Rick McClure responds

Last Monday, I posted an item entitled Dipping into the local election junk mail which included the following regarding the Ontario-Montclair School District election:

One of the teachers' union mailings was very teamwork-oriented, speaking of teacher-principal-parent teams as well as the "Teachers' Education Team" of Steve Garcia, Elvia Rivas, and Kris Brake. Garcia is the only incumbent who was mentioned in this mailer. The union says that the three will respond to Sacramento's budget cuts by keeping "budget cuts as far away from the classroom as possible." Brake, in her separate mailer, says that she "will work to ensure that taxpayer funds are utilized to directly benefit students."

But the teachers' union sent out a separate mailer - one that lives up to the high "standards" set by the state governor's race....

What follows is a hard-hitting attack on Paul Vincent Avila's stances on the issues affecting the board...well, except for the issues part. The hard-hitting attack is still there....

Perhaps I'm going out on a limb here, but I highly suspect that the teachers' union has objections to Avila other than his language or his electioneering.

My post prompted a reply from Rick McClure, President of the Ontario-Montclair Teachers Association, which I am reproducing here in full:

Well, as the President of the union responsible for that piece I think I'm qualified to speak to this. I suggest you go to www.voteoutavila.com and see and read for yourself about Mr. Avila. If after reading just his emails to me and the other candidates for the school board you think I've got ulterior motives, well OK. But I'm willing to bet my next paycheck that instead you'll be saying, "OMG, this nut's an elected official!"

If you go to the www.voteoutavila.com website, you can see electronic copies of BOTH mailings - the one regarding Avila is at the top of the page, while the one regarding "the education team" of Garcia, Rivas, and Brake is at the bottom of the page. (Since this is the "vote out Avila" website, the order of the ads is reasonable - there is another page in which "the education team" is at the top.) There are also links (some of which have expired) to some of the correspondence from and to Avila.

To my knowledge, Avila does not have a campaign website, but his official school board biography, as well as the biographies of J. Steve Garcia and the other incumbent school board members, can be found here.

Alan Wapner's LAX-ONT conflict of interest claims

As noted previously, Ontario City Councilman Alan Wapner has been a vocal proponent of purchasing Ontario International Airport from its current owner, the city of Los Angeles. In a recent letter in the Los Angeles Times, Wapner argued that the city of Los Angeles has a conflict of interest in running ONT:

Los Angeles has an inherent conflict of interest in controlling both airports. As Los Angeles struggles to regain lost traffic at LAX and to pay for a multibillion-dollar expansion, it views ONT as something of a competitor deserving scant attention.

I don't know if Wapner's claim is true or not, and considering the moves by LAX's neighbors to limit traffic, you'd think that the opposite would be the case. However, Wapner has evidence from Los Angeles World Airports' own Executive Director:

To avoid this conflict, Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that operates both facilities, must relinquish control of ONT and concentrate on LAX. The need for this was highlighted by LAWA Executive Director Gina Marie Lindsey's comments at the July 14 meeting of the L.A. Board of Airport Commissioners:

"Now continuing to pursue a strategy that actively pushes traffic away from the city of Los Angeles and into other jurisdictions could be viewed as a little self-destructive."

Wapner also claims that one reason for ONT's high fees is the 15% administrative fee tacked on by LAWA.

Unfortunately - and Wapner should realize this - he is dealing with bureaucrats. And the last thing that a bureaucrat would want to do is to reduce his/her power.

A little more Mills at Ontario...but more approachable

It's a truism that malls are always expanding and adding new stores. They are never contracting and losing stores. Basically, all this means is that some tenant moved out (not discussed) and some other tenant moved in (discussed ad nauseum).

But sometimes malls do expand. A few years after I moved to California, the Montclair Plaza added a second floor. And now, the Ontario Mills center is expanding...a bit:

Areas that used to serve as loading docks will make way for additional exterior storefront entrances as well as extra parking.

Actually, although the increase square footage apparently isn't that significant, the configuration is. Exterior storefront entrances are vitally important to some retailers.

Sports Authority will occupy more than 50,000 square feet and will be in Neighborhood 3, replacing the Baby Depot.

