Fiddling is the best way to describe what Paula Deel has been doing with the community.  Over the many years of taking-on the titles of various reigns of community leadership, Paula has repeatedly failed to accomplish anything of lasting or of meaningful value.

    After years of Paula Deel's involvement, ask yourself: How has Paula Deel made your daily life in Newberry better?

    Paula's accomplishments have been little more than that of a social party coordinator, helping to assist others in the organization of community social events, such as the annual fireworks or the pistachio nut festival.

    For her years of management of the Newberry Springs Chamber of Commerce, Paula Deel has been a failure in providing local businesses meaningful support.

    She has failed to properly market Newberry Springs and to attract needed new commercial businesses.

    To most who know the CSD director, she is very personable.  A friendly, civic-minded individual who emotionally feeds off of the popularity that she receives from community recognition.

    Paula Deel holds a name that is widely associated with her now-defunct feed and plumbing shop.  This recognition has previously served her in past elections as Newberry's voters have voted on name recognition, not upon a person's ability.  For this November's election, the Deel name might not be enough for the votes needed.

    Paula Deel believes that she knows what is better for you than you do yourself.

    Paula's shocking betrayal of selling-out the community on the CSD's litigation on the Daggett Solar Power Project now has many voters extremely upset.

    Voters are re-evaluating Paula's outlandish checkered past.  It may be time to break-away from Paula's loser history of costly community failures.

    Her betrayal on the solar project might be explained if the CSD received the tens of millions of dollars that the sellout was worth to Clearway Energy.  The settling for peanuts demonstrates how ridiculous and unsophisticated the CSD directors are.

    Betraying the community was so wrong, but in betraying the community, the CSD had the Golden Goose before it to pluck.  Instead, it was the Newberry CSD directors who got plucked !

    What the board members naively settled for was lunacy.  Yet, this group is so uppity on itself it wouldn't listen to others outside of its board.  The CSD came away as snookered simpletons.  They were all outclassed and successfully out-negotiated as fools.

    Others profited from the settlement but it wasn't the CSD, our Fire Department, the future civic hub, nor the community.  The CSD walked away with pennies on the dollar and they foolishly believe that they did good !

    CSD director, Paula Deel, has had the opportunity for years to fight for the residents' California Constitutional right to have open transparency of the CSD's actions.  After all, the CSD board conducts the People's business.

    Citizens have a right to know the CSD's full actions.  Instead of promoting transparency, Paula Deel has supported the CSD hiding its activities from public scrutiny.

    In defiance of the California Constitution's Article 1, Sec. 3, Paula Deel has supported the minimal ink on the CSD's agendas and Minutes; and, the CSD's refusal to audio or video record its meetings.  This is not good governance, but a cover-up of malfeasance by cowardly and inept directors who do not want their actions publicly displayed.

    This arrogance towards the public needs to change and that can start by electing new people to the CSD.  The secrecy contributed to the stupidity of the solar settlement.

    Years ago, Paula and her husband advocated for dozens of Chino-based dairies to relocate to Newberry Springs.  The anticipated flies, smell, and groundwater contamination resulting from the tens of thousands of proposed cows brought forth a resounding outcry from residents that quashed the proposal.

    The community did not want to join the Deels in welcoming what the growing Chino-area residents were expelling.  Newberry residents did not want Newberry to become a dairy community.  The dairies, however, would have profited the Deel's then-existing business.  For Paula, it always seemed to be about the money.

    Later, Paula Deel was an early advocate of Nursery Products establishing a toxic sewage sludge processing plant in Newberry Springs.

    Like the smelly dairies, the facility would have been highly offensive to the residential community, bringing in hundreds of truckloads of fresh urban sewage sludge each week, and contaminating the air and groundwater.

    Again, it was the community that said no.

    During the years of the Daggett Solar Power Project's permit processing, Paula was silently noncommital.  She would not stand behind the community in openly voicing opposition.

    While she did attend a couple of the County's public meetings on the application, she never spoke in opposition to the project.

    Paula Deel, however, was very open in sitting within the pro-solar orange encampment of Union workers supporting the solar project, against Newberry Springs.

    Many of Paula's past fought-for ideas have directly contradicted the overwhelming Will of the community.  Often, her support has appeared based not upon what is best for the community, but upon what would best profit her financially.

