By Mark Gutglueck
For the third time running, Denise Davis’s overarching ambition to become Redlands mayor has worked against her, as she was again unable to construct a broad enough platform and support network within either the community at large or City Hall to garner three votes to confer the mayoral honorific on her.
The third city in San Bernardino County to incorporate in 1888 following the chartering of San Bernardino and Colton in 1868 and 1887, respectively, Redlands is therefore one of the county’s most mature municipalities. Nonetheless, unlike Ontario, Upland, Chino, Rialto, Needles, Barstow, Fontana, Montclair, Rancho Cucamonga and Grand Terrace, founded as cities in 1891, 1906, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1926, 1947, 1952, 1956, 1977 and 1984 and all of which hold mayoral elections, Redlands does not leave the selection of its mayor direct to its residents, instead having the city council appoint from among its ranks who is to serve as the city’s political figurehead and the council’s presiding officer.
For more than a century during the first several phases of San Bernardino County’s history, Redlands was the most affluent and arguably the most influential district in the far-flung county. A significant number of the business owners in the county seat of San Bernardino in the early days built their stately homes and mansions in Redlands, in and around Smiley Heights. In those days, Redlands was halfway between being an agricultural wonderland, which had as its centerpiece its expanses of citrus groves, and a resort town, where the wealthy investors from Chicago who had founded the community would winter during what in Illinois were the inclement months of November through February. After the turn of the 19th to the 20th Century and into the Roaring ‘20s and beyond, while San Bernardino was still the nucleus of the county, Redlands became the place where the county’s prime movers, decision-makers, politicians and kings of industry settled and lived, even if they had to do so unofficially for registration purposes. Beginning slowly in the 1950s and 1960s and with increasing momentum in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the upstart west end of the county, first with Ontario and Upland and then Rancho Cucamonga, began to assert itself. As much of Los Angeles County was by the 1970s and 1980s built out, still-wide-open San Bernardino County was beginning to see what was then unprecedented growth, which continued thereafter to intensify. The profit to be turned by converting the county’s agricultural districts into housing and commercial subdivisions was so great that the development community was able to apply political grease – out and out bribes – to the incumbent politicians who would accommodate them by approving their projects and increasing the intensity of land use and bankrolling the campaigns of alternative candidates to drum out of office any politicians who refused to go along and opposed the rezoning of groves, vineyards, farms and dairies into square mile upon square mile of residential neighborhoods with commercial components lining the region’s major arterials. Once the agricultural properties had been converted to residential specific plan areas, the next shift consisted of changing the single family residential density designations of the number of houses to built from four units to the acre to six to the acre to eight to the acre to ten to the acre to 12 or 14 to the acre, or simply converting the land into multi-family apartment units, yielding the building industry and development community ever greater profits.
In Redlands, where the homes were more stately, the orange groves amidst the mansions more acutely appreciated for the buffer they provided between the rows of tract homes being constructed, the residents more conscious that the mad frenzy of development that was taking place was a very real threat to the quality of life of those who had long lived there, a genuinely sincere and deep effort at preservation of their community was born. While that movement never constituted anywhere near approaching a majority of the populace, it did involve a core of dynamic and dedicated activists, ones who were sophisticated and in some cases wealthy, and therefore enabled and capable of carrying off an effective campaign of resistance. They stood up and stood together, networking with enough of the less-overtly political elements of the community at just the right times to achieve their goal. Their goal was to stymie – within the city limits of Redlands and only within the city limits of Redlands – the land speculators and developers who would come in, purchase ten or 20 or 50 or a hundred acres, cozy up to Redlands city fathers, wine them, dine them, make donations to their political campaigns or maybe surreptitiously pass along to them a couple of thousand dollars that no one had to know anything about, and then run through the process down at City Hall to rezone the property they had tied up, grade it, construct scores or hundreds of houses on it, sell them, reap a handsome profit and move onto the next place.
Whereas as elsewhere in the county the battle between on one side the pro-development/pro-aggressive development forces and on the other the no-growth/low-growth/slow-growth/controlled growth contingent had overwhelmingly been decided in favor of the former, in Redlands the opposite was true.
It was not that the building industry had not given it its best shot. Part of the strategy, hatched by the brain trust within the Baldy View Chapter of the Building Industry Association had been to plot an outright takeover of the decision-making process in Redlands. Indeed, the Building Industry Association had been able to at least partially execute on that plan, which consisted of electing as members of the Redlands City Council members of the development community. It was thought that if a majority of the panel were builders themselves, they would, as a matter of course, be sympathetic toward any development proposal that came before them. Even if only one or two of the council’s five members was or were involved in the construction industry, it was figured that member or those members would be able to persuade, if not the remainder of the council, at least enough of the members, of the benefits of accommodating more homes, more stores, more warehousing and more factories, to obtain the three votes needed to allow masons and carpenters and those who employ them to prosper.
Sven Larson, a general contractor, was elected to the council with the Building Industry Association’s support. Larson was in favor of reducing all constraints on the construction industry, and there was no project that came before the council when he was a member of it and later the mayor that he opposed. Larson, however, was not able to entirely have his way with the city, as during his era in office, he was counterbalanced by Bill Cunningham.
Cunningham had been a high school teacher and coach at Redlands High School, and he lived with his family on the 18-acre Glencairn Farm, which included orange and kiwi groves, at the south end of the city. He favored preserving the city’s existing groves and limiting to the extent that law and local ordinances could the intensity of growth that was to take place by imposing on the development community defined restrictions on residential density together with demands that those developing property had to provide adequate infrastructure to service new development and ensure that the city’s residents did not experience traffic delays or gridlock on the city’s streets and its regional highways because those roadways were overwhelmed by more vehicles than they were designed to carry.
