The Chino Valley Unified School Board has again denied a charter petition by proponents of the Neighborhood Arts and Science Academy.
Advocates for the school were turned down in January and  sought  to reinterest the district in the charter school.
Chino Valley Unified has had a positive experience with another charter school, the Oxford Preparatory Academy, which has been in existence for two-and a-half years, and is the highest-performing school in San Bernardino County in terms of students’ scores on state standardized tests.
The school board recharted Oxford Preparatory Academy in December.
The sponsors of the Neighborhood Arts and Science Academy are proposing that the school serve kindergarten through eighth-graders beginning in the fall. They envision it as focusing on arts, science and technology, and preparing students to live and work in a global society. They are befuddled by the district’s reluctance to back the project after the success achieved with Oxford.
The California Education Code provides for the formation of charter schools under the aegis of that sponsoring local school district, although the charter school has its own separate school board or board directors.  Charter schools function outside the normal parameters of normal schools and can offer a curriculum and educational smorgasbord unavailable in traditional public schools.
The sponsoring district sustains a loss of funding from the state per student attendance at the charter school. While Oxford Preparatory Academy is a feather in the cap of Chino Valley Unified, paying for its operation reduces the amount of money available to the district’s traditional schools.
Chino Valley Unified examined the earlier and the latest petitions for the Neighborhood Arts and Science Academy’s chartering and concluded that the proposed school’s education program was unsound, did not contain a comprehensive description of 10 of 16 educational elements required by the district, did not meet the charter conditions contained in the state’s Education Code and that the petitioners were not likely to implement the program as described.
The Neighborhood Arts and Science Academy’s proponents have resolved to appeal the matter to the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools. After consultations with that office, the petitioners are making technical changes to their petition and will resubmit it to the San Bernardino County Board of Education.

Spurred on by Twentynine Palms and Chino, both of which have refused to docilely accept the state of California’s takeover of their redevelopment money, Rancho Cucamonga has resolved to sue the state if it is denied the bond proceeds it needs to see already initiated redevelopment construction projects to completion.
Governor Jerry Brown last year induced the legislature to pass two laws, AB X1 26 and AB X1 27, which dissolved more than 400 redevelopment agencies up and down the state. A legal challenge of those laws by a collection of cities failed and the shuttering of redevelopment agencies is proceeding.
Redevelopment agencies used a variety of funding mechanisms, including the issuance and sale of municipal bonds, to create infrastructure, promote economic development and eradicate blight. Theoretically, redevelopment bonds would pay for infrastructure improvements that would result in an increase in property values, in turn generating increased property tax. That property tax revenue increase, referred to as increment, would be utilized to pay the bondholders on a yearly basis.
In Rancho Cucamonga, as in many other cities, millions of dollars worth of redevelopment bonds had been issued and sold before AB X1 26 and AB X1 27 were passed and went into effect.  The resultant redevelopment projects were begun but unfinished, with millions of dollars left to fund the projects’ completion when the state foreclosed on the money.
The legislation shuttering the redevelopment agencies called for the creation of successors to the cities’ and counties’ redevelopment agencies to oversee the extinguishment of their authority and the discharging of their enforceable  financial obligations.
Provisions of AB X1 26 and AB X1 27 allowed successor agencies to utilize tax proceeds and bond money to complete ongoing projects pursuant to strict regulations and requirements, including having service or construction contracts in place before the laws went into effect. Another provision of the laws was that any lawsuits brought against the state over the agency dissolution or the availability of funding had to be litigated in Sacramento Superior Court.
Rancho Cucamonga was in the process of using its redevelopment authority and bonding capability to widen a portion of Foothill Boulevard on the west side of town, widen the I-15 interchange project at Base Line Road and make improvements to the public works yard on the southwest corner of Ninth and Hellman avenues.
Because elements of the aforementioned projects were not bid out at the time the redevelopment agency was closed down, the state is maintaining that the money cannot be used to see those projects to completion.
The California Department of Finance holds that bond proceeds for contracts made after the day AB X1 26 and AB X1 27 passed and were signed into law, June 28, 2011,  are not “enforceable financial obligations.”
The city of Rancho Cucamonga is appealing the state Department of Finance’s decisions in that regard and exhausting all other administrative remedies in seeing that the money is freed up. At the same time, the city is soliciting bids for the uncompleted work. City emissaries have been dispatched to Sacramento to see if the Department of Finance will entertain the validity of the city’s claims.
If the state continues to deny the city access to the money,  city attorney Jim Markman has been authorized to file suit against the state.

James Markman

While the law has yet to be tested, one interpretation is that bond proceeds can be utilized for “ongoing feasible projects.”
If Rancho Cucamonga does file suit, the case will be adjudicated in Sacramento.
Two other San Bernardino County cities have hatched strategies to hang on to their redevelopment money.
