Sound levels that exceeded  the state’s industrial limit and a flawed environmental impact report combined with the operators’ failure to comply with conditional use standards led to the court order closing down the drag racing strip at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, an examination of court and county land use division documents shows.
Starting in 2006, what were at first unsanctioned drag races were initiated in the parking lot of the raceway, which opened in 1997 and hosts a variety of racing events, including NASCAR sanctioned races. The drag races resulted in sound levels reaching and exceeding 100 decibels as measured on nearby residential properties.
Complaints to county authorities about the unsanctioned drag races did not result in their cessation, however. Rather, county officials were persuaded that some off-road venue was needed for drag racing activity so as to limit illegal racing on public streets. In 2007, the county began granting permits to the organizers of the events under the aegis of the Pacific Street Car Association.
Unable to convince county officials to disallow the races, which because of the intensity of speed and acceleration of the competing vehicles were a third again louder than the race track engines, nearby residents hired the law firm of Chatten-Brown and Carstens to represent them in further negotiations or legal actions pertaining to the drag strip.
Initial restrictions placed on the speedway’s operators prohibited sound emanations of more than 75 decibels reaching the near-lying residential neighborhoods east and north of the racetrack. The drag strip’s sound levels routinely exceeded the standards, but no enforcement action against the facility or its management was taken by the county.
Opponents sued and achieved a ruling in 2009 that an environmental impact report be completed before any permanent permit for a drag strip could be granted. In response, the county  approved a supplemental environmental impact report in November 2010. Drag strip opponents cried foul, asserting that the drag strip’s proponents had misled the county over the intensity of the impact on the neighboring properties.
“In September 2010, just as the environmental impact study was being conducted and was reaching a crucial phase, the speedway’s management temporarily relocated the Pacific Street Car Association events to Las Vegas,” said Sal Lopez, who since 1991 has lived with his family in a home in a residential area adjacent to the drag strip. “That relocation took place just days before a hearing of the planning commission at which the environmental impact study was to be considered for recommendation to the board of supervisors.  The attorney for the speedway recommended relocating that event because they did not want to raise any red flags, and those were their specific words. A few days after the event was moved to Vegas, we had the hearing and the planning commission voted to recommend to the board of supervisors that they certify the environmental impact study. During that hearing, planning commissioner  Michael Cramer stated they would not acknowledge documents challenging the legality of the environmental impact report attorneys from Chatten-Brown and Carstens were presenting and said they would not take that into consideration during the public meeting. Mr. Cramer was appointed by Paul Biane, who at that time was the Second District supervisor, and who had accepted free tickets and luxury box accommodations at the speedway.  Paul Biane received $38,000 from the speedway for his election campaign and all of the supervisors received money from the speedway either shortly before or after the environmental impact study received certification. On November 2, 2010 the supervisors certified the environmental impact study and on November 5, 2010, the Auto Club Speedway continued with the Pacific Street Car World Finals events.”
In certifying the supplemental environmental impact report and giving go-ahead for further drag races, the county gave permission for the speedway to hold louder events, raising the noise standards from 75 to 85 decibels to as high as 100 decibels for some events while requiring the construction of a quarter-mile, 20-foot-high sound wall.
While the sound wall was never completed, the races went on, with races taking place three weekends a month.
What was already for some nearby residents an excessive sound level zoomed to an intolerable cacophony.  According to the readings of some noise monitors, the sound reached an intensity greater than 120 decibels as measured on nearby residential properties.
Nearby residents led by Lopez, meanwhile, formed a group that focused upon the impact they believed the sound was having on students at nearby schools. That group called itself CCoMPRES, an acronym for Concerned Community Members of Parents of Redwood Elementary School.  Chatten-Brown and Carstens did not desist in its efforts to have the county seriously consider the plight of those in the area. The law firm continued to challenge the adequacy of the supplemental environmental impact report and in court filings, emphasized that the sound wall had not been completed, that the decibel level of 100, which exceeds the state of California’s industrial sound limit, was being routinely surpassed.
On February 23, Judge Barry Plotkin made a finding that the environmental impact report for the drag strip was fatally flawed and he ordered the county’s approval of the drag strip be set aside and that the races be suspended at least until an adequate environmental impact report is completed and the sound wall, which was stipulated as a condition of the November 2010 approval, be put in place.
Drag racing enthusiasts, functioning under the aegis of an impromptu organization known as Save Auto Club Dragway, are encouraging the county to lead the way in an effort to reopen the strip.  While two dozen of the drag race aficionados importuned the board to appeal Plotkin’s ruling by the April 23 deadline, county officials have put the ball in the court of the raceway and its patrons to either make that appeal themselves or in the alternative foot the bill for a new environmental impact report and complete the construction of the required sound wall.
The current supervisor in the Second District, where the speedway is located, is Janice Rutherford. Rutherford defeated former supervisor Paul Biane in 2010. Among the charges leveled at Biane during that campaign was that he had accepted free tickets and luxury box accommodations from the racetrack’s owners and sponsors. The widespread perception was that Biane had arranged for lax enforcement of regulations at the speedway. That perception, and the suggestion that Biane ended up paying a political price for his participation in petty graft at and through the raceway to the detriment of his constituents who lived in the shadow of the facility, may now be preventing Rutherford from supporting the reopening of the drag strip.

The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office this week suffered a blow to its credibility when a jury acquitted Javier Andrew Rocha of all charges that had been lodged against him.
Indications were that the jury concluded that the centerpiece of the case against Rocha, a videotape of his alleged assault of a neighbor, showed no assault occurred and severely undercut the sheriff’s department report on the incident.
Moreover, jurors were put off to learn that the prosecutor’s office had moved forward with the case in some measure because of the social standing of the alleged victim’s husband. Jurors also found troubling that the district attorney’s office failed to carefully examine the error-riddled sheriff’s department report of the matter before proceeding with the case against Rocha.
Rocha is the son of Dr. Martin Rocha, Sr., a pediatrician who was formerly employed by Loma Linda University Medical Center. In 2004, Martin Rocha, Sr. was recruited by David Stern, one of the board members at Mountains Community Hospital, to be an on-staff pediatrician.
Martin Rocha, Sr. at that time relocated to Lake Arrowhead with his family, including his then-ten-year-old son, Javier Andrew Rocha, to take the position at Mountains Community. The Rocha family moved into a house on Hospital Road, near Mountains Community, which was immediately adjacent to and shared a driveway easement with the home occupied by David Stern and his wife, Nancy.
In time, despite the consideration that David Stern had recruited Rocha, animosity developed between the Stern and the Rocha families. That enmity was at least partially exacerbated by Martin Rocha Sr.’s purchase of a commercial property in Lake Arrowhead where David and Nancy Stern had an office for their accounting business. Previously, David and Nancy Stern had made an offer to purchase that office property but had not been able to close the deal. After Martin Rocha, Sr. purchased the office property, effectively becoming the Sterns’ landlord, they left that office and quartered their  business out of their home on Hospital Road.