Not only was requiring that any new growth be accompanied by adequate off-site improvements and infrastructure to prevent that development from impacting existing and future residents a good policy in and of itself, Cunningham believed, he further calculated that making developers financially responsible for building that infrastructure would greatly reduce their profit margins on the projects they completed, which would, in large measure, disincentivize development generally.
As much or more than virtually any other individual in local politics in San Bernardino County, Cunningham tested the envelope with regard to bringing the authority of law and local ordinances to bear on what he considered to be the recklessness of the development industry in impacting the community. He had a hand in the drafting and then securing the passage of the controlled-growth or slow-growth Proposition R in 1978, Measure N in 1987 and Measure U in 1997, all of which were intended to reduce growth to manageable levels. Each of those measures was passed by the voters.
Measure R put a limit on the annual growth rate, followed by further refinements and restrictions put in place under the auspices of Measures N and U, such that no more than 400 residential dwelling units can be approved or constructed within the city annually, and the city council is not empowered to suspend, waive or rescind those provisions. Cunningham was likewise instrumental in having the city acquire orange groves which were slated to be developed and which were instead preserved as open space.
Over the decades, development in virtually all other municipalities in San Bernardino County has been far more intense than what has occurred in Redlands. This has made land speculators and developers salivate even more heavily when contemplating their opportunities for profit in the city.
Over the last two decades, several individuals have been elected to the city council with the heavy backing of the development industry in terms of money provided to those elected leaders for use in their election campaigns when they were candidates. In other cases, candidates who were not elected with hefty building industry support or who were appointed to the council have seen deep-pocketed developers swing behind them to support them in their political campaigns going forward. A goal in all of this has been to bring the members of the council in line with the development industry’s hope that the slow-growth/controlled growth provisions of Measures R, N and U and a host of other development limitations in the city can be jettisoned. Multiple attempts in that regard have demonstrated not only that the anti-growth fervor among the Redlands population in general has not diminished but the degree to which the members of the city council are out of synchronicity with the city’s residents.
One demonstration of this is the generalized desire on the part of the city’s residents that municipal planners limit residential development, to the degree that it occurs, to single family homes in the approximate density that has traditionally been the norm in the city. While a rule of thumb in the first half of the 20th Century and then throughout the 1950s, 1960s and well into the 1970s was that single family homes were built on lots that were approximately one-quarter of an acre, lots of a sixth of an acre became common in the late 1970s and early 1980s, while lots of an eighth of an acre proliferated, in some areas of the city in the late 1990s and thereafter. Thus, density in the quarter acre to eighth acre range matches the common conception of the Redlands populace with regard to acceptable housing stock. Among developers, however, the concept has long moved toward condominiums and multi-family residential. More particularly, developers want multiple story apartments whenever and wherever they can get permission to build them in Redlands. The city council for years now has been doing as much as it can to meet those developers’ expectations.
In 2019, the city arranged to put on the March 2020 ballot Measure G, which called upon the city’s residents to eliminate, in one fell swoop, the restrictions of Proposition R, Measure N and Measure U, allow developers to construct up to 27 housing units per acre, eliminate height limits on buildings in the city, relieve developers of the requirement that in building their projects they have to provide infrastructure to maintain traffic-bearing capacity on the city’s streets equal to what was available prior to the development taking place, permit residential land use designations to be placed into the city’s general plan that did not previously exist and abolish the requirement that developers carry out socioeconomic‐cost/benefit studies for the projects they are proposing, among other things.
Cunningham, who at that point was 93 years old, was spry enough to recognize that the forces at City Hall and their development industry allies were threatening to undo much of what he had accomplished. He rallied and was involved in the thick of things in coordinating opposition to Measure G, which was soundly rejected at the polls, with 9,321 votes or 64.88 percent opposing it and 5,052 voters or 35.12 percent in favor of it.
City officials, nevertheless, remained wedded to a pro-development approach and to pushing the idea that the city should allow multiple story apartments – ones to be built as high as the developers fancy making them – in those districts around the city that are close to the existing rail stations on the commuter line that stretches from Redlands and through central San Bernardino Valley, western San Bernardino County and then through Los Angeles County all the way to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.
In an effort to blunt the resentment Redlands residents have toward them over their pro-development orientation, the city council members have in recent years have engaged in a strategy of making adjustments to the city’s zoning map to essentially empower the planning commission with the authority to approve controversial high-density apartment projects that otherwise would have required city council approval. As a consequence of the blanket rezonings, the apartment projects are deemed to be in compliance with the city’s zoning map and other elements of the city code, meaning no variance or general plan amendments, which can only be granted by the elected members of the city council, are needed to approve these high-density apartment project.
In September 2021, the Redlands Planning Commission considered and approved two projects proposed by Vantage One Real Estate Investment. One of those involved constructing 138 apartments and three restaurant buildings on three acres at 212 and 216 Brookside Avenue, the former sites of the long-shuttered San Bernardino County Superior Court Redlands Courthouse Annex and the city’s former police station, safety hall and city council chamber, as well as on the site of two homes, across from the U.S. Post Office. Some 750 feet north of that project, Vantage One obtained permission for an even more intensive use of just under an-acre-and-a-half of property, one involving 100 units per acre at the northeast corner of Redlands Boulevard and Eureka Street, on property located at 200 West Redlands Boulevard. That project, consisting of 149 apartment units on 1.49 acres of ground, supplanted a 40,000 square foot furniture store.
Perhaps the most apt illustration of the degree and manner in which the Redlands’ city council members have assumed an attitude diametrically at odds with the sentiment of the constituents they represent was the political career of Paul Foster, one of Denise Davis’s political mentors who left the council voluntarily in 2022, reportedly just steps ahead of federal investigators who had interested themselves in the ways in which he had been compromised by the development industry.
