Upland Treasurer’s Aggressive Tax Measure Advocacy Costs Him Appointment As Committee Chairman

City Treasurer Greg Bradley’s willingness to serve in the role of Upland Mayor Bill Velto’s “pit bull” in attacking those who questioned or opposed the Measure N sales tax initiative on this year’s ballot has created considerable controversy in the city of 78,583. Indeed, the fallout from the vitriolic characterizations the treasurer has made of some of the City of Gracious Living’s citizenry has been so acute that the city council this week balked at conferring upon Bradley the honor of chairing the committee that is to monitor how that tax money is to be spent if the measure passes in November.
Two years ago, the city council placed an identical one-cent-per-dollar sales tax override within the 15.62 square mile Upland City Limits on the November 2022 ballot. Velto and Bradley took the lead in promoting that initiative, which had been labeled Measure L by the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters. As it would turn out, Measure L went down to defeat, with 12,697, or 55.4 percent of the city’s 22,919 voters who participated in the polling opposing the tax, while 10,222 or 44.6 percent supported it.
For Upland city officials, that defeat stung, as in the same election, the residents of Ontario and, earlier this year in the March 2024 primary, the residents of Chino voted to impose on themselves similar one-percent sales tax increases.
In 2022, city officials estimated that the passage of Measure L would generate for the city something like $16 million per year in added revenue.
In what a good cross section of Upland voters have come to believe was a deliberate effort at misdirection by city officials, in July, just before the elapsing of the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office’s deadline for placing a measure on the November ballot, the Upland City Council voted to place a measure before the voters that would change the city’s formula for the cost of business licenses, which, if passed, was to result in an additional $3 million to $4 million for the city. Then, in a last-minute change, the Upland City Council on August 8 scheduled a special meeting on August 9, at which it voted to forego the measure aimed at changing the business license schedule and substitute another one-cent-per-dollar measure into its place. That meeting, which took place at 12 noon, concluded slightly more than four hours before the 5 p.m. August 9 deadline to have all paperwork relating to a ballot measure to the registrar of voters, who serves as the county’s highest elections authority. Continue reading →

