Ontario INTERNATIONAL Airport

At least in our country, some airports are designated as "international" airport. The criteria appears to be "if a flight from another country has ever landed at your airport, it's international."

The international airport is not CURRENTLY required to provide international service. If it were, then Ontario's airport would have to go through a dizzying round of name changes, as service between the airport and Mexico starts, stops, then starts again.

Ontario is currently NOT receiving any international flights, but it will definitely be international beginning on November 20:

Aeromexico will resume international flights at Ontario International Airport starting in late November.

According to the airline's website, the first flight from Guadalajara, Mexico, should arrive Nov. 20 at 11:45 p.m. and depart from the Inland airport the next day at 1:15 a.m. Fares for the flights linking Ontario and Guadalajara range from $138 to $253 each way, according to the site.

The Press-Enterprise article notes that Aeromexico had stopped its service in February, expected to start it again in July, but won't actually start until late November.

A lesson for non-incumbent candidates in local elections

I was just checking the analytic data for this blog, the Empoprise-IE blog, to see if my election posts had resulted in a surge of interest in the blog. It turns out that they have, since at least some people were getting here while searching for information on Paul Vincent Avila. But the most popular search terms for this blog include variations on Frederick J. Minook's name.

This just goes to prove something that I said back in August.

[A]s of this evening (August 24, 2010), if someone were to search Google to find out who the heck Frederick Minook is, my previous blog post on Frederick Minook would be the first search result that they would encounter.

As of this evening, that blog post is STILL the top search result for Minook.

It's fairly obvious that Minook did not conduct any type of online campaign. As far as I know, the only campaigning that Minook did was to send a postcard-sized mailer to voters - and if you search the web for "minook mailer," you'll find that a post on this blog was the top search result there, also.

Yes, this scares me. And it even scared Paul Leon, and Leon was Minook's opponent in the election. Leon offered the following comment:

Well stated. The internet should also be thoroughly researched for truth in content. Not only can somebody shape your identity, they can put a very negative spin on it. Cross referencing all research is very important. Good point here. Even "trusted" sites like Wikipedia can be suspect because the nature of Wikipedia is for "users" to add content. Now that is a bit scary!

Now I have never met Leon or Minook, and I don't know how well they know each other, but during their campaign I never heard them taking swipes at each other.

But if there's any lesson that non-incumbent candidates should learn, it is that any candidate, especially a non-incumbent, HAS to establish an online presence. If the candidate doesn't do this, it's possible for their opponent, or someone else, to do it for them.

Initial OMSD and Ontario mayor results

Initial results in San Bernardino County are coming in faster to http://www.sbcounty.gov/rov/current_elections/110210/ElectionResults/default.htm than I thought.

The Empoprise-IE Inland Empire blog has discussed two local elections, so I thought I'd check in on them. Here are initial results for the Ontario-Montclair School District:

Ontario-Montclair School Dist - Gov Brd Mbr
10/70 14.29%
Vote Count Percent
ELVIA M. RIVAS 1,741 13.92%
DAVID CAMPIO 1,353 10.82%
J. STEVE GARCIA 1,804 14.43%
KRIS BRAKE 2,454 19.62%
SANDRA ESCAMILLA 1,241 9.92%
BENJAMIN LOPEZ 1,111 8.88%
CHRISTOPHER AGRELLA 672 5.37%
PAUL VINCENT AVILA 2,130 17.03%
Total 12,506 100.00%


So the three leaders are Avila and two of the three teacher-supported candidates.

The mayor race is no surprise - in fact, I might even call it. Frankly, Minook probably could have called it a few months ago.

Mayor ONTARIO
7/69 10.14%
Vote Count Percent
PAUL S. LEON 4,986 75.01%
FREDERICK J. MINOOK 1,661 24.99%
Total 6,647 100.00%

Election coverage from Sacramento

The Sacramento Bee's blog just ran a post regarding the demographics of voter turnout and how they affect Proposition 19.

You can follow the Bee's "Capitol Alerts" here. Obviously no specific IE coverage, but they will have coverage of the statewide races.

This could be the last time...

Matt Munson (who, as I previously mentioned), is live-blogging today's election, brought up an important point in his initial Election Day posting:

This is our last election where you can vote for a third party like Green or Libertarian. I hope Proposition 14 gets repealed....