In the 1990s, Foster came across as someone who was cast from the same mold or cut from the same cloth as Cunningham. Employed as an executive in the human services division of Kaiser Permanente, Foster was interested in Redlands history and maintaining the vestiges and character of the community for succeeding generations. He was a member of the Redlands Historic and Scenic Preservation Commission, and he had made repeated representations that he was in favor of controlled growth as a last reasonable resort since development in the city could not be banned outright. He was given a berth on the planning commission, in which position, it was asserted, he would apply a scrupulous standard that would ensure that whatever was to be built in the city would be of the highest standard.
With the financial downturn of 2007, Foster, without drama, turned, becoming an advocate of the need for economic growth, a bellwether of which, he began saying, was the real estate industry and the building sector. It was not a subtle change but rather a pronounced one, though it did not gain a lot of attention. With the support of the building industry, to which he had previously been somewhat at odds, Foster ran for city council in the 2010 election, which marked Redlands’ switch to even-year electoral contests. Through a combination of the residual support he had from the no-growth/low-growth/controlled-growth advocates and the monetary support of the building industry which paid for an aggressive campaign that included signs, handbills, mailers, newspaper ads, community involvement and other promotional methods, Foster managed a third-place finish in a race for three contested seats on the council, by which he displaced then-incumbent Pat Gilbreath.
During his campaign and thereafter, Foster remained interactive with all order of Redlands social groups such as the Redlands Chamber of Commerce, the East Valley Association of Realtors, Boy Scouts Troop 3, the University of Redlands Alumni Association, the Plymouth Village Retirees Association and the Redlands Service Club Council. He eschewed having substantive exchanges with regard to municipal policy during those contacts, instead propounding his name and candidacy.
During his first two to three years on the council, beyond routinely asserting that he was committed to “moving Redlands forward” and “progress,” Foster avoided taking any high-profiled or pronounced positions that might betray his movement into the pro-development camp. In the latter half of his first term, there was no mistaking that Foster was cozying up to the development industry.
Despite his gregarious approach with regard to involving himself in being seen at public events, as a politician he did not actively seek out the opinions and input of his constituents, insisting that he had long had his hand on the pulse of the community and knew what the city’s voters wanted.
After his first reelection to the council, Foster was selected by his council colleagues for elevation to the position of mayor. He remained in that post six years.
According to some Redlands residents, it was around the time that he assumed the mayoralty that they detected an at first subtle and then ever more obvious change in Foster. He grew even more inaccessible than he had been. Particularly with regard to development proposals, Foster evinced virtually no interest in the views of his constituents, seeming to sense that they would be unwelcoming of any type of development. The only type of interaction he was prepared to engage in, or so it seemed, were meetings with the proponents of development projects. Foster grew deaf, or at best hard of hearing, to any expression of objection Redlands residents made to any of the various facets of project proposals that were to come before Foster and his council colleagues, and he grew impatient with any suggestions that development planned or proposed in the city, which he touted as “progress,” be denied approval.
Consistently, Foster embraced virtually every development project that came before the city. Among his council colleagues, his enthusiasm proved infectious, and he reproved, either silently or acidly, any of his colleagues if they indicated they were so much as contemplating standing in the way of “progress.” Generally, through wheedling and cajoling, he influenced the remainder of the council to go along with him in supporting development proposals if they were not already inclined on their own to do so.
Those who want to build something and accomplish things with their lives, Foster maintained, trumped those who want to leave things as they are.
In 2018, Denise Davis, a University of Redlands graduate who had settled in Redlands and was employed as the director of the Women’s Resource Center at the University of California at Riverside, ran for city council.
Running for reelection that year was Foster. He perceived Davis as bright, young, enthusiastic and energetic, even if a bit naive about the reality of politics and the way of the world, but above all else, someone who was malleable. Davis had the double advantage of a support network of students at Redlands University who were at the ready to assist her in her campaign as well as her association with Emerge California, a collective of Democratic women that was chartered with the purpose of empowering self-identified women leaders within the Democratic Party in successfully running for elected office. Emerge California tutored her on the ins and outs of both grass roots and standard campaigning and provided her with volunteers to augment the college students who were assisting in her campaign. She thus had a stream of campaign workers, committed to the same progressive causes she embraced, to go out on her behalf. There were as many as 30 canvassers armed with her campaign fliers walking right up to the doorsteps of the First District’s high-propensity voters on Saturdays in the month-and-a-half ahead of the election and ringing doorbells to put in a good word for her and encourage those they spoke with to consider Davis’s qualifications before casting their votes. This was a factor which made her potentially electable, particularly given that Redlands’ was returning to by-district elections that year for the first time since 1993. Davis was competing against other neophyte candidates in the election, and Foster saw an opportunity to solidify his political sway over the city as a whole by aligning with her. He came to an accommodation with her in which he agreed to endorse her and she him, while offering to mentor her once she was on the council.
Foster understood well that if his gamble paid off and the young upstart was elected, she would represent another reliable vote for his pro-development agenda, a further hedge against the anti-growth/slow-growth/controlled growth contingent of residents he had to constantly stand off if he were to be able to deliver on his commitment to his true constituency, the developers, real estate speculators and principals in the construction industry who were supporting him in all the ways a politician can be supported, legitimately and illegitimately.
All went as planned. Foster and the other incumbent, Paul Barich, were returned to the council, representing the city’s newly formed Fifth and Third districts, and Davis was convincingly elected with 51.62 percent of the vote against four competitors in the First District.
As was traditionally the case in Redlands, shortly after the new city council was installed, the council set about choosing its officers for the next two years, meaning the mayor and mayor pro tem. While the city had no firm mayoral selection policy, what had evolved was for all intents and purposes a mayoral rotation. As people were elected to the council, those with two years, four years or six years incumbency who had never previously been mayor pro tem would become mayor pro tem – a vice mayor who filled in for the mayor in his or her absence – for two years. Those who had been on the council four years or six years or eight years who had gone without previously having been mayor but had the experience of being mayor pro tem would become the next mayor. Generally, when it got to the point that the only people on the council were ones who had previously been mayor, then the mayoral appointment would go to the person who had not been mayor for the longest time. Bestowal of the mayoral honorific was dependent, however, on the willingness of the individual so selected to fulfill mayoral duties, as the mayor was called upon to attend ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings and other ceremonies during business hours, which could be quite time consuming and might not be possible for someone who was employed or had unforgiving professional demands, particularly ones at locations outside Redlands.
