San Bernardino County will subsidize clean up efforts in Trona to the tune of $3,000.
Last month, in one of the board of supervisors’ last meetings prior to the onset of the new fiscal year on July 1, an amendment to the First District’s discretionary fund spending plan was made. The amendment obligated a total of $83,000 in board discretionary funding in varying amounts to several organizations in the High Desert.
The First District is the largest supervisorial district in San Bernardino County, covering a major portion of the Mojave Desert.
$3,000 was earmarked for Trona Care, Inc. to support a community cleanup effort.
Trona is an unincorporated community at the extreme northwest corner of San Bernardino County, lying at the southwest entrance into Death Valley, and at the western edge of Searles Dry Lake, with Inyo County to its north and Kern County to the west. In 2000 it had a population of 2,742. Soda ash processing is the major economic engine of the economy there, along with evaporative salt extraction from the dry lake bed’s surface, and a lime quarry. Though it is host to some remarkably nice neighborhoods featuring modest but stylized homes, an arsonist or arsonists have wreaked havoc with a least a dozen of those houses.
In addition to routing the $3,000 to Trona, the county designated $5,000 to support the operation of the Adelanto Senior Center; $5,000 to support operations of the Apple Valley Senior Citizens Club and purchase equipment such as a used golf cart to transport residents to and from their cars over cracked pavement; $5,000 to support operations of the Victorville Senior Citizens Club, including the purchase of a commercial refrigerator for use when serving meals to over 300 seniors; $25,000 for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Citizens on Patrol Program; $2,500 for the High Desert Community Foundation’s Orenda Foundation; $25,000 for the High Desert Community Foundation’s Streams in the Desert Foundation’s summer internship program; $5,000 for the Hesperia Recreation and Park District’s Percy Bakker Senior Center operations; $2,500 for the Daggett Community Services District to purchase playground equipment; $2,500 for the Big River Community Services District to purchase playground equipment; and $2,500 for the Victor Valley Animal Protective League to support adoption costs during the San Bernardino County Fair event.