During the 2018 election cycle, the Pomona Police Officers Association PAC (PPOA) made campaign contributions to three Pomona City Council candidates for around $9,000 each - Victor Preciado, Steve Lustro, Christina Carrizosa. Preciado and Lustro won their election that year and are currently sitting members of Pomona’s City Council today.

In recent days, it has come to the attention of the Pomonan editorial Board that these campaign contributions were not properly reported.

In the fall of 2018, the PPOA paid more than $41 thousand to the Freedman Public Affairs for mailers to support the campaign of Victor Preciado, Steve Lustro, who won their election, and Christina Carrizosa, who lost hers.

According to CalAccess, District 2 council member Victor Preciado received a total of $9,689.12, and District 5 council member Steve Lustro received $9.396.56 from the PPOA through contributions and late independent expenditures.

Before assuming office on Dec. 3, 2018, both officials filed a California Form 700, also known as Statement of Economic Interests form, but neither reported the amount received from the PPOA. The form is meant to prevent decisions made by public officials from being influenced by their personal financial interests.

Pomona Ordinance No. 4298 states any person holding a position in Government Code Section 87200 needs to file any required Statement of Economic Interests report online or electronically with the City Clerk.

The PPOA made 83 donations to Preciado’s campaign and 72 donations to Lustro’s campaign of different totals ranging from $72.54, $27.67, $26.86, $1,436.07 and $678.59 from Sept. 2018 through Nov. 2018.

On his 700 form, Preciado reported his salary working with the Kellogg Company and from the San Gabriel Valley Conservation Corps as in the range from $1,001 to $10,000, but did not report the amount donated to his campaign by the PPOA.

Lustro did not report any of the donations from the PPOA or any other salary that might influence his decision making. See both Form-700

Under the Pomona City Code, Article II, Sec. 10-34, it stated that a candidate shall not solicit or accept any contribution which will cause the total amount contributed by such person with respect to a single election in support of or opposition to a candidate that exceeds $500.00.

However, Section 10-36 of the same code states that all contributions, including campaign contributions, exceeding $25 needs to be reported.

During the same election, the PPOA also made 72 donations that equated to $9,449.49 to the campaign of Council member Christina Carrizosa of District. Carrizosa was currently on the Council at the time, but lost her position to current Pomona City Council member, Nora Garcia.

The Police Oversight Starts Today (POST), a coalition of Pomona and area residents, filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission in Aug. 2021 claiming the PPOA caused a conflict of interest when it donated sums of money to certain council members and not equally to every potential candidate.

Council member Preciado, recently contacted, said he wasn’t aware of the money. He also stated that, the form does not need to have that kind of payment on it:

“While [the PPOA] have to state who they are using it for, they actually can’t legally coordinate or talk to the candidate about it. In this example I wasn’t aware of this expenditure or what they used it for.”

To date, Pomona city council member Lustro has not responded to this reporter’s request for comment.

Pomona PD frisking an unhoused individual at Veterans Park ©2001 Julian Lucas
City of Pomona Circa 1950’s
Illustration Julian Lucas

Anthony Solorzano · The Pomonan — Pomona renews contract with DPOA

The city of Pomona approved to renew its contract with the Downtown Pomona Owners Association (DPOA) for supplemental police patrolling for the downtown Pomona Business Improvement District (BID) during the June 3 council meeting.

According to the Los Angeles City Clerk, a BID is a “geographically defined area within the city in which services, activity and programs are paid for through a special assessment which is charged to all members within the district…”

The agreement will provide two police officers to continue patrolling the downtown Pomona BID on top of the private security the DPOA allocates money for. The DPOA will pay $187,288 of the police salary, while the city will pay $337,752, bringing up the total of the contract to $525,040.

The city’s budget for the new fiscal year was adjusted to accommodate for the renewal of the contract with the DPOA. A total of $10.9k was added to the budget.

Tim Sandoval, mayor of Pomona, emphasizes that the renewal wasn’t motivated by anyone on the council, but rather, the city is answering what businesses within the downtown Pomona BID have been calling for.
“It was really driven by the business owners themselves who have experienced a number of different break-ins, burglaries, broken windows,” Sandoval said. “It's been a challenge for some of them.”

The DPOA revenue consists of a tax that every business within the district pays to help promote the area, keep it clean and provide private security.

The city of Pomona created the Downtown Pomona Unit (DPU) with the DPOA back on June 22, 2022 to help the private security it hired patrol and secure the district. Between the years of 2021-2022, the DPOA spent $306,373 on security for the BID. The city recommended it allocate 49.8% of the city’s budget for the Pomona Police Department for the new fiscal year.

A volunteer of the non-profit bookstore located within the BID, Cafe Con Libros, Ralph Acosta, has seen multiple incidents where help was needed to ease the tension. Acosta describes a moment where he saw unhoused people harassing children from the local school as they were crossing the train track. However, he doesn’t think the continuing policing of the downtown area will solve the problems it faces. “I’m in pro-support of [the] community in different layers,” Acosta said. “But to me, it surpasses more than just the layer of policing. Policing itself is one layer and I don’t see that solving the problem.

Mike Ellis, the chief of police, mentioned the new money isn’t paying for training on how to deal with people going through a crisis. “We just recently trained everyone on de-escalating techniques which can include someone that’s being violent or potentially in a mental health crisis,” Ellis said. “So we have ongoing programs for these types of training that the officers [from] downtown will also participate in.”

The contract renewal comes with the option of extending it past the 2024 fiscal year and into the year 2025.

EDITORS NOTES
Over the past thirty years, business improvement districts, (BIDs), have been incredibly popular across the nation. On the other hand, not much is actually understood about how they affect communities. Anecdotal and scientific data supporting strongly held beliefs about BIDs is scant. Some claim that BIDs are a creative means for businesses and communities to unite in response to decline in public funding or known as disinvestment which caused abandonment. Some also claim they provide “safety, cleanliness and habitable for residents, and vendors”. While others attest that BIDs are a sham that uproot underprivileged people, criminalize the unwanted, and alter local culture.

”BIDs are geographically bounded areas where local property owners can assess themselves or their tenants a fee to solve problems that are negatively impacting the local business environment.”

BIDS redesign large areas of public realm in our cities [and] become a powerful voice shaping land use, zoning, transportation, and urban redevelopment planning. BIDS are incorporated as non profit organizations, which people may think being a non profit is doing good work for the board. However, we have to ask who sits on the boards of these organizations? Schaller, Sussana, Business Improvement Districts and The Contradictions of Placemaking; Georgia Press

The majority of BIDs board members are property owners. Moreover, BIDs are a taxing body that assesses properties within the BIDs boundaries. Originally used in assessing commercial properties, residential properties are being assessed more frequently in the present day. Despite the policy language's emphasis on supporting small companies and maintaining a clean and safe environment, the properties are ultimately the subject of the assessment. The assessments are then transferred to small businesses through their leases, which presents a contradiction. Small businesses are currently covering the cost of their lease and the assessment, which raises the value of the property.

On the weekend of March 26, 2024 there were multiple businesses in the downtown arts colony area that were vandalized resulting in store windows being shattered causing thousands of dollars in repair. The BID didn’t prevent this unfortunate crime from happening. In fact vandalism has happened on multiple occasions in the downtown area. So we have to ask the question, do BIDs really provide safety, is the area really secure with having two police officers present? Are the two officers only present during art walks? Why do we need police for art events?

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