    As has been published and recognized for a couple of years, the Daggett solar project is expected to devalue each Newberry residential property by thousands of dollars.  The desirability of living in Newberry Springs will be negatively impacted by the increased levels of airborne silica dust in the environment.

    Potential residents will not want to move into a silica air polluted toxic community.  Paula Deel and the other directors knew of this and didn't care.  They sold out to the Big Solar foreign marauders despite knowing the health and financial injuries to you.

    Pictured above sitting with Paula Deel is Brian Fisher, her long-time friend, and volunteer at the Senior (Family) Center.  In the Fall/Winter 2020 edition of the Newberry Springs Community Focus,  Page 6, Fisher makes an interesting admission about the Senior Center.

    "Out of the blue, we got a call from Clearway Energy Group who asked what they could do for the Family Center.  I told them about our parking lot lights and they agreed to donate the money for the replacement.  I have come to believe that Clearway Energy Group, the solar company, really wants to be a good neighbor.  Thanks to Clearway, in the near future the center will get new lights, including upgrades to LED bulbs."

    Clearway Energy is also reported to have made bribe "donations" to Daggett and one can logically extrapolate that money has also been quietly offered to Paula's Newberry Springs Chamber of Commerce and other groups to buy their loyalty.

    It also wouldn't be surprising if Clearway Energy might have offered generous funds to certain attorneys to sway legal representation.

    The idea that the Senior Center is selling-out and sadly betraying the Newberry seniors for a few hundred dollars in LED lights is sickening.  By creating increased levels of silica dust throughout Newberry, corporate Clearway Energy will be bringing painful suffering and early death to many of Newberry's seniors with respiratory problems.

    How does that make Clearway Energy a good neighbor ?

    Why the hell is Brian Fisher publishing praise of Clearway Energy over a few hundred dollars that won't even cover one future week's cost of medical treatment for one seriously inflicted senior?

    Brian Fisher is part of the CSD directors' Jack Unger and Victoria Paulsen's civic hub group and aligned with Director Paula Deel.  How are all in this clique possessed with such extreme small-mindedness?

    An example of the fingers-in-the-money is the divisive eyesore billboards on I-40 and I-15 that Paula Deel supported.  As a reward for her earlier support, the billboard company has her fingers directly involved in the distribution of the community's funds derived from the billboard revenues.

    Under the billboard permit proposal accepted by the County, the funds have a preset distribution to community organizations.  Under Paula's distribution committee, the funds are now diverted to whoever Paula's group (Paula) deems most worthy.  No public disclosure has ever been made by Paula for transparency of the fund's distribution.

    Other endeavors headed by Deel have tanked.  The much-trumpeted Newberry Springs Community Plan that Paula volunteered to organize and lead, and which multiple public meetings were held, and approved by the CSD board, was later shelved by the County due to the inept follow-through by Paula.

    In 2016, Paul Deel with Paula took control of the preparation of the Desert Trails Promise Zone application (these people like to jump in and run everything).  This was a one-time and fantastic opportunity for Newberry Springs to acquire a major infusion of federal economic assistance.

    This could have brought tens of millions of dollars of economic development, including distribution centers and hundreds of great jobs to Newberry.

    The Deels were repeatedly warned of problems in the manner of their management of the application but they were too stubborn and arrogant to listen to experienced advice.  Through their blundering asinine mismanagement, Newberry lost a gifted opportunity.

    The Newberry Springs Economic Development Association (NSEDA) is a spin-off of the group originally formed for the above Desert Trails Promise Zone.  NSEDA later incorporated under Paula, her husband Paul, and CSD director Vickie Paulsen.  In 2016, it accepted a generous donation from Mike and Donna Mumford of 20-acres of land.

    Needing a purpose for the land, the Deels declared the land an experimental farm and claimed that its planted seeds would grow to bring economic development and prosperity to Newberry Springs.

This is it !  The 20-acres of land.  According to Paula, this is supposed to be the economic salvation of Newberry.  After 4-years and tens of thousands of MWA taxpayer and community dollars, this is now supposed to be economically benefiting the community.

