(December 7)  BARSTOW—While most municipalities in San Bernardino County and California are struggling with the financial challenges inherent in the salary and benefit costs for their firefighters, the city of Barstow is one of the state’s few cities where until now fire department pay has not been a city treasury-breaking issue. That could change soon, though.
Next month, Barstow will join the ranks of cities paying the going rate, that is, union-scale wages to its firefighting staff, such that the cost of employing a single firefighter full time with overtime, including salary and benefits, will run the city close to $130,000 per year, on average.
Traditionally, the Barstow Fire Protection District was an independent agency dedicated to providing fire protection within its jurisdiction and was unaffiliated with any other agency or governmental entity. As such, the district was a self-sustaining one that had to live within the means available to it. This translated into what were more modest salaries and benefit packages for its employees than were available in larger districts and even small or smaller municipal departments.
In a split vote taken at a special joint meeting in March 2010, Barstow’s city council and the separate fire protection district board voted to merge the district with the city. In this way, the city took on responsibility for the fire district’s entire jurisdiction, which included everything within the Barstow City Limits as well as some areas outside the city. The board for the district, which voted 4-1 in favor of the move with board member Paul Courtney opposed, was somewhat more enthusiastic about the takeover than was the city council, which voted in favor of the merger 3-1, with councilman Tim Saenz abstaining and councilman Tim Silva opposed.
Representations made to justify having the city absorb the department were that the takeover would ensure local control of the department, better service and save money.
It does not appear that this last rationale was fulfilled.
In 2011, the fire district became a part of the city. Fire department employees, who were still paid at the rates they received previously, overnight became municipal employees.
Internally, city staff knew the firefighters were working for compensation that was somewhat less than the standard paid to firefighters elsewhere. When the city undertook a routine study of the city’s classification of its employees and their compensation which showed fire personnel were being paid less than other city employees, the issue became a public one. The firefighters, who had previously been willing to work for the pay provided by the district, were beset with a newfound sense of deprivation upon learning that they were in many cases making less money than their municipal colleagues, including some members of the clerical and maintenance divisions.
According to the classification and compensation study, the results of which were accepted by the city council in October, beginning firefighters received 42 percent less pay than beginning police officers.
According to the report, that discrepancy “occurs through the rank of fire captain, with the majority of Barstow’s employees being compensated at a higher rate than fire captain.”
The Barstow Professional Firefighters Association, the union representing the firefighters, began pressuring city manager Curt Mitchell and members of the council, calling for pay and benefit increases that would put the fire department personnel on a par with those working in other cities and fire districts around the county.
Despite the pronounced intent of the city council in voting for the takeover in 2010 that the move would reduce costs, the council in October agreed to a negotiated settlement that goes into effect on January 1, 2013 that will increase the pay of an entry level firefighter before overtime from $4,000 per month or $48,000 per year to a minimum of $4,500 monthly or $54,000 per year. The contract with the firefighters calls for them to make a nine percent contribution to their retirement fund.  All higher ranking members of the department – firefighter paramedics, field training officers, fire inspectors, battalion chiefs, fire engineers, fire captains, and fire captain specialists – make even more money.
The increase in the fire department employees’ pay will also increase the amount of the pensions they will receive, since public safety retirees are paid a percentage – usually three percent – of their highest yearly salary and add-ons times the number of years they have been employed. In this way, a public safety employee who remains with a city for 33 years will be eligible for a pension of 99 percent of his or her highest salary for the rest of his or her life.
The effort to adjust the firefighters’ level of pay upward occurred during the third year of a four-year-long contraction of the national, state and local economy. The adjustment was also made as other municipal entities which are themselves struggling with dwindling revenue and hefty contractual commitments to their employees are seeking concessions from those employees’ bargaining units on salary levels and benefit packages.
The Barstow City Council had the option of directing Mitchell to leave the existing pay scale for the city’s recently-acquired firefighter force in place and use that scale as a standard with which to ask the city’s other employee bargaining groups to make salary and benefit concessions to bring them in line with the firefighters and thereby reduce that portion of the city’s budget which is devoted to employee payroll and benefits.
In Barstow, as in nearly all other cities in San Bernardino County and the state of California, employee salaries, overtime and benefits represent the major cost to taxpayers in maintaining municipal government.
A number of cities are in an extremely delicate position vis-à-vis employee costs. At the county seat in San Bernardino, for example, city officials have filed for bankruptcy and are on the verge of facing lawsuits over the city’s inability or unwillingness to make further contributions to the city’s employees’ pension fund, the California Public Employees Retirement System. The outcome of that refusal to make those payments is unknown at this time, with the possibility that the bankruptcy court will order San Bernardino to continue to make the payments. It is also possible that the pension fund board will pursue legal action against San Bernardino. It is also possible that the retirement system will cease making pension payments to San Bernardino’s retirees altogether or sharply reduce those pensions.
While San Bernardino city employee union officials have blamed San Bernardino elected officials and city management for the situation that city finds itself in, others fault the city’s employee unions and the employees themselves for their intensive lobbying and political efforts that resulted in the election of city leaders who continually provided city employees with generous salaries and benefits that represented costs far beyond the city’s financial means.

(December 7)   The internecine fight among environmentalists over the approval of the Soda Mountain Solar Project is a showcase of the conflicted existential crisis that has beset the ecological movement over alternative energy projects.
