By March, Supervisors Vow Study on High Desert County Hospital with Trauma Center

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9/12/2017 By March, Supervisors vow study on High Desert county hospital with trauma center

By March, Supervisors vow study on High Desert county hospital with trauma center By Shea Johnson Staff Writer Posted Sep 11, 2017 at 1:04 PM Updated Sep 11, 2017 at 1:04 PM San Bernardino County officials will analyze within the next six months the feasibility of constructing a county hospital with a trauma center in the High Desert.

San Bernardino County officials will analyze within the next six months the feasibility of constructing a county hospital with a trauma center in the High Desert.

It was only one of six recommendations made by the civil Grand Jury in late June in response to a shortage of emergency room beds and hospital overcrowding in this region, but it was the most striking due to the enormity of such an undertaking, likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

In a proposed response to the jury’s report expected to be approved by county Supervisors on Tuesday, the officials, acting in their capacity as the governing board of the Inland Counties Emergency Management Agency, say research is required.

“This recommendation requires further analysis, specifically a discussion involving the various stakeholders on the costs, feasibility and various possible approaches to addressing the concerns upon which the recommendation is based,” the Supervisors’ response said.

The analysis, it continued, will take place within six months of Tuesday, meaning by no later than mid-March.

http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20170911/by-march-supervisors-vow-study-on-high-desert-county-hospital-with-trauma-center 1/3 9/12/2017 By March, Supervisors vow study on High Desert county hospital with trauma center

In a conversation following the Grand Jury report’s release, Supervisors Chairman Robert Lovingood, who represents the Victor Valley, described a county hospital as recommended by the jury, similar to that of Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, as “a priority.”

“I think it’s absolutely on,” he told the Daily Press at the time. “The critical issue is going to be funding. If you look into the future, the desert’s going to continue to grow and (a hospital is) going to be just one of the things to put on the board.”

The need was underscored by jurors, who concluded that the shortage of emergency department beds leads to hospital and ER overcrowding and hospital bed delays — the time between arrival of an ambulance at an ER and the ER receiving the patient. Momentum for such a hospital, however, has been historically slow-moving because of funding considerations.

The Grand Jury’s investigation came on the heels of a series of Daily Press stories in 2015 and earlier this year about chronic issues with bed delays and ambulance response times.

This newspaper’s pieces ultimately highlighted the discord between the San Bernardino County Fire Department’s union and ambulance company American Medical Response in whittling the issue to its core.

Supervisors vowed to further analyze all Jury recommendations and agreed with every finding, suggesting issues that have been raised are being taken seriously.

Supervisors concurred, among other things, that demands on the 911 system were influencing the need for a re-evaluation of the EMS system; bed delays were directly affecting the safety of patients; there is a shortage of ER beds here; and coordination is lacking among the three High Desert hospitals, AMR and County Fire with respect to overcrowding.

Officials also acknowledged that the 911 system was being misused on a regular basis, overloading dispatch and decreasing the availability of ambulances.

“Public education on the proper use of the 911, including alternatives for those who believe they need emergency assistance, is necessary,” Supervisors said in their response, adding that enhanced 911 call screening “is worthy of consideration.” http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20170911/by-march-supervisors-vow-study-on-high-desert-county-hospital-with-trauma-center 2/3 LIFE Communities are building permanent memorials for victims of mass violence. By Adriene Hill September 11, 2017 | 1:05 PM

The temporary memorial to the victims of the San Bernardino shooting. - Adriene Hill/Marketplace

On Dec. 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, California, a shooter killed 14 people in an attack at the Inland Regional Center.

Today, there’s a temporary memorial to the victims set up along a busy stretch of road. There are sun-bleached flowers, American flags, a laminated poster with pictures of those who died.

There’s a small planted Christmas tree that someone is still watering, and a couple trash bags filled with older flowers and stuffed animals that have been gathered up but not thrown away.

The county, along with a committee that includes the families of the victims, has begun the work of planning something more permanent.

“They want a place to honor the people that were taken from us,” said Felisa Cardona, a public information officer for the county. “They are looking for something that also acknowledges what the wounded went through, what the first responders went through.” Adriene Hill/Marketplace

Today, a little more than a year and half after the shooting, they have just started looking for a consultant to help with the design process. The county doesn’t know yet what the budget for the project might be.

“We haven’t talked about it,” said David Wert, also a spokesman for the county. “We don’t want to think in terms of limits,” he explains, “we want to think in terms of what’s the right thing to do.”

They are questions confronting many communities around the country — how to memorialize and how to fund memorials to honor victims of mass violence.

Memorials are being planned in communities including Orlando, Florida; Tucson, Arizona; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Charleston, South Carolina; and Aurora, Colorado.

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In order to take the next step in San Bernardino, Cardona called Heather Dearman in Aurora for advice.

“When they called, I just had such a great feeling of fulfillment,” said Dearman, who is the vice chair of the 7/20 Memorial Foundation, the group working to build a memorial to the victims of the Aurora movie theater shooting in 2012. “Knowing that we can help other people get through what we have gone through means that what we’re doing is so important. And we’re doing the right thing.”

Dearman is the cousin of Ashley Moser and Veronica Moser-Sullivan. Ashely was wounded; 6-year-old Veronica was killed.

An essential part of the healing process in Aurora has been fundraising, Dearman said. It took the group more than four years to raise the $200,000 it needed to build the memorial. They raised money quarter by quarter and dollar by dollar, setting up booths at local events and holding fundraisers at local businesses. A church pitched in more than $100,000.

Dearman advised communities going through this process to raise the money themselves. Every time someone chips in or offers a hug, said Dearman, “it’s proof that love always wins.”

And that is part of what drives her to do this work, to prove to her kids that there’s more good than evil in the world.

“They still have their moments when I think that I haven’t shown them enough proof,” she said. But she thinks that when they see the memorial, “that’ll probably be the moment that sends them over the edge into believing.”

The 7/20 Memorial Foundation announced the winning design for the memorial a few weeks ago. It’ll consist of 83 sculptural birds, representing those killed and injured, flocking toward the sky.

Follow Adriene Hill at @adrienehill.

Anesthesia Providers Turn To Opioid Alternatives During Surgery 9/12/2017 Erwin jurors in Colonies trial to resume deliberations Tuesday – San Bernardino Sun

NEWS Erwin jurors in Colonies trial to resume deliberations Tuesday

Former Assistant Assessor Jim Erwin, center, attends the corruption case verdict hearing at San Bernardino Superior Court in San Bernardino, Calif. on Monday, Aug. 28, 2017. Defendants Jeff Burum, former Supervisor Paul Biane and Mark Kirk were found not guilty after a marathon trial that has lasted nearly eight months. (Photo by Rachel Luna, The Sun/SCNG)

By JOE NELSON | [email protected] and RICHARD DEATLEY | [email protected] | San Bernardino Sun PUBLISHED: September 11, 2017 at 3:39 pm | UPDATED: September 11, 2017 at 8:52 pm

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Jurors for Jim Erwin, the remaining defendant in the San Bernardino County Colonies bribery trial, began their third week of deliberations Monday and concluded for the day at noon, court ofcials said.

The jury will resume at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Prosecutors allege Erwin, a former county assistant assessor and sheriff’s labor union president, took part in the bribery of two county ofcials to get a 2006 Board of Supervisors approval of a $102 million court settlement in favor of Rancho Cucamonga development group Colonies Partners LP.

Erwin’s jury received his case Aug. 24 aer nearly eight months of testimony in the marathon trial in the San Bernardino courtroom of Judge Michael A. Smith.

http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/erwin-jurors-in-colonies-trial-to-resume-deliberations-tuesday/ 1/3 9/12/2017 Erwin jurors in Colonies trial to resume deliberations Tuesday – San Bernardino Sun

A separate jury on Aug. 28 acquitted on all counts fellow defendants Jeff Burum, a developer and co-managing partner of Colonies Partners LP; former San Bernardino County Supervisor Paul Biane; and Mark Kirk, former chief of staff for one-time county Supervisor Gary Ovitt.

The Erwin jury has run into some stumbling blocks during its deliberations, including a ri in the panel outlined last week in a motion by Erwin’s attorney Rajan Maline, who sought either a mistrial or dismissal of two panelists, including the jury foreman.

Maline alleged misconduct by the two for allegedly revealing in notes to the court how the panel was leaning in the midst of its deliberations — something even the judge is not supposed to know.

Smith talked to all the jurors in his chambers and sent the panel, including the challenged jurors, back to deliberate. He urged them to refrain from voicing comments via texts or social media and to talk to each other despite disagreements.

Besides the bribery charges, Erwin, a former assistant county assessor, also is charged with intentionally failing to le his state tax return for 2008, and two counts of perjury — one of those for not reporting a gied $12,765 Rolex watch from Burum and other items from an East Coast trip to celebrate the settlement.

Erwin had his own jury because some of the evidence in his case was inadmissible for the other three defendants.

Tags: Colonies corruption trial, Inland Empire, Top Stories IVDB, Top Stories PE, Top Stories RDF, Top Stories Sun

NELSON_JOEJoe Nelson Joe Nelson is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for The Sun since November 1999. He started as a crime reporter and went on to cover a variety of beats including courts and the cities of Colton, Highland and Grand Terrace. He has covered San Bernardino County since 2009. Nelson is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. In 2014, he completed a fellowship at Loyola Law School's Journalist Law School program.  Follow Joe Nelson @SBCountyNow

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Richard DeAtley A journalist since 1975, for City News Service in Los Angeles, The Associated Press in Los Angeles and New York, and The Press-Enteprise, Richard DeAtley has been Entertainment Editor, a features writer, courts and breaking news reporter. He is currently a business reporter for The P-E. He is a Cal State Long Beach graduate, lifelong Southern Californian (except for that time in New York -- which was great!), he has been in Riverside since 1992, and has watched and reported as a great community grew into its own identity.  Follow Richard DeAtley @RKDeAtley

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http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/erwin-jurors-in-colonies-trial-to-resume-deliberations-tuesday/ 2/3 NEWS Cannabis company buying historic town of Nipton to develop 420-friendly resort

By Brooke Edwards Staggs, The CannifornianNO COMMENTS Posted on Sep 10, 2017

Laura Cavaness boasted a new uniform as she set out for another day of tidying tented cabins, dusting antique trinkets and clearing the cobwebs that each night seem to emerge from the desert.