A lawsuit brought by a coalition of four environmental groups challenging San Bernardino County’s 2022 approval of a warehouse/logistics center complex in Bloomington has forced at least a temporary suspension of the project, which came after more than 100 of the 117 homes located on the property have been razed.
On November 15, 2022, the San Bernardino County board of Supervisors approved Howard Industrial Partners’ proposal to construct the 213-acre Bloomington Business Park entailing a 1.25 million square-foot warehouse, one 479,000-square-foot warehouse and one 383,000-square-foot warehouse. The “warehouses” were planned to include internal space used for warehousing, distribution and manufacturing. Other structures are to be utilized for d office space, according to Howard Industrial Partners. Later phases of construction would potentially bring the total combined area of construction to 3,235,836 square feet under roof.
The project area was situated on both sides of Locust Avenue between Santa ana Avenue on the north and Jurupa Avenue to the south, with Maple Avenue and Linden Avenue forming the property’s east border and extending to Alder Avenue on the west.
The property, which historically had consisted of agricultural uses and included 141.4 acres previously zoned for low-density and very low-density single-family housing, lies within an area that is semi-rural, with many of the large lots in the area having been converted outright illegal, semi-legal and semi-legitimate trucking related uses, some of which were resented but still tolerated their residential neighbors.
Initially, what was listed as 265 housing units of varying descriptions were situated upon the area to be converted to the business park. Subsequently it was stated that those 265 units were contained within 117 succinct, stand-alone structures.
While the project was supported by Howard Industrial Partners and its owner, Tim Howard, the project consultants and the Laborers’ International Union of North America, representing construction workers, the project had multiple opponents and detractors, including the Colton Joint Unified School District, Concerned Neighbors of Bloomington, the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, along with scores of local residents as well as Assemblywoman Eloise Gomez Reyes and State Senator Connie Leyva, who in a letter to the county stated, “Benefits from [the project] pale in comparison to its numerous environmental, economic and social impacts.” Bloomington’s residents, Gomez Reyes and Leyva said, “should not have to sacrifice their air quality for the promise of jobs.”
The county put together a draft environmental impact report for the project that was released on September 23, 2021 and a final environmental impact report on October 29, 2022, two weeks before the county’s scheduled hearing on the project. While the county in the environmental impact report stated that the project’s impact on air quality was “significant and unavoidable,” ultimately the county board of supervisors came to a conclusion that the upside of the project outran the downside of the project. The board entered a finding of “overriding considerations” in which the project’s eventual provision of the more than 2,000 jobs, the $10.7 million in one-time fees to be generated by the project, roughly $20 million worth of infrastructure and off-site improvements to accompany the development, some $8 million in tax revenue per year, and the company paying for a sheriff’s deputy and an office for him to work out of in Bloomington offset the negative aspects of the project.
The site for the Bloomington Business Park is immediately adjacent to/no more than 80 feet from the Colton Joint Unified School District’s Zimmerman Elementary. Howard Industrial Partners closed a deal with the district in which it traded a piece of ground nearby to the district in exchange for the school campus and agreed to defray the $44.5 million needed to construct a replacement school.
A feature of the proposal was that Howard Industrial Partners was to make up for knocking down the 117 residential structures where as many as 250 families lived on the property that was to accommodate the project by purchasing a 71.6-acre site not too distant from the land in question which was previously zoned for 52 single family homes. Instead of building those single homes on 1.37 -acre lots, Howard Industrial Partners would obtain “upzoning” for the property from the county and build 480 apartments or 480 condominiums or a combination of both, where the displaced families would be able to move to. While the county and Howard Industrial Partners represented this as a step forward for the area, others saw it as a step backward, as it intensified the use of the property through the upzoning.
At the November 15, 2022 hearing the county board of supervisors gave go-ahead to the Bloomington Business Park project.
In reaction, the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice sued the county, alleging the county board of supervisors had abused its discretion in certifying the environmental impact report and giving approval to the project, violating the California Environmental Quality Act and state housing law.
In the meantime, some of the residents on the property slated for the project’s development departed. Others have remained, anticipating an outcome of the litigation that would prevent the project from proceeding and keep their homes intact. Based on the exodus from those residential properties, Howard Industrial Properties demolished the homes. At last count, at least 92 of the houses had been leveled.
In that way, the ruling handed down on September 18 by San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Donald Alvarez was bit late.
While Judge Alvarez did not interfere with the county exercising its discretion with regard to those areas where there were factual disputes or disputes as to standards where both the proponent and the complainants had differences and had marshaled evidence, facts or documents to support their contradictory claims and did not overturn the county’s approval of the project on that score, he Alvarez ruled that the county’s review of the project, including its environmental analysis, did not in all respects comply with the standards of the California Environmental Quality Act and he issued an order that construction at the site cease while the county revisits the environmental review process and files a revamped environmental impact report that takes into consideration six of the factors relating to the project that were inadequately dealt with or glossed over in 2022.
According to Judge Alvarez, the county and the board of supervisors did not adequately examine project alternatives and made inadequate evaluation of traffic impacts, air quality impacts and noise impacts arising from or potentially arising from the project.
Judge Alvarez made a finding that the county abused its discretion in approving the environmental impact report. In failing to a reasonable range of alternatives for building a warehouse on the property, Judge Alvarez determined the county, while acknowledging there were significant and unavoidable impacts on air quality from the project, did not provide enough information about what those impacts consisted of. The county further, Judge Alvarez ruled, failed to properly support its conclusion that air quality impact mitigation measure for the project, because of their cost, were infeasible. Judge Alvarez found that the county’s conclusions with regard to excessive greenhouse gas generation at the project were contradictory. Judge Alvarez also entered a determination that the county failed to abide by the California Environmental Quality Act by not analyzing renewable energy options and by using an inappropriate noise level threshold for the project in its analysis.
“We at the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice are happy, relieved, and inspired by the court’s decision,” said Ana Gonzalez, executive director at the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice. “This ruling not only underscores the legal oversights of the county and developers but also validates the community’s relentless advocacy against this destructive plan. Our fight continues, and this victory fuels our commitment to protecting our neighborhoods and ensuring a healthy environment for all residents. We thank our attorneys at EarthJustice for their incredible work and resilience.”
-Mark Gutglueck