Over time, the hostility between the Sterns and the Rochas deepened, and the Sterns filed for civil harassment restraining orders against members of the Rocha family.
Because the portion of Hospital Road near their homes is narrow, motorists on occasion would use the common Rocha/ Stern driveway as a turnout. On one occasion last year, one of those motorists turning around in the driveway drove into the Sterns’ garage, damaging it. To prevent motorists from coming into the driveway, David Stern strung a tennis net across the entrance to the driveway easement his home shared with the Rocha property.
On February 2 shortly after 7 a.m., Dr. Rocha’s 28-year-old son, Martin Rocha, Jr., was at his parent’s home to return a vehicle and move some furniture on his parent’s property. To access the Sterns’ portion of the easement so his friend who had accompanied him to his parents’ home, Darren Earl, could safely turn his car around, Martin Rocha, Jr. took down the tennis net which blocked a good portion of the Sterns’ driveway.  His action was captured on a video taken from a camera located on the roof of the Sterns’  garage.  Nancy Stern, who was working in her upstairs office, also saw Martin Rocha Jr. take the tennis net down and came out of her house to confront him. There ensued a mostly verbal altercation that was captured on video.
In the course of the exchange between Martin Rocha, Jr. and Mrs. Stern, Martin Rocha in apparent response to her demands that he do so, retrieved the net from the ground to re-hang it. As the confrontation progressed, however, Martin Rocha flung the net to the side and retreated to the passenger’s side of Earl’s vehicle. Mrs. Stern followed him all the way to the car. When Martin Rocha got into the vehicle on the passenger’s side, Nancy Stern came right up to that side of the vehicle. As she was bending into the car, she came into contact with Martin Rocha and her  glasses fell into the vehicle.  Earl  retrieved the glasses and handed them over to David Stern, who at that point had come out of the house in response to his wife’s shouts. Martin Rocha and his companion drove off, without completing the task of moving the furniture.
Later, at approximately 10 a.m., after sheriff’s deputies had come to the Sterns’ home in response to a phone call from David Stern, 18-year-old Javier Rocha, Martin Rocha, Jr.’s younger brother, departed from the Rocha residence on his way to his father’s medical office, where he was employed. He was briefly questioned by  sheriff’s officers at the scene but then departed. It was apparently at that point that the sheriff’s personnel confused his identity with that of his older brother.
Javier Rocha was later arrested and charged with felonious assault, abuse of an elder, and theft. His bail was set at $100,000 and later reduced to $75,000. He  remained in sheriff’s custody for 77 days. The Rocha family retained Christopher Persaud, an attorney to represent Javier. In the lead-up to the trial, Martin Rocha, Jr. undertook a public campaign to have his brother freed, launching a website,  javierrochaisinnocent.com.  Against the advice of legal counsel, he approached the sheriff’s department and prosecutors, informing them that he was the individual Nancy Stern had the confrontation with, not his brother. After he learned that the sheriff’s department was referencing the security video of the exchange between him and Nancy Stern as evidence of the crime, he initiated an attempt to obtain a copy of the video. This however was met with resistance on the part of both the sheriff’s office and the district attorney’s office. On no fewer than four occasions, he was told that the tape was either not available or privileged from release. He persisted, however, and the tape was eventually released. He posted it on the website.
On the day of the incident, Mrs. Stern, who had previously suffered two heart attacks, went to Mountains Community Hospital and was later transported to St. Bernardine Medical Center in San Bernardino when it was thought she was experiencing another cardiac episode.
The police report of the incident stated that Javier Rocha had assailed Nancy Stern, “smacked her in the chest” and “snatched the glasses off her face scratching the bridge of her nose.” The report further stated “N. Stern is positive Andrew Rocha [i.e., Javier Andrew Rocha] is the one who assaulted [her] because she has known him for the past 7 years.”
The district attorney’s office proceeded with the prosecution of Javier Andrew Rocha despite information it received that Javier Rocha was not the individual involved in the altercation with Nancy Stern.
Furthermore, the video, the strongest piece of evidence presented, severely compromised the prosecution’s case. Javier Rocha, who stands 6 foot 2 inches tall and weighs 230 pounds, is at least three inches taller than his brother, who is a decade older than he is. Moreover, the video captures both brothers, including Martin, Jr. during his interaction with Mrs. Stern just after 7 a.m. and Javier at around 10 a.m. during his brief encounter with the sheriff’s officers who had come in response to David Stern’s call. The difference in the physical aspects of either brother is evident in a comparison of the images captured on the video.
That portion of the video which captures the confrontation between Martin Rocha, Jr. and Nancy Stern depicts a series of events that are not consistent with the police report.  In the video, Martin Rocha can be seen unfastening the tennis net and rolling it to clear access to the driveway easement. After he has placed it onto the vegetation to the side of the driveway, he is at that point approached by Mrs. Stern who comes into the field of focus from the direction of the house and garage. The video shows Nancy Stern moving toward Martin Rocha, Jr. and that at one point he moved to retrieve the wound up net in what appears to be an effort to reinstall it across the driveway. After she approaches him again, however, Martin Rocha, Jr. tosses the net and a pole connected to it back onto the vegetation. What can be seen of the physical contact that occurs between the two comes as Martin Rocha, Jr. is moving to get into the vehicle as she is moving toward him as he is retreating. Once he is in the car, she appears to be reaching with both hands into the vehicle.
At the trial, Martin Rocha, Jr. testified and was cross examined by both prosecutor Kristen Cain and defense attorney Christopher Persaud, He told the jury that he was the  person involved in the incident which resulted in the criminal accusations. Persaud also elicited testimony from Martin Rocha, Jr. and Earl that Nancy Stern had scratched Martin Rocha, Jr. on the back of his neck as she was attempting to pull him out of Earl’s car. Persaud introduced photos, taken by Earl on his cell phone, that showed those scratches, some of which were bleeding.
The prosecution’s case was further damaged by an assertion in the sheriff’s department’s report that Javier Rocha had run away from the deputies looking into the incident. The police report  was contradicted by the Stern’s surveillance video, which showed Javier Rocha cooperatively speaking with a deputy in front of the Stern’s driveway on the morning of February 2 and walking away only after the deputy ended his questioning of him and as the deputy was returning to his vehicle.
The video sequence showing the confrontation was played for the jury on multiple occasions during the five day trial.  After closing arguments on April 12, the jury gathered on Monday, April 16 for deliberations. Upon going into the jury room at 9 a.m., members of the jury requested a copy of the video to view once again. Because of a computer glitch, however, the video could not be displayed and there was a two hour delay while a member of the county’s technical support staff was located to play the video. Upon viewing the video, the jury deliberated for less than 20 minutes before returning with a unanimous verdict to acquit Javier Rocha.
