By Mark Gutglueck
Redlands City Officials’ mad rush to approve the redevelopment project on the site of the shuttered Redlands Mall may very well have resulted in a further decade-long or more delay in that project coming to fruition, meaning that the 11.15-acre site at the heart of one of San Bernardino County’s most resplendent cities, which has already been dormant for over a decade, will have lain fallow for a quarter-of-a-century before the project hastily approved last month will materialize.
At the root of the massive faux pas was the determination of city officials to prevent height limitations on buildings within the city that a committed core of city residents is purposed to impose on future development from being applicable in the downtown area and the developers who have cultivated a rapport with the city’s municipal establishment. The project approved last month is to entail residential structures at least four stories high and perhaps a parking facility six stories in height. In their desire to Continue reading →

Though the results are not official, San Bernardino Second Ward Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra’s come-from-behind victory in the June 7 balloting seems virtually assured.
Ibarra, a community activist who was first elected to the city council in 2018, had to battle through two contests that year – the June primary and the November general election – to land a berth on the council. In 2018, Benito Barrios was the incumbent Second Ward councilman. He was challenged by Ibarra and Cecilia Miranda-Dolan. Barrios’s incumbent status did him no good, as Miranda-Dolan prevailed in the June balloting with 699 votes or 39.6 percent, outdistancing both Barrios, with 525 votes or 29.75 percent, and Ibarra, who outpolled Barrios as well, with 541 votes or 30.65 percent. That November, Ibarra Continue reading →

Linda Reich, who has most recently been serving in the role of community services director, has been chosen to replace Matt Ballantyne as Chino’s city manager.
Reich is to begin in the position on August 1.
Chino, which at 103,416 residents is San Bernardino County’s seventh largest city populationwise and at 29.7 square miles the 15th largest in terms of area, never previously, since its 1910 incorporation, employed a woman as city manager.
Reich possesses a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and exercise science from Michigan State University, a master’s degree in public administration from California State University, Northridge and a doctorate in public administration from the University of La Verne. Continue reading →

Reportedly, El Monte Police Corporal Michael Paredes and El Monte Police Officer Joseph Santana, who were killed in the line of duty on Tuesday, June 14, 2022, both resided in Upland.
Paredes and Santana were gunned down by 35-year-old Justin Flores after El Monte police were summoned at around 4:30 p.m. to the Siesta Inn, a motel on Garvey Avenue, in response to a report of a possible stabbing.
Flores’ widow, Diana Flores, with whom Justin Flores had a child, in a statement to reporters indicated that the 911 call relating to the stabbing emanated from a threat Justin Flores made, which she implied was to her. She had not actually been stabbed, however, and there was no indication from the El Monte Police in the aftermath of the incident that anyone was stabbed.
Paredes and Santana arrived at the motel at roughly the same time. They, along with a sergeant from the Continue reading →

Wayne Gray, who like most of us led a life of mixed joy and sorrow, has at last found peace.
He passed away at 1:34 a.m. on April 13, 2022, from complications that ensued during his recovery from open heart surgery.
He was born in Pomona on June 8, 1955 to his mother Dorothy June Gray and his father Ira C. Gray.
As a child, he lived with his family, which included his older brother Gary and his three sisters Nancy, Sandy and Wanda, in the West End district of San Bernardino County. He attended Howard Elementary School and played baseball as a kid at West End Little League. Continue reading →

In front of man, God and everyone else, the San Bernardino City Council this week gave everyone a clear demonstration of the degree to which the city’s marijuana-related business permitting process has been tainted by graft, corruption, favoritism, misrepresentation, bribery and every unsavory influence imaginable.
Like virtually the rest of San Bernardino County’s reactionary civic leaders of the late 1990s, throughout the first decade of the Third Millennium and well past 2010, San Bernardino’s mayor and members of the San Bernardino City Council refused to yield to the liberalization of California law pertaining to cannabis when California’s voters passed Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act, in 1996. Proposition 215 allowed marijuana to be used for medicinal purposes in the Gold State, conditional upon a user obtaining a prescription from a licensed physician. Continue reading →

The official conclusion of this year’s election that resulted in the reelection of five countywide incumbents was not in compliance with the county’s charter, two lawsuits filed last week contend.

According to a lawsuit filed by Robert Conaway on his own behalf and another Conaway filed on behalf of Sheriff candidate Cliff Harris, San Bernardino County’s charter, as adjusted ten years ago in 2012, requires that the five countywide positions elected in the years corresponding with California’s gubernatorial elections – Sheriff, district attorney, Treasure/tax collector/auditor controller, assessor/county clerk and county superintendent of schools – are to be held in the November general election. According to Conaway’s and Harris’s suits, the county’s practice of declaring a candidate any of those five offices to be the winner if he or she collects a fifty percent of the vote plus at least one in the June primary election and then certifying that candidate’s election is inconsistent with the charter change that was made in 2012.

According to the language in the charter, “All county offices in this county, now or hereafter existing, other than the office of supervisor, that would under the general laws of the state be filled by election, if no county charter had been adopted, are hereby declared to be and are made county elective officers, and all such elective county officers shall be elected at the general election at which the governor is elected, and shall take office at twelve o’clock meridian on the first Monday after the first day of January next succeeding their election and shall hold office until their successors are elected or appointed and qualified, and all such elected county officers shall be nominated and elected in the manner provided by general laws for the nomination and election of such officers.”

NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF: RICHARD JOHN SCHUERGER CASE NO. PROSB2200742
To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both of RICHARD JOHN SCHUERGER has been filed by JOHN H. TAYLOR III in the Superior Court of California, County of SAN BERNARDINO.
THE PETITION FOR PROBATE requests that JOHN H. TAYLOR III be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent.
THE PETITION FOR PROBATE requests that the decedent’s wills and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court.
THE PETITION requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person Continue reading →

By Clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the June 10 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

By Mark Gutglueck
As what is arguably the most dynamic independent public interest group in San Bernardino County, the Red Brennan Group this week scored what was by some counts its sixth major victory for the hearts and minds of the 2.2 million people that live in the county.
Nevertheless, and despite strides other entities involved in public policy advocacy can only marvel at, the coalition once again finds itself on the verge of being outmaneuvered by the political and legal establishment it is up against, such that all of the group’s efforts involving the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars and the investment of thousands of man-hours and woman-hours toward achieving its goal of reform are likely to come to naught.
On Tuesday, the county’s voters by a comfortable margin gave approval to Measure Z, which called for the rescission of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors’ 2018 move to expand the applicability of Fire Protection District Service Zone Five. Continue reading →