With the calendar rapidly advancing toward the November 2020 election, the prospect for a compromise being worked out between city officials and a grassroots group of activists in Big Bear Lake intent on imposing stricter guidelines and regulations on vacation rentals in the mountain city of 5,231 residents is fading with every passing day.
It appears that a denouement to the clash that has been brewing over the years between those with a vested or economic interest in the tourist trade in Big Bear Lake and those who simply reside there will take place on November 8, the date on which the city’s 2,887 voters will have an opportunity to head to the polls or meet the deadline to submit their ballots by mail. Unless those who pushed to place a measure on the ballot that calls for intensifying the regulations and conditions to be imposed on short-term rental units can have a meeting of the minds with the movers and shakers in the local tourist industry, the measure as previously drafted will come before the city’s voters for approval or rejection. Most political prognosticators in a position to have two fingers on the pulse of the mountain community believe that measure will pass. Continue reading →

Notice is hereby given pursuant to Sections 3071 of the Civil Code of the State of California the undersigned will sell the following vehicle(s) at lien sale at said address below on: 07/29/2022 09:00 AM
Year of Car / Make of Car / Vehicle ID No. / License No. (State)
2013 CHRY 2C3CCAAGXDH743194 8RSW984 CA
To be sold by ENRIQUE DURAN RAMIREZ 14881 MERRILL AVE FONTANA CA 92335
Said sale is for the purpose of satisfying lien for together with costs of advertising and expenses of sale.
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel July 22, 2022

Notice is hereby given pursuant to Sections 3071 of the Civil Code of the State of California the undersigned will sell the following vehicle(s) at lien sale at said address below on: 07/29/2022 09:00 AM
Year of Car / Make of Car / Vehicle ID No. / License No. (State)
1985 VOLVO 8412VS1634 9B87076 CA
To be sold by ROBINSON CALF RANCH 8455 SCHAEFER ONTARIO CA 91761
Said sale is for the purpose of satisfying lien for together with costs of advertising and expenses of sale.
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel July 22, 2022 Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
As Fontana is moving to become the sixth San Bernardino County city to legalize the sale of marijuana, concerns have been raised relating to the Postmus Cartel muscling in on the commercial cannabis franchises that are to soon materialize in the county’s second largest municipality.
Multiple anomalies in the processes to license and permit cannabis/marijuana-related commercial operations in the city of 208,393 were given exhibition during the hearing that preceded Tuesday night’s vote to end Fontana’s prohibition on the sale of the drug. At issue in some of those anomalies are known contacts between Bill Postmus and the city’s mayor and one of its council members that took place prior to the July 12 meeting at which the council approved a set of rules relating to such businesses. One of those rules prevents applicants for such business operations from having contact with members of the council.
Moreover, the regulations that pertain to the applicants to be granted the city’s licenses and permits were drafted with exclusions that appear to have been tailored to avoid disqualifying Postmus, a convicted criminal and drug user, whose criminal history and involvement with controlled substances would otherwise have precluded him from being involved in such an operation in Fontana.
Given Postmus’s convictions on multiple political corruption charges including bribery and recent reports that a political money laundering operation he has set up is being used to deliver monetary payments to elected officials throughout San Bernardino County to influence their votes relating to the business ventures of clients for whom Postmus is doing consulting work, suspicions have been raised to the effect that Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren and the ruling council majority she controls, which vehemently opposed marijuana legalization in the city they govern in the past, have been paid by Postmus’s cartel to end their city’s cannabis ban and confer on the marijuana profiteers Postmus represents an airtight monopoly. Continue reading →

Measure K, the initiative passed by two-thirds of the county’s voters in November 2020 calling for a drastic overhaul of county government by reducing the total compensation of county supervisors and limiting them to a single four-year term, must be implemented, the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District has tentatively ruled.
It is widely anticipated that at a specially scheduled meeting scheduled for Monday, July 18, the board will call upon the county’s lawyers to appeal the state appellate court’s ruling to the California Supreme Court, a move which is likely to postpone the terms of the reform from being put into place for another 18 months while the state’s highest court first determines whether it will hear the matter and, if so, then makes a material finding with regard to the issues that are under dispute.
Meanwhile, the primary upshot of the ruling, barring an unlikely change of heart on the part of the appellate court, is that the members of the board of supervisors will see their total annual compensation reduced from what at present is approximately $270,000 to $60,000. Continue reading →