One juror indicated after the verdict was rendered that the entire jury was convinced that the video depicted Martin Rocha in the altercation with Nancy Stern. This damaged not only her credibility with the jury, but called into question the validity of the police report and the prosecution’s assertions, which in other aspects were controverted by the video, the juror suggested.
The trial, in some measure because of the website, invited wide scrutiny, including national and international media attention. A common view expressed by a number of those in attendance at the trial was that both the sheriff’s investigators and the prosecution had not examined a crucial piece of their own evidence, the video, People’s Exhibit 43. The video was later designated Defense Exhibit 45A after Cain made motions to prevent it from being entered into evidence. Some said both the investigators and the prosecutors had merely substituted in the Sterns’ version of events in the police report and court filing against Javier Rocha without undertaking a critical assessment of their representations.
Lieutenant  Rick Ellis, the supervisor of the deputies who investigated the matter and was responsible for signing off on the police report, acknowledged in a videotaped interview after the charges had been filed against Javier Rocha that he had not viewed the videotape. On the witness stand at the trial, he testified that Martin Rocha, Jr. had informed him during a phone call to the Twin Peaks sheriff’s office on February 9 that it was he and not his brother who was depicted on the video having the confrontation with Nancy Stern.
Following the verdict, Cain spurned media requests for comment, including questions about whether she intended to file a criminal case against Martin Rocha, Jr.
At mid-week, the Rocha family was consulting with civil attorneys about filing a malicious prosecution lawsuit.

Hesperia city councilman Paul Bosacki is on a crusade. Convinced that the city he represents has been unjustifiably deprived of a significant return of the property tax its residents pay, the one-term elected official said he wants to leave office knowing that Hesperia is getting a fair portion of the revenue due it.
Bosacki, who served on the city’s planning commission before being elected to the council in 2008, said he is not certain he will run for reelection later this year. For that reason, Bosacki is stepping up the pressure on county and state officials to redress the property tax distribution issue in Hesperia in the near term. He has called upon current First District county supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, who is now vying for Congress and will not remain as supervisor representing Hesperia and most of the High Desert after December whether he is successful in his federal election bid or not, to assist him in his quest.
The property tax allocation formula for local governments in San Bernardino County is a complicated one under which there is no uniformity city to city. Previous to Hesperia’s incorporation in 1988, when the county directly provided many of the services  to the community along with the previously existing Hesperia Recreation and Park District, the Hesperia Fire District and the Hesperia Water District, that formula was somewhat less arcane. Upon incorporation, city officials failed to broker a very favorable split of property taxes with the county.
Like many of the cities that incorporated after the passage of Proposition 13, Hesperia was given a less-than-generous allotment of the diminishing property tax stream. This was a particularly harsh circumstance for Hesperia, which at 73 square miles, had over 473 miles of roads, many of them neglected and deteriorating.
The city was allotted a mere 1.59 percent of the property tax revenue – $1.59 of every $100 collected. That was the second smallest allotment of any of the cities in the county at that time and it is now the paltriest property tax share of any of the county’s current incorporated cities. At present, the county of San Bernardino keeps 14.23 cents of every property tax dollar collected in Hesperia. Indeed, in Hesperia there is a fifteen way split of property tax. The other thirteen beneficiaries of the property tax rolls are the Hesperia Unified School District, which is given 29.5 percent; another 21.41 percent goes to the Education Revenue Augmentation Fund, most of which comes back to the school district; the Hesperia Fire Protection District pulls in 15.3 percent, nearly ten times what the city receives; The Victor Valley Community College District claims 6.4 percent; the Hesperia Recreation and Park District is given 4.3 percent. The county’s flood control district claims 2.2 percent for operations and 0.09 percent for administration; the county library system takes 1.38 percent; the Hesperia Water District is provided 1.03 percent; Community Services Area 60, which lies at the city’s periphery, is entitled to 0.99 percent; the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools accroaches  0.97 percent; the Mojave Water Agency abducts 0.50%; and the Mojave Desert Resource Conservation District nabs 0.02 percent.
Hesperia was not the only city in the county which formerly found itself shortchanged with regard to the division of property tax. Chino Hills, Apple Valley, Highland, Victorville, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana and Adelanto found themselves in similar circumstances, with Victorville at that time being allotted no return in property tax at all. In no case were any of those cities experiencing more than a 5.2 percent  return of property tax collected within their respective borders. In 2003, the county agreed to allot all of those cities 7 percent of the property tax on any land annexed into those cities after that point. Also, several of the cities, individually and collectively pursued litigation and legislation sponsored by local state lawmakers aimed at upping those cities’ property tax revenue.
Hesperia participated in those efforts. The first legislative effort in this regard, Assembly Bill 1057, failed on the Senate floor in 1999. Subsequently, then-Assemblyman Phil Wyman introduced Assembly Bill 1378, which was designed to give Hesperia a larger share of property taxes collected by the county, such that Hesperia at that time stood to be the recipient of $2 million more per year if Assembly Bill 1378 passed. But the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to oppose AB 1378 and a key member of the board, former assemblyman and then chairman of the board Fred Aguiar lobbied in Sacramento against it. Wyman than dropped the legislative try, saying “I killed the bill because we’d rather do it together at the local level.”
Hesperia officials abandoned the legislative approach and pulled out of litigation it was engaged in as a co-plaintiff with other cities after assurances were provided that then-Hesperia Mayor Jim Lindley would be able to use his entré with his then-political ally, then-supervisor Bill Postmus, to amicably negotiate with the county an increase in Hesperia’s share of the property tax return. For Chino Hills, Rancho Cucamonga, and Fontana, the litigative/legislative approach succeeded and by 2006, those cities saw an increase in their end of the formula for property tax splits.
Victorville saw its share of property tax pass-through upped from zero to 4.72 percent, with 6 percent going to its fire district and 5 percent going to its park district.
Apple Valley was granted 9.4 percent of the property taxes its residents pay and another 9.2 percent was handed over to the town’s fire district.
The city of Rancho Cucamonga now gets 5.11 percent and its fire district is provided with 12.48 percent.
A deal was brokered with the city of Chino Hills such that it continues to get a 3.9 percent return on property tax paid for property that was previously within the city and ten percent of taxes from new development. The city of Chino Hills’ fire district also receives 15.15 percent of the property tax paid by Chino Hills residents.
In Fontana, the city receives a 3.8 percent property tax return, while its fire department is granted an 18.55 percent return.
The city of Highland is given 24.4 percent of the property tax collected within city limits.
Adelanto is the only other city in the county that accompanies Hesperia in continuing to stand on the outside looking in with regard to the niggard distribution of property tax. It receives 1.75 percent of residents’ property tax.