Come 2012 we will only have the dog and pony show.

If you're not sure why Munson is making such an argument - didn't Proposition 14 promise open primaries? - then be sure to read what Kurt Hyde wrote in advance of Proposition 14's passage earlier this year. Here's an excerpt from Hyde's post:

The candidates who would be adversely affected the most by this are third-party candidates, independent candidates, and write-in candidates. In effect, they would find themselves unable to be on the ballot in the general election. While third party, independent, and write-in candidates are rarely elected to office, their influence has helped immeasurably in keeping many a so-called conservative at least reasonably on track during the campaign season by offering disenfranchised voters the opportunity to voice their disgust by casting a protest vote. Sometimes they are successful in being elected. Don’t forget Strom Thurmond was first elected to the U.S. Senate as a write-in candidate in 1954.

Frankly, the only way that a third-party candidate will become one of the top two vote-getters would be if the candidate has huge star power, exceeding that of, say, Ross Perot (although Theodore Roosevelt admittedly did well as a third-party candidate in 1912). Hmm...Rob Reiner? Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Anyway, as I write this you have less than 8 hours to go out and vote Peace and Freedom or whatever...

Another option for local election coverage

OK, if you're not from the IE, you're going to have to put up with our sob story for a minute.

One of my favorite spectator sports is election night results. And not just the top of the ballot - I want to hear about my entire ballot. I went ahead and votoed for (or against) all of the stuff - why not find out how the rest of the area voted?

So I tune into our local television stations and hear all of the election results - for Los Angeles County.

Thanks a lot.

Well, one year I had another option - our local public television station, channel 24, offered local coverage. This consisted of a guy in a monotone reading election results, coupled with a woman at one of the party headquarters asking inconsequential questions.

However, there's always the Internet. You can visit http://www.sbcounty.gov/rov/current_elections/110210/ElectionResults/default.htm for San Bernardino County results, or http://www.voteinfo.net/currentElection.asp for Riverside County results. And there are all sorts of bloggers everywhere who will voice opinions on...every election except the one that I'm interested in. No, I don't really care about the witch in Delaware; what about the warlocks and witches in my own back yard?

Which is why I was happy to read this news from Matt Munson:

I am planning a live blog on the election and provide coverage throughout the day, even when I head to the voting booth. All thanks to the blackberry I can provide remote coverage.

I look forward to reading Munson's coverage. Check his Inland Utopia blog for updates.

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.

Maybe David Allen will run for office too

I never got around to this, but Gino Filippi is running for Upland City Council this November. While his claim to fame is with the Filippi Winery, I actually know him best as a columnist for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, where he wrote about...Gatorade. Just kidding, he had a wine column.

This is what Gino Filippi said:

The Upland City Council needs revitalizing. My passion is driven by people and their contributions. I'm considered open-minded, ethical and organized. While this is my first opportunity to serve the people of Upland in an official capacity, I have served as a community volunteer for multiple organizations for over 20 years. I will work to establish term limits, maintain public safety including sidewalk and street repairs, restore library services and support local business. I have no agenda for personal gain or favors and my objective is to restore Upland to the "City of Gracious Living" as intended by its founders.

So does this mean that David Allen will run for the city council in Claremont or Pomona or wherever he lives?

Somehow this drop in the jobless rate is not encouraging

Again, a statistic that can be spun multiple ways.

On the one hand, the jobless rate in the Inland Empire has dropped!

Yeah...it's dropped to 14.8%.

But wait...it gets better:

Unemployment, which had reached an all-time high of 15.1 percent in the Inland area in July, declined to 14.8 percent. The jobless rate declined because more than 9,000 people left the work force last month.

In an odd twist, net employment gains were registered by construction and shipping firms (or what John Husing called "the meat-and-potato sectors" for our region), while net employment losses were registered by government agencies.

Well, at least that's a good sign. If the net gains were being registered in the public sector rather than the private sector, I'd be more worried.

Well, one regional airport is thriving

Sometimes it seems that the stories emanating from Ontario International Airport alternate between bad news and worse news. But there is a bright spot in the (sort of) local airport conversation.

Palm Springs International Airport has added a direct flight from Toronto starting Feb. 2 on West Jet.

Wow. Ontario doesn't have a direct flight to Canada, to my knowledge.

Oh, and the number of air travelers at Palm Springs is increasing.