The Soda Mountain project is a proposal by a limited liability company known as Soda Mountain Solar, which is a subdivision of the Bechtel Corporation, to build a 350-megawatt solar power generating field on 4,397 acres of Bureau of Land Management-administered property in the Mojave Desert six miles southwest of Baker.
So far, the proponents have filed a notice of intent to pre-prepare a draft environmental impact statement. Further steps in the approval process will entail the publication of the draft environmental impact statement for the project, making that statement available to the public, gathering public comment on the statement, the publication of a final environmental impact statement, making that statement publicly available, entering a record of decision on the acceptability of the project and then obtaining a right-of-way grant from the federal government for the approved project.
The 350 megawatts of energy to be produced by the project would meet the domestic electrical demands of 170,000 households and not entail the burning of fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, the project site is relatively proximate to existing transmission lines bringing electrical power from Hoover Dam to Los Angeles. The addition of the electricity to be produced at Soda Mountain would contribute toward the effort to have California obtain 33 percent of its power from clean sources by 2020. In this way, the project is in keeping with several basic tenets and goals of the environmental/ecology movement.
Paradoxically, some environmentalists are maintaining that solar projects such as the one at Soda Mountain are too damaging to the immediate environs to be allowed to proceed. In the case of Soda Mountain, a collection of environmentalists cite how the project will cover just under seven square miles of densely occupied wildlife habitat involving the desert tortoise, roaming bighorn sheep and most specifically a rare desert fish that is close to extinction.
At the national level, the Obama administration has voiced approval of the concept of accelerated development of alternative energy sources. In the nearly four years that Barack Obama has been in office, however, there has been less progress in that regard than was anticipated. Environmentalists have in many cases objected to solar projects in California’s vast outback. Three of those were the Ivanpah Solar Project near the Nevada border at the northeast end of San Bernardino County, BrightSource Renewables, LLC’s solar project near Kramer Junction and KRoad Power’s Calico Solar project.
In an effort to facilitate alternative energy projects and bypass the knockdown, drag out fights that have in nearly every case delayed and in some cases derailed solar energy proposals, the Obama administration took action in the form of U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s creation of 17 solar energy zones in the Southwest deemed optimum for harnessing the sun’s radiating power. Those zones were selected in some measure because they are believed to be less wildlife intensive than other portions of the American desert.
None of the zones lies within San Bernardino County. Rather, the bureau has designated one 213-square mile solar power development zone in eastern Riverside County along Interstate 10 from Desert Center to Blythe and another slightly smaller area in Imperial County abutting the Mexican border.  Projects developed in those two areas will be favored with fast-tracked project reviews.
The creation of the zones did not preclude, however, project proponents seeking licensing and approval for projects elsewhere in the desert. Moreover, there were, prior to the October announcement of the creation of the solar power development zones, dozens of pending solar energy project applications. In some of those cases, the proponents own outright or have “tied-up” through purchase options the property where the solar projects are to be located. In other cases, such as at Soda Mountain, the proponents are seeking to lease public land from the government as sites.
In the instance of the proposed Soda Mountain Project, Bechtel acquired the rights to a filing for the project originally made in 2007 by New York-based Caithness Corp., which proposed establishing solar fields on both sides of Interstate 15 between Razor and Zzyzx roads. Bechtel is the largest construction and engineering firm in the United States, having been founded more than a century ago by Warren Bechtel and later headed by John McCone, a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the 1930s, Bechtel was involved in the construction of the Hoover Dam.
Biologists have concerns over the project’s potential impacts on indigenous flora and fauna at the proposed project site. Large numbers of desert creosote on the property would be displaced, though those plants are not in danger of extinction. Desert tortoises live throughout the Mojave but surveys of the property done in 2009 by wildlife biologists commissioned by Caithness found no tortoises, which are threatened with extinction, on the property.
Bighorn sheep are known to pass over the property frequently. There is no indication, however, that the solar arrays would prove incompatible with them., though they might alter their path of migration.
The most serious known concern about the hazard the project represents to living creatures in the area pertains to the tui chub, a type of minnow, which proliferates in springs and ponds in the area. That portion of the desert is one of the few remaining habitats for the endangered fish. Bechtel/Soda Mountain Solar, LLC intends to draw water from the desert aquifer to periodically  wash the solar panels’ mirrors. Environmentalists have misgivings about a drawdown of the aquifer’s level, which could result in the parching of area’s springs and ponds, resulting in the death of the colonies of tui chub.
At present, environmentalists are linking forces with the National Park Service, which oversees the nearby Mojave National Preserve, and are lobbying the Bureau of Land Management to induce Bechtel/Soda Mountain Solar to consider re-proposing its project for location at one of the designated solar power development zones.

(December 7)   The county of San Bernardino will spend $1.146 million to provide transitional housing for state inmates transferred to the county sheriff’s care who are being released early for good behavior and space constraint considerations.
The released inmates, who were given sentences that are considerably longer than the time they will actually serve, are without means – either financial resources or employment – to house themselves.
According to Audulio Ricketts, the county of San Bernardino’s deputy chief probation officer, “Providing this housing will help these individuals reintegrate into the community with the objective of reducing recidivism.”
In April 2011, Assembly Bill 109, the Public Safety Realignment Act, was signed into law.