For seven months, the 53-year-old Indiana native has lived in Nipton – on the edge of San Bernardino County, a few miles from the Nevada border – with her husband, Carl, their two children and three grandchildren. Together, the couple serves as caretakers for the hundred-year-old Hotel Nipton.

Cavaness recently traded her cotton T-shirt for one made from hemp. Stamped in yellow across the pale green top was the logo for American Green, the cannabis company that wants to buy her entire town.

Carl and Laura Cavaness, both 53, stand outside the hotel they manage in Nipton, Calif. A cannabis company is in escrow to buy the desert town. (Photo by Rachel Luna, The Cannifornian/SCNG) “They gave me this,” Cavaness said, grinning and pointing to the name on her shirt. “We’re hoping to be able to work for them.”

More than a century ago, a gold rush gave birth to what was then known as Nippeno Camp. Today, a green rush – spurred by the marijuana legalization movement – is stirring hopes of new life for Nipton.

American Green is in escrow to buy the 120-acre community, which is home to the Cavaness family and another dozen people, a handful of businesses and a tradition of dreaming big.

The Phoenix-based company wants to modernize Nipton’s five-room hotel and “eco- lodge” cabins. It would upgrade the quirky general store, one-room schoolhouse and RV park. It wants to reopen the Whistlestop Café, which has been shuttered since spring, and add more lodging, food options, a music venue and other amenities.

The goal is to convince visitors to venture 12 miles off the busy highway that connects Southern California with Las Vegas.

And American Green hopes to seal the deal with one key ingredient: marijuana.

The company aims to follow the lead of weed-friendly resorts in Colorado, with future Nipton guests invited to partake in their hotel rooms, attend cannabis-infused dinner parties and soak in medicated pools. And if American Green officials can find a way to loosen strict local bans on the industry, they eventually would like to dedicate the area’s more remote acreage to cultivating and processing marijuana products that can be loaded onto trains that rumble through Nipton each day.

American Green’s vision adds Nipton to a growing list of communities in the Mojave Desert and throughout California that are turning to cannabis to save them. The Whistlestop Cafe in Nipton has been closed since April. Hotel guests have to drive to Primm, Nev. for hot food. (Photo by Rachel Luna, The Cannifornian/SCNG)

In 2014, Desert Hot Springs, about 200 miles south of Nipton, was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy for a second time. Instead, city leaders decided to welcome commercial cannabis cultivation. Today, the town with a yearly budget of $15 million is hoping to collect annual marijuana tax revenue of $50 million.

Another regional neighbor, Adelanto, in the high desert, staved off insolvency in 2010 by selling off a local prison. Five years later, as that one-time infusion of money was drying up, city officials lifted a ban on marijuana businesses. Thanks to revenue from the industry, the Daily Press reports that Adelanto is without a deficit for the first time in eight years.

With statewide projections for legal marijuana to be a nearly $3 billion industry this year – and likely to jump considerably next year, when full legalization kicks in – some version of this story is playing out in Lynwood, Perris and other communities that have long struggled with above-average unemployment and city revenues that haven’t matched expenses.

But Nipton would be the first community anywhere, it seems, entirely owned by a cannabis company. So when news of American Green’s plan to buy Nipton broke in early August, it drew international media attention to a town that’s otherwise best known for being a good spot to buy Lotto tickets.

Early headlines painted pictures of a coming cannabis utopia. But as reporters started digging into the company’s financial records and county policies banning marijuana businesses, the scheme was soon cast as doomed to fail or, worse, a media stunt aimed at artificially boosting share prices for the penny stock company. While cannabis definitely has a role in American Green’s plans, spokesman Michael Rosati said company leaders are confident they can make the venture work even if they can never grow weed in Nipton. And while financial records show American Green is thin on assets and cash flow, Rosati insists it has the resources lined up to close escrow and carry the project forward.

“There will be other investors coming to the table,” Rosati said. “They’ll be announced as things get unrolled.”

Whether American Green’s grand plans for Nipton materialize remains to be seen. But plenty of folks are cheering for the company to strike gold.

PIONEERING SPIRIT

Nipton has long lured pioneers willing to gamble on unusual dreams.

With its vast underground aquifer, Nipton became a camp in the late 1800s for miners pulling riches from nearby mountains, ranchers loading desert cattle onto local railroad lines and wagon trains in search of paradise out west.

British miner Harry Trehearne chased his dreams all the way to Nipton in 1913. At the time, the hotel was about 10 years old, though records are scarce. Trehearne decided to fix it up and open a general store, quickly becoming the unofficial patron of Nipton.

In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed patent papers transferring Nipton to Trehearne. The community has been privately owned ever since, passing between another half-dozen owners before Gerald Freeman set his sights on it in 1984.

Nipton by then was just another desert ghost town. But Freeman, a geologist, had scouted area mining sites for big companies for years, and he viewed Nipton as an opportunity to make a gamble of his own. Current Nipton owner Roxanne Lang discusses the history and future of the desert outpost from the lobby of its historic hotel. (Photo by Rachel Luna, The Cannifornian/SCNG)

Roxanne Lang was living in Malibu and dating Freeman at the time. When he mentioned his interest in buying Nipton, she thought he was kidding. Then she thought he was crazy. But eventually she recognized that his heart was set on this scheme, and her heart was set on him.

They spent $200,000 to buy the town, then began remodeling the hotel, fixing up the grounds and adding the RV park. After struggling to manage the venture from Los Angeles, the couple moved to Nipton with their kids in 1986.

By then, the new “Nipton Nugget” newspaper boasted the town’s population had swelled to 21. There were swap meets on weekends and Catholic Mass in the old schoolhouse each Sunday. Residents were providing salon services and offering hayrides. Plans called for a gas station, a shooting range, an airstrip and more.

Nearby gold mines were booming in those days. But big hauls slowed in the late 1980s, and so did Nipton. Eventually, Freeman and Lang moved their family to Henderson, Nev. while staff kept Hotel Nipton, the store and the restaurant going.

The first “green rush” came to Nipton at the end of the 2000s, as entrepreneurs chased dreams of renewable energy to the vast Mojave Desert. Nipton owner Gerald Freeman built this solar plant in 2010 to supply power for the desert community. (Photo by Rachel Luna, The Cannifornian/SCNG)

BrightSource Energy built the solar plant near Primm, Nev. that can’t be missed from the I-15 and Nipton. Other commercial solar and wind projects popped up nearby. And Freeman built a solar farm to supply half of Nipton’s power, with dreams of one day taking the town completely off the grid.

By then, Freeman was about to turn 80. Lang said he had congestive heart failure and had already suffered one major heart attack. And, since he’d sunk $1 million into Nipton, he had no retirement stash. So in 2015, the couple asked their Realtor friend Tony Castrignano to sell the town for $5 million.

“It’s an opportunity you don’t always come across,” Castrignano said.

There’s been steady interest over the past two years, he said, from a San Francisco architecture school to a Hollywood festival promoter. But no one followed through.

A year ago, Freeman died.

Trying to maintain Nipton alone was too much for Lang, who still works as a speech pathologist in an area school district.

Then along came American Green.

DEALING IN GREEN

American Green started in 2009 as a technology company, Rosati said, initially dabbling in music products. Soon, they were developing the first iteration of a cannabis vending machine, grow lights and other gear for the emerging industry. Today, the company is developing a marijuana cultivation facility in Phoenix. It sells CBD, a therapeutic compound in cannabis that doesn’t make people high. It’s also developing technology products, from apps to a new vending machine.

Some months ago, as a team from American Green drove from Arizona to Las Vegas, Rosati said someone spotted signs touting a town for sale. The notion made sense, he said, since they wanted to expand but were discouraged by the red tape required to open a marijuana business in most cities.

“We thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could have a little more control over this?” he recalled.

The more they learned about Nipton’s resources and history – including tales of silent film star Clara Bow staying at the hotel and Wyatt Earp’s brother mining land nearby – Rosati said the more they liked the idea.

“It’s like a Clint Eastwood movie,” he said. “The pioneering spirit swells up in you.”

To lock in a deal, Rosati said American Green put down $200,000. If escrow closes as planned in early October, he said the company will owe another $1.8 million. Then he said the Freeman trust will carry the note for the remaining $3 million.

As they clean up and modernize Nipton’s existing facilities, Rosati said they plan to keep the main structures intact, recognizing the town’s story will be a part of its attraction. And as they add lodging, like tiny homes and converted shipping containers, plus dining and other amenities, he said they aim to stick closely to Freeman’s vision for building a sustainable community.

 Current town owner Roxanne Lang reads articles about the town in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. The town has attracted media attention over the years for its history, setting and characters. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)  The Whistlestop Cafe is left closed and for rent in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. Cannabis company American Green wants to reopen the cafe as a traditional burger joint, plus add other dining options to the property down the road. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 The Nipton Trading Post displays and sells maps aimed at helping visitors explore the nearby Mojave National Preserve. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 The Whistlestop Cafe is left closed and for rent in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. A cannabis company is in escrow to buy the desert outpost of Nipton and turn it into a marijuana production and tourism destination. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 A sign attracts travelers to stop in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. A cannabis company is in escrow to buy the desert outpost of Nipton and turn it into a marijuana production and tourism destination. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 Hotel Nipton in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. A cannabis company is in escrow to buy the desert outpost of Nipton and turn it into a marijuana production and tourism destination. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)  A rental cabin in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. One of these "eco-lodges" is named Cuatro, in remembrance of the time late owner Gerald Freeman won a local school board election by just four votes. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 Hotel Nipton in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. The five-room hotel is more than 100 years old and features adobe walls that are more than a foot thick. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 Current town owner Roxanne Lang stands in front of the Hotel Nipton in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. For years, she's rode with colleagues in a daily vanpool some 70 miles each way to serve as a speech pathologist in Baker's little school district. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)  A small room inside Hotel Nipton in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. Each room is named for a historic figure tied to Nipton. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 The history of Nipton is displayed on a plaque looking out to railroad tracks and the Mojave National Preserve. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 Antiques are displayed inside the century-old Hotel Nipton in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. A cannabis company is in escrow to buy the desert outpost of Nipton and turn it into a marijuana production and tourism destination. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 Antiques are displayed inside Hotel Nipton in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. Many of the items were at the property when Gerald Freeman and his wife, Roxanne Lang, bought it in 1984. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 The Nipton Trading Post in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. The store sells everything from branded wine to a used spray tan kit. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)  The Whistlestop Cafe is left closed and for rent in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. A customer made this monument for one of the cafe's longtime operators, who always had his dog with him. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 "Nipton Nugget" newspapers from the 1980s are for sale inside the Nipton Trading Post in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 The Nipton Trading Post in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. Owner Roxanne Lang recently found love letters from her late husband in the store's basement, including drafts he'd made before sending her the final version. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)  An old one-room schoolhouse in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. The school operated from around the 1930s to 1960s and has been remodeled as an assembly space called Freeman Hall. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 Antiques are displayed inside Hotel Nipton in Nipton, Calif. on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017. A cannabis company is in escrow to buy the desert outpost of Nipton and turn it into a marijuana production and tourism destination. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG)

 Current town owner Roxanne Lang reads framed documents tied to Nipton's history, which are on display throughout the five-room Hotel Nipton. (Photo by Rachel Luna, Orange County Register/SCNG) American Green hasn’t previously worked in the renewable energy or hospitality industries. But Rosati said that’s where partners – such as PanPacific International, the firm managing the Nipton project – will come in.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle for American Green’s dream in Nipton is legal.