In April, the city of Chino’s redevelopment successor agency, taking stock of the consideration that the city of Chino had made more than $15 million in loans to its redevelopment agency for improvements in its redevelopment agency project areas, submitted to the state Department of Finance a recognized payment schedule for the first half of 2012 that called for the successor agency to begin retiring the debt on more than $15 million in promissory notes issued by the Chino Redevelopment Agency and held by the city of Chino. In May, the redevelopment successor agency followed up on its April action, and  submitted to the state a recognized obligation payment schedule for the second half of 2012 that cited payment on the promissory notes as an outstanding obligation.
The Department of Finance, according to Jeff Oderman, an attorney for the Chino redevelopment successor agency, has rejected the approved list, holding that loans made to the redevelopment agency by the city that founded it are, with the dissolution of the redevelopment agency, invalid debts. According to a number of attorneys, however, the promissory notes from the Chino Redevelopment Agency held by the city of Chino, like many other debts pursuant to loan arrangements involving other cities and  their respective redevelopment agencies, are enforceable under AB X1 26 and AB X1 27. Chino is on the verge of seeking a litigative remedy in Sacramento Superior Court.
The city of Twentynine Palms is proceeding with an even more aggressive challenge of the state Department of Finance in its effort to wrest  back $31 million in bond proceeds.
Twentynine Palms officials believe that AB X1 26 and AB X1 27 are trumped by federal securities regulations, meaning the money the Twentynine Palms Redevelopment Agency bonded for last year must be utilized only for the purpose that bondholders were told the money would be applied toward.
In 2011, while the redevelopment agency dissolution legislation was being considered in Sacramento, the Twentynine Palms City Council, which doubled as the city’s redevelopment agency board, issued two tax allocation bonds for a downtown revitalization undertaking known as Project Phoenix, which is to include a community center, a 250-seat theater, classrooms, a civic plaza, a park, a paseo, residential units, a wastewater treatment plant, and improvements to the downtown fire station. That bond money was made available before the law went into effect but was never expended.
Twentynine Palms City Attorney A. Patrick Munoz, of the law firm Rutan & Tucker, believes he can convince a judge the non-taxable bonds issued last year created specific obligations between the city, the issuer, the bond underwriter and the bond purchasers, and as such are enforceable obligations. If the city were to hand off the bond proceeds to the state and the state were to use the money for a purpose other than what the city had specified in marketing the bonds to the bond buyers, that would constitute fraud, according to Munoz.
Munoz’s strategy calls for having the successor agency lay claim to the redevelopment money and proceeding with the previously ratified redevelopment programs, including Project Phoenix. The state will have to go along with the city’s discharge plan because the bonds are enforceable obligations and the proceeds are secure, Munoz has theorized. Munoz suggested the city will have to be very precise about how the money earmarked for Project Phoenix is expended.
Munoz drafted a contract between the successor agency and the city by which the  successor agency is to  turn over the bond spending authority to the city with a directive that it go toward Project Phoenix. After the contract was presented to the council on May 22 and approved with the 4-1 vote, the oversight board took up the issue the following day, May 23, and its seven members voted unanimously to endorse a resolution to transfer their duties and obligations to administer the bond proceeds to “the city in its capacity as a municipal corporation. If the proceeds were turned over to the state to be re-allocated for operational purposes, these proceeds would no longer be tax-exempt if they were not used for public works projects,” Munoz maintained. “That creates concerns as to whether we violated federal tax laws and federal securities laws due to promises we made to the public when we sold the bonds versus the way we’re using the bonds.”
Acknowledging the strategy could entail a protracted “legal fight with the Department of Finance,” Munoz has recommended that if the state of California does not accept the contract for the Project Phoenix expenditures as legitimate, the city and its successor redevelopment agency should proceed with litigation against the state.

Federal authorities on June 14 arrested and arraigned the owners and employees of the G3 Holistic marijuana clinic in Upland, bringing to a close operations at that facility as well as sister clinics in Colton and Moreno Valley operated by G3 along with a cultivation warehouse in Ontario.
Named in a June 6 indictment that was kept under seal until June 14 were Aaron Sandusky, John Leslie Nuckolls II, Keith Alan Sandusky, Paul Neumann Brownbridge, Richard Irwin Kirchnavy, and Brandon Anton Gustafson.
The defendants were arrested at their homes without incident on the morning of June 14 and transported to Riverside Federal Court for arraignments that same day. The indictments, arrests and arraignments came nearly seven months after the federal Drug Enforcement Agency raided the Upland Clinic in November and more than five months after the DEA again paid a visit to the clinic in January and informed the clinic’s operators they would be deemed to be in violation of federal  law if they continued to operate.
The clinic was founded by Aaron Sandusky and Nuckolls as a capitalistic venture in accordance with Proposition 215, California’s medical marijuana availability initiative which was passed by 56 percent of the state’s voters in November 1996. Sandusky and Nuckolls maintained that theirs was a legitimate business under the law and they remained defiant in the face of federal law enforcement action against them, stating that they stood ready to test the issue on Constitutional and States’ Rights grounds. They are represented by attorney Roger Diamond.
