Janet Jernigan

Janet Jernigan, a prominent Needles businesswoman, has responded to charges leveled by another Needles entrepreneur who has suggested that those businesses which have not been actively involved with the chamber of commerce or a parallel organization have been prejudicially treated by the city.
David Buckley, a food vendor who eschews the traditional brick and mortar restaurant model, has said that members of the Needles Chamber of Commerce and participants in the Needles Downtown Business Alliance are accorded the status of insiders and have been favorably treated by city government. Others who function outside the protective umbrella of those organizations are deemed outsiders, Buckley said.
In propounding his charges, Buckley castigated Jernigan and a handful of other established Needles business owners, including Larry Deatly, the owner of Decco Food Distributors, Joe Jones, a restaurateur, and Susan Alexis, the operator of the Wagon Wheel restaurant and the “agent of process” for the Needles Downtown Business Alliance.
Buckley asserts that the Needles Downtown Business Alliance is “a proxy trust operated on behalf of the Needles City Council, featuring the utilization of interlocking directors, exchange of funds and espionage by city staff.”  He says the alliance “was created and operated to restrict trade and is utilized as a gatekeeper to the market. When two or more parties are formed to restrict trade, you have an illegal anti-trust situation.”
Jernigan, who lives in Arizona but operates a Farmer’s Insurance agency in Needles, said Buckley either purposefully or ignorantly has misconstrued her efforts and those of the chamber, the alliance and City Hall.
She took especial umbrage at Buckley’s suggestion that there was some order of impropriety in her having insured properties, including ones that were destroyed by fire. And she was equally adamant in defending a decision not to sell Buckley insurance on one of his business ventures.
She denied the city or others have prejudicially treated businesses that are less active or uninvolved with the chamber of commerce or the alliance.
Jernigan acknowledged she is “active in the community” but said “I’m not registered to vote in California. He says I’m in cahoots with city of Needles. I don’t know where he gets that.”
One theory that Buckley has propounded is that Needles city government is acquiescing in the proliferation of an extremely unhealthy environment in the city’s downtown area, including the so-called “shooting gallery,” i.e., Needles’ skid row where users of the drugs heroin and methamphetamine congregate to share syringes and intravenously inject those drugs. This has led to an AIDS epidemic that is going unaddressed, some Needles residents have suggested. This circumstance either coexists with or is exacerbated by city officials’ acquiescence in calculated neglect of the area which has redounded to the financial benefit of property owners of the dilapidated property, according to Buckley and others.
Specifically, it was stated, the owner of one building that was destroyed in an apparent arson fire is a former city official who had the house insured for $500,000 through the Jernigan Insurance Company when the value of the property could not have been more than $50,000. It was alleged city officials were doubly complicit in this fraud by both allowing the underlying conditions that led to the fire and an orchestrated cover-up after the fact. According to this version of events, city manager Rick Daniels ordered that the crime scene be bulldozed before the arson investigator visited the site, thwarting any possibility that the fraud would be uncovered.
Jernigan said she was involved in no such scandal. With regard to a residential structure that she had issued a policy for which was later consumed in a conflagration, she said,
“That fire was a year-and-a-half ago. It occurred on a Saturday mid morning. There was  a full loss of the structure  On the following Tuesday I went down there. It was being professionally investigated. Farmer’s paid to the full terms of the policy. The debris was removed within three weeks. A new structure was built on the property.”
It was all aboveboard and the suggestion that she and the city had somehow conspired in the destruction of the property is beyond nonsensical, Jernigan said. “I never spoke to the city about that,” she said. “I can’t make disclosures about my clients or even give a name. That is against the law.”
As far as her refusing to write a policy for Buckley, Jernigan said, “He wanted to put a barbecue out behind his house. He wanted to mix a commercial use with a residential one, which you can’t do in California. The city wouldn’t approve it.”
Buckley saying that she is involved in some conspiracy involving the chamber and alliance which is aimed at preventing new businesses from getting established or existing ones from thriving runs counter to reality, Jernigan said. The more businesses come to Needles, the more money she stands to make, she implied. “I have nothing to do with whether a business opens,” she said. “Of course, I want businesses to open in town. His accusations are without any basis. I do take part in events. I do promote Needles.”
Buckley, Jernigan said, “is very dangerous. He’s unstable.”
She said she could not account entirely for Buckley’s animus toward her, but theorized “I think because I am very involved in activities in the community and I am well known and respected, having been born and raised in Needles, he has targeted me. He does not like women,” she said. “He has called Farmer’s trying to get me fired.”
Jernigan, after speaking her mind, asked for and then demanded that her statements to the Sentinel be deemed as retroactive background, which the Sentinel did not grant.
“You can’t do this,” she said, intimating she would take legal action to prevent her quotes from being used. “I am frightened of him. I don’t want you to use anything I say, because then it turns into a ‘He said. She said.’ type of thing. I don’t want to get into your paper. It’s a tabloid. I’m not going to lower myself to that level. All you do is print lies. The Sentinel does not have a very good reputation, you know. If you want quotes about me, call [sheriff’s] captain Ross Tarangle at 760  326 9200 or Corwin Porter at 909  387 3891 or Ron Frane at 909 387 4830.”