The sports retailer, Smith said, is actually returning to the Mills.

It used to occupy the space where Forever 21 is located, but one of the reasons it left several years ago was because it didn't have an exterior entrance, Smith said.

And it's not just the Mills. When Barnes & Noble moved down Montclair's Central Avenue to relocate in Montclair Plaza a few years ago, the new Barnes & Noble included an exterior entrance.

Of course, if exterior entrances become more and more important, then you'll end up with...a traditional shopping center, or perhaps something more akin to Victoria Gardens.

Only in California...

TMI - Take the train to Cagle's?

I had to find the phone number for Cagle's Appliances in Ontario, so I went to Google to find it.



Now on the one hand, I appreciate the integration that Google has performed between locations and nearby transportation systems, and I can certainly verify that you can get to Cagle's by walking from the Ontario Amtrak station.

But as much as I admire Cagle's, I don't think that people are going to be taking a long-distance train to get there. However, should you be a Tucson, Arizona resident who is looking for a California appliance store, here's how the Sunset Limited can meet your transportation needs.

• Board the Sunset Limited in Tucson on Tuesday evening. It currently departs at 10:30 pm, but this may change when daylight saving time ends.


• Disembark at Ontario at 6:21 am Wednesday morning.


• Take your time walking east on Holt to Cagle's. Maybe you could stop somewhere for breakfast.


• When Cagle's opens at 8:30, go ahead and head on in. Take your time browsing around. But don't take too much time.


• Be sure you're back at the train station to board the eastbound train on Wednesday at 3:34 pm. (You did stop for lunch on Holt, didn't you?)


• You're back in Tucson at 12:06 am on Thursday, give or take an hour depending upon time changes. But you have some new appliances!

Note, however, that the Sunset Limited only runs three days a week. And since Cagle's is closed on Sundays, which is one of the days that the Sunset Limited is in Ontario, there are only two days a week in which you can take the Sunset Limited for your shopping excursion. So plan carefully.

Or if the train trip doesn't work for you, Cagle's is a short cab ride away from Ontario International Airport.


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Dipping into the local election junk mail

On Saturday morning, I did something that I had been avoiding.

I started looking at the accumulated election-related junk mail.

And it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Of course, there's still a little bit of time before the election, so it can turn really bad really quickly.

For the purposes of the Empoprise-IE Inland Empire blog, I'll ignore the statewide races and just concentrate on the local stuff.

I heard from two incumbents - Congressman Joe "Food on the Table" Baca and Ontario City Council Member "Fire Chief" Jim Bowman. Because of their incumbency, they didn't have to resort to negative campaigning. Both are creating jobs, and both are tough. Baca didn't mention who was supporting him, but Bowman noted union support (the fire fighters' union and the police union endorse him) and also noted that every member of the current City Council endorses him. The phrase "independent voice" was not found either of the two Bowman mailers that were in the pile.

Another incumbent of sorts mailed me - the city of Ontario itself. While the mailing was about Measure V (an increase in the hotel-motel tax), the mailer was careful not to endorse Measure V. The mailer just provided information...along with a lot of pictures of fire trucks, fire fighers, and police officers. (For some reason, a picture of someone filling a pothole wasn't deemed sexy enough for this brochure.)

Oh, and remember Fred J. Minook? He sent me a mailer also, which talked about dreaming big and being "innovative." Without trashing the current council (again, a refreshing break from negative advertising), Minook listed some of the things that he wants to do, including the redevelopment of Holt, Euclid, and Mountain to increase businesses and tax revenue; attracting more museums and cultural institutions "so our residents do not have to travel to Los Angeles"; and other big plans. One might question the specifics and logic of ideas such as this:

Fred would expand the Convention Center to attract major conventions and stem the losses.

(What if the bigger conventions DON'T come?) but Minook certainly gets credit for raising the issue.

Unfortunately, the apparent civility in the Ontario mayoral election doesn't appear to have extended to the Ontario-Montclair School District board election. The police and fire unions aren't the only unions that are participating in the election; of the three mailings that I had concerning the OMSD election, two were from the local teachers' union, and the third was from a teachers' union-endorsed candidate.