Redlands’ position at ground zero in the State of California’s grand cultural and land use war over addressing the state’s homeless crisis is to be on display at the Tuesday, July 19 city council meeting.
Traditionally, local government, meaning cities and counties, have had discretion over land use policy and development standards in their respective communities. But with growing numbers of homeless now living on the streets and alleyways and in tents and lean-tos pitched and erected in the parks, parkways and on the sidewalks of California’s cities, legislators and bureaucrats in Sacramento have undertaken to address the issue.
In response to the housing crisis, the California legislature has empowered the California Department of Housing with the authority to essentially usurp local land use authority and to dictate through a formula called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment how many new residential units each community in the state must build without regard to the preferences or Continue reading →

Short-term rental units have drawn substantial regulatory attention in places around San Bernardino County traditionally considered suitable for weekend and vacation getaways in recent years, months and weeks. This week, even though the City of Chino is not thought of as a magnet for city slickers elsewhere looking for a place to get away from the stress of civilization, municipal officials there have signaled their intent to declare the proliferation of so-called Airbnb properties in that 103,416-population locale public nuisances.
In a move that some said raised constitutional concerns, the Chino City Council assigned city staff the task of drafting an ordinance which will likely be inserted into the municipal code at a later date that would potentially ban short-term rentals in the city.
Some of the impacts of homes rented out on a temporary basis are so onerous, some residents and city officials have said, that the city would be justified in action that eliminates them from certain residential neighborhoods or the city altogether. Continue reading →

The California Fish and Game Commission last month postponed at least until October a decision on whether to list the western Joshua tree as a threatened or endangered species under the California Endangered Species Act.
The four-fifths strength commission heard testimony from 222 people, including some politicians who advocated against providing the tree with the protection that environmentalists, botanists and other members of the scientific community say the species will need to survive.
The commission took up the issue after the federal government declined to list the western Joshua tree as a protected species and the Center for Biological Diversity in October 2019 petitioned the California Department of Fish & Wildlife to list the Western Joshua tree as a threatened species under the California Endangered Species Act. Continue reading →

Two Department of Homeland Security agents were involved in the effort to harass and discredit sculptor Weiming Chen and destroy his artwork, the U.S. Justice Department revealed this week.
The involvement of Chinese Government operatives in the effort was previously publicly known. Unrecognized until now, at least publicly, was that those foreign agents had managed to penetrate a U.S. federal government operation intended to protect the nation from foreign intrigue and hostile action and turned a current and former employee of the U.S. Government to assist them in carrying out their effort to foreclose the exercising of free speech that was critical of China, its policies and its political leaders.
Indicted in June were Craig Miller, a 15-year Department of Homeland Security employee, and Derrick Taylor, a retired Homeland Security agent working as a private investigator. Miller and Taylor are accused in the indictment of accessing information about Chinese activists living in the United States from a restricted government database and then providing that information to two other individuals working on behalf of the Chinese Government who then used the data to target the victims. Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
What goes around has come around as Waste Management, Inc., the unexpected sweepstakes winner last January in the competition for 78,665-population Chino Hills’ trash hauling franchise when the previous franchisee was beset with labor challenges, finds itself facing a potential walkout of the workers manning its trucks and employed at its Chino and Corona facilities.
The unrest among the company’s sanitation workers comes at a crucial juncture, just as Waste Management is moving to solidify its hold on the trash handling duties in the southwest corner of the county.
Waste Management, the largest garbage hauler in the United States, once had a stronger presence in San Bernardino County, but for two decades found itself outhustled and outmaneuvered by smaller and hungrier competitors. For more than 40 years, the company has had the refuse handling franchise in Continue reading →