Re-Printed from the Daily Press
January 09, 2011 1:45 PM
By: Tomoya Shimura

VICTORVILLE • Three new appointed and elected judges were assigned to Victorville Superior Court as the new calendar year began.

Judge Debra Harris transferred from Joshua Tree to take on one of Victorville’s two family court calendars. Harris, a Republican, replaces Robert Lemkau who was turned out of office and retired from the bench last month.

The Victorville resident was appointed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in July 2009 after she worked for the San Bernardino County Public Defender’s office for 15 years.

Judge Lynn Poncin, who was elected in June in an unopposed judicial race, begins her bench tenure in criminal court, where she was a lead family violence prosecutor. She worked for the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office for 13 years.

On her election website, Poncin stated she would continue to protect victims of crime and give them a voice in the courtroom.

Judge Elia Pirozzi is scheduled to start his criminal court calendar in Victorville on Jan. 24, moving from Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga, where he resides. Schwarzenegger appointed him in May 2007.

Prior to his judgeship, Pirozzi maintained law offices in Ontario and Redlands, specializing in real estate and business law. Pirozzi is a former candidate for Congress and State Assembly and former chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Party.

Judge James Hosking, who defeated Lemkau in the June election, has been assigned to the family court in Joshua Tree.

Former Victorville judges Christopher Marshall and Bridgid McCann were transferred to San Bernardino and Rancho Cucamonga, respectively.

To read more about the new judges, see the full story in Monday’s Daily Press. Get complete stories every day with the “exactly as printed” Daily Press E-edition, only $5 per month! Click here to try it free for 7 days. To subscribe to the Daily Press in print or online, call (760) 241-7755, 1-800-553-2006 or click here.

Tomoya Shimura may be reached at tshimura@VVDailyPress.com or (760) 955-5368.

Re-Printed from the Daily Press
January 06, 2011 2:59 PM
Brooke Edwards

VICTORVILLE • Through the shadow cast by investigations and financial woes, Mayor Ryan McEachron is keeping his eye on one clear goal for Victorville in 2011: breaking ground on the La Mesa/Nisqualli interchange.

“I know it’s like a broken record,” McEachron acknowledged, having campaigned on promises of the long-awaited bridge in 2008. “But we have everything in place but the funding agreement. …My highest priority for this year is to make sure that that funding agreement gets approved, we’re out to bid and we break ground.”

The project involves building a bridge over Interstate 15 connecting Nisqualli and La Mesa roads, with on-ramps and off-ramps that would provide residents with another access point and relieve traffic on Bear Valley Road.

Caltrans granted Victorville the right to oversee construction of the interchange and all design work is complete. The city has also taken possession of all land in the project’s right-of-way, McEachron said, though payment on some properties is still being decided in court.

McEachron hopes to have a funding agreement for the $93 million project approved by the Victorville City Council and county transportation board SANBAG as early as February or early March. Staff can then advertise the project and go out to bid, in a process that should take three months. That means construction could begin this summer.

Aside from that massive undertaking, McEachron said he hopes the city will concentrate less on public projects in 2011 and more on getting private businesses to flourish.

“I’d like to see us get back into the mode of economic development and creating jobs,” McEachron said, with his eyes on Southern California Logistics Airport and the Foxborough Industrial Park.

While there’s “nothing specific on the horizon,” he’s hopeful that the city’s new wastewater treatment plant will allow it to attract more clients like Dr Pepper Snapple Group to SCLA.

Construction should also start during the first quarter of this year on two new Walgreens stores and two long-discussed Walmart Supercenters, at Dunia Plaza and along Palmdale Road at Highway 395.

To read about other items also on the agenda for 2011, see the full story in Thursday’s Daily Press. Get complete stories every day with the “exactly as printed” Daily Press E-edition, only $5 per month! Click here to try it free for 7 days. To subscribe to the Daily Press in print or online, call (760) 241-7755, 1-800-553-2006 or click here.

Brooke Edwards may be reached at (760) 955-5358 or at bedwards@VVDailyPress.com.

Re-Printed from the Daily Press
December 28, 2010 8:08 AM
Brooke Edwards

VICTORVILLE • After 38 years on Victorville’s City Council, Terry Caldwell may be ready to try his hand at another political office — though he isn’t saying just yet which office that might be.

Caldwell, 72, announced just before the filing deadline that he wouldn’t be running for reelection on Victorville’s Council this past November, citing his age and desire to spend more time with his family as contributing factors. But since stepping down from the dais Dec. 7, Caldwell has said publicly several times that he might be considering a run for a new position.