The city had sought to utilize zoning and its legislative executive authority to prevent the clinic from operating and had expended $285,000 in legal fees paid to the law firm of Richards, Watson & Gershon, which employs former Upland City Attorney Bill Curley, in a legal effort against G3 Holistic. That strategy, in and of itself, was ineffective. Despite one favorable ruling indicating the city could bring its zoning and land use authority to bear in keeping the clinic from operating at its 1710 West Foothill Blvd. Suite F-4 location, the city was thwarted when G3 Holistic lawyers filed appeals first to the appellate court and ultimately to the state Supreme Court, in the meantime keeping the clinic running.
Controversy erupted over the city’s payment of the $285,000 in fees to Richards, Watson & Gershon to carry out a legal battle in state court when medical marijuana is legal under state law. As a consequence of those billings and other unrelated high dollar billings by his law firm, Curley was forced out as city attorney earlier this year.
The presence of G3 Holistic in Upland played a part in the federal indictment of former Upland Mayor John Pomierski on extortion, bribery and conspiracy charges. According to  federal prosecutors, Pomierski and his associates attempted to shake down Aaron Sandusky for money while he was seeking to maintain his operating permit with the city.
The leading advocate of the city’s legal effort against G3 was councilman Ken Willis. In speaking with the Sentinel, Willis acknowledged, “We were spending a lot of money fighting this thing on our own. We didn’t know what to do. This was new ground for us. It started out as a conditional use permit issue and a zoning issue. Other cities had to go through the same process we went through. There was a learning curve to being confronted with marijuana shops in the middle of our community and them being aggressive was a new experience. In time it became obvious to us we were dealing with a federal law at one end of the table and at the other end of the table the [Proposition 215] initiative that dealt with pot shops.”
Willis disputed the suggestion that the money the city spent on the legal effort was squandered, even though the city’s legal effort did not achieve the sought-after goal. He said that drugs are a scourge and the city could not remain idle. Tolerating medical marijuana would have planted the city’s feet on a slippery slope, he said.
“I’m sure you have heard my arguments in favor of pushing them out of town in the past,” Willis said. “Most of the concern revolves around the problem of protecting young people. There are a lot of arguments about marijuana helping people with glaucoma but many more children can be negatively influenced by this than there are adults with glaucoma. Just about every family has a story about one of its own members and marijuana and cocaine. Eventually, the two go together.”
At some point the city realized the strategy of trying to use the state courts to drive G3 out was of questionable efficacy, Willis said.
“Our police chief and city attorney said ‘Let us see if we can find a better way,’ and whatever information we had we turned over to the feds and crossed our fingers,” Willis said. “We finally learned the Department of Justice and the DEA were concerned about the issue, but it took a fair amount of urging to get them to come look at Upland. There were some red flags there and I think the feds began to see we were resisting this onslaught of pot shops and fighting it to the degree we could. They decided there was more to accomplish in Upland than in other communities. They have now drawn a line in the sand and I think they will back that up.  I am glad the feds took some action and personally I think a vast majority of the parents of children of this community will feel relieved if this leads to the permanent closure of these facilities in our town.”
The case of Upland vs. G3, which is now before the Supreme Court, since May 4 has been handled by Richards, Watson & Gershon pro bono.
Aaron Sandusky, 41, G3’s cofounder and CEO, Nuckolls, 31, G3’s cofounder and CFO,  Keith Sandusky, 44, who was a G3 manager, and Brownbridge, 29, Kirchnay, 45 and Gustafson, 30, all of who worked at the Ontario cultivation warehouse, pleaded not guilty.

The county’s special district’s division is proceeding with the second phase of improvements to the Cedar Glen Water system in the San Bernardino Mountains, despite questions about whether underlying inadequacies of the system have been redressed.
The county in 2009 initiated the first phase of improvements to the area’s water system. That phase included the drilling of a well off of Coulter Drive where there was then no electricity to operate a pump. The special districts division subsequently entered into discussions with Southern California Edison to extend electrical service to the area.
Phases II and III are to consist of continued improvements, including the replacement of existing water storage facilities with additional steel water storage reservoirs; construction of a new domestic water well; and replacement of approximately 7.7 miles of existing distribution pipeline to bring the Cedar Glen water system into compliance with the California Safe Drinking Water Act and California Department of Health Services requirements.
There is some concern among Cedar Glen ratepayers that the well located on the southern boundary of the San Bernardino National Forest is being built to benefit developers and that current residents will bear the cost.
The community of Cedar Glen was provided with water service by investor-owned Arrowhead Manor Water Company (AMWC) until May of 2003, when the company went into receivership.