AB 109 focused on parolees who have been classified as “low-level” offenders. The bill, among other things, created a provision for the adjudication of parole violations at the local level, rather than returning the offenders to the prison system. Essentially, the realignment displaces responsibility for the supervision of these offenders from the state to the local level. Parolees categorized as low risk offenders are titled “Post Release Community Supervision” or PRCS offenders, after their current offense is determined to be non-serious, non-violent, and non-sex related. Realignment dictates that they be released for supervision to the local county where they were originally sentenced. The legislation also requires that best practices be utilized for treatment and rehabilitation.
According to Ricketts, “The department went through the request for proposal (i.e., bidding) process to solicit proposals from qualified vendors to provide temporary/transitional housing for PRCS offenders. Six vendors submitted proposals. The review process narrowed the field to Time for Change, Family Assistance Program, and Foothill AIDS Project based on their demonstrated ability to provide the best service for the population at the most reasonable cost,” Ricketts said. “These three vendors represent the first group of providers that will deliver this service. The probation department is committed to providing temporary/transitional housing to offenders that demonstrate a need for housing assistance and to find additional vendors which can provide this service. The department is entering into these contracts to provide housing for the PRCS and other mandatory supervision adults. The term of these contracts is for three years, but may be terminated by the county upon thirty day’s written notice.”
Time for Change will be paid $246,000. Family Assistance Program will receive $300,000.  Foothill AIDS Project was given a not to exceed contract of $600,000.

(December 7)   Due to what San Bernardino County Superior Court Presiding Judge Marsha Slough called   “severe ongoing budget reductions,” the courts will reduce the operating hours of the court clerk’s office beginning Monday, February 4, 2013.
At present, the clerk’s office of the Superior Court is open 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, except court holidays.
Effective next February 4, the public service hours for the clerk’s office of the Superior Court will be 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, except court holidays, and except for the clerk’s office for the Juvenile Dependency Court and Juvenile Delinquency Court in San Bernardino.
Effective Monday, February 4, 2013, the public service hours for the clerk’s office for the Juvenile Dependency Court and Juvenile Delinquency Court in San Bernardino will be 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, except court holidays.
Drop boxes are provided to receive documents when the clerk’s offices are closed.
The decision to reduce the hours of operation was made by Slough.
“There are great financial exigencies facing all governmental entities in California and neither the Superior Court of San Bernardino County nor the California judicial system are exempt from having to deal with these extreme financial circumstances,” Slough said. “After careful deliberation, I have concluded that the changes set forth constitute the most reasonable and measured way to begin to meet these financial challenges while minimizing the impact on the citizens of San Bernardino County and on the court’s ability to provide equal access.

(December 7)   The Environmental Protection Agency has reached a settlement with 12 corporate entities  and the Defense Department that will provide $51 million for the remediation of 60 acres in Rialto beset with perchlorate contamination.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced it had reached a settlement on the case with Emhart Industries, Inc., Black & Decker Inc, American Promotional Events, Inc., the Ensign-Bickford Company, Raytheon, Whittaker Corporation, Broco, Inc., J. S. Brower & Associates, Inc, Pyro Spectaculars, Ken Thompson Inc., Chung Ming Wong, BF Goodrich, and the Department of Defense on December 5.
In the late 1990s, a plume of contaminants containing perchlorate was found to be migrating through the local water table. Officials began a study into entities known to have been or believed to be engaged in manufacturing activities that resulted in the accumulation and release of the perchlorate. It is believed that the 12 corporate entities or their predecessors had operations that were ongoing in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s which involved the use, storage or disposal of perrchlorate and that they engaged in activities or handling procedures that led to the contamination. The county of San Bernardino acquired a waste disposal facility operated by Broco and simply razed the facility, according to lawyers for the West Valley Water District. Perchlorate is a product used in the manufacture of both fireworks and ordnance. In very minute quantities perchlorate can wreak havoc on the thyroid gland.
The area, referred to as the Goodrich Site,  was  designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as one of its Superfund sites, which makes federal funding for the remediation available but also carries with it a requirement that the parties responsible for the contamination assist in the cleanup effort. If any of the parties deemed responsible for the contamination refuse to sponsor or otherwise pay for a share of the remediation, the EPA has the authority under federal law to have any party proven responsible to pay triple the cost of that portion of the cleanup for which they were the contaminating party.
Rialto and Colton and the West Valley Water District, which had previously sued the companies, are parties to the settlement agreement.
Emhart will put up the lion’s share of the first portion of the clean-up cost. The other entities will participate in what is anticipated to be a 30-year long undertaking that will include designing, building and operating groundwater wells, treatment systems and purification  equipment intended to arrest the spread of perchlorate and another substance, trichloroethylene, known as TCE. TCE is a health threatening  industrial cleaning solvent used by area manufacturers.

(November 30)   The city of San Bernardino intends to carry on with normal though reduced services over the next few years while running a $40 million annual deficit, according to a document approved by the city council this week for filing with the Federal Bankruptcy Court in Riverside.
On a 5 to 2 vote, the San Bernardino City Council on November 26 approved a redrafted Chapter 9 Bankruptcy pendency plan intended to maintain the city as a viable entity yet capable of providing a rudimentary level of municipal services. The plan allows the lion’s share of city employees to keep their jobs, while deferring payments to nearly all of the city’s creditors and vendors for some time to come.
The plan’s approval was opposed by councilmen Chas Kelley and John Valdivia.