Bosacki maintained that “Hesperia is being forced to make do with too little. Hesperia receives 1.59 cents of every dollar collected from property taxes. That is the lowest amount in the county. The reason Hesperia can’t provide public services is that our property tax dollars are still going to the county. That has been the problem since 1988, when Hesperia first became a city, and it has just compounded because of the years of neglect to our infrastructure. We can’t pay for new infrastructure and we are not staying up with the upkeep on the old infrastructure. The traditional purpose of local property tax is to pay for services where the tax is collected. Public services such as police and roads and the responsibility for paying for them were transferred to the city from the county in 1988, but the property tax dollars collected from Hesperia residents have remained with the county and those dollars are being spent on county programs not within the city of Hesperia city limits.”
Bosacki suggested that a portion of the tax money collected from Hesperia property owners that is going not only to the county but other agencies should be taken away from those entities and rerouted to the city.
“After so many agencies have taken their pieces of the pie, we are being left with a too small amount of cash to work with,” he said. “The property tax problem has not changed for the people of Hesperia. We remain a cash cow for the county.” Bosacki suggested that the Hesperia Recreation and Park District, which functions on an annual budget of more than $15 million and charges use fees, could afford to give up a significant part of the 4.3 percent of locally collected property tax it receives.
“The average amount received by cities in San Bernardino County is 13.9 percent,” Bosacki said. “Hesperia receives 1.59 percent back and we haven’t been able to remedy the problem. This is an inappropriate tax allocation. The poor folks in Chino Hills were only getting back 4 cents out of every property tax dollar, and they were able to get a special dispensation where they now get ten percent on all new development. We are in a way worse position than they were. I would like to see them, or any other city try to provide services on 1.59 cents out of every dollar like Hesperia.”
Bosacki was critical of the city’s past political leadership, which he said had allowed the situation to persist for far too long. He suggested that the dialogue and negotiations with the county that Lindley, as the city’s former mayor had sought to substitute for legislative or litigative fixes, had run aground when Postmus, Lindley’s erstwhile political ally, offered Lindley a job with the county. Lindley, with Postmus’ backing, became county legislative analyst in 2005 and was later promoted to the positions of county chief purchasing officer and then county health officer. He is now city manager in the Northern California City of Dixon. Postmus later had a celebrated falling out with Lindley before Lindley departed San Bernardino County. Postmus received a black eye himself, having been charged with political corruption, and last year he pleaded guilty to fourteen felony counts including soliciting and receiving bribes, conspiracy and perjury. The welfare of Hesperia was lost in the shuffle, Bosacki said. Postmus’ hand-picked successor, Mitzelfelt, promised to assist Hesperia, but so far has not delivered, Bosacki said. He called upon Mitzelfelt to make good on that promise before he leaves office in December.
“Now is the time, Mr. Mitzelfelt, to put the Hesperia tax problem in front of the board of supervisors and fix this 24-year-old problem for good,” Bosacki intoned.  “Hesperia voters are watching and waiting, and expect equal and fair treatment with our tax dollars, like our neighbors in Apple Valley, who get 9 percent returned to them. The ball is in your court. The state took away our redevelopment agency and with redevelopment funding gone, Hesperia needs its local tax dollars to be spent on Hesperia

Apple Valley Town Council Member Rick Roelle said he is running for First District supervisor as a reform candidate.
“I believe the supervisor’s office today is in disarray with corruption,” he said. “If you look at the number of scandals and what has happened, it is an obvious problem. I think I can bring ethics and integrity to the board. Now that there is an open seat, I think I can run and win. I believe I am well qualified for the job.”
A thirty-year veteran of the sheriff’s department who has risen to the rank of lieutenant, Roelle said that the major issue in the race locally “For me is the rising alarming crime rate in the First District, which has a detrimental effect on job creation in the area. I believe it has hampered businesses from locating here. Crime makes this a less desirable place to do business. Law enforcement and economic development go hand in hand. In the last year we have seen a 30 percent increase in crime in the unincorporated areas.  The majority of the land in the High Desert is unincorporated county area. Over that same period, the board of supervisors have cut the law enforcement budget, eliminating 200 sworn positions. That has forced the sheriff to make cuts to the department, mostly in the unincorporated areas. That has resulted in the 30 percent increase in crime, which makes the whole High Desert a less desirable location for people to locate and operate a business.”
The solution, Roelle said, is to eliminate the self-interested wheeling and dealing on the board of supervisors.
“Look at the $100 million payout to the Colonies, the FBI investigations, other federal investigations going on,” Roelle said, referencing the board of supervisors’ 2006 decision to settle a lawsuit brought against the county by the Colonies Partners over flood control issues at the Colonies at San Antonio project in northeastern Upland by conferring a $102 million payment to the development company. Prosecutors allege that decision was tainted by extortion and bribery of two of the former members of the board of supervisors and the former chief of staff to a third supervisor. Those bribes allegedly consisted of $100,000 contributions to political action committees controlled by the elected officials involved or their associates. Two of the former supervisors – Bill Postmus and Paul Biane – were indicted and Postmus has entered guilty pleas to 14 counts of bribery, conspiracy and perjury. Charges remain pending against the other alleged participants in the graft, all of whom have pleaded not guilty. Investigations by the FBI, IRS, Securities and Exchange Commission and other agencies into that matter and others involving the county and other local governments are ongoing.
“The solution is changing the priorities of the board of supervisors,” Roelle said. “The board of supervisors needs to put an emphasis on quality of life issues rather than staying in office. The first government priority has to be the safety of its citizens from domestic or foreign threats. Local government needs to concentrate on ensuring the safety of its citizens and letting the free enterprise system work. Everything will fall into place if we do that.”
Another issue facing the First District, Roelle said, is the “falling home prices. Up to 50 percent of the value of homes has decreased. I think of the High Desert as a blue collar community. We need more emphasis on education to have high technology job opportunities come in here. We need to have an educated and skilled work force. Thirty percent of the people who live in the High Desert have not attended a college class.”
At the larger county level, the major challenge, Roelle said, “is obviously the budget crisis. A part of the budget problem is the lack of growth of the economy. But the other is the ethics of the board of supervisors. When you have the types of payouts and legal fees we are paying, we have to clean up the ethics of the board of supervisors. Their low standards have affected the county as a whole.  It has cost money.”
Roelle said he stands out from the crowd of other candidates for First District supervisor because of his track record as a sheriff’s officer and elected public official.
“I think my experience in local government distinguishes me,” he said. “At the local level, as a member of the town council, I was elected twice by the largest majority in the history of the High Desert. I received nearly  12,000 votes each time. I am a man of my word and I look out for the benefit of the people and do not bow down to special interests. Outside interests have come in and that is the basis of the scandals we have in this county now. I have been on the town council for two terms, which is almost eight years now and served one year as mayor on each term. I have a background in law enforcement. I understand how government works and why it does not work.  I am now and have been a member of SANBAG [San Bernardino Associated Governments, which serves as the county’s transportation agency, which has all five of the county’s supervisors and one council member of each of the county’s 24 cities as board members] for nearly eight years. I understand transportation, the need for transportation and how it is funded. That makes me qualified to step into this job and hit the ground with both feet running.”