Five months later, in October of 2003, the community was devastated by the Old Fire, which burned over 300 homes. Based on the disaster, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors created the Cedar Glen Redevelopment Area on November 23, 2004.
The board approved a loan from the county general fund in the amount of $800,000 for a proposed improvement zone on June 7, 2005 and shortly thereafter, an improvement zone was formed by the county under County Service Area 70 to provide water to the residents of Cedar Glen to be governed by the San Bernardino Special Districts Department (SDD).
On November 15, 2005, before the county had even purchased Arrowhead Manor, the county submitted an application for funding to the California State Department of Housing and Community Development for a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) through the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In February 2006, the county of San Bernardino was provided with $3,091,270 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds as part of a disaster recovery initiative to pay for the proposed repairs to the water system in the Cedar Glen community.
The board of supervisors approved purchasing Arrowhead Manor Water Company for the price of $305,000 through the court appointed bankruptcy receiver on October 17, 2006. The county finalized the purchase on January 28, 2009.
Shortly after the purchase of the water company, Phase 1 of the water improvements funded by the CDBG funds began.
At a meeting of the Cedar Glen Redevelopment Project Area Committee on April 24, 2009, special districts director Jeff Rigney said 14,000 feet of water line had been completed, a well had been drilled and they were repairing a water tank.
Many Cedar Glen residents believe they are being overcharged for the water service they are receiving.  Shortly after Arrowhead Manor was placed into receivership in 2003, water rates were raised over 400 percent. The county borrowed $800,000 to acquire the water company and its assets and to make necessary improvements to it. $305,000 of that loan money was used to buy Arrowhead Manor. By 2008, the loan principal, penalties, and interest had risen to approximately $2,000,000.
At present, the $800,000 loan is not being repaid, but local water users are still paying greatly inflated prices for water.
In 1980, the owners of the Arrowhead Manor Water Company, Ernie and Jean Schoettmer, were awarded $910,510 pursuant to the Safe Drinking Water Bond Act. The money the Schoettmers received was supposed to be used to build a pump house, a water tank and pipelines off of Balsam Ave. in Cedar Glen and put in 8-inch pipelines on Juniper Drive, Maple Drive and Pineridge Drive.
Engineering for that work was done by Albert Webb and Associates and the final permits were signed off at the time by what was the county’s Department of Transportation and Flood Control in 1982.  Though a notice of completion was sent to the Department of Water Resources stating that all work had been completed, a large portion of the work, in fact, was never finished. There are major discrepancies between the systems in the ground and documents pertaining to the project contained in county files. Members of the board of supervisors have not themselves nor detailed their staff members to make a survey of the actual systems and have relied upon the erroneous documentation.
The phase of improvements begun in 2009 obscured that pipes were not laid in 1981 and the money diverted elsewhere. County special districts employees acknowledged  in a preliminary system evaluation dated July 20, 2004 that “Based on conversations with Mr. Darel Davis (the engineer hired by the receiver), 6 & 8-inch piping installed was not installed correctly and needs to be replaced.” However, in Davis’s official report to then-special districts director Thomas Sutton a month earlier on June 17, 2004, the defective or missing pipe was not mentioned.
Documentation indicates that the county confirmed that two miles of pipe were laid using money provided by a California Department of Water Resources Loan that was supposed to provide for the  laying of over 14 miles of pipe.
In July of 2002 the Public Utilities Commission made Decision 02-07-009, stating that Arrowhead Manor was found to “have improperly diverted Safe Drinking Water Bond Act surcharge funds…” and ‘The Commission concludes that all penalties imposed by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) on Arrowhead for failure to make timely loan payments are Arrowhead’s obligations under its DWR contract and are not recoverable from ratepayers.’ Further in Resolution W-4407 dated July 10, 2003 when the PUC reinstated the Safe Drinking Water Bond Act surcharges, it also stated “As a condition of re-establishing the Safe Drinking Water Bond Act surcharge, the decision put Arrowhead on notice that it would be held responsible for refunding or applying on behalf of customers any surcharge revenues not applied to repaying the loan.” Though the surcharge was reinstated in July of 2003, two months after the Superior Court appointed John Richardson as the receiver of Arrowhead Manor Water, from that time nothing was paid to the Department of Water Resources.
In January 2009 bills sent to Cedar Glen residents included a $504 Safe Drinking Water Bond Act surcharge.  In February 2009, a facilities charge showed up on those bills for the first time for $17.35. In April 2009, the facilities charge grew to $36.60. In August 2009, the facilities charge grew again to $123.60, which now appears on each statement.
While Cedar Glen residents are being socked for higher water rates, some of them are clamoring for all of the money collected by the court appointed receiver and the Special District since 2003 to be refunded to the residents of Cedar Glen because that money was never paid to the Department of Water Resources.
The county did not provide legal notice to residents that there would be a facilities charge.