According to cash projections for fiscal year 2012-13 provided with the plan, the general fund will receive $120,424,000 in revenue while continuing to spend $166,237,000. This means the city will have a base deficiency of $45,812,000. The city will be able to transfer in $4.83 million from reserves and other sources for an actual total operating deficiency  of $40.983 million.
According to the authors of the pendency plan, acting city manager Andrea Travis-Miller, director of finance Jason Simpson, and Michael Busch, the president of the municipal consulting firm Urban Futures, Inc., “The city of San Bernardino has reached a crossroads. Continued financial imbalance between revenues and expenses have now exhausted the city’s general financial reserves and burdened it with obligations it cannot pay, obligations that exceed its current year general fund resources by $45.8 million in fiscal year 2012-2013 and that, unless addressed structurally to be sustainable, will continue to grow in future years. Despite efforts to reduce expenditures and put the city’s financial house in order, the city is insolvent. During the past two years it became clear the city’s financial position was weakening and its employment contracts, post-employment benefits and unfunded liabilities incurred over the last 15 years cannot be supported if the city is to continue delivering services crucial to protecting the health, safety and welfare of the community.”
The city council can “protect the community and make sure that the city emerges from this financial crisis as a viable, sustainable institution,” Travis-Miller, Simpson and Busch said “only [through] the difficult process of restructuring its long-term financial obligations and fixed costs.” They then noted, “The city is working with its employee unions and associations, and its creditors, to reach agreements that would restructure the city’s unsustainable financial obligations.”
In the plan, Travis-Miller, Simpson and Busch cited the precedence of the city of Vallejo’s 2008 bankruptcy filing in exploring how San Bernardino can overcome requirements contained in the California State Constitution and San Bernardino’s own city charter which prohibit the city from adopting an unbalanced budget. They suggested that by deferring payments within the rubric of the Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing, the city could technically comply with the balanced budget requirement.
“Without restructuring its finances or maintaining the protection of Chapter 9, the city could not pay its employees, retirees, bondholders or vendors,” they wrote. “This would result in uncontrolled default and, presumably, a collapse of public services. Bankruptcy protection assures that this will not happen in San Bernardino, though we cannot say how much creditors will, or will not, receive. The term ‘pendency plan’ was developed in the city of Vallejo Chapter 9 case to describe the plan the city would operate under pending the completion of the bankruptcy process.”
San Bernardino may end up extending even further the amount of time it now intends to take to pay off its mounting list of creditors and may even shortchange some of those creditors.
“Amendments to the plan or extension of the plan into future fiscal years could occur,” Travis-Miller, Simpson and Busch stated. “Because the Great Recession struck Vallejo after it filed for bankruptcy protection it had to make many changes in its plan to adjust to worsening economic conditions. During the period the city operates under the pendency plan in bankruptcy, the differences between payments required by contracts and the amount actually paid become claims in bankruptcy and are resolved through negotiations and, ultimately, the plan of adjustment submitted to the creditors for approval and to the bankruptcy court for confirmation. In Vallejo, after three years, all classes of creditors voted to accept the plan of adjustment; however, under the Bankruptcy Code, the court can confirm a plan of adjustment even if some classes of creditors disapprove, a process known as ‘cram down.’”
City staff had earlier prepared pre-pendency plans which were submitted to the council on August 29, 2012, September 5, 2012, October 1, 2012 and November 19, 2012. The version submitted on November 26 adjusted those earlier plans somewhat, specifically calling for further reductions in the police force. While the city proposed fiscal year 2012-13’s budget  include 299 sworn officer positions, 18 of those positions were unfilled when staff first began work on the pendency plan and it is anticipated that as of December 1, there will be 31 vacant positions in the department, for a force structure of 268 sworn officers. By January 1, it is anticipated the force will have dwindled, through attrition consisting of retirements or layoffs, to 258 sworn officers, with funding available for only 260 officers, maximum. The city is further awaiting a contract proposal from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, since Travis-Miller, Simpson and Busch maintain “there may be significant savings or adjustments in the city’s overall cost to effectively police the city.”
The plan also calls for the city’s police officers to begin paying 50 percent of their retirement fund contribution, which is currently entirely picked up by the city. This will net the city savings of $3.252 million per year. Similarly, the city’s firefighters will be called upon to make a 50 percent contribution to their retirement fund, saving the city $1.894 million. A number of other city employees will be called upon to pick up fifty percent of their pension contributions, saving the city $651,000.  The city also intends to reduce firefighter overtime by 35 percent, saving the city $921,375, by staffing fire trucks throughout the city with three men.
“The pendency plan provides a balanced general fund through cost reductions to labor, benefits, debt and other obligations,” according to Travis-Miller, Simpson and Busch. They said the plan would “promote health, safety and welfare, minimize the impact on future services, balance costs and service impacts of reductions, build fiscal sustainability and maintain competitive compensation packages.”
There has been much criticism of what is considered to be the city’s excessively high compensation of city employees in terms of both salaries paid and benefits provided, and suggestions that this in large measure accounts for the city’s current financial circumstance. To that issue, Travis-Miller, Simpson and Busch propounded, “It is essential the city maintain competitive pay and benefit programs to retain and attract qualified, motivated employees. In the past, the city’s pay and benefit packages were among the most generous in its market area, sometimes significantly above the regional market. The city has, through negotiation or through imposition of reductions covered by its fiscal emergency powers, reduced compensation and benefit packages for its employees. These include employee payment of their California Public Employee Retirement System contributions, capping contributions to employee health plans and reducing costs by changing carriers, limiting pay outs, seeking new, lower pension benefit levels for new hires and eliminating retiree health insurance for new hires. The additional, but selective, changes here continue to address situations where compensation is above market and has created excessive liabilities that cannot be paid without unacceptable reductions in service. The primary reductions proposed herein relate to retirement costs and benefit structure.”