At the end of 2018, Foster had been mayor for most of the proceeding four years, which was partially a function of his dominant personality and partially because the other members of the council were too engaged professionally to accept the mayor’s post. Paul Barich, who at that point was second only to Foster in terms of seniority on the council, would have been the logical choice for the mayoral designation, but his successful insurance brokerage monopolized his time. Eddie Tejeda, first elected in 2016, was employed as a special education teacher of students with moderate to severe disabilities in the Rialto Unified School District. Toni Momberger had been appointed to the council in 2017 and elected to serve out the remaining two years of an at-large council position in November 2018 on the same ballot with Foster and Davis. The decision was to sustain Foster as mayor for another two years and that Davis would be given the extremely rare honor of being elevated to mayor pro tem despite having no previous experience on the city council.
Once her tenure as councilwoman/mayor pro tem had begun in earnest, Davis showed little interest in the primary matters that are the traditional purview and function of local government: finances, the provision of public infrastructure and amenities, public safety and land use. In all of those arenas, she followed the lead of her council colleagues. With regard to the issues of land use, zoning and the consideration and approval of development proposals, she simply defaulted to whatever Foster’s position was.
Her real purposes as a councilwoman, Davis firmly believed, were basically two-fold, those being to embrace every progressive or woke cause within reach and to utilize her elective status to propel herself further along the political evolutionary path.
Instead of focusing on specific or even general issues of municipal management, urban planning, financing or public improvements, Davis’s energy and attention went toward ensuring that local government stood by the principles of tolerance, diversity and inclusion in all that it did. Davis had not, exactly, hidden that she was a lesbian during her campaign, but had not made it a central issue, either. In office, whenever the opportunity presented itself, she referenced herself as a politician on the cutting edge, one who was openly and proudly outside of the heterosexual mainstream.
She pressed her council colleagues, albeit usually by bare 3-to-2 margins, to make gay pride month, transgender day, non-binary day and sexual assault awareness month proclamations and declarations. She was the prime mover in the city’s acceptance of plans to paint, onto Vine Street near City Hall, a rainbow crosswalk mural that celebrated inclusiveness, one which included a reference to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. She has since said that the rainbow mural crosswalk stands as her major accomplishment in office thus far. The vote to allow the artists to proceed with it passed by a bare 3-to-2 majority. That victory let everyone know of her firm belief that everyone should be included in public life and should have the opportunity to participate in the political process.
She publicly revealed that one of her primary objectives before she leaves the city council is to “diversify the dais,” that is, to wrest control of Redlands municipal governance from the enclave of heterosexual white men who have traditionally dominated City Hall.
She pursued and succeeded in attaining other progressive goals. As much as anyone on the council, she inspired the city to seek and obtain a $30 million Homekey Grant through the California Department of Housing to convert the Good Nite Inn located at 1675 Industrial Park Avenue into a full-dimensional shelter for the community’s chronically homeless featuring 98 permanent supportive housing units, each with a kitchenette. She also was a key supporter of the city’s unique utility bill assistance program.
In the 2020 election, Momberger had declined to seek reelection, Tejeda was returned to the council without opposition, this time as the representative of District 2, and Jenna Guzman-Lowery was elected to represent District 4. Tejeda, with a full four-year term in office under his belt and having made arrangements with the Rialto Joint Unified School District to give him two or three hours leave on those occasions when he might be needed to officiate during weekday hours in Redlands, was prepared to accept the mayoralty for the next two years, as, under the circumstances, he was the logical heir apparent. Before that could take place, however, Davis ran a power play, one which she had fully designed herself and which was intended to deliver into her hand the mayoral gavel. In December of that year, she presented to the council and the Redlands community her plan calling for dispensing with the practice of leaving entirely to the collective council’s discretion the selection of the mayor for a two-year term and instead setting up a rotational system, starting with District 1 and proceeding in numeric fashion one through five, conferring one-year mayoral terms on the council members. This was both logical and fair, she insisted, and made immediate sense now that the city had transitioned entirely to a by-district electoral system, such that Redlands citizenry would be guaranteed, on a geographical basis, equitable representation every five years.
Davis augmented her presentation with two further elements as part of the strategy. She had called upon a significant number of her supporters to lobby the city council both privately and publicly to accept her mayoral rotation formula and she presented the idea as one which would undo more than a century of Caucasian male chauvinistic domination.
Redlands’ history was replete with “backroom conversations” which inevitably led to “backroom deals” by which “rich White men” had “perpetuated the status quo” to “marginalize… women and minorities” while “suppress[ing] minority votes” to “prevent” anyone other than themselves “from assuming leadership roles,” she charged. Her proposal, she said, would “guarantee minority representation and diverse leadership… rooted in equity.” She saluted the city’s shift to by-district elections in 2018, which she said was long overdue since it meant that each of the city’s five “representatives are elected equally. Therefore, each should have an equal chance to serve as mayor and mayor pro tem.” She said her proposal, with its one-year mayoral and mayoral pro tem terms instead of two-year terms would double the degree of diversity and fair distribution of the city’s leadership.
Many observers noted that Davis had layered into the selection process she was proposing criteria calculated to give her the first opportunity to be mayor. As she represented District 1 and the rotation, as she originally proposed it, was to move in numerical order, she would be chosen. Simultaneously, she was proposing that the Redlands mayor pro tem be automatically promoted into the mayor’s slot when the city’s change of council officers took place. She was, at that point, the mayor pro tem.