One of the teachers' union mailings was very teamwork-oriented, speaking of teacher-principal-parent teams as well as the "Teachers' Education Team" of Steve Garcia, Elvia Rivas, and Kris Brake. Garcia is the only incumbent who was mentioned in this mailer. The union says that the three will respond to Sacramento's budget cuts by keeping "budget cuts as far away from the classroom as possible." Brake, in her separate mailer, says that she "will work to ensure that taxpayer funds are utilized to directly benefit students."

But the teachers' union sent out a separate mailer - one that lives up to the high "standards" set by the state governor's race. It opens as follows:

It's OK
for Our Children
to Pretend to be Adults...

But It's Not OK
for Our Board Members
to Behave Like Children

What follows is a hard-hitting attack on Paul Vincent Avila's stances on the issues affecting the board...well, except for the issues part. The hard-hitting attack is still there. Examples:

Avila threw a tantrum, using profanity to berate school administrators in front of parents and teachers when his name was left off a middle schools' graduation program....

In his time on the Ontario-Montclair School Board, Avila has lost races for State Assembly 3 times, State Senate 3 times, college board 4 times and city council 6 times.

Perhaps I'm going out on a limb here, but I highly suspect that the teachers' union has objections to Avila other than his language or his electioneering.

Spirit Walk at Bellevue Cemetery on October 30

Bellevue Cemetery in Ontario holds some personal significance for me. Three family members are buried there, a neighbor is buried there, and just recently I heard that a former pastor was going to be buried there.

If I were to name these people, most of you wouldn't know them, but anyone who has studied Ontario history will certainly have heard of some of these people:

George Chaffey, founder of Ontario.
Dr. Orville Ensign, local physician.
E.H. Richardson, inventor of Hotpoint Iron.
Frances Elizabeth Oakley, citrus owner and member of Ontario's Women's Temperance Union.
Kezzie Monroe, one of the early librarians.

The Ontario Heritage Association is holding a "Spirit Walk" at the cemetery on October 30, and actors will portray each of these five people at their gravesites.

Frankly, I was surprised to discover that George Chaffey was buried here. Ontario was just one of the projects in which he was involved during his lifetime. However, I guess that it would be hard to bury him in the town of Salton.

See Liset Marquez's post for more details on the Spirit Walk.

Safariland's corporate history

I haven't really followed the Ontario firm Safariland lately, even though I have a natural interest in the company. Since I've worked in public safety software for the last 15 years, I'm always interested in Inland Empire companies like ESRI and Safariland that also play in that sector.

But when I last checked into Safariland some time ago, they were a stand-alone independent company in Ontario. A September Press-Enterprise story on Safariland's Scott O'Brien updates that history somewhat.

In 1999 O'Brien and Perkins sold their ownership in Safariland and planned on retiring. But the buyer, Armor Holdings, was unable to coordinate the operations of Safariland and 18 other manufacturers of law enforcement products it had acquired, and in 2005 O'Brien agreed to return as president and meld the separate companies into one organization....

Then in 2007 the United States unit of BAE Systems plc, a British global conglomerate, bought Armor Holdings. O'Brien continued as president. Today he is navigating Safariland, which has 1,763 employees and manufacturing plants in Inland Southern California, Florida, Wyoming and Tijuana, through a severe economic downturn.

A word on that downturn - you'd think that public safety would be pretty much recession-proof, but when governments are short on cash, they'll often try to make do with existing equipment and software for just one more year. So I can see O'Brien's challenges.

Be sure to read the interview of O'Brien in the Press-Enterprise.

Oh, and by the way, I can identify with O'Brien in another way, since he sells products that are subject to export controls. O'Brien:

Our biggest market is the Untied States. The international arena has more growth opportunity but the problem now is that BAE is very stringent about how they want business done internationally. You have to do a lot of careful vetting of whom you sell to, to make certain they are not going to take the stuff and sell it to some corrupt government.

And you thought that only auto racers came to the IE

The Citizens Business Bank Arena is bringing new people here who otherwise wouldn't come. Case in point: Elton John and Leon Russell will appear there on November 5. They've also worked on an album together, which will be released in October before their appearance.