(April 8)  Retired San Bernardino County fire captain Bob Buhrle said he is running for assemblyman in the California 33rd Assembly District because “I believe I can use my more than 20 years’ experience in various elected positions to be of benefit in helping straighten up California.”
Buhrle said “We need solutions” and that part of the cure is “having small businesses create new jobs. This can be done if we work together at all levels of government in cooperation with the private sector, with corporations and citizens. We need more water for all of California. We are in a drought. We should make an effort to use desalinization plants. I have been to Saudi Arabia and have seen a desalination plant that produced two million gallons of water per day. If we are going to have more building in California, more growth in the desert and in the mountains, we are going to need more water. In the Crestline-Lake Arrowhead Water Agency we have to expand our pipelines. A case in point is a few years ago there was concern about water in Big Bear and the leadership said they had it wired. But the water in the local aquifer in Big Bear is owned by the Big Bear Mutual Water Company, which is based in Redlands. For the sake of California as a whole, for jobs to grow, for businesses to expand, we need more water. To stimulate the economy and the job market we need more water.  Governor[Jerry] Brown has this bullet train project to San Francisco. Instead of spending that money on a bullet train we should be using it for all of California by securing more water.”
Despite the recent rebounding of the stock market, which Buhrle intimated was good for Wall Street but not reaching far beyond that, further efforts to redress the financial malaise on the West Coast is needed, he said.
“We have to simulate the economy somehow,” he said. “It is going to take effort from everyone to get us out of the recession. The job market is still hurting. In talking to college students, for instance, I have heard it is difficult for college students to get loans and to transfer units from one college to the next. We need to make it easier for colleges to transfer units. This would be no easy project, but if I am elected I would get together with college students and others to see if we could get more funding for their college tuition, get classes on line for upper division units, and make classes compatible for use at various colleges.”
At various times over the last three decades he has been on the board of directors at the Big Bear Municipal Water District, a board member of the High Desert Medical Center,  a board member of the Lake Gregory/ Crest Forest County Water District, a member of the Arrowhead Lake Association Board of Directors, a board member of the Big Bear City Community Service District, which oversaw the budget and management of municipal sanitation, water, fire safety and  refuse disposal services, a member of the board of trustees for the Rim of the World Unified School District, and a member of the San Bernardino County Regional Parks Advisory Board.
“Because I have multifaceted experience with water districts, the school district, the community services district, the hospital district and the regional parks board, I do think that combination makes me a better choice than the other candidates who cannot claim that range of experience,” he said.
He said that in several of those capacities, he had been part of successful efforts to obtain grant funding.
“We obtained a grant for Big Bear Dam,” he said. “During my 17 years with the regional parks board we were getting grants for all the major parks in San Bernardino County. This gave me experience in how to apply for grants and the knowledge that they are available. Grants are getting a little tight nowadays, but they are still a possible form of funding if you know where to look and how to apply.”
Born in Los Angeles, Buhrle grew up in San Bernardino. He served with the Army in Vietnam, in an air crash rescue division. He attended the University of Redlands and obtained a degree in management. He began working for the U.S. Forest Service as a firefighter and later was hired by Cal Fire and the San Bernardino County Fire Department, where he achieved the rank of fire captain.
Single, he joined the Air Force Reserves, achieving the rank of master sergeant. He subsequently saw duty in Iraq and Bahrain and served as fire chief at Camp Falcon in Baghdad.