William Buck Johns, president of Inland Energy, the company behind several of Victorville’s energy ventures, has told community members that he plans to support Caldwell in a bid for 1st District Supervisor Brad Miztelfelt’s seat in 2012.

To read more about Caldwell, see the full story in Tuesday’s Daily Press. Get complete stories every day with the “exactly as printed” Daily Press E-edition, only $5 per month! Click here to try it free for 7 days. To subscribe to the Daily Press in print or online, call (760) 241-7755, 1-800-553-2006 or click here.

Reprinted from the San Bernardino Sun.
Michael J. Sorba, Staff Writer

VICTORVILLE – Federal and local investigators continue to request stacks of documents from the city as part of ongoing probes into bond sales and financial records.

Requests for information have become so intensive that three full-time workers are dedicated to processing them, said Councilman Ryan McEachron.

“It’s more or less an ongoing investigation and no outcomes at this point have been shared with city staff,” McEachron said. “I’m not sure how much longer this will go or how long it will take them to come out with any kind of a report.”

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission launched its investigation in August, directing city employees to stop deleting e-mails or throw away paper records, including document drafts and Post-it notes, said city spokeswoman Yvonne Hester.

The SEC has declined to comment on the matter. McEachron says the agency is focused on bond sales that took place between 2005 and 2008. Read the rest of this entry »

Reprinted from InlandPolitics.com

Friday, October 29, 2010 – 6:10 a.m.

Is the city of Victorville on the brink?

The buzz in city and county political circles isn’t good.

Possible insolvency and unincorporation is becoming the talk.

With financial issues plaguing the city as a result of flawed decisions by its officials, now amplified by the Great Recession, the rumors are of no surprise.

Millions of dollars in debt obligations and shrinking revenues has buried the city.

Mayor Terry Caldwell’s decision not to seek reelection is probably a harbinger of things to come.

Just how far and wide the fallout will travel no one knows.

But one has to wonder whether or not the city and its problems will fall into the lap of county supervisors.

Putting lipstick on this pig won’t work for much longer.

First time USCIS has halted an EB-5 regional center
Reprinted from the Daily Press.
October 26, 2010 1:01 PM
Brooke Edwards

VICTORVILLE • The federal government has terminated Victorville’s foreign investor program, ending the city’s hopes to raise tens of millions of dollars for projects at Southern California Logistics Airport.

It’s the first time U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has ever terminated an EB-5 program, agency spokeswoman Mariana Gitmore said by phone Tuesday. She said Victorville hadn’t been able to demonstrate that it meets the criteria to raise funds through the federal program, despite repeated requests for more information. Read the rest of this entry »

September 23, 2010 4:57 PM
Brooke Edwards – Daily Press

VICTORVILLE • The same firm that’s handled Victorville’s audits for four of the last five years is now under scrutiny itself for financial reports Mayer Hoffman McCann prepared for the embattled City of Bell, according to officials with the State Controller’s office.

State Controller John Chiang on Thursday released the first of three audits focusing on Bell’s mismanaged finances, focused largely on actions taken by Robert Rizzo, former CAO for Bell and Hesperia’s original city manager. The report found Bell’s internal controls were “virtually non-existent,” resulting in the city making inappropriate payroll, illegally raising taxes, mismanaging bond funds and entering into questionable contracts and land purchases.

“Our audit found the city had almost no accounting controls — no checks or balances — and the General Fund was run like a petty cash drawer,” Chiang said in a statement.

Mayer Hoffman McCann was retained in November to audit Bell’s finances. Now Garin Casaleggio, spokesman for the Controller’s office, said financial reports prepared by the firm are the subject of a separate audit, due out by the end of October.

“It’s hard to believe a CPA firm could miss the abuses we found,” Casaleggio said by phone Thursday. “And we found them rather quickly.”

A call to Mayer Hoffman McCann wasn’t immediately returned Thursday afternoon.

Victorville rehired Mayer Hoffman, which had audited the city’s financial records from the 2005-06 fiscal year, in May 2009 to complete an audit that was already four months overdue.

The move came in the wake of a delayed and highly critical review of Victorville’s 2007 financial statements by auditors Caporicci & Larson. That firm declined to even issue an opinion on the city’s finances, stating Victorville had “not maintained adequate internal control and accounting records.”

Newly rehired Mayer Hoffman McCann gave the city an unqualified or “clean” opinion for the 2007-08 fiscal year, putting a couple hundred million dollars worth of assets that were stripped away by Caporicci & Larson back on city books.