In voting against the plan, Valdivia complained that a 260-officer police force was insufficient to meet the city’s needs.
Calling the plan “deeply flawed,” Kelly said the city needed to spur economic development to increase revenue. He said the plan was not balanced in that it made no cuts to administrative services.
In a rare show of solidarity, mayor Patrick Morris and city attorney James Penman, who as longtime political rivals have blamed each other for the city’s deteriorating financial state, urged the council to put disagreements over specific elements in the plan aside and to support the plan in a show of unanimity that would convince the federal bankruptcy magistrate hearing the city’s case, Meredith Jury, to allow the bankruptcy reorganization to proceed.
City officials did not address the possibility or likelihood that some or many of its creditors, contractors or vendors with whom the city has ongoing contracts will cease the delivery of goods or services as a consequence of the payment deferrals.

(November 30)   Chino Hills residents are very likely to receive an unwanted Christmas gift in December in the form of notice that the city’s households will be called upon to defray a significant portion of the cost of undergrounding power lines though the city.
Those costs could be as high as $26,000 per household to be amortized over 25 or thirty years, either in the form of increased electrical rates or assessments, the Sentinel has learned.
In 2009, the board of the California Public Utilities Commission granted Southern California Edison clearance to erect a series of 198-foot high power transmission towers through the heart of 44.7 square mile Chino Hills along a long-existing power corridor easement owned by the utility as part of the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project. Those lines are intended to convey electrical power,  generated at what will be the world’s largest windmill-driven electrical generating field near Tehachapi in Kern County, to the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. The $2.1 billion project is part of Southern California Edison’s effort to meet state-mandated renewable energy goals.
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 over $2.3 million to employ attorneys and make other efforts to contest the Public Utility Commission’s action, including a 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.
Beginning last year, Edison, which has long had a 150-foot wide right-of-way for its power lines that runs for 5.8  miles through upscale Chino Hills from Tonner Canyon to the Riverside County line,  erected 12 of the towers within the city limits and another 5 in Carbon Canyon before a city appeal to the California Public Utility Commission (PUC) and Public Utility Commission Chairman Michael Peevey in particular succeeded in a temporary halt to the towers’ construction being granted in November 2011 while a potential alternative, such as undergrounding the lines or rerouting them through Chino Hills State Park, was explored.
The rerouting alternative has been discarded, such that the only realistic chance that the towers will be de-erected consists of the undergrounding of the lines. That approach, however, will be very expensive and the PUC has given indication it does not expect Edison to bear that cost alone. The primary beneficiaries of the undergrounding, the city of Chino Hills and its residents and landowners, are expected to participate in carrying that financial burden.
PUC President Michael Peevey previously asked Edison to provide cost data on a potential undergrounding by February 28, 2013. On November 15, Peevey asked Edison to provide the commission by December 3 with a detailed report cataloging the costs and scope of the materials and service contracts associated with the undergrounding alternatives, along with Edison’s cost recovery proposals.
The Sentinel has learned that Edison has calculated 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 to be  $300 million to $473 million, and  undergrounding a double-circuit line to be $703 million to $1 billion.
Chino Hills homeowners will see annual assessments approaching $900 per year to cover the city’s cost for directly participating with Edison in undergrounding the Tehachapi Line or annual rate increases of anywhere between $800 to $1,000 if Edison undertakes the undergrounding on its own
Multiple options exist by which that share of the cost could be defrayed or amortized. One option would be to bypass the city government altogether and have the city’s ratepayers, as Southern California Edison customers, bear the cost through a special surcharge on their electric bills. Another option would be for the city to share in the burden by issuing bonds or taking out loans and using the bond proceeds or the loan to cover its portion. One formula proffered consisted of the city having its business and residential elements splitting the debt service responsibility on the loans or bonds. In this way, the debt service on an issuance of $500 million over 30 years would require total payments of roughly $1 billion, including interest. Assuming the business community would pick up half that amount over the 30-year life of the loan or bonds, Chino Hills’ homeowners would be called upon to pay $500 million to bondholders or the lending institution over the thirty year life of the obligation. With roughly 18,700 households in the city, each household would be responsible for $26,737.96 of that debt. Defrayed over thirty years, each household would be called upon to assume a yearly assessment of $891.26. Such an assessment, if passed by the city council, would be placed on each homeowner’s property tax bill.
Part of Peevey’s rationale for moving up the date for Edison to provide its figures is that the PUC wants to facilitate the completion of the Tehachapi project by 2015, and having a cost sharing mechanism involving the city of Chino Hills or a rate recovery process in place by mid-2013 is deemed crucial to that goal.

(November30)   Gloria Negrete-Mc-Leod’s surprise come-from-behind victory over longtime Congressman Joe Baca in the race for Congress in California’s redrawn 35th Congressional District has inspired some intense jockeying among a handful of local politicians who are now looking at succeeding Negrete-McLeod as state senator in the 32nd  District.