Davis pointed out that in all of Redlands history there had only been three women mayors, but failed to note that the city had only had two Latino mayors and that her proposal as she was framing it would in all likelihood, if it were adopted, result in keeping the Hispanic Tejeda from taking up the mayoral gavel as he was about to just before she intervened with her mayoral succession proposal.
Tejeda, who under the existing and traditional system stood next in line to be mayor, objected to the imposition of her selection strategy with its implied favoritism toward distaff members at the exclusion of its agnate members as part of a deliberate strategy to undo what she implied were generations of inequity and a lack of diversity, one which would thus logically lead to her immediate selection as mayor and Tejeda’s immediate exclusion from the top municipal leadership role. Tejeda’s reaction provoked from her the observation that he “obviously had ambitions to be in a leadership role himself.” In this way, she seemed to impute malevolence to Tejeda’s ambition, while making no such association with her own.
Davis, having loaded the council chamber gallery with her supporters, pressed the council to accept the terms she was propounding. Sensing they were being stampeded, the council put off until the following month a decision on the mayoral succession.
In January 2021, Foster, Barich and Tejeda – feeling they were being demonized for being men and that a move was on to shame them into making Davis mayor simply because she was a woman – were cautious about how they should proceed, lest they learn too late that Davis was plotting to hatch a social media and publicity blitz depicting them as reactionary and bigoted misogynists which would not only damage them personally and politically but leave the city under a cloud. What did emerge through the confusion and rhetoric was that despite her spirited attack on the status quo and them, Davis had not cultivated or even attempted to develop a mastery of the knowledge and skills normally involved in municipal operations and policy formulation. She had not made a study of city finances nor of the engineering issues faced by the public works division, nor staffing, equipment needed, operational and enforcement issues with regard to the police and fire departments and she had not even the vaguest interest or curiosity about what was taking place in the city’s community development or planning divisions. For that reason alone, it was concluded either individually or separately by the three men on the council that Davis did not possess the necessities to be, nor merit the title of, mayor.
For Tejeda, Davis presented an even thornier problem. Like Davis, Tejeda is a Democrat, one with ambition toward higher office. In the March 2020 Primary Election, he had vied, unsuccessfully, for San Bernardino County Third District supervisor. He has contemplated runs for state legislative office, including assemblyman or state senator. He has not ruled out an eventual run for U.S. Congress. Antagonizing Davis, who is affiliated with and is indeed a darling of the most liberal element of the local Democratic Party, was not a move that would enhance whatever future electoral viability for higher office he has. Accordingly, he sought to avoid a direct showdown with Davis. In January 2021, despite Barich’s misgivings about serving as mayor and the conflict it might have with his running his insurance agency, he went along with accepting that post. The council, by a 3-to-2 vote, with Davis and Guzman-Lowery dissenting, rejected adopting Davis’s mayoral succession model, electing to remain with the traditional system. When it came down to selecting who would serve as mayor for the duration of 2021 and 2022, Davis, who was nominated by Guzman-Lowery to serve as mayor, failed to take possession of the gavel when Foster, Barich and Tejeda voted against her. Tejeda’s nomination of Barich was voted upon, at which point Davis recognizing her hopes of being mayor had been dashed for the next two years, joined with Foster, Barich and Tejeda in making Barich mayor. Tejeda was voted in as mayor pro tem.
In 2021, suspicions within the Redlands community with regard to Foster’s connections to the development community had reached a fever pitch. Despite the perception that he was on the take, he did not desist in his militating on behalf of the development community. In July 2021, the city council considered a project that called for bulldozing more than six acres of 130-year-old orange trees on the 8.8-acre historic England Family Grove Estate to allow for the construction of 28 homes. After delaying more than four-and-a-half months, the city council, heavily influenced by Foster, voted unanimously to approve the project. The vote to remove the grove was something that, two decades previously, Foster as a preservationist would have opposed. In the run-up to the vote, however, Foster made a defense of himself and the philosophy he had since adopted, saying that despite his “sensitivity” to the city’s preservationists’ “passion, I have to weigh that against my belief in private property rights.” Furthermore, Foster said, he felt those opposing development were engaging in illegitimate stall tactics by “finding a way to delay the project or delaying a decision.” He and the council, Foster insisted, had “to look at the big picture. We cannot just be driven by emotion” and understood that “There are things more important than historic preservation,” one of which was economic development. Mature and responsible people understand the importance of not interrupting the march of progress, he said.
In September 2021, with indications that both state and federal investigators had interested themselves in the stridently pro-development stance of the city council and particularly Foster’s central role in forming and maintaining that approach despite the intense resistance of a sizably active element of the community, Foster abruptly publicly announced that he would be departing from Redlands to move to Camano Island, located in the southeastern end of Puget Sound in Washington.
In December 2021, in what was one of Foster’s last substantive acts as a member of the city council, he pressed the city council to take up the delayed vote with regard to the 28-unit residential development proposal on the England Grove Estate, despite the city having been challenged by attorney John McClendon with regard to inadequacies in the environmental clearance documents submitted in conjunction with the project application. Prompted by Foster, the city council unanimously approved the project.
The following month, Foster departed Redlands for Camano Island. The council appointed former City Councilman Mick Gallagher to serve out the remainder of Foster’s term.
In the November 2022 election, which was conducted following the redrafting of Redlands’ electoral map, Davis was handily reelected to represent District 1; Mario Saucedo, a member of the planning commission, was elected to represent the redrawn District 3; and Paul Barich was returned to the council, this time representing the redrafted District 5.