San Bernardino County currently bans all types of marijuana businesses. So the only way American Green could develop commercial cannabis enterprises in Nipton is if it either convinces the county Board of Supervisors to change those policies or if Nipton incorporates so they can make their own laws.

But Nipton is far from having the population it needs to become an official town, according to Kathleen Rollings-McDonald, executive director of the county’s governing land use agency. State law requires at least 500 registered voters, while San Bernardino County adds a requirement of 10,000 residents.

Rosati said all options are on the table, and he’s optimistic that cannabis eventually will be cultivated in Nipton. But if not, he said nothing should stop them from marketing Nipton as cannabis-friendly. And their plan for infusing aquifer water with CBD that they’d use to fill bathing pools and bottle off for sales should still be allowed to proceed, he argues, since they’d be using CBD derived from hemp. That’s sold now in stores such as Trader Joe’s.

Marijuana aside, the Mojave Desert is having a moment, with sometimes long waits to get into Joshua Tree National Park. Plus, there’s newfound demand for quirky accommodations, such as extreme “glamping” sites, that make for fun Instagram posts. In the right hands, Rosati said, Nipton seems poised to break through.

The Cavanesses are supportive of American Green’s plan, insisting media reports on the marijuana angle have been overblown.

“They think it’s going to be a big smoke-out town,” Cavaness said. “It’s not going to be anything like that.”

Other Nipton residents, who live in mobile home compounds scattered along the highway into town, seem mostly apathetic. Oscar Talamantes, 53, shows off a fountain on his Nipton compound that’s home to cows, horses, pigs, peacocks and more. (Brooke Edwards Staggs, The Cannifornian/SCNG)

“It doesn’t make any difference to me,” Oscar Talamentes, 53, said.

He moved from Las Vegas to Nipton eight years ago seeking some peace. He leases the front half of his property to a towing business and has built a little oasis out back, with peacocks roaming free, horses to ride, cows to milk, chickens to eat and a deep well.

Talamentes does venture to Nipton Trading Post to get a cold beer. But he said he’s not worried about American Green’s plans.

“It’s not going to change my life,” he said. “I’ve got everything I need right here.”

Sharon McKeever has mixed feelings. She’s been stopping in Nipton with her family since the ’80s, as they drive from the San Fernando Valley to Lake Mojave, and likes the place as is.

“I just hope it doesn’t change too much,” she said, as she picked out a bobblehead turtle to bring home to her daughter.

When she recently showed American Green’s team around the property, Lang said she felt reassured, sensing the company’s executives appreciate Nipton’s history and what it might become.

And she feels certain her husband, Jerry, would’ve gotten a kick out of the marijuana part.

“When he passed away, I told him I would take care of it,” she said. “I think he would approve.”

NIPTON: BY THE NUMBERS

$200,000: Amount Gerald Freeman paid for Nipton 33 years ago

$5 million: Selling price of Nipton’s 120 acres in 2017

20: Estimated residents in the town

$0.0019: American Green’s closing share price Friday, Sept. 8

$191,287: Cash American Green listed on hand as of March financial statements

$8 million: Liabilities American Green listed in March financial statements

$75: Price of a used spray tan kit for sale in the “thrift store” portion of Nipton Trading Post

5: Rooms in Hotel Nipton, plus four tented “eco-lodge” cabins

8: Individuals who’ve owned Nipton since 1940

27: Fixed stray cats that roam Nipton to control the rodent (and therefore snake) population

Sources: Historic records, Register reporting, OTCMarkets.com

9/12/2017 Carpet recycling firm plans to open next year in Rancho Cucamonga – San Bernardino Sun

NEWS Carpet recycling firm plans to open next year in Rancho Cucamonga

(Photo courtesy of XT Green) Carpet recycling firm plans to open next year in Rancho Cucamonga

By JIM STEINBERG | [email protected] | San Bernardino Sun PUBLISHED: September 11, 2017 at 4:33 pm | UPDATED: September 12, 2017 at 4:29 am

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RANCHO CUCAMONGA >> A start-up company is planning to open a 126,000-square-foot carpet recycling plant that would process primarily commercial carpets from around the state.

XT Green will be using a patented technology to recycle carpets that otherwise likely would have ended up in landlls, said company Vice President Gail Brice.

The primary products produced by XT Green will be nylon and polypropylene pellets that will save 13.2 million gallons of oil annually and provide a greenhouse gas emission reduction benet equivalent to planting 3.5 million trees, Brice said.

Calcium carbonate from the carpet backing also will be recovered and sold, she said.

The plant expects to open in early 2018 and have about 60 employees. Most of those will be hired next year, she said.

“Rancho Cucamonga provided a welcoming environment for business that made a difference throughout the site selection process and further solidied our interest in locating there. They made sure we met with their necessary staff and had the workforce and building that met our growth needs,” Brice said.

“XT Green is indicative of the type of leading-edge ‘green’ rm that we want to attract to our city,” John Gillison, Rancho Cucamonga city manager said in a statement.

“Thanks to their innovative process, XT Green has been approved as an ‘Advanced Manufacturer’ by the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority (CAEATFA),” he said. “They are proving to be leaders in their industry and will do much to pave the way for other rms that are committed to green technology to locate to our community and region.”

Brice said the new technology developed by the XT Green team will result in higher-quality recycled products from residential carpet but also provide the unique ability to recycle commercial broadloom carpeting. http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/carpet-recycling-firm-plans-to-open-next-year-in-rancho-cucamonga/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tw… 1/3 9/12/2017 Carpet recycling firm plans to open next year in Rancho Cucamonga – San Bernardino Sun

Nationally, three billion to four billion pounds of carpet are disposed of in landlls every year, she said.

Tags: Echo Code, environment, Inland Empire, Top Stories IVDB

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http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/carpet-recycling-firm-plans-to-open-next-year-in-rancho-cucamonga/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tw… 2/3 9/12/2017 3 Ontario Mills mall eateries reopen after rodent droppings, cockroaches found – San Bernardino Sun

LOCAL NEWS 3 Ontario Mills mall eateries reopen after rodent droppings, cockroaches found

Gameworks, one of the original businesses at the Ontario Mills, has closed. (Photo by Will Lester-Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG) ORG XMIT: 0712_NWS_IDB-L- GAMEWORKS-0712-02

By LISET MARQUEZ | [email protected] | Inland Valley Daily Bulletin September 11, 2017 at 6:40 pm



http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/3-ontario-mills-mall-eateries-reopen-after-rodent-droppings-cockroaches-found/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_… 1/4 9/12/2017 3 Ontario Mills mall eateries reopen after rodent droppings, cockroaches found – San Bernardino Sun ONTARIO >> Three of the four Ontario Mills mall eateries have reopened aer being shut down last week by the San Bernardino County Environmental Health Department.

The health inspector was conducting a plan check consultation of several locations Sept. 6 when violations were found, including rodent droppings and cockroaches. Inspectors shutdown Sweet Factory Shop, Stone Oven, Chicken Now and S.

County records show Chicken Now, which had cockroaches under a food preparation sink and major leaks under two sinks, reopened the following day. Ofcials visited the site Sept. 7 and found the leaks had been repaired.

“Aer a thorough inspection of the entire kitchen facility, three dead adult cockroaches were observed at the dry storage area. The manager provided a copy of the most recent pest control service report, which was conducted on 9/7/2017,” the inspector wrote in the report.

During a reinspection of Stone Oven on Sept. 8, a public health ofcial observed ve old droppings near hoses that lead to the ceiling. The inspector noted that any open gaps in the facility had been sealed, with the exception of a big gap near the water heater, which was being xed later that day.

“The pest control servicer also stated that weekly services shall be conducted for the next three months to ensure this facility is free from rodents,” the Sept. 8 report states. “Lastly, the pest control servicer stated two rats have been caught in the ceiling area within the last two days and he believes this facility is free from rodents.”

County ofcials reopened the eatery but will conduct a third inspection of Stone Oven on Friday to ensure there is no vermin.

A Sept. 8 reinspection of Sweet Factory found operators had xed the lack of hot water and cleared the backed up oor drain underneath the three compartment sink. The shop reopened.

Lana Cao, spokeswoman for the county Department of Public Health, said in an email Monday aernoon that S had not reopened.

Inspectors went to S on the following day and found the sewage backup in the oor drains in the janitorial room and women’s restroom.

“Four nymph and two adult cockroaches were observed in the commissary room and two adult cockroaches were observed in the janitorial room,” the report said. “Due to evidence of a vermin infestation, the health permit is not reinstated on this date.” http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/3-ontario-mills-mall-eateries-reopen-after-rodent-droppings-cockroaches-found/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_… 2/4 9/12/2017 3 Ontario Mills mall eateries reopen after rodent droppings, cockroaches found – San Bernardino Sun The location will be reinspected Sept. 21. County ofcials also ordered the location to sanitize the oors, walls and ceiling.

“The commissary is to remain closed and the health permit is to remain suspended until the vermin infestation is eliminated,” the report stated.