This year, there are a multitude of peculiarities in the race for San Bernardino County assessor, even beyond the typical degree of idiosyncratic abnormality which contests for that particular office embody.
As the largest geographical county in the lower 48 states, encompassing a land area larger than Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut and New Jersey combined but with an overall population density throughout most of its history that allowed its politicians to get into office with a number of votes that totaled less than that polled by fifth-, sixth- and seventh-place finishers in other jurisdictions, graft and corruption flourished in San Bernardino County throughout most or all of the 20th Century, intensified with the advent of the Third Millennium and continues to the present, tainting virtually every aspect of the county government, including its board of supervisors, its elected sheriff and district attorney, the county treasurer and, as acutely or more so than in other stations of governance, the county assessor’s office.
First, the position paid more money. In San Bernardino County, the assessor also serves as the county clerk and recorder, for which triple function the holder of the office was paid at that time a salary of $218,101.69, further pay of $20,384.75 and benefits of $66,506.16, for a total annual compensation of $304,992.60. Comparatively, a member of the board of supervisors was not paid as well, receiving at that time $151,690.24 in salary, $17,000.10 in pay additions and $49,825.74, for a total annual compensation of $218,516.08.
While in San Bernardino County the county treasurer doubles as the tax collector, that authority extends to doing little more than taking the money in. In San Bernardino County, the obscure position of county assessor is the county’s highest taxing authority, a position of tremendous power, leverage and influence. Not only does the assessor determine the value of real estate, which has a direct bearing on taxes to be paid by residents on their homes, his authority extends to determining the value of buildings, offices, headquarters and factories, machinery and equipment used by businesses, which impacts the taxes those entities pay. The tax burden an entrepreneur, company, venture or corporation must bear can have a dramatic – indeed a controlling or make-or-break – impact on a business, influencing whether it is able to remain as a going concern. Beyond that, the assessor has the ability to determine, in a very real way, just how successful a successful enterprise is going to be.
This has served as a magnet for graft – the provision of bribes, payoffs, kickbacks and the like – which have undercut the integrity of governance in San Bernardino County and damaged the entire region’s reputation as a whole. A business operation, for example, entailing factories and foundries which does a brisk business in which it has $20 million in sales against $5 million in personnel costs and $5 million in other overhead costs including materials and equipment acquisition and maintenance, would show a profit of $10 million, of which the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the California Franchise Tax Board would get their piece of the action. That, however, would not be the extent of the government’s intrusion upon the pocketbook of the business owner, who would yet be subject to a host of fees and further taxes, consisting of property taxes on the land on which the factories and foundries are located and assessments on the equipment contained therein. It is the county assessor’s office which makes a determination of the value of the land, buildings and equipment in question. Business owners willing to peel off $5,000 or $10,000 or $25,000 of their own and prevail upon their employees to write $500 or $1,000 or $2,000 checks to the incumbent assessor in the year of or the year prior to the assessor’s run for reelection just might find that the assessor’s office has determined that the business’s land, facilities and equipment should be assessed, depending on the circumstance, at $7 million or $17 million or maybe $27 million less than what might otherwise be determined. In virtually every case, it is the assessor’s office which is the final arbiter of such matters.
M.A. Cranmer, as San Bernardino County assessor in the 1950s, sought to carry out his function in a straightforward manner. He was succeeded by John Bevis, who had risen through the ranks in the office, in 1959. Robert Herbin, who began as a field appraiser in the assessor’s Victorville office in 1951, steadily advanced in the office, becoming assistant chief appraiser in 1959 and chief appraiser in 1968. In 1974, he ran successfully for the top spot in the office when Bevis retired. Herbin’s virtually encyclopedic knowledge of the office and dedication to a formalistic and standardized set of procedures showing no bias or favoritism resulted in what is generally considered to be the apex of the office’s function throughout the county’s 169-year history. In 1978, after a single term as assessor, Herbin was challenged by Robert Gordon “Gordie” Young, a transplanted Canadian and liquor store owner from Fontana who had been bitten by the political bug while he was working as an accountant/auditor at Kaiser Steel and Kaiser Hospital. Young served three-and-a-half years on the Fontana School Board and two terms on the Fontana City Council from 1968 to 1976. The far more politically savvy Young prevailed in the 1978 race and remained in office for four terms, from 1979 until 1995. During Young’s tenure, the assessor’s office’s burnished its reputation for showing favoritism to county politicians and those aligned with them, applying one set of assessment standards for the political elite and members of the establishment which resulted in lower tax rates for them and applying a different taxing yardstick in essence to more than 98 percent of the county’s property owners, residents and businesses.
In 1996, Chico Porras, the workhorse under Young whose professionalism had served as the major principle of integrity during the 16 years Young was in place, ran to succeed Young, and was seeming on course to do so when he captured 46,928 votes or 32.2 percent in the June primary against five other candidates. In the November runoff, however, the second-place finisher in June, Don Williamson, easily outdistanced Porras, who polled 116,309 votes or 40.1 percent to the victor’s 173,225 votes or 59.8 percent. Young was reelected in 1998 and 2002.
Bill Postmus, another politician who had first been elected to the county board of supervisors representing the First District in 2000 and was reelected to that post in 2004, the same year he was elevated to the position of chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee, ran for county assessor against incumbent Williamson in 2006.
With two other challengers in the contest, which consequently resulted in no candidate getting a majority of the vote in the June primary, the race was extended into a head-to-head runoff between Postmus and Willamson that November. In what to this day remains the most expensive political campaign in San Bernardino County history, Postmus prevailed. In the course of the late spring and fall race, Postmus expended more than $2.4 million in promoting himself. At the same time, he was able to use his political reach as the chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and the chairman of the San Bernardino County Republican Central Committee to raise another $1.3 million worth of electioneering funds through political action committees and so-called “independent” expenditure committees that were in fact not independent, which was then used to carry out attacks on Williamson.
Despite having been outspent roughly seven-to-one, Williamson yet managed to poll 47 percent of the ballots cast to Postmus’s 52.62 percent, with 0.38 percent going to write-in candidates.