Roelle, 52, grew up in Covina, attending his first two years of high school there. He graduated from Apple Valley High. He has completed 70 units at East Los Angeles College, Victor Valley College and San Bernardino Valley College. Divorced, he has two grown children.

Though he twice was rejected by voters in his run for Upland mayor when he opposed John Pomierski in 2004 and 2008, Ray Musser was chosen to replace Pomierski after the latter resigned a week prior to his March 2011 indictment by a federal grand jury on extortion, bribery, conspiracy and political corruption charges. On Wednesday, Musser announced he will run for mayor again in November.
Musser has been on the city council since 1998, having been reelected as councilman in 2002, 2006 and 2010. He will be opposed in his run for mayor by councilman Gino Filippi, who was first elected in 2010.
Filippi has represented himself as a reformer and Musser as a mayor who was not elected to that position by a popular vote.
“This is the self-appointed mayor,” Filippi said. “He voted to appoint himself.”
Filippi has suggested that Musser was a willing participant in the Pomierski regime and the ethos that prevailed at City Hall during the years that led up to the now disgraced former mayor’s indictment.
“The voters will be able to chose from two very different pathways for our city – Musser’s failed policies of the past and lingering culture of corruption, or my new vision for our city where we balance our budgets, bring integrity back to city hall, and revitalize our jobs.”
Musser, however, referenced his longtime role as the sole political opposition to Pomierski and his numerous lone dissenting votes on issues and matters that were decided in Pomierski’s favor during the decade Pomierski dominated the city council.
“Those running for office have said we need a change, a new direction,” Musser said. “I disagree.  Why would we change the direction we are going?   We have come out of and are moving away from troubled times. Many of my objectives when I came into the mayor’s seat 14 months ago have been met, and we have overcome some significant challenges and adversities. With the support and cooperation of our council, I have led the charge for changes to campaign financing, limiting the financial influence of a few special interests and taking money out of Upland politics.  A new ethics and code of conduct ordinance was approved to which every elected official, appointed committee and city employee must follow and be held accountable. It is not a time to change direction and go back.  We have more challenges ahead of us, and the city will need experience and proven leadership to overcome these challenges.  It is not a time for inexperience and unproven leadership with unknown intentions to lead our city. It is for these reasons, and the responsibilities and commitments yet to be accomplished that I announce my intention to run for the office of Upland mayor in the November 2012 Election.”

San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Donna Gunnell Garza on April 17 ordered Registrar of Voters Michael Scarpello to submit to questioning related to his decision to disqualify 64 ballots in the February 7 San Bernardino city clerk race.
In the initial tallying of votes in that election, Gigi Hanna won by three votes. A recount requested by runner-up Amelia Sanchez-Lopez resulted in a six-vote margin in Hanna’s favor. Sanchez-Lopez then filed a legal challenge of the registrar’s decision to disqualify  64 mail-in ballots because signatures on the envelopes containing those ballots did not match signatures on the voter-registration cards for those mailing those ballots.
Sanchez-Lopez’s challenge suffered a setback when Gunnell Garza previously granted a motion by Stuart Leviton, Hanna’s attorney, excluding testimony from voters whose ballots had been disregarded whom Sanchez-Lopez’s attorney, William Trejo, wanted to question. At that time, Gunnel Garza indicated she did not believe that testimony would provide relevant evidence.
But in what some considered a reversal, Gunnel Garza this week turned back a motion by Leviton to prevent Scarpello from being questioned, finding that the registrar will need to justify for the court “the reasonableness of his actions.”
Leviton and county counsel, representing Scarpello, maintain the state elections code empowers election officials to disqualify ballots if the signatures on them to do not comport with those on the voters’ registration cards.
But Trejo has signed affidavits from 16 qualified voters who claim they voted in the February 7 mail-in run-off election for city clerk only to see their ballots discarded. It is Trejo’s contention that if those 16 ballots and the other 48 uncounted ballots are considered, Sanchez-Lopez will be the winner.
The challenge puts San Bernardino City Attorney James Penman in a curious position. The city officially supports the outcome of the race as previously determined, with Hanna declared the victor. As such, Penman’s office is being called upon to argue against Sanchez-Lopez’s challenge. Penman, however, supported Sanchez-Lopez’s candidacy.
Gunnell Garza set a May 2 hearing date for further arguments on the challenge to the ballot disqualifications.

TWENTYNINE PALMS — Twentynine Palms voters rejected the Measure H tax initiative by a substantial margin.
The initiative to levy an $80 to $120 per parcel assessment on customers of the Twentynine Palms Water District to provide enhanced fire protection and emergency medical aid to the community garnered 850 votes of endorsement, or 48.27 percent, and 911 in opposition, or 51.73 percent, during the mail-in balloting concluded on April 17, according to the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters.
The registrar said 1,761 voters, or 32.93 percent of the 5,421 eligible to participate, returned ballots. The measure needed the endorsement of two thirds of those voting to pass.
Property owners in the Twentynine Palms Water District’s service area are also within the response area of the Twentynine Palms Fire Department.  According to fire chief Jim Thompson, the defeat of Measure H will likely result in the closure of the Lear Avenue fire station, which provides first response to the Desert Heights and Indian Cove districts and backup for the remainder of Twentynine Palms. The fire station downtown will remain in place and fully staffed, but community leaders have indicated that the decline of the fire department to a single fire station will represents an inadequate level of service.
While voters did not pass Measure H, they did endorse Measure I, which needed only a simple majority to be effective, 906, or 51.24 percent, to 862, or 48.76 percent. Measure I authorized the fire department to spend the revenue that would have been generated had Measure H passed.
The Twentynine Palms Water District board of directors will discuss further funding options for the fire department at its April 25 meeting

Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, who is now vying for election to Congress in the recently redrawn California 8th Congressional District, finds himself beset with accusations that he sought to improperly influence the race to succeed him.
The situation was touched off by a report of a backroom deal by which Mitzelfelt allegedly convinced a candidate in many quarters perceived as the frontrunner in the upcoming First District supervisor contest to drop out.
In February, Ken Anderson inexplicably withdrew as a candidate to succeed Mitzelfelt as supervisor, despite having leapt to an impressive advantage over more than a half dozen other hopefuls. Anderson boasted an impressive resumé, including success in the private sector and positions of responsibility and trust within local and state government. He developed and sold at a profit a strip mall, currently owns a hardware store in Phelan and with members of his family at one time operated a string of four other  hardware stores in Apple Valley, Barstow,  Hesperia and  Lancaster.  He had completed stints on the county planning commission and as a board member of the Phelan Piñon Hills Community Services District, was a field representative for state Senator Sharon Runner and a community liaison for Mitzelfelt. He declared his candidacy on January 12 and to all appearances seemed to be making strides toward capturing the office.  In late January and early February he had pulled down the endorsements of Sharon Runner, that of her husband George Runner, who had previously served 12 years in the State Legislature representing portions of the High Desert and is now an elected member of the California State Board of Equalization, as well as that of Steve Knight, Assemblyman for California’s 36th District. Donors and backers of all sorts were signing on in support of his campaign, which was switching into high gear under the guidance of Lovella Sullivan, a professional campaign consultant.