While ultimately the board of supervisors signed off on the billing policy, none of its members has evinced knowledge or understanding of the circumstances related to the previous history of the water system under Arrowhead Manor’s management.  Some Cedar Glen residents continue to maintain that the county and the board of supervisors, which authorized using taxing authority to collect water bills more than two years ago, are bound by Public Utilities Commission Resolution W-4407, which stipulated the conditions of the reinstatement of the surcharges and that the county must repay every resident in Cedar Glen all surcharge monies collected since July 10, 2003 or drop the surcharge payments altogether.

On June 1, California Attorney General Kamala Harris and her office issued a legal opinion which dealt a fatal blow to the current practice in San Bernardino County of allowing cities to undertake so-called “hostile annexations” of some properties lying at those cities’ peripheries.
Such hostile takeovers come about when cities annex pockets or islands of unincorporated county land where less than a majority of the landowners or residents are in favor of the takeover.
The San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission is the local agency which hashes out border disputes and jurisdictional issues.  In recent years, the commission has construed specific portions of the government code pertaining to annexations, §§ 56300-57550, to facilitate the takeover agenda of local cities.
In the last decade, controversy has erupted over that policy, as some of the landowners who did not want to be annexed into cities claimed their rights under the law had been violated.
Three of the county’s cities in particular – Fontana, San Bernardino and Colton – have made aggressive efforts to annex, or attempt to annex, properties. There has been considerable opposition to annexation in all three places, and the tactics used by the cities in conjunction with LAFCO in those cases have been deemed by annexation opponents to be especially egregious.
Between 2000 and 2009, Fontana expanded its boundaries from 35 square miles to 42.4 square miles, in some cases over the vociferous opposition of those who did not want to become part of the city. Fontana had better luck in its expansionist drive than the city of Colton, where that city’s manifest destiny has stalled, and the city of San Bernardino, where the annexations were granted but then rescinded in the face of a court challenge.
In 2006, Colton tentatively planned to use a provision of state law that allows cities to annex without a vote unincorporated island areas of 150 acres or less that are substantially or totally surrounded by the annexing city to gobble up seven unincorporated county islands totaling 535 acres  north of Interstate 10 and in Reche Canyon. Before the city council acted on forwarding that request to San Bernardino County LAFCO, a significant portion of the roughly 2,000 county residents whose properties would have been brought into Colton protested to varying degrees, and the city council declined in September 2006 to follow through with the annexation filing. But the following year, then-assistant city manager Mark Nuami resurrected a version of the annexation request, which was never filed with LAFCO but which remains sitting on a shelf, ready for filing. This plan has greatly alarmed the residents potentially to be annexed.
In 2009, the city of San Bernardino, relying on the same provision of state law relating to the annexation of 150 acres or less, filed with LAFCO to annex six county islands at its periphery totaling 354 acres. But some of those annexation requests qualified as piecemeal takeovers that to some appeared to violate the law. In those cases, a. few of the islands were contiguous, such that if they had been considered together they would have totaled more than 150 acres. In November 2009, the LAFCO board approved the annexations without allowing the residents to be annexed to vote on the issue.
At that point, a resident of one of those islands, Sue Hulse, challenged the city and LAFCO, ultimately spending $100,000 in legal fees to have lawyers argue that the city’s annexation of all six pockets of unincorporated county property at once stretched that law unto breaking and that three spreads of land that were annexed were adjacent and together totaled more than 150 acres.
While Hulse’s challenge was pending in San Bernardino Superior Court, on February 22, 2010 the November 18, 2009 annexations were confirmed by LAFCO and responsibility for servicing those areas transferred from the county to the city.
On March 9, 2010, however, Judge Robert Fawke granted Hulse a stipulation that called for the city to discontinue all of its action with regard to the annexations. Subsequently, on a motion by the city, the case was transferred to the court of Judge Donald Alvarez.
Hulse asserted the city was cutting corners in more ways than one in that it shortchanged the impacted residents of their right to self determination and then forced the takeover to occur without having adequate financial resources to service the area. In the meantime, the county agreed to resume providing services to the area while the matter was being litigated. A stipulated judgment accepted by Judge Alvarez ended Hulse’s case on August 13, 2010. Under the terms of the judgment, LAFCO was to bear two thirds and the city of San Bernardino was to bear one third of Hulse’s $100,000 legal bill.
In the meantime, county residents alarmed at LAFCO’s annexation policy approached state senator Gloria Negrete-McLeod with their concerns. Negrete-McLeod in turn wrote to then-state attorney general Jerry Brown, requesting his office’s interpretation of the legal issues relating to hostile annexations. After Brown was elected governor, the matter was passed along to current State Attorney General Kamala Harris for her office’s legal opinion.
Many San Bernardino County cities, calculating that such resolve as was shown by Hulse in testing the issue is relatively rare, wanted LAFCO’s policy of facilitating hostile annexations to be perpetuated. While they were encouraging the county and LAFCO to do just that,  county chief administrative officer Greg Devereaux last year advised the county’s cities that the aggressive annexation of pockets of county land would be put on hold, at least temporarily.