Tags: Inland Empire, public health

MARQUEZ_LISETLiset Marquez Liset Marquez has covered the foothill communities of Rancho Cucamonga, Upland and Claremont since 2014. She has been with the Daily Bulletin since 2006.  Follow Liset Marquez @Journaliset

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http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/3-ontario-mills-mall-eateries-reopen-after-rodent-droppings-cockroaches-found/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_… 3/4 9/12/2017 Veterans celebration in Phelan expanding

Veterans celebration in Phelan expanding By Rene Ray De La Cruz Staff Writer Posted Sep 11, 2017 at 7:51 AM Updated Sep 11, 2017 at 7:51 AM PHELAN — Organizers of the 23rd annual Veterans’ Dinner and Graduation celebration said this year’s event will honor over 1,000 military heroes and have some “very big changes.”

Heritage School teacher Todd Anton, who has hosted the event each year at Serrano High School in Phelan, said one major change is the event will be scheduled one month earlier than usual.

Anton said former Serrano High School head football coach and current school Activities Director Ray Maholchic suggested moving the event from Veteran’s Day week in November to October 18.

“Usually this dinner falls on Veteran’s Day week and competes with other events, and the Marine Corps birthday on Nov. 10,” Anton said. “Moving the event will also involve more of Serrano High School.”

Anton said this year’s event, which includes veterans receiving their high school diplomas through San Bernardino County Veteran’s “Operation Graduation,” has been dubbed “More than a Dinner; More than a Game.”

Anton said another change to this year’s event is varsity football players will serve dinner to the veterans and sign them up for free admission to the football game between Apple Valley High School and Serrano in Phelan on Oct. 20.

The Serrano football team will wear special military-designed jerseys during the game, which will be dedicated to the veterans who will also be honored during the game.

http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20170911/veterans-celebration-in-phelan-expanding 1/3 9/12/2017 Veterans celebration in Phelan expanding

During halftime, 93-year-old WWII veteran and U.S. Army Air Corps B-17 and B-24 pilot Lt. Robert Maholchic will be honored. He is the father of Ray Maholchic and grandfather of current Serrano football coach Casey Maholchic.

Unlike previous dinners, where students served and mingled with veterans, students at this year’s event will host tables and spend the entire dinner with the veterans at that table.

“This gives the veterans a chance to teach and the students to learn,” said Anton, who is also an author and military historian. “The veterans are the best teachers in that room. They are ones who lived it and saw others pay the ultimate sacrifice.”

Anton said as the dinner grew from 200 to nearly 1,200 veterans over the years, the ability of students and veterans to connect became less and less.

“I just didn’t want the kids to be waiters, but hosts and historians — spending quality time with amazing people,” Anton said.

Applications are now being accepted for the graduation award ceremony through the Operation Recognition Veterans Diploma Project, offered in partnership between the SBC Superintendent of Schools and the county’s Department of Veterans Affairs.

All applicants must have been enrolled in high school prior to their military service or internment in a World War II relocation camp. There is no cost to apply or to receive a high school diploma. Applications can be downloaded from the County Schools’ website at vdp.sbcss.k12.ca.us/.

The graduation is scheduled for 4:15 to 5:15 p.m., with dinner to follow from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Oct. 18 at Serrano High School, located at 9292 Sheep Creek Road in Phelan.

Tickets are free to all U.S. veterans and one guest. Tickets are available in Phelan at Heritage School, McDonald’s, Pizza Factory, Desert Community Bank and the Snowline Schools District Office, along with DCB in Wrightwood, A-Tech Transmission in Hesperia and Victorville Motors.

http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20170911/veterans-celebration-in-phelan-expanding 2/3 9/12/2017 Veterans celebration in Phelan expanding

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/Tri-Community- Veterans-Dinner-390371307753847/ or email [email protected].

Rene Ray De La Cruz may be reached at 760-951-6227, RDeLa [email protected] or on Twitter @DP_ReneDeLaCruz.

http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20170911/veterans-celebration-in-phelan-expanding 3/3 9/12/2017 Inland scouts honor 9/11 anniversary with flag retirement ceremony – San Bernardino Sun

NEWS Inland scouts honor 9/11 anniversary with flag retirement ceremony

Eagle Scout Logan Roldan, 16, of Troop 608 in Upland, holds a framed 911 Memorial Boy Scout patches from New York, as they retire a US Flag during a flag retirement event honoring September 11, at the Boy Scouts of America Troop 301 Scout House in Ontario, CA., Monday, September 11, 2017. (Photo by James Carbone for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin)

By MIKE CRUZ | [email protected] | San Bernardino Sun September 11, 2017 at 10:43 pm



More than 150 boy and girl scouts from Inland Valley communities took part in an annual ag retirement ceremony Monday evening, the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack.

The ag ceremony took place at 6 p.m. at the Boy Scout Troop 301 house, 1322 E. Fourth St., in Ontario. The scouts who participated were from troops in Ontario, Upland, Montclair, Fontana and more.

http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/inland-scouts-honor-911-anniversary-with-flag-retirement-ceremony/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tw… 1/3 9/12/2017 Inland scouts honor 9/11 anniversary with flag retirement ceremony – San Bernardino Sun

Girls from Brownies 03694 of Ontario, walk carefully to the fire pit to retire a US Flag, during a flag retirement event honoring September 11, at the Boy Scouts of America Troop 301 Scout House in Ontario, CA., Monday, September 11, 2017. (Photo by James Carbone for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin)

On Sept. 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people were killed when airplanes hijacked by terrorists hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a eld near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

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LOCAL NEWS University of Redlands, community remembers 9/11 victims with prayer, remembrances

Approximately 2500 flags were placed on the grass outside of Memorial Chapel at the University of Redlands to mark the 16th anniversary of the terrorist attacks Monday afternoon September 11, 2017. (Will Lester-Inland Valley Daily Bulletin-SCNG)

By KRISTINA HERNANDEZ | [email protected] | Redlands Daily Facts PUBLISHED: September 11, 2017 at 9:01 pm | UPDATED: September 11, 2017 at 9:09 pm



The victims of Sept. 11, 2001 were remembered during University of Redlands’ weekly prayer service.

Held Monday aernoon, students, faculty, staff and the community were invited to share reections of the day’s events in the U of R labyrinth. Chaplain John Walsh led the service.

The university’s Chaplain’s Ofce hosts the weekly service at 4 p.m. It is open to the public and there is no charge to attend.

To learn more, call 909-748-8369.

Tags: Photos And Videos, Sept. 11, Top Stories RDF

http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/university-of-redlands-community-remembers-911-victims-with-prayer-remembrances/?utm_source=dlvr.it… 1/3 9/12/2017 Inland Empire communities remember 9/11 anniversary – San Bernardino Sun

NEWS Inland Empire communities remember 9/11 anniversary

Crosses fill the lawn outside the Rialto Fire Department, honoring the fallen first responders from the September 11th attack in Rialto, CA., September 11, 2017. The crosses were part of the annual 9-11 Remembrance Ceremony, hosted by Rialto Police and Fire. (Photo by John Valenzuela/The Sun/SCNG)

By MIKE CRUZ | [email protected] | San Bernardino Sun PUBLISHED: September 11, 2017 at 6:16 pm | UPDATED: September 12, 2017 at 4:25 am



RIALTO >> Rows of small white crosses were placed on the grass Monday morning near Rialto Fire Department as the city — and others across the Inland Empire — remembered the victims and rst responders of the 9/11 terror attack.

Residents joined police and re personnel and city ofcials on Willow Avenue, between the re and police departments, to remember the 16th anniversary of the attack. A giant American ag was raised atop a ladder on a re truck.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, when airplanes hijacked by terrorists hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a eld near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

In Riverside, about 150 people paid tribute to rst responders and victims during a ceremony at City Hall. In Banning, bells rang at 8:46, 9:03, 9:37 and 10:03 a.m. on the San Gorgonio Pass campus of Mt. San Jacinto College to mark when the planes crashed into the trade center, the Pentagon and the eld in Shanksville.

The University of Redlands remembered 9/11 during its weekly 4 p.m. prayer in the labyrinth, while students at Redlands Adventist Academy gathered around the agpole on campus to remember the lives lost. In Chino, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Los Angeles Chapter, held its seventh annual blood drive to honor 9/11 victims at the Baitul Hameed Mosque.

http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/inland-empire-communities-remember-911-anniversary/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 1/3 9/12/2017 Inland Empire communities remember 9/11 anniversary – San Bernardino Sun

Community leaders gathered at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona to honor those who died. The WesternU Chamber Singers performed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and U.S. Army veteran Thomas Laffey closed the ceremony by playing “Taps” on the bugle, followed by a moment of silence.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tags: Echo Code, Inland Empire, Sept. 11, Top Stories IVDB, Top Stories RDF, Top Stories Sun

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http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/11/inland-empire-communities-remember-911-anniversary/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 2/3 9/12/2017 ROTWNEWS.com – Festival Angaelica September 18-24, Big Bear Lake

<< TOP STORIES >>

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Subscribe Festival Angaelica September 18-24, Big Bear Lake

in Community News, Entertainment, For Your Information, Informational, Mountain Region, News, Subject, Ticker / by Michael P. Neufeld / on September 8, 2017 at 5:03 am /

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By Susan A. Neufeld

Big Bear Lake, CA – Festival Angaelica is celebrating 10 years of FREE to attend films, art, live music, workshops and outdoor adventures. Combining Independent Cinema from around the globe with the unparalleled beauty of the San Bernardino Mountains.

Festival Director Breven Angaelica Warren is excited to be returning to Big Bear Lake for the event’s 10th Anniversary.

“Angaelica is an arts & ecology organization that supports artists through our unique mentorship festival, combining art and nature — while creating a community that educates, encourages and empowers filmmakers to step out and make bold, new and visionary works.” Said Warren.

EVENTS

The festival includes Filmmaker camping, outdoor movies & live music, live painting, hiking, kayaking, paddle boards,comedians, guest speakers, screenplay readings and workshops.

On Monday there will be live music at Meadows Edge Picnic area. Tuesday events are at Fawnskin Harbor in the afternoon with outdoor music and movie. Wednesday is at Meadows Edge with karaoke and a cruise on Miss Liberty paddleboat. There will also be live music and movie in downtown Big Bear Village. Thursday through Sunday are movie screenings, workshops at the Big Bear Performing Arts Center.

http://rotwnews.com/2017/09/08/festival-angaelica-september-18-24-big-bear-lake/ 1/7 9/12/2017 ROTWNEWS.com – Festival Angaelica September 18-24, Big Bear Lake REGISTRATION

RSVP FREE Registration AT http://WWW.ANGAELICA.COM/FESTIVALS2017FESTIVAL

The Festival is delighted to have found such an engaged and supportive community that encourages art & nature collaborations.