Ontario International Airport without the "LA"?

Readers of this blog know the story. Ontario International Airport launched a big expansion, just before 9/11 hit and rendered its terminal configuration meaningless (all of the shops and restaurants ended up behind security barriers, meaning that only passengers could get to them), decreased the number of passengers because people didn't want to fly, resulted in increased rates to the airlines who flew into the airport...thus meaning that airlines began to pull out of the airport.

I guess it helps to write a 25 page study to say that, but the study apparently also calls for an action plan. inlandempire.us:

City leaders in Los Angeles, which currently operates the facility, must act now to prevent further loss of flights at ONT, where unusually high operating costs contributed to a decision by Southwest Airlines alone to cut its daily departures by a third in the last decade, the report said.

If you've never been to the airport, Southwest pretty much IS the airport. Yes, other airlines fly here, but Southwest is clearly the dominant carrier.

There are actions that can be taken, and a suggestion of who can best perform those actions. The Press-Enterprise:

Reviving ailing Ontario International Airport will require slashing costs and increasing marketing, two things the city of Ontario thinks it can do better than the city of Los Angeles....

So how do you cut costs?

The plan focuses instead on the airport's high cost to airlines -- a result due in large part to a bloated work force of city employees and millions of dollars in administrative costs collected by Los Angeles International Airport annually, according to the report.

But the Press-Enterprise cites one economist, Alan Bender, who says that operational cost-cutting won't help much.

"You go where the business is," he said. In an area where the recession has left an even deeper wound than other regions, the business climate has waned, he said. "That's more important than lowering the costs."

But you have to admit that the costs are huge.

It costs airlines an estimated $14.50 per enplaned passenger at Ontario airport. At LAX it costs $11, at John Wayne Airport in Orange County it costs $9.93 and in Long Beach Airport it's $5.34.

Hmm...maybe Los Angeles could sell the airport to Long Beach.

Why the Ag Preserve needs to be shut down

This story is from Australia, but it bears great relevance to the Inland Empire, and illustrates why the Ag Preserve needs to be shut down.

When a crowd of about 50 Aussies started pawing at their suddenly burning, aching eyes, panic set in.

Did somebody release poison gas? (But why would terrorists strike the dairy pavilion at the Royal Adelaide agricultural show?)

No, it’s so, so much worse.

Austrialian health officials were called in CSI-like to investigate the outbreak, Reuters Life! reports. The culprit: Stagnant cow urine.

More here.

Follow-up to my Royal Tahitian post

On March 3, 2009, I photoblogged a poster that I saw in the Applebee's in Ontario International Airport. Because the poster listed musicians, I posted it to my Empoprise-MU music blog. However, it talked about a local place - the Royal Tahitian. The post, entitled "At the Royal Tahitian, circa 1966," mentioned that I knew nothing about the establishment, other than the fact that Pearl Bailey, Sarah Vaughan, and Louis Armstrong had apparently performed there in 1966.

Leave it to David Allen, in a September 4 post in his blog, to fill in some of the gaps.

The Royal Tahitian operated in Ontario from 1960 to 1967 at Whispering Lakes Golf Course.


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Afterward the building became the clubhouse for the golf course (at 2525 E Riverside Drive, Ontario CA 91761), but Allen reports that the clubhouse was closed in April, and the building is slated to be demolished.

Be sure to visit Allen's post for some before and after pictures, including some handbills from the heyday of the Royal Tahitian. Some of the other performers included the Four Tops, James Brown, and Ray Charles. Also see the Sunday article that Allen wrote in his paying gig, the Daily Bulletin.

But it wasn't just about the music, according to Critiki:

The Royal Tahitian claimed to be the world's largest Polynesian restaurant, with 250 acres of tropical landscaping and "lagoons" -- however, this was simply a reference to the Ontario National Golf Course nextdoor. The main floor was the restaurant, with a bar downstairs, and a show area outside. It featured a dramatic asymmetrical swooping A-frame entrance.

However, Critiki also claims that the building was demolished in 2003. Frankly, I trust David Allen on this one - unless the golf course happened to have TWO buildings with dramatic asymmetrical swooping A-frames. Perhaps there are multiple Royal Tahitians, just like there are multiple Doyle Owls. (And no, I don't think Reed College's Doyle Owl has ever appeared at the Whispering Lakes Golf Course.)