In an interoffice memo with the subject heading “San Bernardino County Island Annexation Policies” dated May 4, 2011, Devereaux told LAFCO chief executive officer Kathleen Rollings-McDonald, “Through the San Bernardino County General Plan, San Bernardino County has adopted policies recognizing that cities are the logical service providers for municipal-level services and that unincorporated islands can be more effectively and efficiently served by surrounding cities. Although LAFCO has requested the county of San Bernardino to provide a definition of ‘entire island’, the county believes it prudent to await the California Attorney General’s  response to Senator Gloria Negrete-McLeod’s letter requesting a definition of ‘entire island.’
Earlier this month, on June 1, Harris and deputy attorney general Marc Nolan did just that, essentially repudiating LAFCO’s past practice of allowing cities to override the oppositional sentiment of those to be annexed by creating pockets smaller than 150 acres and annexing those without a vote.
With regard to “whether a LAFCO may split up an unincorporated island that exceeds 150 acres into smaller segments of 150 acres or less in order to use the section 56375.3 annexation procedures, and thereby avoid the landowner/voter protest proceedings that would otherwise be required,” Harris and Nolan wrote, “We conclude that it may not. To split an unincorporated island into smaller pieces for annexation is an action that simply may not be reconciled with the statutory requirement that, to utilize the protest-waiving procedures for island annexation under section 56375.3, a LAFCO must order the annexation of the entire island.
A LAFCO has no discretion to disregard this statutory mandate. The requirement is specifically designed to prevent piecemeal annexation as a means of circumventing the citizen participation in the annexation process.”
The attorney general’s office also said cities and local agency formation commissions are precluded from making creative use of the definition of an island and then splitting an island that is larger than 150 acres into a smaller piece to facilitate annexations.
Harris and Nolan wrote “an ‘island’ is an area of unincorporated territory that is (1) completely surrounded, or substantially surrounded—that is, to a large degree or in the main surrounded—by the city to which annexation is proposed or by the city and a county boundary or the Pacific Ocean, or (2) completely surrounded by the city to which annexation is proposed and adjacent cities. An island may not be a part of another island that is surrounded or substantially surrounded in this same manner.”
Furthermore, according to Harris and Nolan, “As to the question whether section 56375.3 requires the annexation of an ‘entire island’ or ‘entire unincorporated island’ as set forth, respectively, in subdivisions (b)(1) and (b)(2) of that statute, a straightforward reading of these provisions compels an affirmative response. Simply put, once the boundaries of an island are fixed, the question under section 56375.3(b)(1) becomes whether the island’s territory is 150 acres or less. If so, the territory is subject to annexation under the streamlined procedures of section 56375.3; if not, it is not subject to these procedures. A LAFCO lacks discretion or authority to use streamlined procedures to annex an island that exceeds 150 acres in area or that does not constitute the entirety of the island in question. Annexing part of a given island would run afoul of the command of section 56375.3(b)(1) and (b)(2).54 “
Rollings-McDonald acknowledged that LAFCO’s policy was at a variance with the definitions provided by the state attorney general’s office.
“The attorney general’s opinion does provide guidance on what constitutes an entire island and what is substantially surrounded,” Rollings-McDonald said. “We now intend to present to the commission an action for considering the modifying of its existing policy.“

The Rancho Cucamonga City Council last week voted unanimously to employ a Chino Hills-based firm to carry out an environmental impact report relating to the proposed WalMart Supercenter Project on Foothill Boulevard between Milliken and Rochester.
City officials reportedly utilized $348,762 provided to them by the WalMart Corporation to defray the cost of the environmental impact report to be completed by Applied Planning, Inc. of Chino Hills.
The eventual placement of the 185,000 square foot supercenter on the north side of Foothill just east of Mayten Avenue will result in the closure of the existing Walmart located about a mile away on Foothill Boulevard, east of the 15 Freeway.
Despite opposition to the project on the part of some residents and a pattern of environmental lawsuits against proposed WalMart supercenters elsewhere in Southern California and San Bernardino County, the contract with Applied Planning for the report was placed on the city council’s June 6 consent calendar and voted upon collectively with other items of city business. Consent calendar items are normally designated routine and non-controversial.
The project, which is to cover 29 acres, would entail a large-scale retail store including a grocery component. There has been opposition to WalMart supercenters in the past by labor organizations because WalMarts, like many department stores, do not employ unionized retail clerks. Most grocery stores employees are  unionized.