Negrete-McLeod, a Democrat, has two years left in the four-year term as state senator she was elected to in 2010. She embarked on what was widely viewed as a quixotic venture to capture the California 35th Congressional District seat in running against Baca during California’s open June primary earlier this year  in the Democratic-leaning 35th District. Baca, himself a Democrat and a former assemblyman and state senator, in 1999 was elected to succeed longtime Congressman George Brown following his death in office. At that time, Baca represented California’s 42nd Congressional District. Following redistricting based on the 2000 Census, he successfully ran for reelection in California’s 43rd Congressional District five times. This year, he opted to run in the newly configured 35th Congressional District, which was slightly afield from the 43rd, but his incumbency and perceived fundraising advantage over all other challengers, including Negrete-McLeod, appeared to give him a leg up on the competition. And indeed, in the June open primary polling, Baca bested Negrete-McLeod by what seemed a more-than-comfortable margin, 12,619 votes or 47.7 percent to 9,078 or 33.93 percent. A third candidate in the race, Anthony Vieyra polled 5,058 votes or 18.9 percent. Given that this year California had switched to an open primary, the two top finishing candidates qualified for the general election, despite party affiliation. In this way, the stage was set for a showdown between Baca and Negrete-McLeod, both Democrats, in the November race.
In the final weeks before the general election on November 6, Negrete-McLeod’s campaign was infused with $3.8 million in donations from a political action committee controlled by Republican New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, which paid for a $2.3 million television advertising blitz during the last week of the campaign. Baca, who throughout most of the campaign had been complacent, was caught flatfooted and saw the election slip away, with Negrete-McLeod capturing  61,065 votes or 54.35 percent to his 51,281 votes or 45.65 percent.
Negrete-McLeod is now purposed to depart Sacramento for Washington, D.C. To succeed her in the state capital, four current office holders, including one who is about to depart Sacramento herself, have now emerged as likely contenders.
The new Congress is set to convene on January 3. Negrete-Mcleod will have to resign as a state senator prior to being sworn in as a congresswoman.
Under the law, Governor Jerry Brown has 14 days to call a special election after McLeod vacates office. A special primary election could be scheduled as early as late April or early May. A victor will have to receive a majority of the vote to be elected. If no candidate captures a majority of the vote, the two top vote-getters would compete in a special run-off election.
Wilmer Amina Carter, the current assemblywoman in the 62nd District, was termed out and could not run for reelection this year. She will leave office next week. A Democrat, Carter is now considering vying for the position Negrete-Mcleod will soon forsake.  Carter will need to move to be eligible to compete in the race.
Larry Walker, who is currently the county treasurer-tax collector/auditor-controller, is  interested in the position, and is actively seeking endorsements. A former Chino mayor and county supervisor, Walker is also a Democrat.
Another Democrat,  Norma Torres, who is at present the 61st District assemblywoman representing Pomona, Claremont, La Verne, Ontario, Montclair and parts of Fontana, just garnered reelection to the assembly, this time in the 52nd Assembly District, which covers Chino Valley, Pomona, Montclair and Ontario. Torres was formerly mayor of Pomona, which is in Los Angeles County.
A fourth potential candidate is Ontario mayor Paul Leon, a Republican. Leon this week told the Sentinel, “I’m exploring the idea. I’m open to serving in the state senate. I am confident I can represent this area well at the state level. With my experience in Ontario, I feel I can be a positive influence in the state capital. I think I can repeat the stable financial model we created in Ontario and I would welcome the opportunity to lead the state back to prosperity.”
Ontario boasts the soundest economy and largest municipal budget of all of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities, with more than a half billion dollars running through all of its funds annually.
The jockeying for political position has already begun, entailing intrigue and in at least one case a humorously awkward clash of intent.
Negrete-McLeod’s endorsement is coveted. As the incumbent in the district, her nod alone will carry weight. Moreover, she has some money remaining in her state campaign war chest which cannot be moved into her federal campaign coffers. In this way, she has the option of endowing her endorsement with money that could assist in his or her electioneering effort.
There is a degree of tension, however, between Negrete-McLeod and Torres. Last year, before Baca made it clear he would seek election in the newly redrawn 35th Congressional District, Torres had offered herself as a candidate there, threatening to make the run against Negrete-McLeod. For that reason among others, Negrete-McLeod does not appear disposed to endorse Torres. Consequently, both Walker and Carter are courting Negrete-McLeod, with no clear indication of which Negrete-McLeod is likely to favor.
Walker has been assiduously seeking endorsements. At one point he called Leon, seeking his support. At that point, Leon had to inform Walker that he could not do so since he was himself considering a run for the very same slot.
Given the voter registration numbers favoring Democrats in the 32nd Senatorial District, there has been speculation that Leon might change his party affiliation from the GOP to the Democrats to make himself a more viable candidate. At the same time, Leon, one of the leading Hispanic Republican officeholders in the county, could find an upside in competing as a Republican against the other three, forcing a Donnybrook between three Democrats who end up splitting the vote of their shared partisan constituency, very possibly giving Leon a berth in a run-off.

(November 30)   Timothy John Sabo, the controversial attorney who spent much of his career working as  counsel to municipalities and local governmental agencies in and around San Bernardino County, has died.
Sabo was valued as a “facilitator” who rendered legal opinions other attorneys were often unwilling to provide to enable government to undertake projects or make funding arrangements that allowed cities and joint public agencies to proceed with policies that were controversial and subject to legal opposition or challenge.