Once Postmus was settled in as assessor, he immediately moved to exploit the power and influence of the office, creating a second assistant assessor’s position where previously there had been only one and hiring 11 of his associates, none of whom had any expertise or previous experience in real estate, appraising or levying taxes, into the office’s 13 highest-paying positions. From those 11 positions, those Postmus hired engaged themselves not in work relating to the assessor’s office’s function but in political and electioneering activity on behalf of the Republican Party, political issues and candidates for local and statewide office favored by Postmus. Moreover, Postmus used his discretionary power to set taxing rates on the county’s residents and business operations to lower the assessments of those demonstrating a willingness to pony up money to support him in his planned future political endeavors by endowing his campaign fund and/or the political action committees he controlled with donations or otherwise supporting candidates and political issues he favored. Those who contributed to his electioneering fund or that of his allies Brad Mitzelfelt, Paul Biane, Tad Honeycutt and Anthony Adams were given a break on the taxes they paid. Those who did not paid the going rate. In Postmus, the pay-to-play ethos that pervaded San Bernardino County to greater and lesser degrees for decades had never been so grossly and clearly illustrated.
In 2009, after the degree to which Postmus and those he had put into place in the assessor’s office were utilizing public facilities, assets and the assessor’s office’s authority for partisan political purposes became widespread public knowledge, Postmus imploded in scandal and was forced to resign as assessor and charged with six felony counts of misuse of his elected office. He was convicted on all six of those counts, along with eight other felony political corruption charges, in 2011. Four of the political operatives inexperienced in assessor’s office operations Postmus had hired into lucrative posts within the assessor’s office were indicted or criminally charged; ultimately three of those were convicted.
Postmus was replaced with Dennis Draeger, who took the office into a holding pattern. Draeger did not engage in anything approaching the over politicization of the assessor’s office that Postmus had, but did little to erase the favorable assessments that had been conferred upon the class of landowners, property owners and business owners who were able to afford making exorbitant donations to the county’s political elite.
Draeger, who was not a politician, per se, but rather a journeyman county employee who had worked in both the assessor’s office and treasurer’s office, took on the role of a politician when he ran for assessor in 2010. Though Draeger did not tap into the largesse of the legion’s of political donors who had consolidated behind Postmus to put him into the assessor’s post, he obtained enough support overall to trounce his very poorly funded opponent, Al Palazzo 73.4 to 26.6 percent, in the election.
In 2014, Draeger opted to retire. Dan Harp, who as the chief appraiser under Williamson was the one of just two assessor’s office in place under Postmus who had managed to keep the office functioning when Postmus and his political cronies were exploiting it for partisan purposes and had risen to the position of assistant assessor under Draeger, vied to replace him. Opposing Harp, who had never run for office, was an established politician, Bob Dutton. Dutton, the son of wealthy developer/entrepreneur Ted Dutton, had followed his father’s lead relatively early on, making a name for himself as a shopping center developer partnering with his father and running related businesses in the City of Rancho Cucamonga during that municipality’s formative years. From his position as the president of the Rancho Cucamonga Chamber of Commerce, Dutton had successfully run for the Rancho Cucamonga City Council. From that vantage, sponsored by his father’s considerable wealth, he successfully ran for the California Senate. Following two terms in the upper legislative house in Sacramento, he sought to make the transition to Congress in 2012, vying in the newly formed 31st Congressional District, which was drawn up following the redistricting based on the 2010 Census. Despite his father’s money and his own fundraising ability based upon his two terms in the California Legislature, Dutton was thwarted in his ambition to hold federal office by Gary Miller, a fellow Republican and 14-year Congressional incumbent in California’s 42nd Congressional District, who chose to run for reelection in the 31st District as well.
Two years after losing to Miller, Dutton sought a political comeback by running for the assessor’s post. Dutton had nothing approaching Harp’s degree of expertise and experience with regard to the function fo the assessor’s office. He thus had to bring his superior fundraising capability based upon his years in office and his previous successful electoral campaigns and single electoral defeat to bear in the contest against Harp, in which he prevailed by a very thin margin, with 73,549 or 50.61 percent of the total 145,332 votes cast to Harp’s 71,783 votes or 49.39 percent.
With the office again in the hands of a politician, the favoritism shown toward those willing to pay for influence by means of political donations was back in vogue.
Four years later, with Dutton having locked up virtually all donations that could possibly go to anyone considering running for assessor, he was unopposed in his reelection bid.
Thereafter followed what is now widely recognized as an act of extreme disrespect by Dutton toward the voters and taxpayers of San Bernardino County, no matter how poignant and sad of a personal challenge he found himself in.
It is now known that Dutton had developed prostate cancer by 2019. It had progressed undetected for at least a year. In 2021 it had reached a critical stage. The Sentinel is reliably informed that on three separate occasions in the fall and early winter of 2021, paramedics had been summoned to Dutton’s palatial residence in Rancho Cucamonga when he suffered a medical emergency related to his condition.
Before the end of 2021, Dutton learned that his cancer had metastasized and had reached his bones.
Nevertheless, with the filing period for the 2022 election approaching, he chose to seek reelection as assessor/county clerk/recorder, the total annual remuneration for which had grown by that point to $409,540.07. It was widely known that former San Bernardino County Fifth District Supervisor Josie Gonzales was contemplating running for assessor and had retained a substantial amount of the money she had in her political war chest when she was supervisor, which she had transferred into her political fund for election to the assessor’s position.
As had been the case four years previously, Dutton’s status as an entrenched incumbent with substantial name recognition and virtually unlimited fundraising capability discouraged anyone who might have contemplated running against him. This extended to Gonzales, who had at her disposal more than $200,000 that could be used to finance her run for assessor. Though a handful of people close to him knew of his medical condition, Dutton had succeeded in keeping word of it within a very tight circle and from the public at large.
The filing period for county positions to be contested in 2022, including the assessor’s post, opened on February 14, 2022. Had Gonzales known that Dutton was ailing, she assuredly would have entered the race. But, Dutton, knowing his prospect of living long enough to serve out the next term as assessor, running from January 2023 until January 2025 was nil, kept everything under wraps. When the filing period for elected county government offices closed on March 11, 2022, Dutton was the sole candidate in the race.