WalMart Supercenters have generated controversy in other ways, in some measure as a result of lawsuits filed against them on environmental grounds by an Upland-based attorney, Cory Briggs. In Ontario, Briggs represented a group, known as the Ontario Mountain Village Association, which materialized to oppose a Supercenter WalMart planned for the northwest corner of Mountain Avenue and Fifth Street. Briggs brought court action against the city regarding that project, raising thirteen separate environmental issues. While the court rejected most of the arguments that the city had not made adequate mitigation of the project’s impacts, it did find merit in Briggs’ contention that the Ontario WalMart Supercenter involved problems with regard to truck circulation and excessive sound that needed to be redressed. The legal action against that project delayed it for more than four years.
Briggs acknowledged he is monitoring the proposed WalMart Supercenter project in Rancho Cucamonga.
While Rancho Cucamonga city officials were enthusiastic about the sales tax revenue generating potential the supercenter represents, opponents of the project point out that the expanded store will not generate a substantially greater amount of sales tax than the existing store at 12549 Foothill Boulevard, since the bulk of the increased square footage will be devoted to the sale of food. Most food items are not taxable under California law.
There is also concern that the closure of the existing WalMart will leave a vacuum at the shopping center, leading to blight and the exodus of other retailers there.
Jim Banks, who was formerly a member of the Rancho Cucamonga Advisory Committee and has been credited with having contributed to the framing and maintenance of the urban planning ideals which many believe distinguish Rancho Cucamonga from other San Bernardino County cities, said he believes city officials are taking a misstep by embracing the supercenter.
“Traffic is a huge issue,” said Banks. “Within a very short distance you have Lowes and Home Depot. Further to the east and west you have Victoria Gardens and the Terra Vista shopping centers. Cars are already stacked up there during certain hours and this will only make it worse.”
More than creating gridlock on the streets, Banks said, the city may be shooting itself in the foot financially by greedily biting off more than it can chew.  “A consideration that is equally serious or perhaps even more important is what I call commercial oversaturation,” Banks said. “We already have more retail than is needed and the idea that we can enhance our sales tax base by building more stores is illusory. They will drive out as much as they will bring in. What used to be Mervyns is now a hobby shop. The Kmart now houses a Goodwill outlet. The Longs Drugs at Baseline and Haven is still empty after several years. This supercenter will have a grocery component and that could lead to the closure of two or three grocery stores. By what they are doing they are going to create these mini-ghost towns all around Rancho Cucamonga.”
Banks said the city may end up regretting having put the matter on the consent calendar if a legal challenge against the project is made. “That was sneaky,” he said. “They prevented public input and opinion on many points relating to the project by doing that.”
The city arranged for WalMart to cover the cost of the environmental impact report but not pay Applied Planning directly. By having the city collect the money from WalMart and then having the city retain Applied Planning, officials sought to ensure that the environmental impact report would remain a neutral document that did not favor the project applicant
The WalMart Supercenter will be open to the public 24 hours a day with the major vehicular traffic access from Foothill Boulevard.  The store will receive about 88 truck deliveries each week. There will be a commercial drive approach from Mayten Avenue providing access to six loading docks at the rear of the building.  North of the project site are 19.25 acres of vacant land zoned medium high residential which will ultimately be developed as a multi-family residential project. To the east is a commercial development and to the west across Mayten Avenue are senior apartments.

The Inland Valley Development Agency and the San Bernardino International Airport Authority have made some progress in their legal battle with the state of California, securing $22 million of the $432 million they say they were deprived of in a miscarriage of the state’s authority.
Known by their acronyms, IVDA and SBIAA, the Inland Valley Development Agency, consisting of the county of San Bernardino and the cities of San Bernardino Loma Linda and Colton, and the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, consisting of the county and the cities of San Bernardino, Colton, Loma Linda and Highland, are joint powers authorities formed to facilitate the transition of the former Norton Air Force Base into a civilian airport. IVDA exists to build up the property around the airport and SBIAA exists to develop the airport itself.
Last year, at Governor Jerry Brown’s prompting, the state legislature passed two laws, AB X1 26 and AB X1 27, which shuttered county and municipal redevelopment agencies up and down the state. Those redevelopment agencies had used a variety of funding mechanisms, including bond financing and state and federal tax pass-throughs to develop or improve infrastructure, spur development and eliminate blight. Assembly Bills X1 26 and X1 27 ended redevelopment programs and routed much of the money to law enforcement, education and other programs.
IVDA and SBIAA officials maintain that their agencies are not traditional redevelopment agencies in that both were formed to facilitate the civilian reuse of what was formerly federal property and that as such they are exempt from SB X1 26 and SB X1 27.
The state contends differently, however. A provision of SB X1 26 and SB X1 27 is that any challenges pertaining to them must be heard in Sacramento Superior Court.
In addition to a number of bureaucratic filings pertaining to the matter they have lodged in Sacramento, IVDA and SBIAA have filed suit against the state, asserting those two entities should not have been classified as traditional redevelopment agencies and shuttered under SB X1 26 and SB X1 27. They maintain that they are entitled to $432 million in tax increment revenue from property taxes around the airport over the next decade to pay for airport construction, on- and off-site improvements and infrastructure and to cover cash incentives to commercial airlines to convince them to fly into and out of the airport.