But with his political fortunes racing upward, against the advice of several of his closest associates and his campaign committee, he pulled out of the race, crossing up dozens of supporters who just days and weeks before he had been entreating to assist him in his electoral effort.
At the Spring Valley Lake Country Club on February 28 during a lunch meeting of the Hi-Desert Republicans Women Federated where many had gathered to hear what they anticipated would be a fiery and aggressive campaign speech touching on his vision for the High Desert’s future, Anderson dashed the crowd’s expectations, saying, “I just don’t feel in my heart at this time that I am able to continue.”
He offered no more than that in his explanation of his withdrawal, befuddling and frustrating those who had lined up in support of him and his candidacy. The exact reason for his decision remained a mystery.
This week, on Tuesday April 10, the issue of his withdrawal from the supervisor’s race returned when Mitzelfelt succeeded in getting his colleagues to ratify his hiring of Anderson to serve as his field representative.
Almost immediately, it was widely bruited around the county that Mitzelfelt and Anderson had brokered some order of a backroom deal to have Anderson end his candidacy in exchange for the job Mitzelfelt arranged for him to take this week. There were suggestions that this was calculated to benefit Mitzelfelt’s run for Congress either directly or indirectly by assisting one of the other candidates in the supervisor race with whom Mitzelfelt has political backers in common.
While many cynically found Anderson’s acceptance of the position to be a satisfactory explication of Anderson’s abrupt withdrawal from the race in February, others, including many of his one-time backers, found it both troubling and disappointing.
Many remained baffled at his willingness to surrender a legitimate shot at becoming supervisor in return for a job that promises to be relatively short-lived. Mitzelfelt will remain as First District supervisor only into December, at which time, presumably, his staff will be supplanted by a new one chosen by the incoming supervisor.
The position Anderson was hired into, field representative, provides an annual salary of $64,561 together with benefits of $62,180 per year. One of the benefits is the provision of health benefits for Anderson’s family.
Given Anderson’s financial circumstance, including complete ownership of a hardware store in Phelan and his profitable sale two years ago of a strip mall he developed and owned, observers questioned why Anderson was willing to trade down from the possibility of capturing the supervisor’s post to holding a lesser position that would last no more than seven months.
Questions attained, as well, to the legality of any arrangement that was made in a deal between Mitzelfelt and Anderson pertaining to Anderson’s withdrawal from the supervisor’s race.
Two sections of the California Elections Code, 18205 and 18523, appear to prohibit any type of deal that would dissuade a candidate from running for office.
Elections Code Section 18205 states: “A person shall not directly or through any other person advance, pay, solicit, or receive or cause to be advanced, paid, solicited, or received, any money or other valuable consideration to or for the use of any person in order to induce a person not to become or to withdraw as a candidate for public office. Violation of this section shall be punishable by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code for 16 months or two or three years.”
Elections Code Section 18523 states: “A person shall not directly or through any other person advance or pay, or cause to be paid, any money or other valuable thing to or for the use of any other person, with the intent that it, or any part thereof, shall be used in bribery at any election, or knowingly pay or cause to be paid any money or other valuable thing to any person in discharge or repayment of any money, wholly or in part, expended in bribery at any election. Any person violating this section is punishable by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 of the Penal Code for 16 months or two or three years.”
Anderson’s contract to serve as a field representative in the First District was reviewed by deputy county counsel Kenneth Hardy. That review, however did not look into the California Elections Code 18205 and 18523 implications, according to San Bernardino County’s public information officer, David Wert.
“I spoke with Mr. Hardy,” Wert said. “County counsel review of such items is only to ensure that the contract language adheres to legal form. County counsel does not concern itself with the appointing authority’s decision-making process in offering a position to one person as opposed to another.”
Wert did add that “Neither Mr. Hardy nor I are aware of any kind of investigation related to this.”
Anderson told the Sentinel that those seeing or attempting to draw a nexus between his decision to drop out of the race and Mitzelfelt’s decision to hire him “are barking up the wrong tree. I can tell you they are two complete separate things.”
Anderson acknowledged that as a candidate he “had a lot of support from the community,” but stopped short of agreeing to a characterization of himself as the frontrunner, saying such a description was a “compliment.” He said there were reasons why he had departed from the running and that “People saying there was a trade there doesn’t make any sense. I made a personal choice not to run.”
He declined to disclose what his precise rationale was. “I don’t want to say at this time,” he said. “I made a personal decision together with my wife, as I stated at the time. The decision was made a long time before it was announced.”
Anderson said. “This opportunity [going to work as Mitzelfelt’s field representative] came up completely separately.”
Mitzelfelt told the Sentinel there is no substance to the rumors of a backroom deal and that he neither encouraged Anderson to withdraw his candidacy nor offered him any inducement in the way of a position with his office to do so.
“I did not discuss that with him,” Mitzelfelt said.
Mitzelfelt said he hired Anderson “because he has done great work for my office in the past and he was available.”
He said the timing of Anderson’s hiring came about because “My assessment of the work volume in my district office was that I needed an additional field representative. He was available and willing and already a part-time member of my staff. Ken has worked for the First District on a basically volunteer basis for more than a year and has proven to be an amazing asset in assisting constituents and handling issues,” Mitzelfelt said. “As a business owner and an active participant in local government and numerous community groups, Ken brings a depth of knowledge about High Desert issues, along with a can-do attitude and organizational skills that will serve our constituents well.  Ken’s business experience and familiarity with local government makes him uniquely qualified to work on a variety of issues with terrific perspective from both the private and public sector.”
Joseph Fahrlender, with whom Anderson served on the board of directors of the Phelan Piñon Hills Community Services District and who was among his most ardent supporters as a candidate for supervisor, said he too was taken aback when Anderson dropped out of the race.
“I was upset and he heard everything I had to say for a day or two,” Fahrlender said. “There were a bunch of us, and we were saying, ‘Are you nuts? If you stay in this, you’ll win.’ But in the end, he said he found out that he is just not a politician. He would be in a room with all these people who expected something of him or wanted something from him and what he wanted to do was accomplish things and work at it and not just have to sit around all the time. He came to realize that would be what he would be doing on a weekly basis. I know it’s hard to understand in this world where everyone wants to be top dog but that is not what he wanted to do. At first he thought of himself as a politician but after he took a run at it he found out he wasn’t really cut out for it. He figures he can do a better job working for someone else, going out to find the answers and really working instead of shaking everyone’s hand and trying to please everybody by making a bunch of empty promises.”