Though circumstances had given him a glimpse of how incapacitated he was becoming, Dutton chose to seek reelection, knowing he would not be able to serve out his full term, resulting either in the expense of having to hold a special election to ensure that the county’s residents are represented by an elected assessor/county clerk and recorder or giving to the board of supervisors control over who would fill the position. Advantaged with the power of incumbency and a substantial campaign fund, Dutton chose to stay in office, knowing that there was virtually no prospect he could be successfully challenged. In the 1980s, the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Dutton was heard decrying “career politicians” who were damaging the nation, the State of California and local government by holding onto office at any price to benefit themselves with no regard for serving their constituents and their needs. By 2022, at which point he had spent 20 of the previous 22 years in elected office, Dutton had himself become a career politician, one so intent on staying in office that he ran for reelection knowing he was dying and would be unable to fulfill the duties of the position and term which he had convinced the voters to entrust to him.
The June 7, 2022 primary in which the unopposed Dutton was reelected assessor until January 2027 took place. A mere month and 16 days later, on July 13, 2022, more than five months before his current term was to elapse and before he was to begin serving the term to which he had been elected, Dutton died.
At that point, the board of supervisors, had it acted with alacrity, could have solicited candidates for assessor, subjected them to an application process and put those meeting the qualifications for candidacy on the November 8, 2022 general election ballot by the August 12, 2022 deadline set by the county registrar of voters to include candidates on that year’s general election ballot and voter pamphlet, giving the county’s voters an opportunity to elect their assessor for the term running from January 2023 to January 2027. Instead, the board of supervisors tarried, and did not get around to recruiting those interested in serving in the position until later in August 2022. At that point, four candidates came forward: Dutton’s widow, Andrea Dutton; former San Bernardino County Supervisor and former San Bernardino County Treasurer/Tax Collector/Auditor/Controller/Recorder/County Clerk Larry Walker; former San Bernardino County Supervisor/former Fontana Councilwoman Josie Gonzales; Bradley Snowball, a supervising auditor-appraiser in the assessor’s office; and Chris Wilhite, who was serving in the capacity of assistant assessor, Dutton’s second-in-command, at the time of his death.
Ultimately, the board of supervisors chose Wilhite to succeed Dutton, and scheduled a special election to fill the assessor’s post from January 2025 until January 2027.
Running for the position are Gonzales, who is making a political comeback attempt after having been termed out of office as Fifth District County Supervisor in 2020; Williamson, who is seeking to make a political comeback 18 years after Postmus knocked him out of the assessor’s position in 2006; Victorville Councilwoman Blanca Gomez; and Dara Smith, who is currently a director of assessor operations with the County of Los Angeles.
The 2024 San Bernardino County Assessor’s race is beset with a plethora of peculiarities.
The contest for assessor is normally held in the even-numbered election year corresponding with California’s gubernatorial election. This election is being held in a presidential election year. The contest for assessor normally involves the victor being elected to a four-year-term. The winner of the election in November will serve a two-year term. Normally, the race for assessor, as is the case with all elections in San Bernardino County, including those for supervisor, district attorney, sheriff, treasurer and superintendent of county schools, consists of a contest corresponding with the primary election, in which a winner is declared immediately upon the vote tallying if a candidate receives a majority of the vote and a runoff is held between the two top vote-getters in November if in a contest involving more than two candidates none polls a majority of the vote. In this year’s assessor’s race, no voting took place during the March primary. Instead, a single contest for the position is being held in November. The winner will be the top vote-getter, even if he or she does not receive more than 50 percent of the vote.
The peculiarities extend to the contestants in this year’s race.
Gonzales is a former member of the board or supervisors. Though members of the board of supervisors vying for another county political office is not unheard of – as was the case with Bill Postmus running for assessor in 2006 and Larry Walker running for auditor/controller-county clerk/recorder in 1998 and again in 2002 and 2006 and the merged office of auditor controller-treasurer/tax collector in 2010 and 2014 – it is a rare enough occurrence to be remarkable.
Williamson is staging an attempted political comeback two years shy of two decades after he left office. From a historical standpoint, this is noteworthy. Such attempts are rare, as generally, once an officeholder leaves office, he or she in only the rarest of circumstances returns to that office. Dennis Hansberger, who was one of the youngest supervisors in county history, was first elected Third District supervisor in 1972 and served two terms, leaving in 1980. In 1996, he vied once more for Third District supervisor, successfully and was reelected twice thereafter. The sixteen year gap between his two stints on the board of supervisors is two years less than the 18 years between the time Williamson last served as assessor and the time he will return to that post in January, if, of course, he is victorious on November 5.
Blanca Gomez, an incumbent Victorville councilwoman elected at-large most recently in 2020, is vying for reelection to the council in the November election, this time in District 3, now that the city has chaged to by-district elections. Thus, Gomez is seeking two elected positions in the same election, an extremely rare circumstance.
Smith, a political neophyte, is seeking the assessor’s post based upon her professional experience as an assessor’s office employee. Her position as one of four director of assessor operations with the County of Los Angeles under Assessor Jeff Prang makes her the fifth highest-ranking employee below Prang in that office. Historically in San Bernardino County, assessors have consisted variously of politicians with little prior experience with regard to the assessor’s office function being elected to the post or what have been nonpoliticians who came up through the ranks of the San Bernardino County Assessor’s Office and were appointed or elected at least partially on the basis of their professional accomplishments and competence with respect to the function of the assessor’s office. Smith falls into neither category. Until entering the current contest, she was not a politician. Though she has accrued substantial experience with regard to the function of the assessor’s office, she did not achieve that experience in San Bernardino County but rather in Los Angeles County. Her status as a San Bernardino County resident qualifies her to run for assessor.
An anticipated issue in the race is that of professional experience. In this regard, Williamson and Smith best Gonzales and Gomez.
Another anticipated issue in the race is that of political experience. In this regard, Gonzales, Gomez and Williamson best Smith, although to some voters at least, a candidate’s status as an established politician is not seen as a desirable trait.
Another anticipated issue in the campaign is familiarity with and previous integration into San Bernardino County. Gonzales, Gomez and Williamson have claim to being, or having been, San Bernardino County establishment insiders, to one degree or another. Smith stands as an outsider. Nevertheless, Smith’s aloofness from the pay-to-play ethos that has dominated San Bernardino County politics for decades and the degree to which Gonzales, Gomez and Williamson were or are immersed in it, could, if played properly, redound to Smith’s benefit.

