add-on of around $900 per year. By passing the undergrounding  cost on to consumers statewide, individual ratepayers would see a yearly impact on their electricity bills of under $5, according to Bob Goodwin, the leader of the Chino Hills-based grassroots group Hope For The Hills that is the foremost advocate of the undergrounding option.
Southern California Edison’s Local Public Affairs division has argued that “It is improper that 12 million people should have to pay more than $700 million to benefit what is only a few hundred households in Chino Hills.”
In the event that the PUC board expresses interest in how much of the cost burden the Chino Hills community is willing to bear to make the undergrounding a reality, advocates for the undergrounding will be unable to provide any quantified answer. With the more vocal of Chino Hills residents protesting the presence of the towers insisting that the cost sharing for the undergrounding should be done among all of Southern California Edison’s ratepayers rather than simply those living within the confines of Chino Hills, city officials have taken no steps whatsoever toward creating or even exploring creating a local funding mechanism such as a tax or assessment arrangement that would cover the cost of the undergrounding effort.
The city has, however, indicated it is prepared to commit as much as $76.7 million to mitigate Southern California Edison’s undergrounding costs, including providing 69.97 acres of real property needed for the construction of the underground transmission line which the city is prepared to convey to SCE in fee; future  revenue which the city would have derived which will now be available to SCE through ownership of such properties; increased expenses that the city will incur due to its loss of the use of the contributed properties; and costs associated with the landscaping and maintenance of those properties that are located in the right-of-way.
Since 2009, the city has expended roughly $4.4 million in legal and administrative costs in fighting the towers.
“The people of Chino Hills have already paid enough,” said Chino Hills City Councilman Ed Graham.
Complicating the issue for Chino Hills and undergrounding advocates is skepticism members of the Public Utilities Commission Board have toward the grounds upon which  Chino Hills officials’ have questioned, contradicted  or second guessed Edison with regard to technical issues relating to the undergrounding effort. Pronouncements by the city and its representatives in several instances lie outside their respective areas of expertise, putting Southern California Edison in a superior position in making its case with PUC staff, which is extremely sensitive to technical issues involving utilities.
One example of this is Edison’s stated intention of proceeding with an undergrounding configuration that would entail two transmission cables. In his testimony before the PUC on March 20, Chino Hills City Manager Mike Fleager said he and the city were opposed to the double circuit line. “It is my understanding that even SCE has stated that a double circuit transmission line is not needed at this time,” Fleager testified. Fleager’s statement was flatly denied by SCE’s representatives. When the commission inquired why the city was averse to Edison laying into the right-of-way a double circuit line, thus doubling the electrical carrying capacity of the system and creating an economy of scale while obviating the future need to tear up the right-of-way and put in another line in the future, Fleager provided an answer that left the commissioners with the impression that Chino Hills and its residents had no regard for the overarching objective of making renewable energy available to a significant number of residential, commercial and industrial customers in Southern California at a competitive price. Commissioners have since expressed concern that Chino Hills officials and Edison’s critics in Chino Hills in general have little appreciation or regard for the added cost the undergrounding effort would represent for SCE, totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and are more concerned with matters of convenience relating to the Chino Hills population than the state’s energy efficiency goals.
“The city and its residents have one goal – removal of the 200 foot transmission structures which SCE has constructed through the city,” Fleager stated in his testimony. “The city believes the single circuit underground transmission alternative represents the most cost-effective means of achieving this goal. In putting forward this solution, the city, however, recognizes that it may be necessary at some time in the future for SCE to install a second circuit. If that occurs, the community understands that once again there will be disruption to their lives resulting from the construction activity associated with the installation of the second circuit. The community believes that the temporary disruption this will cause is a small price to pay to ensure the removal of the overhead transmission structures.”
Another example of what at least some commissioners believe to be the city’s short-sighted focus on achieving its objective while showing little or no regard for the technical issues Edison must deal with is the city’s opposition to the expansion of the  Mira Loma Substation to accommodate circuit regulating equipment for the undergrounding. The substation is located in the extreme southern end of Ontario, across the city limits from Chino. The city of Ontario lodged a protest against that facility expansion, based on aesthetic considerations together with concern that it would inhibit future residential growth in the area.  The city of Chino Hills joined in with Ontario in protesting the Mira Loma Substation expansion.
That opposition to the Mira Loma Substation expansion has confounded PUC technical analysts, the Sentinel has learned, as the expansion of the substation will be critical to the undergrounding of the electrical lines the city is requesting.
To accommodate the undergrounding, electricians say, two transition stations will be needed at both ends of the undergrounded line. These transition stations, involving “compensators and convertors” will involve at least two acres of ground. The transitional staging is required because above ground lines, which can allow the offloading or diffusion of heat through the wire into the air to take place, embody different physical and electrical characteristics than  underground cables which carry significantly more charging current and heat. Electrical engineers will thus use massive transformers featuring a multitude of coils above ground to counteract the charging current of the undergrounded cable after and before it is connected to the overhead cables at the succeeding stages of the Tehachapi line.