    Acquiring a 5-figure taxpayer grant from the Mojave Water Agency, and thousands of dollars in payola billboard money being funneled by Paula, the Deels have poured mucho dollars into a well, laying some pipeline...  and where did the money go?

    The property doesn't even have power and the well's pressure switch already appears to have been vandalized.

    The Deels irrationally expected that Newberry's residents would leave their own properties and follow them to rent sand from NSEDA's farm to grow crops that the residents could then sell at farmers' markets; thereby, improving the economy of Newberry Springs. (huh?)

    It was a Deel's senseless idea 4-years ago.  After tens of thousands of wasted dollars, it is a worse idea today.

    Who in their right mind wants to leave their own land and pay money to rent sand from NSEDA and then give free sweat equity into developing NSEDA's remote property?

    The residents have plenty of their own sand outside their door to improve which offers their crops far better security from the night harvesters.

    At least the Barstow economy benefited as the driller for NSEDA's well was a Barstow company, Randall Wallis Water Well Drilling.

    Despite having some educational gardening meetings, and being a social club where Paul Deel can strut about, the precious funds expended have failed to provide any community economic development.

Here are the principal farming improvements!  Empty weed-infested rectangles.  Paula Deel believes that what you see here deserves community (billboard) funds.  If you agree with her judgment, return her in November to handle your public CSD funds.  Please visit this pathetic location and experience it for yourself.  (Photo was taken September 2020.)

    While good at spending public money, or money given to her, Paula Deel doesn't appear to have any capability for economic development, nor developing Newberry through the Chamber, the CSD, NSEDA, Desert Trails, the Newberry Springs Community Plan, or anything else.

Associated with the Deels is Ron Harter who is a major alfalfa farmer who is reportedly selling-out his property to the Daggett Solar Power Project.  As a close friend, the Deels honored Harter by inviting him to be a charter fellow officer of NSEDA.  (Clickable link above.)

    While Paula's grandmotherly outward facade may appear friendly, good, and noble, her actions have been treacherous.  She, furthermore, lacks the professional business savvy, educational background, and contacts necessary to manifest meaningful project outcomes.

    Voters are slowly awakening to her habitual failures, failures that have held back, and have greatly damaged Newberry Springs.

    Turncoat Paula's latest trick to betray the community by supporting the solar industry, once again...

    Paula Deel and the CSD board have exercised intentional bad faith in dealing with the community.

    The CSD's deceitful betrayal was cowardly hidden and it has left terror and lasting trauma in some elderly Newberry residents with respiratory ailments and a limited income.  They are fearful of the devaluation of their home values and exposure to increases in silica dust.  None of this needed to happen.

    While we may be still a few months away from a possible court legal filing to address the Newberry CSD directors' transgressions against our community and their alleged criminal misrepresentation and fraud before the California Superior Court, the local anger continues to grow.

Possible future portrait.

    As described in my August 10, 2020, news blog, Paula Deel and the other directors, allegedly without lawful authority orchestrated a sham upon the Superior Court by having the Friends of Newberry Springs illegally dismissed from the litigation.  The court may have ramifications upon the CSD directors.

    There is no legal authority under the Newberry CSD's charter from LAFCO to interfere with a public entity's litigation.  The CSD's actions appear highly malicious and done solely to deprive the community's Friends of having their day in court.  The residents were considered an impediment to the CSD having its financial settlement.

    The intent is to recover current and future damages from the CSD and the individual directors and staff for their interfering removal of the Friends.

    At two highly attended (packed) CSD public meetings before the COVID-19 switch to Zoom meetings, the community made it abundantly clear that the residents wanted a Superior Court decision.  The CSD agreed and then later secretly reneged.

    Dang, there is much more baggage to present on Paula but this writing is already too long.  Perhaps more in another blog.  For me, I have had enough bad judgments and failures from Paula.

    Lesson learned: Only an uneducated and uninformed person will keep voting for a candidate who repeatedly fails and stagnates the community.

    Newberry is blessed with two other solid women who are running for the CSD office without the baggage, with clean hands, and who will represent the Will of the People.  I will be voting to give them a fair chance.

Anyone interested in exploring a possible legal action against the CSD's entities is welcomed to contact us through newberrystrong@mail.com.  If legal action is ever filed, only those participating may receive a benefit.