Stater Bros. Chief Executive Officer Peter Van Helden last month told his company’s workforce and the world that a new financial era has dawned, making further layoffs beyond the 63 that have just gone into effect unavoidable.
In what Van Helden said were the first layoffs ever in the grocery store chain’s 89-year history, 63 courtesy clerks were handed pink slips last month.
Since the first store’s founding by Cleo and Leo Stater in Yucaipa in 1936, Stater Bros. Has experienced steady growth, such that the corporation, now headquartered in San Bernardino, has expanded to 171 stores.
The 26th largest grocery-store chain in the United States, it looms much larger within Southern California. It is under challenge at present, however, according to Van Helden, because of inflation that has already taken place, further inflation that is going to occur, particularly prompted by President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs and the dwindling opportunities to engage in cost reductions of its products because of the escalating expenses of labor, electricity, fuel and other overhead. Continue reading →

Terry Elliott, the candidate behind whom the unions representing San Bernardino’s police officers and management had lined up as the central element of their effort to drive Second Ward Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra from office in 2022, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on 11-counts relating to his having swindled individuals of more than $230,000 through misrepresentations he made involving a church and a nonprofit corporation with which he is associated.
Elliott was arrested Thursday, March 6, and is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon in United States District Court in Riverside.
Elliott had an established criminal history when he was recruited by the San Bernardino Police Officers Association and the San Bernardino Police Management Association to run in the June 2022 election against Ibarra in what was her first reelection campaign after having been elected to represent the Second Ward in her maiden campaign for political office in 2018. Ibarra, who had been supported by the police unions in 2018, fell into disfavor with the police department when she publicly remarked upon the fashion in which the city’s police officers and the department in general stood down and took no action to arrest the participants in looting of commercial establishments at various locations in San Bernardino, including within the Second Ward, during the riots that occurred on the evening and early morning of May 31/June 1, 2020, in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department on May, 25, 2020.
While the San Bernardino Police were present en masse while hundreds of rioters were staging protests that turned violent and involved breaking windows, going into stores and shops and walking or running away with merchandise, the department’s command made a set of strategic and tactical decisions to remain non-confrontational with the volatile crowd and only a handful of arrests of isolated participants in the rioting were made. The department and its officers defended that action, or non-action, as a prudent response that prevented any untoward incidents involving police, rioters and bystanders and an escalation that would potentially have led to further violence, injury and death. Continue reading →

More than ten months after former Upland Public Works Director/City Engineer Bradon Yu was forced to leave his post with the City of Gracious Living over his bridling at being forced to postpone critical street repairs for what he and others considered “political reasons,” city officials have issued a response to the grand jury’s critique of the controversy in which they have exonerated themselves of any [misbehavior/wrongdoing].
Upland’s residents have consistently over the years turned back the efforts by city officials to get them to approve imposing on themselves higher taxes to augment the sales tax, property tax and state and federal grants and other subventions the city receives to make up the revenue side of its budgetary ledger. Under California’s Constitution, any new taxes must be approved by those voters in the jurisdiction in which the tax is to be applied. While residents in many nearby cities in both San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties, such as Chino, Ontario, Claremont and Pomona have voted to increase the sales tax they pay within their various city limits, that has not been the case in Upland. In 2022, the Upland City Council used its authority to place Measure L, which called for a one-cent per dollar sales tax increase, pushing the 7.75 percent sales tax rate to 8.75 percent. Upland voters participating in the November 8, 2022 election rejected Measure L, with 10,222 voters or 44.6 percent in favor of it and 12,697 voters or 55.4 percent opposed to it.
Disappointed in and disapproving of what they considered to be the city’s voter’s stinginess and angry with a small but committed contingent of Upland residents who campaigned against higher taxes, Upland city officials, led by Mayor Bill Velto, who had taken the voters’ rejection of Measure L quite seriously and personally, resolved to persist in the effort to get the city electorate to acquiesce in a tax regime that would provide City Hall with revenue beyond the $61.3 million it had in its annual general fund operating budget. A strategy that was arrived at was to limit or discontinue altogether funding for street repairs and for Foothill Boulevard – Historic Route 66 – the city’s major east/west thoroughfare. Continue reading →

The H5N1 bird flu, which was first detected in San Bernardino County in January, is spreading locally.
The malady, which so far has been primarily confined to the animal world but carries with it potential yet mostly unmanifested hazards for humans, has made its presence felt most poignantly with the sharp escalation in the pricing on eggs. Based upon the progression into agricultural hosts, it appears the situation with regard to the contagion is on a trajectory to get worse before it will get better.
Yesterday, March 6, San Bernardino County Public Health Department officials announced that the bird flu has turned up at no fewer than four of San Bernardino County’s dairy farms.
“While the risk of bird flu to the general public remains low, the detection of this virus in animals across multiple farms serves as a reminder to practice caution when handling animals or animal products,” said San Bernardino County Health Officer Sharon Wang. “It’s crucial to avoid raw milk consumption and follow proper food safety practices to reduce any potential risk of exposure.”
In January, there were outbreaks in both San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
While H5N1 appears to have originated in birds, it has jumped to a variety of mammals. Currently, it has manifested in 48 species. In 2023, it had migrated to South America, where it resulted in a die-off of 23,000 sea lions.
The condition made its first known appearance in North America in 2021. Continue reading →

“You want to hear a story about that boy? He owned a dairy farm, and his old ma, she was kind of sick, you know? And the doctor, he called him over and said, ‘Your ma is lying there and she’s just so sick and weakly, I want you to try to persuade her to take a little brandy, see, just to pick her spirits up.’ ‘Ma, she’s a teetotaler,’ he says. ‘She wouldn’t touch a drop.’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you what to do,’ that’s the doc. ‘You bring in a fresh quart of milk every day and put some brandy in it, see, and you try that.’ And so he did, and he doctored it all up with the brandy, the fresh milk, and he gave it to his mama, and she drank a little bit of it. So, next day, he brought it in again, and she drank a little more. So, it went on that way. The third day, just a little more and the fourth day she took a little bit more. And then finally, one week later he gave her the milk and she just drank it down, she swallowed the whole thing and she called him and she said, ‘Son, whatever you do, don’t sell that cow.” -Gene Hackman, in the character of Buck Barrow in the 1967 movie “Bonnie & Clyde,” his breakout role in which he earned his first Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.

San Bernardino native Gene Hackman, a two-time Academy Award-winning actor, died on or about February 18 under circumstances that initially were unclear and led to widespread speculation when his death was announced last week.
At issue was that Hackman’s wife was found dead in the couple’s New Mexico mansion at the same time, as well. The results of her autopsy indicates that her death preceded his and was not directly related to his passing, but might have been an indirect contributory factor as the actor was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and was isolated in their home for as long as a week after she expired. Continue reading →