PUC officials are troubled by what they see as Chino Hills’ officials willingness to sign on to what is perceived as an “obstructionist” strategy toward a key component of Edison’s undergrounding plan merely for political expedience, that is, maintaining cordial relations with the city of Ontario.
Simultaneously, Edison has lobbied and in some cases succeeded in having other entities back it in its requests to proceed with the Tehachapi line as it was originally approved, thus avoiding added expense and decreasing the rates that will be charged its customers in the future.
Among the entities that have offered Southern California Edison support in its call for the PUC to allow the utility to complete the Tehachapi line without having to underground electrical cables through Chino Hills and thus hold down electrical rates are the California Ratepayers Association,  the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Apple Valley, Fullerton and Phelan chambers of commerce, the Milk Producers Council and Inland Action, an  entity devoted to promoting economic prosperity in the Inland Empire.
The effort to promote the undergrounding of the lines the entire five miles distance through Chino Hills has already been undercut, with the PUC having quietly acceded last year to Southern California Edison’s insistence that it could not prepare economic plans to underground that portion of the Tehachapi Renewable Energy Project power line  through the Oak Tree Downs area of Carbon Canyon at the  west extension of Chino Hills, given the undulations of the area’s rolling hills and other peculiarities in the contour of the land. The upshot is that the undergrounding program now being considered applies to a three-and-half mile span across the city.
Goodwin said that Hope For The Hills and the Chino Hills community in general “looks forward to a decision by CPUC favoring public safety in Chino Hills on July 11. This has been an epic battle of a growing group of passionate citizens trying to undo bad management decisions at corporate giant SCE to construct a dangerous infrastructure project through a densely populated neighborhood.
“The international standard for high voltage transmission towers and lines is to keep 400kV lines at least 400 feet from homes, schools, and parks,” Goodwin said. “The Chino Hills portion of the Edison Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project  is even bigger, 25% more powerful at 500kV and they are placing it within 75 feet of hundreds of existing homes, schools, churches, and parks. This would become the largest high voltage transmission project in the world that is located this close to a densely populated area.”
Goodwin said, “Chino Hills does not want to be an afterthought years from now when health issues arise, and they will, with the prolonged exposure to the electromagnetic frequency radiation these lines will emit. Additionally, with this project being the first like it in the U.S., the construction is not proven. Given that, does SCE think it is safe to ‘experiment’ on a community of residents with no regard to the impact this will have on families?
“We appreciate,” Goodwin said, “the courage demonstrated by the CPUC commissioners as they were personally appalled at the sight of seeing the arrogant towers with their own eyes.  It’s obvious they immediately recognized SCE’s reckless disregard for others.”

(May 24) San Bernardino County in the upcoming 2013-14 fiscal  year will rely upon well over a quarter of a billion dollars in short term loans as part of its budgeting process.
Those short term loans, in the form of what are called tax and revenue anticipation notes, are secured against revenue the county anticipates receiving later in the fiscal year but which will not be available when the fiscal year begins in July.
This week the board of supervisors authorized the borrowing of funds for fiscal year 2013-14 and the issuance and sale of 2013-14 Tax and Revenue Anticipation Notes in an aggregate principal amount not to exceed $275,000,000.
According to a report authored by Gary McBride, the county’s chief financial officer and the county’s principal administrative analyst, Katrina Turturro, “Issuance of the tax and revenue anticipation notes (TRANS) will allow the County to meet temporary cash flow shortfalls during the year. Repayment of the notes will be made from general fund cash and revenues via a note repayment trust fund.”
Since 1981, the county has issued short-term notes in the form of TRANS to finance cash shortfalls of the county’s general fund. This is done by San Bernardino County, as well as many other local governments, to address the seasonal mismatch between the receipt of revenues and disbursements for ongoing operations. Expenditures for the general fund such as payroll costs follow a regular, even pattern throughout the year, while receipts follow a much more uneven pattern due primarily to property tax payments which are received in December and April of each year. The proceeds of the TRANS may be used for any purpose for which the county is authorized to expend money, thus allowing the county to cover temporary cash shortfalls.
The TRANS will be repaid from the county’s unrestricted cash and revenues, a portion of which is required to be deposited into a special note repayment fund. According to McBride, “The county has always met its set-aside obligation on its short-term notes and has always timely paid its principal and interest payments.”
On Tuesday, the board of supervisors authorized the issuance of tax and revenue anticipation notes in an amount not to exceed $275,000,000. The resolution authorizes the issuance of one or more series of both tax-exempt and taxable notes, allows for portions of the notes to mature at different times throughout the year, and authorizes the county to issue additional series of notes for the fiscal year at a later date if certain conditions are met.