At the council’s first meeting the following month, held on December 6, 2022, Saucedo was sworn into office and Davis had placed on the agenda a discussion of the city’s mayoral succession policy. She was again seeking to establish a one-year rotation of the city’s council members into the mayoral post. She hoped that the council would adopt the policy, which called for numerically progressing up from District 1 in order to District 5 in designating the mayor and adopting having the council member in line to next be mayor serve as mayor pro tem prior to becoming mayor. By being less aggressive in forcing the issue and avoiding making inflammatory assertions that the city council had been and yet was a genderist institution, she hoped that the council might that evening adopt her proposal, setting in motion events that would see her accede to being mayor when the council was to meet on December 20 and select its officers. While the council discussed her proposal, it did not take any action on it that evening other than directing city staff to draft possible changes to the Redlands Municipal Code as it pertained to the selection of the mayor and mayor pro tem, which would come up for discussion at the following meeting.
City staff complied with that directive and brought such an item forth for the December 20, 2022 meeting, but scheduled that discussion for after the council was scheduled to vote on who would serve as mayor for the next two years. Davis knew she needed three votes to become mayor, which meant that she would need to cull one from Barich, Tejeda or Saucedo to add to her own and that of Guzman-Lowery. She had burned her bridges with Barich and Tejada. She considered appealing to Saucedo for his support, but then analyzed the circumstance. Saucedo had worked as a Redlands municipal employee in the water, public works and parks divisions for three decades from 1988 to 2018. Despite what many considered to be a potential or real conflict of interest, he had been appointed to the Redlands Housing Authority while he was yet working for the city. He had thus been welcomed into the fold long before he was appointed to the Redlands Planning Commission in February 2019, in which role he had gone consistently along with Foster’s mayoral dictates to the planning commission for nearly three years.
What hopes she had of becoming mayor hung on getting the regimented mayoral rotation model she had proposed two years previously approved. But the vote on the process had been delayed until after the mayoral nomination and vote. Saucedo was a reliable member of the Redlands political establishment, she recognized, and she accepted that her ascension to the mayoral spot would need to be deferred again. When nominations for mayor were called for, Barich nominated Tejeda and Davis nominated Barich, who declined the nomination. There being no further nominations, Tejeda was declared mayor for the next two years.
Recognizing that her assuming the mayor pro tem post once again would, if her mayoral rotation model was accepted, put her into line to be the next mayor, Davis coveted getting that appointment. Guzman-Lowery obliged her in a gesture toward such an eventuality, nominating her to be mayor pro tem after Tejeda had nominated Barich for the vice mayor post. A vote was taken with regard to those nominations. Barich captured his own vote and those of Tejeda, Sauceda and Guzman-Lowery, with Davis voting no. Davis received her own vote and that of Guzman-Lowery, while Tejeda, Barich and Saucedo voted in opposition. Barich was declared mayor pro tem for the next two years.
Despite the vote putting Tejeda and Barich into the mayor and mayor pro tem slots through to December of 2024, the city council later in the evening’s proceedings took up Davis’s proposed alternative method for the selection of the mayor and mayor pro tem. Davis explained that what she was calling for was a one-year seniority-based rotation with the most senior council member who had not already served as mayor becoming mayor, and the second most senior member serving as mayor pro tem. At the end of the one-year term, the mayor pro tem would then rotate into the role of mayor. An “opt-out” clause was included in the proposal to allow a council member to decline serving as mayor. The resolution authored by city staff that the council was to consider that night removed the previous language concerning the selection of mayor and mayor pro tem and the two-year length of their terms of office from the municipal code while substituting Davis’s seniority-based one-year rotation.
Davis and Guzman-Lowery spoke in favor of the change, emphasizing that the prospective new methodology was designed to represent the districts equally and provide for inclusivity and diversity. Barich said he was not opposed to the rotation method in general, but wanted to retain the two-year mayoral term. Tejeda said he was not convinced the rotation proposal would necessarily serve the city’s best interests. He sought to assure Davis that she would ultimately become mayor if she were to abide by the standards that the council had long utilized. “I’m saying it right now in the open: I will personally nominate you in two years to be the mayor,” he said to Davis.
Saucedo flatly indicated that he favored the current system that allowed for council members to determine who would fill the leadership roles for two years.
Five of Davis’s supporters – Kathy Sadanala, Jenn Kim, John Roach, Traci Lowenthal and Richard O’Donnell – spoke out in favor of the annual rotation method, saying it would promote equality, diversity and inclusion. Gail Howard and Andy Hoder opposed the strict rotational mandate, saying it emphasized the concepts of equality, diversity and inclusion to the exclusion of competence, expertise and possession of appropriate leadership skills in a post as important as the city’s mayor.
The council carried out a lengthy dialogue, dwelling on the merits of a 2-year term versus a 1-year term, with some noting that a two-year term did not coincide with the existing election cycle nor provide a period during which the holder of the office would fully learn and settle into the duties assumed by the mayor. In reaching a consensus on accepting the specified rotation program, Tejeda, Barich, Davis and Guzman-Lowery agreed to a compromise office-holding schedule keeping the two-year terms of office for the mayor and mayor pro tem. A motion by Davis, seconded by Tejeda, to change Chapter 2.02 of the Redlands Municipal Code relating to the selection of the mayor and mayor pro tem and adopting an amended resolution to provide for the rotating schedule going into effect beginning in December 2024 and continuing thereafter every even numbered year passed by a vote of 4-to-1, with Saucedo dissenting.
To be fully effectuated, the revamped ordinance had to be given a second vote, referred to as a second reading. That took place on January 27, 2023.
In the November 5, 2024 election, Guzman-Lowery was defeated for reelection in District 4 by Marc Shaw, a member of the planning commission. In the gap between the election and this week’s December 17 city council meeting there were indications that city officials had been rethinking the commitment to the rotational system approved with the December 2022 and January 2023 votes. On the agenda for the December 17, 2024 meeting was Item 3, “Discussion and possible action relating to… establishing the process for the selection of the mayor and mayor pro tempore and their respective terms of office and repealing [the rotational mayoral selection process]” to be followed by the “selection of mayor and mayor pro tem.”