In the 1980s, Sabo pushed the legal envelope himself by accepting work as redevelopment attorney, bond counsel and bond disclosure counsel simultaneously for several municipalities in San Bernardino County, including Ontario, San Bernardino and Fontana. Serving in those capacities entailed a considerable conflict of his functions, as he would stand to reap, as bond counsel and disclosure counsel, a percentage of the bond sales for bonds which he as redevelopment attorney had recommended for issuance. In this way, Sabo personally profited as a consequence of the legal advice he was providing as redevelopment attorney, throwing the wisdom of that advice into question. Sabo was able to function in this manner for several years, but the practice was criticized and questioned, ultimately resulting in a state attorney general’s opinion that highlighted the conflict-of-interest inherent in such arrangements. One by one, the entities that had been using Sabo in such dual or triple capacities discontinued doing so.
A scandal that materialized as a consequence of Sabo’s lax oversight within the context of his conflict-laden service as redevelopment attorney and bond counsel was that relating to the issuance of $65 million in bonds by the Fontana Redevelopment Agency in the 1980s to pay for infrastructure at the massive Southridge development in southwest Fontana. That project’s developer, the Ten-Ninety Corporation, claimed it did not have the money to pay for basic improvements such as streets, curbs, gutters, sidewalks, storm drains, sewers and the like to accommodate the development. To facilitate the project, the city council, acting as the redevelopment agency board in accordance with Sabo’s advice, issued $65 million worth of public improvement bonds together with taking out $55 million worth of loans from a glaziers’ union to pay for that infrastructure. Sabo, as bond counsel and disclosure counsel, was paid a one half of one percent commission on the sale of the bonds – $325,000. The bonds were actually purchased by the owners of the Ten Ninety Corporation, which raised questions about the accuracy of the company’s earlier claim that it did not have the wherewithal to pay for the requisite infrastructure to complement its project. The city of Fontana continues to pay $3.14 million per quarter – $12.56 million per year – to those bondholders. Sabo was never held to account for failing to fully inform the Fontana City Council/redevelopment agency board that the agency was enabling the developers to boost their profits on the development, despite his role as disclosure counsel.
Sabo, who grew up in New York, went to college at Youngstown State University in Ohio where he graduated magna cum laude in 1969, and later attended and graduated from the University of Denver College of Law in Colorado.
Shortly after passing the bar, he went to work for renowned municipal-bond lawyer James Warren Beebe. Under Beebe’s tutelage, Sabo learned first the rudiments, then the finer points and in time all of the permutations of public financing instruments and arrangements.
He eventually forged off on his own, forming his own law firm, which focused primarily on the practice of  municipal law, redevelopment law, public finance and municipal bond law. At various times, his firm included David Gondek, Alexis Crump, Stephen Deitsch and Charles Green. He and his firm were particularly active in various municipalities in San Bernardino County, Los Angeles County and Riverside County.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Sabo was counsel to the San Bernardino Redevelopment Agency, which utilized his guidance in arranging for the redevelopment of several of the city’s dilapidating districts, including the area that was transformed into Hospitality Lane, which now is one of the few areas of that city thriving economically.
Sabo was considered a leading authority on all versions of financial mechanisms, instruments and strategies within the public sector, such as tax allocation bonds, industrial development bonds, residential mortgage revenue bonds, hospital bonds, public benefit corporation bonds and capital appreciation bonds, as well as financing schemes that entailed a public agency’s formation of adjunct agencies with varying types and intensities of taxing, borrowing, lending, revenue producing and utilizing, and bond issuing capabilities.
Sabo’s clients recognized he could be counted upon to find a way to proceed with their programs and agendas, despite legal restrictions or regulations that hamstrung them.
In 2000, Sabo signed on with the law firm of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, a large national law firm which employs more than 800 attorneys at offices in Atlanta, Beaumont, Charleston, West Virginia, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, La Quinta, Lafayette, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Madison County, Illinois, Newark, New Orleans, New York, Orange County, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, Temecula and Tucson.
His association with that prestigious firm, however, did not prevent him from continuing to court controversy. One such brouhaha manifested when he took on representation of clients engaged in litigation against the city of San Bernardino, the parent authority over the redevelopment agency and economic development agency he was legal counsel to.
At the time of his death, Sabo’s actions in his capacity as counsel to the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, a joint powers authority involving the cities of San Bernardino, Highland, Colton and Loma Linda and the county of San Bernardino focused on the civilian use conversion of the former Norton Air Force Base, were under scrutiny by the FBI. Federal agents were looking into Sabo’s relationship to Scot Spencer, who until recently was the contract developer of the airport, and one of Spencer’s business partners, T. Milford Harrison. Harrison was formerly the executive director of the San Bernardino International Airport Authority.
Spencer, who served time in federal prison in the 1990s following his conviction on bankruptcy fraud charges stemming from his efforts to revive Braniff Airlines, was hired by the authority board to develop the airport on the basis of his contacts in the airline industry.
Spencer’s management of what was supposed to be a $38 million renovation of the airport’s passenger terminal and a $7 million development of its concourse was dogged by cost overruns, boosting the combined cost of the passenger terminal and the concourse to $142 million. No commercial airlines have yet flown out of the airport, despite the completion of those improvements. Instead, Spencer exploited his position at the airport, showing favoritism toward companies he owned or controlled and set up at San Bernardino International Airport, including SBD Aircraft Services, Norton Aviation Maintenance Services, Unique Aviation, San Bernardino Airport Management, SBD Properties LLC, KCP Leasing and Services, SBAM Technics, and SBD Aircraft Services, to the detriment of other aviation-related companies located there.