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scattered clouds ° humidity: 56% 72 wind: 1mph SE H 94 • L 61

80 ° 67 ° 75 ° 82 ° 74 ° WED THU FRI SAT SUN

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http://rotwnews.com/2017/09/08/festival-angaelica-september-18-24-big-bear-lake/ 2/7 9/12/2017 Man stabbed near ARCO gas station in Redlands – Press Enterprise

NEWSCRIME Man stabbed near ARCO gas station in Redlands

Photo by Beatriz E. Valenzuela, Staff A stabbing took place about 7:30 a.m. at Sun Avenue near Orange Street in Redlands

By BEATRIZ E. VALENZUELA | [email protected] PUBLISHED: September 12, 2017 at 8:33 am | UPDATED: September 12, 2017 at 9:08 am



A man who witnesses say is a transient was stabbed Tuesday morning near an ARCO gas station in Redlands.

The stabbing took place about 7:30 a.m. at Sun Avenue near Orange Street in Redlands. On Tuesday morning, Sun was blocked off from Orange to Alta Street.

Several bloody articles of clothing could be seen strewn about at the entrance of an alley behind the ARCO gas station.

Beatriz Valenzuela @BeatrizVNews 37m "They told me died but I don't believe them," said Marisha Campos who saw Kyle less than an hour before the stabbing.

http://www.pe.com/2017/09/12/man-stabbed-near-arco-gas-station-in-redlands/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 1/3 9/12/2017 Man stabbed near ARCO gas station in Redlands – Press Enterprise

Beatriz Valenzuela Follow @BeatrizVNews

.@RedlandsPD have not confirmed this is a homicide. pic.twitter.com/pekmrWqkhx 8:54 AM - Sep 12, 2017

Tags: stabbing, Top Stories PE

VALENZUELA_BEATRIZBeatriz E. Valenzuela Beatriz E. Valenzuela is an award-winning journalist who’s covered breaking news in Southern California since 2006 and has been on the front lines of several national and international news events. She’s worked for media outlets serving Southern California readers covering education, local government, entertainment and all things nerd including comic book culture and video games. She’s an amateur obstacle course racer, constant fact-checker, mother of three and lover of all things adorable.

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http://www.pe.com/2017/09/12/man-stabbed-near-arco-gas-station-in-redlands/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 2/3 9/12/2017 Man survives propane explosion in Joshua Tree National Park - Hi-Desert Star: News Man survives propane explosion in Joshua Tree National Park By Stacy Moore, Hi-Desert Star | Posted: Monday, September 11, 2017 10:27 am

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK — A man survived an explosion when he lit a cigarette next to a leaking propane tank while in the national park Sunday, Sept. 3.

National park spokesman George Land said the park service was alerted to the explosion around 7 a.m.

The man was by himself in his car at the Stirrup Tank area south of White Tank Campground. He had a propane tank in his car that may have been leaking, according to Land. The man lay down on the seat and lit a cigarette, setting off a blast of fire.

“It pretty much demolished the car,” Land said.

“The only thing that saved him is he was lying down on the seat and the back of the seat took a lot of the blast.” Emergency services responded and took the man to a hospital, where he was treated and released for minor burns. “I believe his hearing was somewhat impaired from the blast,” Land said. The car was a total loss, but the propane tank itself didn’t blow up, he added.

http://www.hidesertstar.com/news/article_6bc1209e-9716-11e7-8995-372422889338.html?mode=print 1/1 9/12/2017 ROTWNEWS.com – Quiet Skies Lake Arrowhead Community Meeting – Monday, September 18

Quiet Skies Lake Arrowhead<< TOP STORIES Community >> Meeting - Monday, September 18 A Day of Recognition For Those Who Keep Us Safe

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Subscribe Quiet Skies Lake Arrowhead Community Meeting – Monday, September 18

in Community News, County, Environment, For Your Information, Informational, Local, Mountain Region, News, Politics, Subject, Ticker / by Michael P. Neufeld / on September 12, 2017 at 5:00 am /

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By Susan A. Neufeld

Lake Arrowhead, CA – On Monday, September 18, at 6:30 p.m., “Quiet Skies Lake Arrowhead” is having a Community meeting at the Lake Arrowhead Resort & Spa, 27984 Hwy 189, Lake Arrowhead.

The meeting is in regard to the plane noise over the Lake Arrowhead area after the FAA changed the flight path into Ontario Airport.

THIS IS THE MEETING THE FAA NEVER ALLOWED US TO HAVE.

INFORMATION

Information that will be available at the meeting:

Adverse effects of the jet engines on air and quality of life Noise: effects, annoyance and quality of life issues Useful information everyone needs to know How to write a complaint email Where to file complaints

SPEAKERS

http://rotwnews.com/2017/09/12/quiet-skies-lake-arrowhead-community-meeting-monday-september-18/ 1/7 9/12/2017 ROTWNEWS.com – Quiet Skies Lake Arrowhead Community Meeting – Monday, September 18 The panel of speakers to be at the meeting:

FAA Western Regional Administrator has been invited US Senator Dianne Feinstein, represented by Peter Muller US Senator Kamala Harris, represented by Heather Hutt Congressman Paul Cook, represented by Dakota Higgins Lewis Murray, from County Supervisor Janice Rutherford’s office

This important meeting should be attended by all residents of the mountain communities, it will help us understand what impact this change is having now, and will have on our communities in the future.

Save the date — September 18 – 6:30 p.m. – Lake Arrowhead Resort and Spa.

For more information visit http://movetheflightpath.org

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LOCAL WEATHER

scattered clouds ° humidity: 56% 72 wind: 1mph SE H 94 • L 61 http://rotwnews.com/2017/09/12/quiet-skies-lake-arrowhead-commu80 ° 67 ° nity-meeting-monday-september-18/75 ° 82 ° 74 ° 2/7 9/12/2017 Redlands Conservancy proposes improvements to Redlands Gateway Ranch – San Bernardino Sun

LOCAL NEWS Redlands Conservancy proposes improvements to Redlands Gateway Ranch

The Redlands Conservancy has proposed improvements to Redlands Gateway Ranch, a 12-acre city owned property in Live Oak Canyon.

By SANDRA EMERSON | [email protected] | Redlands Daily Facts PUBLISHED: September 8, 2017 at 12:04 pm | UPDATED: September 12, 2017 at 4:30 am



The Redlands Conservancy is ready to get to work transforming the Redlands Gateway Ranch into a native plant nursery and outdoor education center.

The conservancy, which has a lease to maintain the city-owned 12-acre property in Live Oak Canyon, presented their plans to the Redlands City Council earlier this week.

Here’s what they propose:

Phase one of the project would focus on site clean up, setting up a temporary home for an onsite caretaker to stay and developing the native plant nursery. The second phase, which would occur in 2018, would include creating a staging area and developing trail connections. The project’s third phase, also planned for 2018, would include restoration of the house and outbuildings on the property. The onsite caretaker would move into the house once it’s renovated.

The conservancy’s preliminary budget for the project is $240,980, which would rely on community donations and grants.

http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/08/redlands-conservancy-proposes-improvements-to-redlands-gateway-ranch/ 1/3 9/12/2017 Redlands Conservancy proposes improvements to Redlands Gateway Ranch – San Bernardino Sun

“This is a phased project as you could see,” Sherli Leonard, the conservancy’s executive director, told the City Council Tuesday. “We won’t be addressing the restoration of the house until the third phase. As you can see, these phases overlap each other as we can get funds.”

The ranch would also feature a drought tolerant plant demonstration garden and would serve as a trailhead for equestrians and hikers headed south into land owned by Riverside County and north into the Herngt ‘Aki’ Preserve in Redlands.

The conservancy will continue to work with staff on its plans and update the City Council.

“We look forward to the matter coming back to us formally,” Mayor Paul Foster said.

The property was just out of reach of the Palmer re, which scorched 3,874 acres in the San Timoteo Canyon Area south of Redlands last week.

“We had disked that property and about 5 acres north of it maybe a month and a half ago, two months ago strictly as weed abatement,” Leonard said. “The re burned right to the edge of the disked area.”

The conservancy cleaned all the weeds surrounding the house and other buildings on the property, which also helped prevent sparking from the re, she said.

“We feel pretty good about having been proactive on that,” she said.

The adjacent acreage owned by the Western Riverside County Regional Conservation Authority, however, lost its native vegetation and wildlife to the re, Leonard said.

But, Leonard said, the re also took out the non-native vegetation and invasive plants that have become problematic.

“It was ready to take over,” she said. “What we’re going to try to do now, even though this isn’t Redlands property, is we will work with the RCA on plant restoration in such a way that hopefully we can get ahead of the non-native plants and the weeds that have been plaguing the area so much.”

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EMERSON_SANDRASandra Emerson Sandra Emerson covers the cities of Redlands, Highland and Yucaipa for the Redlands Daily Facts and The Sun.  Follow Sandra Emerson @TheFactsSandra

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http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/08/redlands-conservancy-proposes-improvements-to-redlands-gateway-ranch/ 2/3 9/12/2017 SBCUSD Superintendent asks for community assistance in raising student attendance - Highland Community News: Schools SBCUSD Superintendent asks for community assistance in raising student attendance Posted: Monday, September 11, 2017 3:22 pm

While visiting Middle College High School for the Century Club's Sept. 8 meeting, San Bernardino City Unified School District (SBCUSD) Superintendent Dale Marsden shared his aim for the district to reach 97 percent in student attendance, a goal he asked the Century Club members and the community at large to assist the district in achieving.

Marsden shared that the district as a whole achieved an attendance rate of 95 percent last school year and has now set its sights on for a new high. "If we meet that goal that will increase our ending fund balance for our district by about $10 million," Marsden said. "That's a huge chunk of change to make a difference in the lives of our kids." According to Marsden, 95 percent is very high for a large school district struggling with poverty and lots of social ills. That 95 percent was reached largely through the efforts of the Principal Espinoza district's Operation Student Recovery initiative. Middle College High School Principal The program has district staff making home visits to chronic James Espinoza thanks the San Bernardino absentees to better understand the reasons for the absences City Unified School District and the and assist in getting the students back in school. community stakeholders of the Century Operations Student recovery has had about a 75 percent Club for supporting the school, Sept. 8. return but community support will be needed to continually raise attendance rates, Marsden said.

