By Mark Gutglueck
Sacramento’s loss is San Bernardino County’s gain, according to word emanating from the Fifth Floor of the County Administrative Complex.
Sometime next month, after Thurston Smith leaves the California Assembly as a result of his being defeated on November 8 in his contest for reelection, he will very likely check in as San Bernardino County’s newly appointed First District supervisor, displacing Paul Cook, the former assemblyman and congressman who abandoned those two higher offices when he ran successfully for supervisor in 2020.
According to well-placed individuals within the county’s governmental structure, the current First District Supervisor, Paul Cook, does not meet the residency requirement to hold his elective post. His departure as supervisor is imminent, the Sentinel was told.
The Republican establishment, or that wing of it that surrounds the county’s center of power, is insistent that the gap to be created with Cook’s departure be filled with Smith, a deviation from the previous expectation that Cook would be succeeded by his handpicked successor, his chief of staff, Tim Itnyre.
Cook, who had joined the Marine Corps in 1966 after he had obtained a bachelor’s degree in education at Southern Connecticut University in anticipation of becoming a teacher, served in Vietnam, was highly decorated and achieved the rank of colonel before he retired in 1992. Relatively late in his career, he was stationed at the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base, during which time he began a transition back to the civilian existence he had abandoned at the age of 23. Continue reading →

Less than a month after service on Redlands Metrolink Arrow rail system was initiated, a pedestrian transiting the tracks near California Street was struck and killed by the train.
The death occurred despite public requests before the service began for signalization and safety features for pedestrians to be incorporated into the project design.
The Arrow Rail route, which was originally slated to cost $360 million, began construction in 2019, requiring the replacement of existing track between San Bernardino and Redlands. Reports are that the project cost zoomed to more than $410 million.
The project entailed the completion of four new stations, including one at Tippecanoe Avenue near the Loma Linda/San Bernardino boundary, New York Street, Downtown Redlands and at the western entrance to Redlands University. Continue reading →

It now appears certain that the effort by a Northern California attorney last year to strong-arm Victorville into conducting by-district elections to ensure minority voter representation on the city council backfired, with Robert Harriman achieving electoral victory over Lizet Angulo in District 4 as a result of the first by-district election in city’s 60-year history.
The manner in which the election was held this year appears to have allowed white males – who are not considered to be a protected minority under the California Voting Rights Act, which was used to force the changeover to by-district elections – to make an inroad on a previous electoral situation in which they had been entirely shut out. Indeed, the at-large voting system that Victorville had used in every election from its 1962 inception up until this year had two years ago produced a city council that was entirely composed of women and had seated a single white member complemented by three Latinas and a Black woman. As at least a partial consequence of the attorney’s tinkering with the electoral process in Victorville, the city will have upon the swearing in of its newest member in December two white council representatives as opposed to just one and women will have lost their monopoly on the decision-making panel.
The standings in the District 4 race at present have reversed since the initial reporting of results on election night. Angulo was ahead by what seemed, if not a comfortable margin, a large enough lead that her election seemed likely. Ten days after the election, that has now changed. Continue reading →

On November 8, San Bernardino County’s voters passed Measure D by close to a three-to-two margin.
Measure D was designed by the board of supervisors to undo Measure K, which was passed by more than two-thirds of the county’s voters in 2020. Measure K set the supervisors’ individual salaries and benefits at $60,000 per year and restricted them to a single four-year term in office. The political reform-minded Red Brennan Group had sponsored Measure K. The justification for reducing the supervisors pay and curtailing them to a single term in office, the Red Brennan Group maintained, was that the roughly $260,000 in total compensation the supervisors are provided puts them in an earnings bracket that leaves them out of touch with the county’s voters, who average $67,903 in total annual income per year. Continue reading →

Twelve of 16 local measures presented to San Bernardino County’s voters passed on November 8.
In Rialto, Measure A, put forth by the Rialto Unified School District to authorize the issuance of $340 million in bonds to update safety systems, renovate classrooms and make other facility upgrades at all campuses in the district, passed the 55 percent approval threshold with 7,443 votes or 69.59 percent in favor and 3,408 or 31.41 percent opposed. To debt service those bonds, homeowners will be required to pay on a yearly basis 6 cents per $100 of the assessed value of their homes for the next 27 years.
Measure D, voted on countywide, passed with 148,855 voter endorsements to 103,180 no votes, 59.06 percent to 40.94 percent. Measure D erases the reduction in the combined yearly salary and benefits of the individual members of the board of supervisors to $60,000 and further does away with limiting the supervisors to a single term, provisions that were added to the county charter by the passage of Measure K in 2020. Under Measure D, the supervisors will instead receive total annual compensation of $271,817.79. Measure D’s passage also allows those supervisors already in office to serve three more four-year terms and all future supervisors to serve three terms in office
Measure EE, voted upon countywide, authorized San Bernardino County officials to importune State of California officials to provide them with what the sponsor said is the county’s “fair share” of state and federal funds while simultaneously threatening to have San Bernardino County secede from the state if Sacramento is not forthcoming with that money. It passed, with 128,892 votes or 50.63 percent in favor and 125,696 pr 49.37 percent in opposition. Continue reading →

Out on San Bernardino County’s East Coast, in a clean sweep of historic proportion, Needles voters in one fell swoop made a majority changeover in four of their seven municipal leaders as a result of this month’s election.
On November 8, according to the latest release by the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters, Janet Jernigan polled 408 votes in the race for mayor, giving her 55.66 percent of the 733 total votes cast, putting her well ahead of her competitors, James M. Jones, with 278 votes or 37.93 percent, and Sandra Queen Noble, who had 47 votes for 6.41 percent.
Jernigan will replace Jeff Williams, a longtime member of the city council and mayor.
Also elected this year, though confirmed may be the more proper term given that all three were unopposed, were Jamie McCorkle, JoAnne Pogue and Henry Longbrake. Continue reading →