While IVDA and SBIAA are pressing on with their lawsuit and claims, they are stepping up their efforts to use other means of dialoging with the California Department of Finance in an effort to show they are entitled to the money. There was an indication of a crack in the state’s position when the Department of Finance’s response made no claim that IVDA and SBIAA were not entitled to the $432 million but rather that they  had no existing contracts to utilize the money.
During a meeting between the San Bernardino County auditor-controller and officials with the state Department of Finance, state officials agreed to set the tax revenue IVDA and SBIAA are claiming aside in a sequestered account and that the money could be disbursed for any “approved,” i.e., contracted for, obligations the agency can demonstrate. Simultaneously, the Department of Finance reconsidered its blanket denial of the $432 million claim, finding that $22 million in tax revenue for road improvements near San Bernardino International Airport, including improvements to San Bernardino’s Mountain View Avenue Bridge, would be made available to IVDA. The state continues to deny the validity of the agencies’ claims to the remaining $410 million. IVDA and SBIAA are redoubling their appeal of that portion of the decision.
While both IVDA and SBIAA have enough money in terms of membership dues paid by their constituent members to continue to operate over the next several months, eventually obtaining the $410 million the state is denying them would be crucial to the survival of the airport development effort.
If the state’s Department of Finance relents and passes the remaining $410 through to SBIAA and IVDA, the lawsuit will be dropped. If not, the case in Sacramento Superior Court will proceed.

CHINO–Matthew Ballantyne, Chino’s city manager designee, convinced the city council to hire him by actively campaigning for the post, simply out-hustling 70 other applicants for the job.
Ballantyne, 38, six years ago landed what for many in the city managing profession might consider a plum assignment: city manager in San Marino. He was brought into that position after eight years as a city staff member.

Matthew Ballantyne

San Marino was once considered the most affluent city in the world, where its residents had a medium income higher than any other municipality on earth. It is home to the Huntington Library, and remains an exclusive bastion. The median list price of a single family home in San Marino was $1,987,500, as of July 2010.
Incorporated in 1913, the Los Angeles County city’s founders envisioned it as exclusively residential, with picturesque  properties intersticed with well-manicured gardens and parkways, paseos, vistas and wide streets.  Nearly a century later, it maintains its hauteur.
But at just 3.77 square miles in land area and 13,147 population, the city reached build out long ago, with more than 97 percent of its current housing stock having been put in place between 1920 and 1950.
For Ballantyne, running San Marino has been fulfilling at the same time that it has been frustrating.
With master’s degrees in both public administration and urban and regional planning, Ballantyne has longed to utilize his refined level of expertise in the professional setting he finds himself in. There have been no major development projects in San Marino during his tenure there.

The county of San Bernardino last week concluded a settlement with the federal government and three environmental groups over road access to remote areas in the Mojave National Preserve.
In 2006, the county filed a “quiet title” suit against the federal government to preserve access over what were then 14 county-maintained roads within the preserve. The federal government had moved to take over authority of the roads and the county claimed that the roads maintained by the county which are adjacent to the Mojave National Preserve are permanent and protected rights-of-way under Revised Statute 2477, part of the Mining Act of 1866, which allowed construction of roads across public lands. Revised Statute 2477 was repealed in 1976 and replaced with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which subjects the county to extensive environmental review and regulatory costs when it is invoked on county roads not established or authorized under Revised Statute 2477 before it was repealed. The county had not secured official acknowledgment or documentation of the Revised Statute 2477 rights from the Department of Interior, despite efforts to do so. Consequently, it filed suit to force the issue.
At the heart of the dispute was whether the public would continue to be able to reach land where many endangered or sensitive forms of wildlife existed.
The National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity joined the suit in support of the federal government, as part of an effort to prevent the county from creating a situation in which wildlife would be harmed.
Proposals and counterproposals from both sides failed for nearly six years to reach an acceptable middle ground. Last week, the federal government agreed to maintain at a cost of $53,000 annually all of the existing roads in the preserve under a rubric worked out between the county and the environmental groups that calls for the county to maintain ownership of two roads on public lands bordering the preserve that were used for travel before 1976 along with eight other roads within the preserve. The county agreed to the closure of four other roads in the preserve which encroach on areas where the environmental groups say species such as Joshua trees and desert tortoises are threatened.
The county entered into the settlement over the protest of supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, in whose First District the preserve is located. Mitzelfelt indicated he did not believe the National Park Service would adequately fund the road maintenance program. “Based on my own conversations with the Park Service, I have little confidence that they will be appropriated enough funding to properly maintain and improve those roads,” Mitzelfelt said.  “As far as a process to prevent arbitrary closure of roads, such a provision exists in the settlement.  But I fear the Park Service will simply go through the public process and consultations with the county and attempt to close roads anyway based on lack of funds.”