(August 14)

After four years on the city council in Yucaipa, Greg Bogh said he is ready to serve another term. Hence, he is running for office against incumbent Tom Masner and challengers David Avila and Tom Powell.
“I think I accomplished quite a few things,” Bogh said. “The number one thing is we have more business prospects in Yucaipa. You can see that the vacancy rate in our business district has gone down. People are spending money. People are locating businesses here and more people want to locate businesses here.”
He continued, “One of the things we accomplished was the agreement with the chicken ranches and with [city franchise trash hauler] Burrtech to regularly collect their manure. That has definitely helped in that area. We brought back the Fourth of July event. We restarted the farmers market and the arts festival. We will be starting a winter arts festival. We worked with the school district in putting a track in at the high school. We have continued the trend of Yucaipa becoming a better place. I would hate to see it go back in the wrong direction. There are still some economically depressed areas. We have a few mobile home parks that need help. We need to focus our energy in helping them improve or rezoning them into something different. I’m not sure of the exact solutions but we can come up with something. We are continuing to work on the uptown area and we need to improve the Dunlop area.”
The formula for dealing with the city’s major challenges, Bogh said, is pursuing prosperity.
“The number one way to fix most issues is economics,” he said. “We need to bring in jobs and create a good business environment. Money has to keep moving. Commerce is what truly brings people out of their economic problems. We need to keep building an economic base for the community. We have the money to make improvements. In some of our mobile home parks we need to go through and clean them up, get the police department [i.e., the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which provides contract law enforcement service to Yucaipa] to come in, since some of the mobile home parks have crime problems. I think rezoning the parks will give some of the owners an opportunity to convert them into something different, commercial areas and so forth.”
Bogh said he merits reelection and is distinguishable from the competition he faces.
“Look at my record,” he said. “Over the past four years, things have changed tremendously. Speak to anyone and ask if they like the direction Yucaipa is going in and if they think it is better off now than four years ago. There has been a lot of change. Yucaipa has been dominated by specific individuals. I think I am an independent voice. I did not take money from anyone other than my family. When I vote on issues, my vote is not connected to anybody. It doesn’t really require that much money to run for office in Yucaipa, but if you are taking money from special interests that can make a difference in the way you vote. When I was running for years ago, I told everyone, ‘My kids go to Yucaipa schools. I want to do a good job so when they get out of school, they will want to stay in Yucaipa.’ The test of whether I have been a good councilman will come down to whether the decisions I am making are creating huge problems for my city to the point that my kids don’t want to be here or do they want to stay. I try to make my votes and decisions as to what this will do twenty years into the future.”
Bogh attended San Bernardino High School and Cal State San Bernardino, where he majored in business. He is part owner of his family’s construction business. He is married with three children.