"If you you see some of our kids walking around and are curious about if they should be in school you can call our school dispatch and our officers will gladly go out check on our young people and make sure they're in the right place," Marsden said. "We want everyone in this community to care for our kids. A student that misses 10 days or more during the school year is 20 percent less likely to graduate from high school and 25 percent less likely to ever enroll in college."

The district dispatch phone number is (909) 388-6131. Many local businesses have already been visited and given school class schedules and calendars and asked to participate. The meeting brought together educators, parents and business partners at Middle College High School to highlight the school's tremendous success in preparing students for college.

http://www.highlandnews.net/news/schools/sbcusd-superintendent-asks-for-community-assistance-in-raising-student-attendance/article_b2398b78-973… 1/2 9/12/2017 SBCUSD Superintendent asks for community assistance in raising student attendance - Highland Community News: Schools Principal James Espinoza shared that in 2016-17 the Middle College was a top performing high school in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, achieving 100 percent graduation rate, 100 percent A-G completion and 100 percent graduate acceptance to 4-year colleges.

Middle College graduates have also earned an average of 54 college credits per student.

The 100 percent graduation rate dates back to 2015.

The school has also earned several awards since its establishment in 2001 include a 2004 Golden Bell, 2007 California Distinguished School Award, 2008 U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon Award and 2017 ACT College and Career Transition Award (top school in California).

The school also ranked ninth in CAASPP state testing in 2015 and eleventh in 2016.

The school offers alternative education to the district's high achieving students with a campus adjacent to San Bernardino Valley College, enabling the students to benefit from taking college courses. Many of the students graduate high school with an Associates Degree.

http://www.highlandnews.net/news/schools/sbcusd-superintendent-asks-for-community-assistance-in-raising-student-attendance/article_b2398b78-973… 2/2 9/12/2017 Searchers locate 71-year-old Calimesa woman after daylong search at Yucaipa park – Press Enterprise

Jolene Rooker, 71, of Calimesa, was reported to have gone missing Sunday, Sept. 10, 2017, in Yucaipa. She was found Monday evening after a daylong search. (Photo courtesy of San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department)

A 71-year-old Calimesa woman was found safe with a minor injury about 6 p.m. Monday, a day aer she was reported to have gone missing in Yucaipa.

Jolene Rooker was taken to a local hospital as a precaution and reunited with her family, according to Riverside County sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Chris Willison.

“She was located approximately 300 yards east of where her vehicle was located,” he said.

Her car had been found at Wildwood Canyon Road and Mesa Grande Drive, said Jodi Miller, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

Authorities had said Rooker was last seen Sunday evening in Wildwood Canyon Park. Information about the circumstances of her disappearance were not released.

http://www.pe.com/2017/09/11/71-year-old-woman-missing-search-underway-at-yucaipa-park/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 2/5 9/12/2017 Searchers locate 71-year-old Calimesa woman after daylong search at Yucaipa park – Press Enterprise The missing-person report was made to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, and both counties are involved in the search, which on Monday involved bloodhounds, mounted search-and-rescue teams and aviation units.

Community members also were helping search — including Dan and Laura Dotson, who are regulars on A&E Network’s “Storage Wars” and who live in Yucaipa, according to social media posts.

Yucaipa Police @YucaipaPD 23h Please help locate missing adult Jolene Rooker. Last seen at Wildwood Park last night 6pm. 71 YOA blnd/blu 5'. pic.twitter.com/F7ftLL8Ncp

Yucaipa Police Follow @YucaipaPD

Search is underway for Jolene. @sbcsdk9dare Mounted Search and rescue pic.twitter.com/dnDiBN55Vm 10:48 AM - Sep 11, 2017

1 12 26 http://www.pe.com/2017/09/11/71-year-old-woman-missing-search-underway-at-yucaipa-park/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 3/5 9/12/2017 Searchers locate 71-year-old Calimesa woman after daylong search at Yucaipa park – Press Enterprise

Yucaipa Police @YucaipaPD 23h Please help locate missing adult Jolene Rooker. Last seen at Wildwood Park last night 6pm. 71 YOA blnd/blu 5'. pic.twitter.com/F7ftLL8Ncp

Yucaipa Police Follow @YucaipaPD

pic.twitter.com/Vzh8DpL1WQ 10:57 AM - Sep 11, 2017

6 19

Tags: Top Stories PE

Stephen Ramirez Steve Ramirez writes about public safety issues including criminal justice and res in Inland Southern California. He previously covered high schools, college football and motor sports for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune since 1989. He's a big fan of Buddy Holly and loves World War II Follow movies. Stephen Ramirez @SteveRRamirez http://www.pe.com/2017/09/11/71-year-old-woman-missing-search-underway-at-yucaipa-park/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 4/5 9/12/2017 Suspect in vehicle theft, kidnapping of infant in Fontana is identified – San Bernardino Sun

NEWSCRIME Suspect in vehicle theft, kidnapping of infant in Fontana is identified

A man who was caught driving a car that was stolen from outside a Fontana restaurant — with a 7-week-old baby inside it — is removed from a patrol car in Norco to be identified by the car’s owner and baby’s mother on Monday, Sept. 11, 2017. (Courtesy photo)

By ALEX GROVES | PUBLISHED: September 12, 2017 at 8:05 am | UPDATED: September 12, 2017 at 8:14 am

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http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/12/suspect-in-vehicle-theft-kidnapping-of-infant-in-fontana-is-identified/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twi… 1/3 9/12/2017 Suspect in vehicle theft, kidnapping of infant in Fontana is identified – San Bernardino Sun

Christopher Agbaosi, 45, of Rialto was arrested Monday as a suspect in a vehicle theft and kidnapping in Fontana that involved a 7- month-old girl. (Courtesy of Fontana Police Department).

The man suspected of stealing a car with a 7-week-old baby inside and then driving from Fontana to Norco has been identied as Christopher Tanpinu Agbaosi, 45, of Rialto, according to police.

Agbaosi was arrested Monday on suspicion of kidnapping, child cruelty and assault with a deadly weapon that was not a rearm. He was booked into the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga and remained there Tuesday with bail set at $250,000, according to online jail records.

Just before 2 p.m. Monday, police say that while the mother of the 7-week-old baby picked up food from the Chipotle at 10515 Sierra Ave. — leaving the child in the running car — Agbaosi entered the car and drove away.

Agbaosi was spotted about an hour later and 20 miles away in Norco, carrying the baby down the street aer leaving the car in the middle of the road, according to Ofcer Jay Sayegh, a Fontana police spokesman.

About 3 p.m., he was arrested in the parking lot of StoneBridge Christian Academy. He was transferred from a Riverside County Sheriff’s Department car into a Fontana police patrol car a little over an hour and a half later.

Authorities have said the mother of the young girl le her in the car momentarily because the girl was sleeping.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.

Tags: children, Top Stories IVDB, Top Stories PE, Top Stories Sun

http://www.sbsun.com/2017/09/12/suspect-in-vehicle-theft-kidnapping-of-infant-in-fontana-is-identified/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twi… 2/3 9/12/2017 Audio: Orange County to police homeless encampments | 89.3 KPCC

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Orange County is moving to increase law enforcement in and around the homeless encampments that line the Santa Ana River. It’s part of a six-month plan to clear the camps and find permanent housing for the hundreds of people living there.

The county Board of Supervisors is expected to officially request the increased patrols at its board meeting on Tuesday. The board is also requesting that the sheriff's department work with law enforcement agencies from nearby cities to develop a coordinated plan for addressing crime around the homeless encampments.

Nearby residents have increasingly voiced concern about the encampments, which have ballooned in recent years. A recent survey found more than 400 homeless people living in a roughly 2-mile stretch along the river behind Angel Stadium and the Honda Center.

Lt. Jeff Puckett, who oversees the Orange County Sheriff Department’s homeless outreach team, said the team was switching its focus from almost entirely social service outreach to a combination of outreach and law enforcement.

“It’s undeniable that there is a criminal element that does exist out there,” he said. “This is not something where we’re looking at necessarily the homeless population but what we feel is the criminal element that’s victimizing the homeless population."

Puckett said the sheriff’s department will crack down on victim-based crimes like assaults and robberies in the riverbed camps. He said he hopes that will also help lessen crime in surrounding neighborhoods.

Authorities from cities that border the Santa Ana River in central Orange County, including Anaheim and Orange, are fielding increasing complaints from residents about the encampments and associated crime. http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/09/11/75455/orange-county-to-police-homeless-encampments/ 3/8 9/12/2017 Audio: Orange County to police homeless encampments | 89.3 KPCC Tim Paarni, who manages the Park Royale Mobile Home Park, which borders the river in Orange, said crime has increased dramatically in the park over the past several years.

“In the last 14 months we’ve had over 160 bikes stolen,” he said.

Paarni said people living in the adjacent homeless encampment constantly break street lights around the mobile home park, pilfer construction material and tap fire hydrants for water.

“We’ve had residents who have moved out because of it,” he said, adding that several others planned to sell their homes and move in the near future.

Some homeless people camped along the river have also complained about crime.

Mohammed Aly, a vocal advocate for the homeless, agreed that crime was a problem. But he suspects that the sheriff’s department also plans to crack down on minor violations that would make life even harder for homeless people.

“If somebody has a generator because they’re powering a cooler, or a fan, or a charger so that they can keep their phone charged, the county could essentially fight them,” he said.

Aly also said neighboring law enforcement agencies have begun searching people at random as they emerge from the riverbed onto city streets.

“Now many of them are scared to come out of the riverbed," he said. "How is this problem going to be solved if the county sheriff's and the police departments are harassing people for trying to stay alive?”

Lt. Puckett said the sheriff’s department wouldn't rule out cracking down on code violations in the camps in the future. “But for right now, we’re going to be looking at victim-based crimes,” he said.

The county is two months into a $750,000 pilot program whose aim is to find permanent housing for the homeless people living along the river and eventually clear the camps. City Net, the nonprofit organization that is heading up the program, recently told the Orange County Register that it had relocated 45 people from the river.

Some advocates for the homeless, including Aly, say the county has thus far failed to adequately ramp up access to basic services, like bathrooms, which is supposed to be part of the county’s plan. Aly has been trying for months to get permission to place portable toilets near some of the largest encampments, close to Angel Stadium.