Even before the agenda for the December 17 meeting was posted, Davis and a number of her supporters cried foul. The city council was reneging on what it had offered the community in December 2022 and January 2023, they said.
While it was not yet established what the council majority’s intent was and whether the council’s four male members intended to change the rotational system simply to prevent having to rotate Davis into the mayoralty, it was widely circulated in the Redlands community that the last minute change was a baldly political move targeting Davis specifically that was aimed at keeping her from becoming mayor and lessening her chances at being elected to some higher office.
If the intention of the council and Mayor Tejeda, who had personally requested that the rescission of rotational system be placed on the agenda, was to make a change to the process by reverting to the previous methodology of giving the council members the discretion to choose the mayor and mayor and pro tem in any way they collectively saw fit and stay on track to honor Davis by using its recovered discretion to elevate her to mayor, that will not likely ever be known. Davis’s acerbic reaction in which she reiterated all of the incendiary attacks on Redlands’ male politicians that she had made in 2020 and then some recreated the tense atmosphere that existed four years previously when she was denied the opportunity to serve as mayor.
She at once networked with her supporters in the community as well as in the Democratic Party in general and those in Emerge California to engage in a lobbying campaign to convince the council to stay the course that had been mapped out some two years previously. One element of that was to request her supporters to send emails to the city exhorting the council to maintain the rotational system and make her mayor. In doing so, Davis betrayed that she was the prime mover behind the email campaign when she collected all of the emails – 81 in total – that called for adhering to the rotation and making her mayor and re-emailed them to Redlands City Clerk Jeanne Donaldson to ensure that the city council got the message. Davis pointedly did not include in those re-emailings those that supported the city’s return to the previous method of giving the council complete sway over who should be made mayor.
The language contained in more than two dozen of the emails was remarkably similar, leaving the impression that they were modeled upon a master letter.
The tone of many or even most of the emails supporting Davis did not, precisely, win friends among the council or positively influence them toward installing her as mayor.
The emails utilized the phrase “Do the right thing” and other wording calling upon the city council to “rightfully” act in urging that Davis be made mayor, implying or directly stating that any other outcome was “shady” or “lacked integrity.”
“This council, based off some previous terrible decisions, is already on thin ice,” warned Alycia Tornetta in an email.
“It is no surprise that now Councilwoman Davis is up for her mayor rotation, the other members of the boys club want to change the process,” wrote Ashley Killian. “As usual, Tejeda never sticks to his word and works only for whoever is likely lining his pockets.”
Doug Padilla demanded in his email that the council “Stop playing games,” warning, “We are all watching.”
Shana Higgins told the council that by denying Davis the opportunity to be mayor its members were “baldly misogynist.”
Laura Roethe took issue with Tejeda, blaming him for opposing Davis’s ascendancy to mayor.
“The self-serving nature of his decision is absolutely evident, and I can only hope that his poor suggestion is rooted only in selfishness and not in misogyny,” Roethe wrote.
Preventing Davis from becoming mayor, Adam Sipes wrote, “smacks of misogyny and marginalization.”
Hannah Agon asserted that the effort to prevent Davis from becoming mayor “is transparently misogynistic, as the next person in line to be mayor is a woman.”
Nooo Ichimura accused Tejeda, Barich, Salceda and Shaw of being “sexist. It’s quite embarrassing that male city council members are trying to silence female members.”
Jill Sibler’s email charged that Tejeda is “driven by personal political gain” and was engaged in an unprincipled effort “to prevent council member Denise Davis her turn to be mayor per the 2022 agreement. Mr. Tejeda’s deviation from the historical norm to swear in the new mayor at the beginning of the council meeting and to instead open the meeting with discussion of a resolution he newly
introduced which changes the mayoral selection process and replaces the rotation process he affirmatively voted on in 2022 is a transparent strategy to deny the rightful appointment of Ms. Davis as mayor. Despite Mr. Tejeda’s previous declaration that he would support Ms. Davis’ mayoral appointment, he now seeks to oust her through his proposed resolution. Is it because Ms. Davis is a lesbian? Or because Mr. Tejeda doesn’t like her ideas for change or stance on issues he wants to enact? I suspect the die has been cast and the fix is in; that backroom politics are in play. I believe that Mr. Tejeda has already conferred with some council members and the vote is now predetermined in favor of his resolution, the result being a mayor other than Ms. Davis.”
Nancy Glenn wrote that “Proposing to keep the old method reeks of misogyny, homophobia, and a power-hungry grab.”
In her email to the city council, Barbie Fiske-Phillips stated, “Many people including myself have lost confidence in local government. This resolution appears to be a completely blatant power grab by Mayor Tejeda to prevent Denise Davis from becoming mayor. It stokes the growing sense among many of us that our city council functions through political maneuvering. The added appearance of ‘the good ol’ boys club’ is apparent in Redlands politics and this is one more example of it.”
Jessica VanOverbeke wrote that it was “very concerning to me that it seems like the motivation behind this move is possibly based on the fact that a woman and member of the LGBTQ community is next in line to be mayor.”
Some oral statements made by several of the dozens of members of the public who came to the December 17 meeting and addressed the council during the public comment opportunity proved more scathing than the emails.
Jennifer Maravillas accused Tejeda of breaking his promise to the community and of being loyal to the “southside rich folks on the countryside. You don’t represent our full community. You’ve had plenty of opportunities to show us you’re a decent, capable elected official. You failed us every single time.”
Bruce Laycook said abandoning the mandated mayoral rotation was “divisive in nature” and “blatantly self-serving. The good ol’ boy network is not the way that you want to show your leadership in the city of Redlands.” He accused the council of making a “sexist decision” in passing Davis over. “It seems dishonest,” Laycook said.