One such company was Aeros Aeronautical Systems Corp., a blimp builder which did work on dirigibles and other lighter-than-air craft in Hangar 695, which it had leased at the airport.
In 2008, business was booming for Aeros, and the company was making its lease payments to the airport authority on time and in full. But that year, two companies Spencer was a controlling partner with, SBD Aircraft Services and Norton Aviation Maintenance Services, entered into a subcontract with another Spencer-affiliated outfit, Unique Aviation, for the renovation and refurbishing of a then-35-year-old Boeing 727-227. Spencer claimed he needed the hangar space Aeros was using to have SBD and Norton Aviation do the work. Despite the consideration that Aeros was a tenant paying top dollar for the space it was using and that it had secured in June 2008 two successive short term leases with 30-day termination notices to undertake tests on a dirigible, Spencer used his leverage with the San Bernardino International Airport Authority to have Sabo author a letter which the airport authority’s then-executive director Don Rogers signed that essentially evicted Aeros.
In July 2008, before Aeros vacated the hangar, Spencer signed a lease for Hangar 695 at a rate less than half of what Aeros was paying for the space and despite the consideration that Aeros had yet to vacate it. When Aeros did not leave quickly enough to satisfy Spencer, who said he was prevented from completing $750,000 worth of repairs on the 727, he threatened to sue the airport authority. Before the incident was over, Aeros, which had offered the promise of remaining as a longtime paying tenant, left in a huff, never to return. The authority kowtowed to Spencer even further by providing him over $1 million worth of concessions, including the forgiving of a $155,000 balance on a previous loan, the extension of another $550,000 loan at 5 percent interest, and an ongoing $315,000 hangar rental subsidy, all of which were approved by Sabo. Sabo had also signed off on Spencer’s partnership with T. Milford Harrison, a former executive director of the airport authority.
In September 2011, the FBI raided San Bernardino International Airport Authority headquarters and offices and hangars at the airport itself, seizing hundreds of documents. An investigation into the potential delivery of kickbacks to airport authority officials was continuing at the time of Sabo’s passing.

(November 30)   Upland City Manager Stephen Dunn has been authorized to actively seek bids on outsourcing several key components of the city’s municipal services, including law enforcement, fire protection, engineering, code enforcement, computer systems, fleet maintenance, animal control, and operation and management of the city library.
Upland has long been a full service city, with in-house departments that carry out practically every aspect of its municipal function.
But in recent years the city has been beset with financial challenges, including a contracting economy that has reduced revenue into city coffers, coupled with rising expenditures such as legal costs on lawsuits in which the city has been both a plaintiff and a defendant, as well as escalating salary, benefit and pension costs for current and past employees.
On November 7, Dunn outlined separate and combined general options, including seeking concessions from employees in all of the city’s divisions and departments with regard to current and future contracts, including downward adjustments on salaries and benefits; dissolving the city’s police, fire, engineering and inspection departments and contracting for those services with outside agencies such as the county, the California Division of Forestry or the city of Ontario; selling the fire department’s ladder truck and converting Fire Station #2 to a paramedic team by going from a three-man to a two-man crew; periodic shutdowns of one fire station to drive down overtime; renegotiating the existing contract for the city’s air ambulance; leasing communication towers to cellular phone companies; and selling off certain assets for one-time revenue. If expenditure reductions cannot be made, Dunn said the city will need to explore new forms of revenue, including increasing the cost of municipal services or seeking citizen approval of a city-wide sales tax  or a parcel tax for the library.
Over the dissenting vote of councilman Gino Filippi, the balance of the council directed Dunn to explore each of those options, quantify the savings they will provide, and return to the council in January with a refined set of specific recommendations.
The city’s general fund reserves, which were earlier projected at $4.2 million, have dwindled to $932,000 and the council had previously okayed two short-term measures Dunn offered them, cutting $229,000 from various elements of general government operations, including within Dunn’s office and in that of the city’s development services division.
The council has also given Dunn permission to transfer $250,000 from the city’s gas tax fund, normally utilized for street and road improvements and required by law to be deposited in a separate bank account, to the city’s general fund, if the general fund becomes depleted. The general fund is used to pay for the city’s day-to-day operations.
A certain level of resistance against the outsourcings has already surfaced. Filippi, who three weeks ago said the city should explore all cost saving alternatives, this week balked at actually giving Dunn latitude to purposefully explore closing out the fire and police departments.
Whether the threat of just such budgetary fixes are sincere or intended to induce the Upland Police Officers Association and the Upland Professional Firefighters Association into serious bargaining mode remains to be demonstrated.  In this regard, the city’s current assumption of many employees’ contributions toward their retirement funds and the employee bargaining groups’ willingness to surrender that perquisite for those they represent is at issue. In years past, during brighter economic times, the city, while providing what was designated as its part of that contribution toward employees’ pensions, also agreed to pay that portion of the pension fund that was put up by the employees themselves. At present, the city is paying $1.6 million per year in covering what would otherwise be the employees’ burden. If the city’s seven employee bargaining groups would make that concession alone, Dunn indicated he is reasonably sure that layoffs will be avoided for at least the next two years.