“These options give the county the ability to offer the correct mix of notes to respond to market demand, satisfy tax requirements, and ensure that the county’s cash flow needs are met,” McBride said.  The firm of Orrick, Herring ton & Sutcliffe LLP will serve as note counsel on the bond issuances and Hawkins, Delafield and Wood LLP will serve as disclosure counsel.

(May 24) HINKLEY—A plume of hexavalent chromium permeating the water table beneath Hinkley has grown considerably in the last 36 months, spreading from a 2.5-by-1 mile area to one of roughly 7-by-2.5 miles, according to the final environmental impact report completed pursuant to Pacific Gas & Electric’s state-mandated remediation of the environmental hazard.
That clean-up has been ordered by the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, which deemed Pacific Gas & Electric responsible for the contamination.
Hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium 6, is a known carcinogen and highly damaging to several organs. California Department of Health guidelines indicate humans should not consume water that has  a total chromium content greater than than 50 parts per billion.
In 1952, Pacific Gas & Electric established a natural gas pipeline that linked the oil and gas fields in Texas and New Mexico with San Francisco, which required pressurization stations at several junctures along that route. Until 1966, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) utilized chromium 6 to control algae and protect against rust in the cooling towers for those compressor stations. Near Hinkley, PG&E had disposed of chromium 6-laden wastewater from the pressurization stations in unlined ponds. Much of the chromium 6 leached into the water table.
In 1994, lawyer Ed Masry filed a multi-plaintiff direct action suit against Pacific Gas & Electric, alleging contamination of drinking water with hexavalent chromium in the area was a direct result of Pacific Gas & Electric’s negligent action.  The case was settled in 1996 for $333 million, at that time the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in American history. In 2006, PG&E agreed to pay another $295 million to settle cases involving 1,100 people statewide for chromium 6 related claims not involved in the prior suit. In 2008, PG&E settled the last of the cases involved with the Hinkley claims for $20 million. Despite those payouts, the contamination problem at and around Hinkley remains.
Hinkley is slightly north of California State Highway 58, 14 miles northwest of Barstow, 59 miles east of Mojave and 47 miles north of Victorville.
The presence of Chromium 6 near Hinkley again became an issue in 2010  when hydrologists learned the contaminated plume had expanded to roughly 2 1/2 miles in length and about a mile in width.
In 2011, following indications that the plume was still extant and spreading and that many more residents of the area were at risk, PG&E initiated the provision of bottled water to locals and was prepared to commit as much as $54 million toward providing a permanent replacement water supply for all indoor domestic uses, including individual household filtration systems. The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board concluded that merely providing bottled water was not adequate and it ordered Pacific Gas and Electric to provide a new permanent water source to affected users. PG&E dissented from that mandate but lost its appeal. Lahontan called for a more thorough examination of the extent of the contamination and has since called for an aggressive – and expensive – remediation effort. Simultaneously, Pacific Gas & Electric undertook an effort to buy up all of the property in and around Hinkley and encourage those residents remaining there to move away. Such a strategy, PG&E believes, will in the long run prove less expensive than undertaking a cleanup of the aquifer. A substantial number of Hinkley residents have sold their property to the company and have left town, presumably for good.
PG&E has also questioned the standard Lahontan is calling for with regard to chromium 6 levels. PG&E maintains that the standard is more than 100 times lower than the naturally occurring chromium background level in Hinkley and lower than naturally occurring background levels in many other communities in California. PG&E is suggesting the level of water purity Lahontan is requesting cannot be achieved.
PG&E cited a survey completed by faculty and students with the University of California at Berkeley, which found chromium 6’s background level in Hinkley to be 3.1 parts per billion. The company is requesting that Lahontan adopt that as the goal for decontaminating the water. Others, however, are skeptical, pointing out that the background levels PG&E is referencing refer to trivalent chromium, or chromium 3, which is a far less toxic substance than chromium 6.
PG&E previously maintained the level of remediation  that Lahontan is demanding “will result in a material increase” that will endanger the company’s solvency since it will not be able to recover the costs from its customers, and will impact negatively the value of the company’s stock.
Nevertheless, the environmental impact report for the remediation effort now under consideration and which PG&E is now purposed to comply with sets forth a multitude of cleanup alternatives, including  extraction of the contaminated water, carbon filter amendment of the contaminated groundwater and reinjection of the water into the aquifer,  agricultural application of the water within and adjacent to the northern diffuse portion of the plume to metabolically process the water, freshwater injection in the northwest area of the plume adjacent to the western boundaries of contaminated areas, further carbon filtration of and reinjection of extracted water and continuous monitoring of the contamination levels and migration of the plume.