Brian Davison is running for city council in San Bernardino’s Fifth Ward, once again challenging incumbent Henry Nickel.
Davison was Nickel’s only opposition in 2015, the city’s last election held before the passage of the new San Bernardino City Charter in 2016, which changed San Bernardino’s election cycle from odd-numbered to even-numbered years. This year, three others – Ben Reynoso, Mike Avelleneda, Marlo Brooks and Pete Torres – have joined with Davison in seeking to unseat Nickel.
“I think Henry has accomplished as much as he is going to,” Davison said, adding that by rejecting Nickel and electing him, the Fifth Ward’s voters will be bringing about “change” that will be “better for the city.”
The major issues facing the Fifth Ward, Davison said, are indistinguishable from those vexing the rest of the city, Davison said.
“Crime and the homeless situation,” Davison said, need to be addressed. “We need more police patrol,” he said. “There are not enough officers on the street.”
The solution to a large measure of what ails the city, Davison said, is simple.
“We get more police officers patrolling the city,” he said. “If you have a guy walking down the street, casing the neighborhood, and he sees the police patrolling there, he is probably going to say to himself, ‘This is not the area I need to be in,’ and he will go somewhere else. If you talk to the people who live up here in the Fifth District where I am running, they will tell you we need the police up here, on the streets, not in an office behind a desk in the police station or the substation. We want them right in the area where the crime is. If you have a police presence, if you have officers on the streets throughout the areas patrolling, that is going to be a major deterrent to crime. We want the police officers here.  I think I have seen them on my street maybe three times in the last year. Other residents will tell you the same thing. The police presence in our city is inadequate. You can see that. Residents are taking things into their own hands.  Nine out of ten houses now have the Ring.com app. They are trying to protect their own homes, protect themselves, protect their families.”
Davison said he recognizes that financing in San Bernardino, which declared bankruptcy in 2012 and did not emerge from that status until 2017, is tight. He said the upgrading of the police department’s patrol reach can be effectuated through the reprioritzation of its existing assets and without the expenditure of more money.
“We are already spending close to 80 percent of the city’s budget on public safety,” he said. “Given the constraints on our budget, we don’t have more money to spend. What we have to do is reallocate the funds we have to put more boots on the ground to drive down crime.  We are too top-heavy, with more sergeants, lieutenants and captains than we need. For everyone that is sitting behind a desk, we could instead have two officers out on patrol. I don’t know why we keep on feeding a dead horse.  Henry [Nickel] is going the wrong way on this. I would never have voted to give the police chief and the assistant police chief a nine percent raise. I would have put that money where we need it.”
Davison was also critical of Nickel’s other decisions and votes as a councilman.
“He was on a committee that was supposed to save the city money and what they did was recommended and then voted to reduce the pay of the city attorney, the city clerk and city treasurer by two thirds, and that went to a lawsuit and naturally the city lost. Those were three elected officials. The city treasurer just quit. It cost the city more than we were supposed to save. We had to provide the city attorney and city clerk with back pay and we had legal expenses on top of that. I would never have voted for that.”
Davison has served as a park and recreation commissioner since 2016.
He is also active in Blessing Angels. “It is a grassroots service organization that focuses on fixing the homeless problem,” he said of Blessing Angels. “We work to find homes for the veterans and the homeless, provide them with clothing and amenities they need, which is sometimes something as simple as toothpaste and toothbrushes, so they can brush their teeth. This is run entirely on donations and it is very direct, with the money going straight to the homeless. There is no administration that is eating up the money. We take pictures of the homeless, so those who donate can see that the money or clothes they have provided is going to where we said it was to go.”
Davison grew up in San Dimas, graduating from San Dimas High School. He moved to San Bernardino in 1986. He he owns a business in San Bernardino, and lives in a house in the Fifth Ward that he built himself in 2001.
He has been working his entire adult life, Davison said. “I got married early and had to go to work,” he said. “I followed in my father’s footsteps. He was an electrician and I went to trade school by going to work with him. Now I am a licensed electrician.”
Davison said, “I have lived in San Bernardino for 34 years. If I am elected to the city council I will restore integrity, pride and transparency to the way our city is governed.  My goal is to return San Bernardino into being an All America City.”
Davison has three children, two stepchildren and 26 grandchildren.
-M.G.