The county has balked on the issue of providing more toilets, although it did recently expand the hours of a public bathroom next to the Santa Ana River bike path. Those facilities, which are about a mile walk from the camps near the stadium, are now open 24 hours. Private security guards are stationed at the bathrooms from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Anaheim considers state of emergency on homelessness

Anaheim’s city council is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to declare a state of emergency regarding the homeless population living along the Santa Ana River.

A declaration of emergency would be largely symbolic, although the proposal does include some concrete actions. These include directing city staff to work with adjacent cities and Orange County to beef up efforts to get homeless people into shelters. It would also call for enforcing laws and health and safety codes in and around the encampments.

The proposal also calls for expediting building permits and waiving fees for organizations that want to open shelters in the city.

Nearby residents and business owners have increasingly voiced concerns about sanitary conditions and about crime and safety issues associated with the encampments.

Anaheim spokesman Mike Lyster said homelessness was the city's most pressing issue.

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Join the discussion. Tap here to jump to this article's comments. http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/09/11/75455/orange-county-to-police-homeless-encampments/ 4/8 NEWS LA County leaders to consider travel ban on states that oppose DACA

Hundreds of people arrived at a rally Friday, September 1, 2017 at the Federal Building on Los Angeles Street, calling for the protection of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program started by President Obama and under threat of being shut down by President Trump. The action is one of several planned this week by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. (Photo by Walt Mancini/Pasadena Star- News/SCNG)

By SUSAN ABRAM | [email protected] | Daily News PUBLISHED: September 11, 2017 at 6:49 pm | UPDATED: September 11, 2017 at 7:21 pm

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Los Angeles County supervisors are expected to vote Tuesday on whether to restrict county employees from traveling to nine states that oppose the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the Obama-era policy that protected undocumented children from being deported and which President Trump plans to end.

The motion by supervisors Hilda Solis and Janice Hahn would ban LA County employees from several departments from vising Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia on county business. The only exception is if there is in an emergency response, according to the motion.

Those states had threatened legal action against the Trump Administration if DACA wasn’t repealed. If adopted, the county’s travel ban would be in place for a year.

Supervisors introduced the motion last Tuesday, just hours after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of DACA and a halt to all new applications for the program. The program will end in six months if Congress does not take action. In response to those who have applied for DACA, before the new applications were halted, Trump tweeted last week, “you have nothing to worry about — No action!”

Solis and Hahn also ask their colleagues to sign and send a letter to President Trump and the U.S. Congress demanding a legislative solution to DACA.

In their motion, they called the Trump Administration’s plan to end DACA “a divisive, ill-advised and inhumane move.”

“This action is widely opposed by leaders of both parties at the federal level, and decried by numerous California elected officials,” Solis and Hahn wrote. “It is also a heartbreaking blow and cruel exercise of Presidential authority aimed at nearly 800,000 of the most vulnerable young people among us, including 214,000 who reside in California.”

More than 100,000 people work for the county. The five-member board oversees the largest local government body in the nation.

Such restrictions have sprouted up more frequently this year, most notably in connection with North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” a measure that required transgender people to use bathrooms that aligned with the gender on their birth certificate. Sports teams and California lawmakers were among those that enacted such travel restrictions to North Carolina and states that were deemed unfriendly toward the LGBTQ rights.

But the county’s travel restriction proposal may not make the same economic dent as those initiated by sports leagues or large corporations, said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

Still, such a statement could send a message, he noted.

“I think it is a somewhat effective measure,” Sonenshein said. “It’s probably more symbolic than having a major impact on these states. It’s an interesting moral statement.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, the lone Republican on the five-member board, noted last week after the motion was introduced that DACA was part of an executive order signed by President Obama as a stop-gap measure, because Congress hadn’t taken any action on immigration reform.

“What I think is being said today is Congress needs to get to work and do its job,” Barger said. “I think it’s time to get together and pass a comprehensive immigration bill, and especially DACA. Young people who came before the age 16 came in at a young age. This is the only country they know. I always vote my conscience. On the issue of DACA, to me, it is my conscience. I believe we have to do the right thing. I’m hoping our congressional leaders will do what they were voted into office to do.”

Tuesday’s vote will come a day after California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, joined by the attorneys general of several other states, filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration over its decision to end DACA.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas will introduce a motion Tuesday as well, asking Los Angeles County’s legal counsel to file amicus briefs in support of Baccera’s litigation.

Ridley-Thomas said DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers, have known no other country except for the United States.

“Ending DACA will result in uncertainty and turmoil, not only for the nation’s 800,000 Dreamers but also for our entire community, of which they are an integral part,” Ridley-Thomas said in a statement Monday. “It’s important that Los Angeles County express support for our Dreamers.”

Tags: DACA, immigration, San Fernando Valley, Top Stories LADN

Susan Abram Susan Abram covers public health and county government for the Los Angeles Daily News and the Southern California News Group.  Follow Susan Abram @sabramLA

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OPINION California’s high cost of living hampers state’s growth

Housing is a big part of California’s high cost of living. (Getty Images)

By PRESS-ENTERPRISE EDITORIAL BOARD | Press-Enterprise PUBLISHED: September 11, 2017 at 4:39 pm | UPDATED: September 11, 2017 at 4:54 pm

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On paper, California has done well during the economic recovery, but the high cost of living still makes it a difcult place in which to live and work.

The Golden State’s economy is poised to surpass the United Kingdom’s as the h-largest in the world, but that prosperity is tenuous and rather unevenly distributed. Like so many of its residents, it seems the state is rich, but not wealthy, generating high incomes that are mostly squandered to pay for the state’s high cost of living, not building wealth.

http://www.pe.com/2017/09/11/californias-high-cost-of-living-hampers-states-growth/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 1/3 9/12/2017 California’s high cost of living hampers state’s growth – Press Enterprise

More than 37 percent of California households could not last three months living at the poverty level if they were hit with an economic shock like the loss of a job or other signicant drop in income, according to a recent study by Prosperity Now. In addition, the group notes, 46 percent of households in the state did not set aside any savings for emergencies last year, and more than one in ve California jobs are in low-wage occupations.

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The state also suffers from the largest poverty rate in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which includes the cost of living.

Our cost of living is second only to Hawaii’s, the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center has revealed. The analysis looked at six measures — groceries, housing, utilities, transportation, health and miscellaneous costs — and California ranked in the bottom 10 in every category, including ranks of 49th in housing, 48th in transportation and 46th in grocery costs.

Of these, the housing costs are the greatest concern, taking up half of people’s incomes in many parts of the state. The culprits are familiar: zoning restrictions that limit the amount of developable land; the political power of local “not in my backyard” interests to prevent developments; high development impact fees, overly strict building codes and labor rules that drive up the cost of building; abuses of the California Environmental Quality Act that delay or kill development altogether; and “inclusionary zoning” measures that require developers to set aside a certain number of below-market “affordable” units — and thus make building housing (especially lower-end and middle-range units) less protable and less attractive.

Yet, lawmakers seem intent on pursuing the same failed policies that drive up the cost of building housing — and thus prices — and reducing the incentives to build additional housing units.

In the long run, high taxes and housing prices will continue to erode California’s business climate and economic opportunities. These were signicant factors in MoneyRates.com’s recent “Best Places to Make a Living” report, which ranked California second-worst in the nation, based on its performance in ve categories: cost of living, workplace safety, state tax burdens, median wages and unemployment rates.

“[A] fairly high median wage is devalued by a high cost of living … and high state income taxes,” MoneyRates.com noted. “While California’s cost of living problem is not as acute as Hawaii’s, its unemployment rate is more than 2 percent higher.”

Californians have long paid a “sunshine tax” for the great weather and other natural benets of living here, but if government tax and regulatory policies continue to take a larger bite — particularly from the shrinking middle class — the state’s future will not shine so brightly.

Tags: Editorials

Press-Enterprise Editorial Board

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https://nyti.ms/2xUzn4L

TECHNOLOGY As Amazon Pushes Forward With Robots, Workers Find New Roles

By NICK WINGFIELD SEPT. 10, 2017

FLORENCE, N.J. — Nissa Scott started working at the cavernous Amazon warehouse in southern New Jersey late last year, stacking plastic bins the size of small ottomans. It was not, she says, the most stimulating activity. And lifting the bins, which often weigh 25 pounds each, was also tiring over 10-hour shifts.

Now Ms. Scott, 21, watches her replacement — a giant, bright yellow mechanical arm — do the stacking.

Her new job at Amazon is to babysit several robots at a time, troubleshooting them when necessary and making sure they have bins to load. On a recent afternoon, a claw at end of the arm grabbed a bin off a conveyor belt and stacked it on another bin, forming neat columns on wooden pallets surrounding the robot. It was the first time Amazon had shown the arm, the latest generation of robots in use at its warehouses, to a reporter.

“For me, it’s the most mentally challenging thing we have here,” Ms. Scott said of her new job. “It’s not repetitive.”

Perhaps no company embodies the anxieties and hopes around automation better than Amazon. Many people, including President Trump, blame the company for

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/technology/amazon-robots-workers.html?_r=0 1/5 9/12/2017 As Amazon Pushes Forward With Robots, Workers Find New Roles - The New York Times

destroying traditional retail jobs by enticing people to shop online. At the same time, the company’s eye-popping growth has turned it into a hiring machine, with an unquenchable need for entry-level warehouse workers to satisfy customer orders.

Amazon’s global work force is three times larger than Microsoft’s and 18 times larger than Facebook’s, and last week, Amazon said it would open a second headquarters in North America with up to 50,000 new jobs.

Complicating the equation even more, Amazon is also on the forefront of automation, finding new ways of getting robots to do the work once handled by employees. In 2014, the company began rolling out robots to its warehouses using machines originally developed by Kiva Systems, a company Amazon bought for $775 million two years earlier and renamed Amazon Robotics. Amazon now has more than 100,000 robots in action around the world, and it has plans to add many more to the mix.

The robots make warehouse work less tedious and physically taxing, while also enabling the kinds of efficiency gains that let a customer order dental floss after breakfast and receive it before dinner.

“It’s certainly true that Amazon would not be able to operate at the costs they have and the costs they provide customers without this automation,” said Martin Ford, a futurist and author of “Rise of the Robots,” a book about automation. “Maybe we wouldn’t be getting two-day shipping.”