Ontario-based Rockwell Healthcare LLC has acquired for $30 million three skilled nursing facilities entailing 191 beds in San Bernardino County which were purchased by Laguna Hills-based Summit Healthcare REIT Inc. in 2021 for just over two-thirds of that price.
On July 2, 2021, Summit Healthcare REIT Inc. bought the 59-bed Creekside Post Acute Nursing Home in Yucaipa, the 50-bed University Post Acute Nursing Home in Mentone and the 82-bed Yucaipa Hills Post Acute Nursing Home in Yucaipa for $20,055,000. The purchase took place during the COVID-19 crisis, just as the pandemic was beginning to taper off in the aftermath of widespread vaccinations against the condition.
Immediately upon its acquisition of the three facilities, Summit Healthcare REIT leased them to Rockwell Healthcare, LLC, the operator of the facilities, on a triple net lease basis.
On September 6, 2024, after owning the facilities for three years and two months, Summit Healthcare REIT sold them outright to Rockwell.

Misprision of a felony is the act of deliberately concealing knowledge of a felony from the authorities without having been complicit in the felony itself. It is a criminal offense under United States federal law and in some states. 

September 24, 2024

Yucaipa City Council

Re: Warehouses in Live Oak Canyon

It’s the same old story: out-of-town developers trying to poop in our back yards. In this case the poop is warehouses in Live Oak Canyon.