Bret Henry, the  current president of the San Bernardino County Professional Firefighters, is one of seven candidates vying to become the next First District Supervisor.
Henry is casting himself as a reform candidate, maintaining “I want to get in there and work with people to change the stigma of the county.  Corruption is out of control. We have good people fighting it, but there is no way of just changing it overnight.  I am basically fed up with the false stories and lies and the twisting of the truth. I want to work with the good, honorable business people of the county for a change.”
In addition, Henry said, “I am a public safety advocate. Public safety has been neglected for too long. Right now, everyone is blaming nurses, cops, firefighters and teachers for all the problems going on. But with all of the billions and billions in subsidies and bailouts, those groups have been served up as being part of the problem, and they are seen as getting too much in salary and pensions. That is far from the truth and what is needed is someone with my skill set who can get in there and redress those issues.”
Henry said it is the fat cats in government – the top level administrators – who are exploiting not only the taxpayers but the rank-and-file governmental employees. The public has unfairly blurred the distinction between the bad guys and the good guys, he said, and the line workers deserve their pay and benefits and the sycophants at the top of the totem pole do not. He said pension reform needed to be calibrated accordingly.
“The whole issue is incredibly complex but at the end of the day there is a problem with the pension system structure. The benefits do not have to be taken away but they do need to be funded correctly. The senior management is the problem. We have a recently retired division chief who was making  $136,000 in salary his last year on the job, yet takes home $211,000 as a pension. That is wrong. It is the big guys who are making more than they should.”
In making his point about the issue, Henry reflexively referenced the firefighters he represents as a union president in making his point. “In reforming the pension system,  we should not hurt the  guy who shows up at the front door when you have a heart attack or a fire. We should not do away with pensions. If you have a good car with a flat tire, you don’t throw the car away. You fix the flat tire. The flat tire in the pension system is the too-generous pensions received by senior management.  The little guy gets blamed for the problems.”
Henry dismissed suggestions that as a union official and public labor advocate he was in some fashion out of step with the predominate Republican population of the First District.
“Ronald Reagan himself was a labor leader,” Henry said. “Ronald Reagan said we often focus on the problems of labor organizations. However, we are a representative form of government and there is a correlation between the decrease of labor unions and the growing gap between the rich and poor.  So said Ronald Reagan. There are thousands of collective bargaining agreements that go on without a hitch every day and they represent the betterment of the middle class, the blue collar population.”
As a public employee and a public employee union official, Henry said he has acquired valuable insight on how government works that will redound to the betterment of the community if he is entrusted with a leadership role.
“I bring a particular skill set to the game,” Henry said with regard to what he sees as the major challenge facing both the county as a whole and the First District. “We have to get jobs. There is a chicken or the egg first question. What do you need first? Jobs or public safety? People have to feel safe in the stores where they shop and on the road and in their homes. We need to hire highly trained and well paid first responders – police, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs [emergency medical technicians] so people can work and live. If we don’t have that, the jobs won’t come. We have to build collaterally together. There is a synergy between jobs and safety. Jobs will not come without public safety. Safety cannot be paid for without jobs.  Once everything is here, people have to feel safe.”
With regard to the First District’s needs as distinguished from those of the rest of the county, Henry said that the High Desert needs more than anything else “infrastructure. That is a huge thing in the First District. The First District is uniquely qualified to host jobs. We have the space. We have a trained work force, many of   who go to work down the hill. We need to build infrastructure, roads to get people up and down the hill and improve the infrastructure here to support more factories and warehouses. The area around Southern California Logistics Airport is a perfect example of an area that can produce jobs. We could make it an inland port. With investment, that alone could produce thousands of jobs”.
Henry said he is just what the First District and the county needs on the board of supervisors. He said two of his opponents in the race – Michael Orme and Robert Smith – are linked to the disgraced political leadership of the past, including former First District supervisor Bill Postmus, who has pleaded guilty to perjury, soliciting and receiving bribes and using methamphetamine while in public office, and Postmus’s former chief-of-staff, Brad Mitzelfelt, who covered for Postmus while he was engaged in those depredations and was then rewarded by becoming Postmus’ hand-picked successor as supervisor. Smith and Orme both worked as field representatives for Postmus. “One of the key things in this race is many of the other candidates  have long term ties to individuals with a host of problems. If people want the same old business as usual, I am not the one to vote for. I have thirty years of honor and integrity in the Marines and the fire service, solving problems. I believe what is needed is a personality such as mine to fight for the First District. I love the First District. There were some uphill battles I engaged in when I was in the Marine Corps. There have been uphill battles when I was with the US Forest Service and County Fire. I will fight for the First District.”
Henry weighed in on  a countywide voter initiative on the ballot in November which calls for reducing the supervisors to part-time status and trimming their individual combined pay and benefits package from $270,000 per year to $60,000 per year.
“Looking at a budget the size of San Bernardino County’s, the issue isn’t full or part time. It is pay,” he said.
If the measure passes Henry suggested it will be difficult for  the county to attract supervisorial candidates of the  quality he said he embodies.
“If you are paying $60,000 a year, some people are not going to want to serve. I am still a working class guy. You want someone in that position who fits the job and is creative and smart. If you reduce the pay, people are not going to tend to want to accept that. You would create a situation like what you have with city councils where you have the city manager running the show. If you do not pay a decent salary and provide good benefits, you are not going to attract the same caliber of people. You will get people who see it as something to do part time. I would say for sure that in the desert we would have a better system if our city council members were there full time. If this initiative passes, you are going to cut down on your applicant pool. But if that is what the people decide they want, then they are entitled to that.”
A resident of Hesperia, Henry, 49, grew up in Reseda and later earned an emergency medical technician certificate from Victor Valley Community College. He was in the Marine Corps from 1981 to 1990. He worked as a paid call and full time firefighter with the United States Forest Service for almost seven years and then went to work for the San Bernardino County Fire Department, where he has been for more than 14 years. He is presently a fire captain overseeing operations in Fontana. He has long been active in fire employee union activities and has acceded to the position of union president. In that capacity, Henry earned public pension investment management certificates from Stanford Law School and the Hass Business School at the University of California at Berkeley. He also earned certificates in trustee studies and institutional investing from Harvard Law School and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is not currently married but has children.

The parents union that was turned back last month in its effort to utilize the Parent Empowerment Act to take over operations of Desert Trails Elementary School filed a lawsuit on April 5 against the Adelanto School District and its board of trustees.
The Desert Trails Parents Union does not appear to be funding the legal action on its own and is being assisted by the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Parent Revolution and that group’s law firm, Kirkland & Ellis.