The dynamics between people and machines play out on a daily basis on the floor of Amazon warehouses in places like Florence, N.J., and Kent, Wash. In Kent, the robots vaguely resemble giant beetles and scurry around with vertical shelves loaded with merchandise weighing up to 3,000 pounds on their backs. Hundreds of them move autonomously inside a large caged area, tailgating each other but not colliding.

On one edge of the cage, a group of human workers — the “stowers” — stuff products onto the shelves, replenishing their inventory. The robots whisk those shelves away and when a customer order arrives for products stored on their backs, they queue up at stations on another edge of the cage like cars waiting to go through a toll both.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/technology/amazon-robots-workers.html?_r=0 2/5 9/12/2017 As Amazon Pushes Forward With Robots, Workers Find New Roles - The New York Times

There, human “pickers” follow instructions on computer screens, grabbing items off the shelves and putting them in plastic bins, which then disappear on conveyor belts destined for “packers,” people who put the products in cardboard boxes bound for customers.

Dave Clark, the top executive in charge of operations at Amazon, said the company wanted the machines to perform the most monotonous tasks, leaving people to do jobs that engage them mentally.

"It’s a new item each time,” Mr. Clark said. “You’re finding something, you’re inspecting things, you’re engaging your mind in a way that I think is important."

The robots also cut down on the walking required of workers, making Amazon pickers more efficient and less tired. The robots also allow Amazon to pack shelves together like cars in rush-hour traffic, because they no longer need aisle space for humans. The greater density of shelf space means more inventory under one roof, which means better selection for customers.

The Amazon warehouse in Florence shows the latest example of the kinds of jobs machines can do better than people. Eight mechanical arms are in operation at the facility, a warehouse where large quantities of merchandise are broken down into smaller units and distributed to Amazon fulfillment centers across the country.

The arms go by the awkward name of robotic palletizers, but workers have given them a dash of personality, sticking signs on each one naming them after Stuart, Dave and other minion characters from the “Despicable Me” movies. Unlike the warehouse robots in Kent, which were based on the machines Amazon got through its Kiva acquisition, these arms come from an outside company.

Amazon began installing them late last year, not long after it opened the warehouse in Florence. The robot arm is configured to pick up only bins of a standard size, not objects of other dimensions. In a demonstration of future possibilities, Amazon showed a virtual reality simulation used to prototype new robot concepts, including an arm with a forklift attachment that moved pallets.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/technology/amazon-robots-workers.html?_r=0 3/5 9/12/2017 As Amazon Pushes Forward With Robots, Workers Find New Roles - The New York Times

When Amazon installed the robots, some people who had stacked bins before, like Ms. Scott, took courses at the company to become robot operators. Many others moved to receiving stations, where they manually sort big boxes of merchandise into bins. No people were laid off when the robots were installed, and Amazon found new roles for the displaced workers, Mr. Clark said.

“The people didn’t go anywhere,” he said.

The question going forward is: What happens when the future generations of robots arrive?

For now, there are warehouse tasks — for example, picking individual items off shelves, with all their various shapes and sizes — where people outperform robots. Amazon has added 80,000 warehouse employees in the United States since adding the Kiva robots, for a total of more than 125,000 warehouse employees. And it says the warehouse hiring spree will continue.

But start-ups and researchers are scrambling to overcome the many remaining technical obstacles. Amazon even sponsors an annual contest to encourage more innovation in the category.

Mr. Ford, the author, believes it is just a matter of time before the employment picture in Amazon’s warehouses changes.

“My assumption is this technology will eventually displace a lot of people in those warehouses,” Mr. Ford said. “I would not say that overnight huge numbers of jobs disappear. Maybe the first indication is they don’t get rid of those people but the pace of job creation slows down.”

Amazon’s Mr. Clark said history showed that automation increases productivity and, in some cases, demand from consumers, which ultimately creates more jobs. He said warehouse workers would continue to work in technologically rich environments.

“It’s a myth that automation destroys net job growth,” he said.

In the case of the Florence facility, it opened up the new opportunity for Ms. Scott.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/technology/amazon-robots-workers.html?_r=0 4/5 9/12/2017 As Amazon Pushes Forward With Robots, Workers Find New Roles - The New York Times

At one point, one of the arms knocked over a tote, sending a dozen or so cone-shaped plastic coffee filters skidding across the ground. Ms. Scott hit a button that froze the arm so she could safely pick up the mess.

Then the arms started working again.

“The robot will work the same all day long,” said Edward Cohoon, who supervises Ms. Scott and other Amazon workers as they tend to individual robots. “Their stomachs don’t grumble.”

Correction: September 11, 2017 Earlier versions of the captions for the pictures of a robotic arm in Florence, N.J., and human “pickers” were reversed. Follow Nick Wingfield on Twitter @nickwingfield.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2017, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Robots of Amazon.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/technology/amazon-robots-workers.html?_r=0 5/5 9/12/2017 In Harvey’s Wake, Houston Rethinks Real Estate Development - WSJ

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-harveys-wake-houston-rethinks-real-estate-development-1505145759

U.S. In Harvey’s Wake, Houston Rethinks Real Estate Development

The storm sparks debate over whether regulations are needed to prevent future flood disasters

Stephen Costello, Houston's chief resilience officer, says the city's culture of growth isn’t going to change anytime soon in response to Hurricane Harvey. PHOTO: SHIBANI MAHTANI

By Douglas Belkin and Shibani Mahtani Sept. 11, 2017 12:02 p.m. ET

HOUSTON—For years there hadn’t been much debate over how to regulate land use here. Developers in the nation’s fourth-largest city mostly built what they wanted, where they wanted.

Now, after Hurricane Harvey killed at least 50 people and caused roughly $180 billion in damage, a battle is shaping up over how best to oversee real-estate development in Houston.

“If Houston does not change, it will not survive from an economic standpoint,” said Jim Blackburn, a professor of environmental law and the co-founder of Rice University’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disaster Center. “This absolutely should change our policies and our trajectory.”

Two men in particular will have a large say in Houston’s path forward.

Stephen Costello, whose official title is chief resilience officer, but who is known to many as Houston’s flood czar, says the go-go culture of growth is here to stay. “I don’t think you’re going to see a dramatic change in the way we are developing,” he said.

Regulating development through, say, a stricter zoning code is a nonstarter, he said.

“Zoning is never going to happen here, not in my lifetime,” he said.

Instead, he believes the city needs to build its way out of its flooding problem by investing in a better system to more quickly and efficiently move rainwater out of town and into the bayous during heavy rains.

The second man with a large say in this argument is Russell Poppe, executive director of the Harris County Flood Control District. He hopes to leverage a Federal Emergency Management Agency program to buy hundreds, if not thousands, of homes in vulnerable areas. https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-harveys-wake-houston-rethinks-real-estate-development-1505145759 1/3 9/12/2017 In Harvey’s Wake, Houston Rethinks Real Estate Development - WSJ For that to come to pass, it needs to happen soon, he said.

“We would prefer to buy these homes out now before they start making improvements,” Mr. Poppe said. “We’re interested in homes we consider hopelessly deep in the floodplain.”

Many Houston residents would appear eager for such a plan. Mr. Poppe says his phone has rung consistently in the wake of Harvey with dozens of people asking for the city to buy their homes.

Federal officials and scientists like Mr. Blackburn have long urged Houston, one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, to preserve more of its prairie and regulate development to mitigate the flooding that has plagued residents for decades. They haven’t had the ear of the area’s politicians who, by and large, have championed development to push economic growth.

Harris County, where Houston sits, added more people than any other U.S. county during the eight years before 2015, according to Census Bureau data. To make way for that growth, developers have paved over enormous tracts of prairie land that once soaked up the rains that sweep in from the Gulf of Mexico.

The tabletop-flat city is now a sprawling metropolis stitched together by 10-lane elevated highways connecting far-flung subdivisions filled with single-family homes. The unmanaged growth has meant cheap housing relative to other parts of the country, which helps attract even more people.

“Almost all the flooding in Houston is the result of poor development decisions,” said John Jacob, a professor of watershed science at Texas A&M University.

To mitigate the loss of prairie land and the increase in homes near rivers, the city has built drainage systems that channel rainwater toward the city’s bayous. A half-dozen major floods in recent years show that infrastructure hasn’t been equal to the task, and critics say the catastrophic damage caused by Harvey is the last straw.

But developers and city officials say the scale of Harvey was so massive it is neither fair nor smart to draw conclusions from the storm yet. They note that building code restrictions and other regulations have gradually become more strict since the 1990s.

Fred Caldwell, president and chief executive of Caldwell Cos., a commercial and residential real-estate developer, believes the development community has done an “incredible job in protecting natural areas,” adding his company has incorporated green space into its planned residential communities.

He disputed the notion that RELATED stronger regulations would

Harvey Likely to Weigh on Houston’s Commercial Property Market for Months have mitigated Harvey’s Before Harvey, Houston Had a Glut of Rentals. Not Any More impact. The record amount As Houston Begins Cleanup, Residents Face Up to Losses of rainfall—51.88 inches— would have devastated an area with stricter zoning, building regulations and more green space, he said.

“To try to plan for that kind of event would be challenging in any metropolitan area,” said Mr. Caldwell. “The goal, I don’t believe, should be to totally mitigate the impact of this kind of event forever. It was the largest event of its kind.”

Mr. Blackburn, who has litigated environmental cases and worked in this field in Houston for more than four decades, believes conversations on regulation and a moratorium on development in the floodplains, for example, will go nowhere. Instead, he hopes a market forces-driven solution to preserving prairie lands and wetlands, like incentivizing farmers and ranchers to keep their land, could be feasible and accepted.

Mr. Jacob called possible FEMA buyouts a step in the right direction, albeit a costly one. He believes his concept to prevent developers from again building in the floodplain is https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-harveys-wake-houston-rethinks-real-estate-development-1505145759 2/3 9/12/2017 In Harvey’s Wake, Houston Rethinks Real Estate Development - WSJ simple and much cheaper.

“I’d like to see a sign in every subdivision that shows where the water came up to during each storm,” he said. “If you shine a light on things you can make a tremendous difference. Let people make their own choices, and you won’t need any regulation.”

Write to Douglas Belkin at [email protected] and Shibani Mahtani at [email protected]

Appeared in the September 12, 2017, print edition as 'Houston Re-Evaluates Land Development.'

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