The results of the Monday night Yucaipa City Council meeting was a step in the right direction thanks to councilmembers: Justin Beaver Chris Venable, and Matt Garner. All three voted to kick the can down the road regarding the approval of the warehouse plan. That’s a first step. However, the council refused to require a 17-year-old and outdated EIR be scrapped in favor of a developing a meaningful report.

The other councilmembers need to go. A recall effort to remove Bobby Duncan and Jon Thorp should move forward. Their comments and their vote to approve warehouses are a clear indication they are in the pocket of the warehouse developers and out of touch with their constituents.

The city council meeting was a clear indication of how the residents of Yucaipa feel about warehouse development. And their neighbors in Live Oak Canyon feel the same way. In what was likely a record turnout for a council meeting with the overflow-room full and standing room only which ran over into the hallway, all but about twenty opposed the warehouses. None of the supporters were local residents. The three warehouse developers, Palmers, Robinsons, and Issa families (corporations) all brought in family members from as far away as Huntington Beach and Florida to support their warehouses. None of them are local residents and they all have nothing but financial interest in their respective developments. Mr. Issa, identified himself to the council when he spoke as living on Live Oak Canyon Road. Fact is, he lives in Miami, Florida. Then there were the union construction workers all posing in their high-visibility vests and insisting that they needed jobs to survive—jobs to build warehouses that would kill residents with the added air pollution from 700+ diesel trucks daily in addition to the hundreds of workers driving in and out. What nonsense! I’ve seen ploys by developers for over forty years to sway the vote at county and city council hearings by staging support. This one was one for the ages. Gotta hand it to you, Pacific Oaks Development, you’re good!

Nearly 200 residents and neighbors made their opposition to warehouses evident. Dozens of them spoke about, air pollution, loss of natural habitat, the end of rural Yucaipa, traffic, visual blight, etc. Nearly a half-dozen local physicians spoke to the health risks of diesel fumes, especially increased cancer rates. Two things were never properly addressed that are critical considerations: runoff and real visibility.

Visibility:

Mayor Beaver and others repeatedly mentioned that the first phase of the warehouses (Palmer Corp.) was appropriately designed to be hidden from view by tucking the massive Amazon-like warehouses into the hills of Live Oak Canyon. What Mayor Beaver and the others fail to understand is that they will not be out of view. Hikers, mountain-bike riders, and equestrians who ride the trails on the plateau atop Live Canyon on Redlands Conservancy lands will see them clearly. And all the wildlife living there will surely see them! Furthermore, the effects of the warehouse with several hundred thousand big rig trucks annually jamming our traffic all over the valley will surely be visible. And speaking of visibility, I chuckled when the city’s PowerPoint report showed us architectural renditions of the proposed warehouses themselves. The city planner commented how good the structures would look with their little barn-shaped roof detail designed to appear rural. Did he really think the people of Yucaipa would buy such nonsense? You really think a little striping detail on the side on a 50-foot-tall warehouse would lead us to believe we were still in the country? Come on! Ask the residents in Cherry Valley if their new warehouse with the wood water-tank and windmill out front makes them feel like they’re still living in the country as they drive past that monstrosity every day. Who said it, “If you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig!”

Runoff:

Nobody mentioned last night anything about the catastrophic effects of the runoff from the warehouses into the Live Oak Canyon riverbed. For decades, the overbuilding in Yucaipa has steadily increased the storm runoff in the canyon resulting in significant erosion of the canyon walls. The erosion got so bad that years ago Live Oak Canyon road was rerouted away from the river to keep the road from falling into the riverbed. Residents here have for decades been hauling fill-dirt to shore up the banks of the river and secure their homes from toppling 40 feet into the riverbed as well. One housing development in particular here in the canyon relies on a 75-year-old rickety steel, one-lane bridge as their only access to their homes across the riverbed. It’s already a constant struggle to keep the bridge from washing out. Increased flow from square miles of warehouse rooftops and parking lots will surely result in losing that bridge. And because a new bridge would have to be built to modern codes, those residents would never be able to afford another bridge and forever lose access to their homes. Currently, all that land in Live Oak Canyon in its natural state absorbs most of the rainfall. Replace that soil, trees, and shrubs with concrete and you have a formula for disaster.

The council mentioned serval times the need for future town hall meetings to get feedback from their constituents. Are you kidding? Haven’t you heard enough? You received nearly a thousand letters and emails prior to the council meeting opposing warehouses. You heard from your residents and neighbors last night in force voicing their opposition. You heard from a number of local organizations: two Yucaipa citizen groups, the Save Live Oak Canyon group, the Friends of Live Oak Canyon non-profit homeowners organization. the Redlands Conservancy, etc. What more do you need to hear? Are you hard-of-hearing? When I hear the council say they need more feedback, I know it’s a signal that they’re trying again to kick the can further down the road. I know that you are just trying to stretch out the process and wear down your constituents until you can quietly pass the warehouses proposal when they aren’t looking?