The firm did express doubts about whether Victorville could continue to stay afloat, in a caution repeated on the city’s 2008-09 audit.

Mayer Hoffman McCann is still at work on Victorville’s 2009-10 review, due out in January.

City spokeswoman Yvonne Hester said Thursday that Victorville had no comment on the situation, or on Mayer Hoffman McCann’s performance.

If the Controller’s office finds evidence of deficiencies in Mayer Hoffman’s work relative to the City of Bell, Casaleggio they could turn that information over to the California Board of Accountancy for possible disciplinary action against the firm.

To subscribe to the Daily Press in print or online, call (760) 241-7755, 1-800-553-2006 or click here.

Brooke Edwards may be reached at (760) 955-5358 or at bedwards@VVDailyPress.com.

By Joe Nelson
Posted: 09/08/2010 04:14:03 PM PDT
The Sun

For the second time, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has threatened to terminate the Victorville Regional Center, which the city fears could jeopardize hundreds of jobs at Southern California Logistics Airport.

In a notice of its intent to terminate the Regional Center dated Aug. 10, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, determined that most of the jobs being generated at the Regional Center, including jobs at the Dr. Pepper Snapple and Platipak factories, could not be directly attributed to a $30 million wastewater plant, which began operations in July.

An economic analysis submitted to USCIS by Regional Center Chief Executive Officer Keith Metzler in late June indicated that money from foreign investors would be used to construct the wastewater plant, which would create 12 jobs at the plant once completed and treat 900,000 gallons of industrial wastewater daily from the Dr. Pepper Snapple plant. The construction of the wastewater plant, according to Metzler, would also create more than 400 jobs at the bottling plant and more than 1,200 jobs within the regional center itself.

But USCIS is disagreeing with Metzler’s analysis.

“It is of note that neither the Dr. Pepper Snapple plant nor the Plastipak plant appear to have a relationship with the wastewater treatment plant other than being parties to agreements to be consumers of the services of the wastewater treatment plant,” according to the USCIS letter. “It would appear that your
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regional center asserts that any newly created public or private entity that provides a commodity or service to commercial consumers, such as a wastewater treatment plant, power plant, solid waste disposal center, etc., would in effect be able to claim credit for the jobs created by the commercial consumers of its services.”

USCIS is the federal agency that oversees a foreign investor program called EB-5, which allows wealthy foreign investors to invest in American infrastructure and capital improvement projects that create at least 10 jobs in exchange for green cards.

Victorville was given approval by USCIS last June as a Regional Center, allowing the city to participate in the EB-5 program. Newport Beach energy magnate William Buck Johns has been aggressively recruiting investors in the the last year from Asia, South Africa and Mexico.

So far, 28 investors have agreed to invest in the regional center. Nineteen applications have been processed through USCIS, and loans totaling $9.5 million have been made to the Southern California Logistics Airport Authority, Johns said.

But the latest roadblock by USCIS – its second notice threatening to terminate the regional center – threatens it all.

“The notice directly jeopardizes the ability of the Southern California Logistics Airport

Industrial Wastewater Treatment Facility to sustain jobs created as it prohibits the ability of the SCLA (wastewater treatment plant) to refinance its construction debt,” Metzler said in his 14-page response letter to USCIS dated Sept. 1.

Despite the setbacks, Johns and other city officials who have kept up on the regional center issue are nothing but optimistic.

“We’re expecting our green light from USCIS any day now,” Johns said Wednesday.

To read the rest of the story, click here…….

Feds renew threat to terminate fundraising efforts
September 13, 2010 9:11 AM
Brooke Edwards

VICTORVILLE • Federal officials have sent a second notice of their intent to terminate Victorville’s efforts to raise funds through foreign investors, so far unsatisfied with the city’s defense of its program.

Victorville shot back an 83-page response, waiting once again to hear whether it will be allowed to use loans received through the federal program — loans Deputy City Manager Doug Robertson declared “the only viable option” to help fund construction of the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved Victorville’s application as an EB-5 Regional Center in June 2009, allowing the city to solicit $500,000 loans from foreign citizens so long as that money helps create 10 local jobs. In exchange, the aspiring immigrants are put on the fast track to getting U.S. visas.

But USCIS sent the city a rare notice of intent to terminate its EB-5 program in May, raising questions about whether Victorville had misrepresented itself in marketing the program and if projects such as the stalled Victorville 2 power plant are still viable.
To read the rest of the story, click here….