Ross French asked, “What are the other members of the council so afraid of? Is Denise Davis that much of a threat to you, to your agenda, to the City of Redlands, that you feel the need to conduct this ham-handed charade in order to prevent her from serving as mayor?”
Tracy Lowenthal said, “Eddie Tejeda is engaged in a power grab that undermines the integrity of our local leadership and the trust in our city council. His current attempt to block her rightful ascension is not only a betrayal of trust but a myopic and misogynistic maneuver that brings shame to our community, to you and your family.”
Germaine Miles accused Tejeda of “misogynistic and fascistic maneuvering. You want to return to the completely nontransparent, backdoor deal-making, middle-school boys club.”
Patrick Mason accused Tejeda of having said that as long as he was on the city council he would not allow Davis to be mayor.
In her remarks, Davis sought to dissuade the council from rescinding the rotational model she had successfully championed two years ago. Changing the mayoral appointment process, Davis said, was a misstep. “To abandon this policy now is not merely a question of fairness, it is a betrayal of the public trust. Leadership should not be concentrated in one person’s hands too long. My colleague who has held the role of mayor for the past two years seemingly seeks to disrupt my turn to serve under the very system he benefited from. Changing the rules midgame sends the wrong message: that leadership positions are reserved for the most powerful, not for those who are willing to step up and serve when their time comes. It diminishes the very accountability this council is supposed to embody.”
Davis’s remark about Tejeda having benefited from the mayoral rotational selection process and now seeking to deviate from it did not sit well with Tejeda nor the others on council. Nearly four years previously, it was Tejeda who had remarked that Davis had been the beneficiary of the council’s tradition of using its own discretion in appointing the mayor and mayor pro tem when she had been elevated, immediately after having been elected while she yet had no council experience, to the mayor pro tem post in 2018. In 2020, Davis had sought to cut in front of Tejeda on the mayoral waiting list. While she had not succeeded in advancing to the mayoralty by that effort, it did result in Tejeda being delayed from moving into the mayor’s slot for two years. Both her bid to be proclaimed mayor in 2020 and the accompanying proposal to change the mayoral selection process which she initially floated at that time and which the council, with the compromise substitution of a two-year term for Davis’s suggested one-year term which the council adopted almost two years ago, had flown in the face of tradition and the established order. Thus, to her four colleagues on the council earlier this week, Davis’s protests and those of her supporters that they were not honoring tradition and the established order were unconvincing.
Another element that played against Davis was the single dimension of the protest against depriving her of the opportunity to be mayor. Barich previously remarked that Davis was stacking the deck by having orchestrated the show of support for her proposal, his suggestion being that the show of outrage at jettisoning the mayoral rotation model was being staged by her and her supporters alone and was not a general manifestation across the entire community.
And, indeed, Davis’s support was not as deep as it might otherwise have been. Silent for the most part was the most civically active element of the Redlands community – the anti-growth/low-growth/controlled growth contingent of residents who have been at odds with the city council going back decades.
Davis had gone right down the line with, and continues to support, the other members of the city council in their unbending backing of real estate speculators, developers and the building industry, most particularly that portion of the building industry involved in residential development.
It was only within the last six months, on two votes relating to industrially-zoned warehouse/distribution facilities, one being the 357,510-square foot North Palisade Industrial Commerce Center proposed by RP/NPP Redlands Industrial Owner, LLC at 1101 California Street on July 16 and Prologis Incorporated’s proposal to convert the former La-Z-Boy facility at 301 Tennessee Street into a 197,398 square foot distribution warehouse on November 19, that Davis, in conjunction with Guzman-Lowery, voted in a way that was substantially different from her colleagues with regard to land use decisions. Those break were isolated and temporary, precipitated by the opposition to warehouses expressed by the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, the Accelerated Neighborhood Climate Action Group and the San Bernardino County Young Democrats.
Davis remained and still remains at one with the remainder of the city council with regard to accepting the intensification of residential development in Redlands. Davis’s willingness to sign on with the political and social establishment in this regard ultimately deprived her of the assistance of a significant percentage of the Redlands population, which includes some sophisticated individuals who might have made the show of support that she received from the progressive wing of the local Democratic Party on December 17 broader and more meaningful, perhaps taking things to a level that would not have allowed the council to withhold the key to the door of the mayor’s office at City Hall from her.
Saucedo said, “I don’t believe the rotating mayor system was good then and I still don’t believe it is today.” He said having a “rotating mayor diminishes the authority and effectiveness of the position. A rotating mayor often lacks the perceived legitimacy, leadership, strength needed to effectively represent the city. This can weaken the city’s position in negotiations with developers, litigants or unions where a strong consistent voice is essential. Reducing the mayor’s influence risks undermining of the collective strength of the council.”
Barich said, “I think people assume if we go away from the rotation that Denise is not going to be the mayor. You don’t know that. If we go back to selecting, I might nominate her.”
The council voted 4-to-1, with Davis dissenting, to rescind the mayoral rotation policy.
The council then turned to selecting a mayor. Barich nominated Davis and Tejada nominated Saucedo. Barich and Davis voted to elevate Davis to the mayoral post, with Saucedo, Tejeda and Shaw in opposition. Saucedo was then elected on a 4-to-1 vote, with Davis in opposition. Thereafter, Shaw was nominated to serve as mayor pro tem by Barich. No other nominations were made and Shaw was declared mayor pro tem.
Saucedo said, “I just want to [say] thank you to those that have the confidence in voting for me and I think that I will lead this city with integrity and collaboration and partnership to move this city forward for all residents of the city.”
Shaw said, “I appreciate the opportunity to serve.”
A handful of Redlands residents in the last three days repeated the observation made two years ago with regard to the irony that, had Davis gone along with making Tejeda mayor in 2020, she very likely would have acceded to the mayoral position in 2022. The curse of her unfulfilled and vaulting ambition which overleaps itself, it was suggested, remains in place.