On January 12,  the parent union submitted what its members believed were a sufficient number of signatures on petitions to force the district to undertake a set of what the parents union believes will be reforms at the severely underperforming Desert Trails Elementary School, which ranks last out of the ten elementary schools in the Adelanto School District and in the bottom ten percent of all elementary schools statewide in terms of academics, such that out of the graduating sixth grade class 72 percent of students are not proficient with the English language and 70 percent are not proficient in math.
Those petitions called upon the district to sack the school’s principal, David Mobley,  and surrender to the school’s parents authority in hiring his successor, infuse in the new principal hiring authority for the school’s faculty, reduce class sizes and increase the number of school days and instructional hours, and include more science, history and art in the curriculum.
The Parent Empowerment Act, authored by former state senator Gloria Romero and passed by the legislature in 2010, enables a majority of parents at a school at which students test out as low-performers on state academic tests to force a district to implement significant reforms, ranging from replacing the principal and up to half the staff to reopening the school as a charter academy. That process is known by the colloquialism “parent trigger.”
A group of parents opposed to the parent takeover of the school formed and went to  work obtaining rescissions of many of the signatures on the petitions.
In February, the school district, to whom the parent trigger petitions had been entrusted, announced that it had validated the signatures of only 317 of the 466 signatures on the petitions. The Desert Trails Parent Union, through one of Kirkland & Ellis’s attorney’s, Mark Holscher, demanded a recount and reconsideration of that invalidation of the petition effort and after the district did so, the board, on March 28,  voted unanimously to give a final rejection to the reconsideration of  the parent trigger petition, finding that it fell 20 signatures short of the  321 signatures needed.
Holscher and Kirkland & Ellis on April 5 filed on behalf of five of the members of the parents union – Doreen Diaz, Kathy Duncan, Teresa Rogers, Olivia Zamarripa and Bartola Del Villar – a petition for a writ of mandate and a complaint in Victorville Superior Court seeking a court order that the district verify the signatures and allow the Parent Trigger process to advance, as well as asking for the  recognition of  the educational rights of students at Desert Trails.
According to Holscher’s filing, “On January 12, 2012 70% of the Desert Trails parents petitioned the district to transform the failed school into a parent-led, community-based independent charter school. The parents’ petition was explicitly authorized by the parent trigger statute that allows parents to file such a petition for a failed school, and requires a school district to implement any petition signed by 50% of the parents.”
But the district cheated those parents in the course of its signature verification process, according to Holscher, and his writ of mandate calls upon the court to reestablish the petition as valid.
“The district ‘counted’ the parents’ votes,” Holscher said. “While nearly all vote counting for petitions and voting in California is done by disinterested third parties and with processes to ensure impartiality, the district vote counters here opposed the petition to remove the district from running the failed school. The district, however, faced an insurmountable problem: 466 parents had signed the petition, and the district had no discretion to reject the petition so long as there were 333 proper signatures. The district, unfortunately, engaged in a systematic effort to invalidate the petitions. First, despite the clear legal mandate that the district must accept every parent’s petition absent proof that a petition was not valid, and the courts’ repeated instructions that any attempt to reject a citizen’s First Amendment protected right to petition must withstand the most ‘exacting scrutiny,’ the district refused to accept 25 parents’ petitions because the district could not find a signature in its files to compare to the petition signature. The parents’ first requested relief is for this court to reverse the improper rejection of these 25 petitions. Once these 25 petitions are restored, as these presumptive valid votes must be, the petition is over 50 percent and cannot be blocked by the district. Second, the district’s teachers as well as teachers from outside the district engaged in a campaign to coerce parents to ‘rescind’ their petitions, and the district then used 97 of these purported ‘rescissions’ to block the January 12th petition.  The parent trigger statute and its regulations do not allow for any ‘rescissions’ after a petition is filed.”
Holscher’s filing  continues, “The parents’ second request for relief is for this court to rule that the district improperly rejected 97 petitions by rescinding the votes through this unauthorized ‘rescission’ process.   Moreover, not only are rescissions not permitted, the parents have uncovered smoking-gun proof that individuals who obtained the rescissions doctored and falsified rescission forms and engaged in a coercive campaign to block the petition.  Even if the parent trigger statute called for ‘rescissions’ after a vote, which it does not, the fraudulent rescission process here could not possibly survive the ‘exacting scrutiny’ that this court must apply to this rejection of the petition.  Third, the parents here request that the court grant a writ requiring the district to approve the March 6, 2012 resubmission of the petition by the parents.”
Holscher maintains that prior to the board’s March 28 vote, Adelanto School District Superintendent Darrin Brawley acknowledged the parents had garnered sufficient valid signatures to qualify for the parent trigger takeover of the school.
“The parents met with the superintendent of the district on March 6, 2012, to go over the petitions and reach agreement on the valid petitions,” according to the court filing. “At the March 6th meeting, the superintendent and the parents went through all the disputed petitions. After reviewing the petitions the superintendent specifically represented to plaintiff Doreen Diaz and another person at the meeting that ‘You are definitely over 50% at this time.’  The parents made it clear that they would only resubmit at that time and not get even more signatures if the district agreed they were over 50%. When the parents asked again and told the superintendent that they wanted to advise the school board publicly that night of the superintendent’s findings, the superintendent said it would be fine for the parents to tell that to the board.  The board then rejected the resubmitted petition by falsely claiming that the petition was again under 50%, even with the ‘corrections’ requested by the district. The parents request that the court rule that the district is estopped from rejecting the petition because the district superintendent specifically represented to the parents that the petition was over 50% knowing full well that the parents would resubmit on that basis.”
In an exclusive interview with the Sentinel, Brawley disputed Holscher and Diaz’s assertions.
“I disagree with that adamantly,” Brawley said. “I told them we still needed to go through the verification process. What they claim was said is an accurate description of their statements to me but certainly not mine to them. I handed over a stack of information and informed them they would need to go through the verification process. I never told them we were over the threshold. That would not be known without going through the verification process.”
The court papers state, “In its findings, the district purported to return the petition for being under 50 percent, again relying on rescission forms that it knew were tainted by forgery and fraud. The district relied on 70 questionable rescission forms that would be deducted from the total, even though the parent trigger statute did not even include a rescission option.  Aside from relying on fraudulent documents, the district’s own math did not add up with its prior rejection of the petition on February 21. Inexplicably, 15 students from the board’s February 21 findings were unaccounted for in the board’s March 28 findings. The missing 15 students, not surprisingly in the district’s favor, remain a mystery.”
According to Holscher, “The district acted in bad faith throughout the petition process. The district has no compelling reason that would justify the burdensome and onerous verification procedure they have crafted which has and continues to chill the protected speech of the plaintiffs.”
Brawley said that the district is “still examining the writ.” He said he and the district would defer comment until the analysis of the filing is complete and that given the legal issues involved it would most likely be lawyers doing the talking.
“That is something that will be responded to by our legal team,” Brawley said.