By the way, all that talk last night, including a roll-call testimony by each council member, about how they took input from all their stakeholders. You know that’s not true! None of the groups that spoke last night, including the two Live Oak Canyon homeowner groups were ever consulted. If you had, you would have received a copy of the “Bixler report” to document the natural resources of the factual Live Oak Canyon you propose to destroy.

EIR:

Your EIR is outdated and will assuredly be tossed out if litigation becomes necessary on this matter. You should have never approved it last night! Not only is it seriously dated, it’s seriously flawed because it failed to include any site specific (onsite) survey of the biotic resources of Live Oak Canyon. Only one study of the biotic resources of Live Oak Canyon has ever been conducted, Survey of the Biotic Resources of Live Oak Canyon by nationally renowned environmental biologist, Professor David Bixler. (If you had contacted the Friend of Live Oak Canyon, I would have supplied you with a copy.) Bixler’s conclusions included a recommendation that in order to preserve the many rare and endangered species of plants and animals, development be restricted to no more that 1 home per 5 acres. That specific ratio is what Redlands has traditionally adhered to. And that brings up my final point. You must consider Live Oak Canyon in its entirety. Our canyon stretches out for approximately 4 miles. Within that span of road between I-10 and San Timoteo Canyon, lies 5 jurisdictions: 2 counties and 3 cities. To complicate the matter the jurisdictions are not simply contiguous, but checker-boarded. Consequently, whatever you do in the Yucaipa portion of Live Oak Canyon, directly affects our residents in all the other jurisdictions.

To the citizens of Yucaipa, I say we are with you and support your efforts to stop warehouses in Live Oak Canyon. Not just slow them down, stop them! None—zero warehouses in Live Oak Canyon! Whether you can see them or not, they are there and we will all live with the side effects for the rest of our lives. Last night, the city asserted that those red areas on their development map required warehouses. But, the woman who spoke during public comment refuted that. She should know. She was a member of the city’s committee that developed that map. She insisted that those red areas for warehouses were actually intended for light-industry, “like a Costco or Trader Joes.” So, that gives the city council some wiggle-room to re-think those areas entirely.

Several of the city council members took a step in the right direction last night, including Mayor Beaver, by voting down the warehouse proposal and sending it back for reconsideration and redevelopment. Three steps are necessary to move the warehouse proposal forward:

1. For the first time to listen to all your constituents and neighbors here in Live Oak Canyon. We are most affected by your actions.
2. Arrange for a new EIR.
3. Move forward on the recall of Councilmembers Jon Thorp and Bobby Duncan, especially Jon Thorp.

Respectfully,

David Matuszak, president

Friends of Live Oak Canyon

and coordinator,

Friends of Live Oak Canyon Firewise Community

MCB Real Estate has acquired Falcon Ridge Town Center in Fontana for $64.7 million.
The acquisition was made through a joint venture with a fund managed by DRA Advisors, a New York-based registered real estate investment advisor.
The rate on the sale was $259 per square foot.
Site Centers, a real estate investment trust that owns and manages shopping centers, was the seller and retained a 27,000-square-foot property.
Falcon Ridge Town Center is located proximate to the Summit Avenue exit off the 15 Freeway near the 210 Freeway at 15218-15320 Summit Avenue.
The center was built in 2005 and renovated last year. The 273,000-square-foot center was fully leased at the time of the sale. It spans 25.1 acres and is anchored by the regional grocery chain Stater Bros. Markets and a Target Department Store. It features 24-Hour Fitness, 7-Eleven, Affordable Comfort, Bath & Body Works, Benefit Cosmetics BrowBar, Chase Bank, Chili’s Grill & Bar, China One, Citibank, Cozy Fox CVS Drug Store, Del Taco, EC Roofing company, Inc., Falcon Ridge Dry Cleaners, Famous Footwear, Five Below, Gamestop, GNC, Goldstar Pediatrics, H&R block Hoan-Vu, It’s Just Wings, Jack-In-The Box, James Tang Photography, Little Caesars, Mattress Firm, Metro Electrict Gate Repair, Michaels, MoneGram, Nektar Juice Bar, Old Navy, Ono Hawaiian BBQ, Palm Beach Tan, Panera Bread, Party City, Ross Dress For Less, Starbucks, Summa Sushi, Summit Optometric Center, Summit Orthodontics, The UPS Store, Ulta Beauty, Verizon Wireless, Wells Fargo, Western Union, Wonder Nails Yogurtland and 24 recently built Tesla charging stations.
“The area in and around Fontana is rapidly growing with more affluent residents moving in every year, and Falcon Ridge sits right in the middle of that growth,” said P. David Bramble, MCB managing partner, in a prepared statement.