Despite its relatively diminutive size, Big Bear Lake over the last several years and two or three election cycles has generated almost as much controversy and political tension as most other cities in widespread San Bernardino County ten and twenty times its size. It now appears, with the addition to the city council of a personage whose views do not line up with the panel’s two most dominant and long-serving members, that the city council contretemps in Big Bear Lake is likely to remain a reality.
Big Bear Valley, which covers roughly 135 square miles, lies within the San Bernardino Mountains and includes the unincorporated San Bernardino County communities of Big Bear City, Fawnskin, Holcomb Valley, Sugarloaf, Erwin Lake, Baldwin Lake and Lake Williams, as well as the incorporated municipality of Big Bear Lake, a 6.42 square-mile city that lies along the south shore of Lake Big Bear.
The City of Big Bear Lake, with its 5,046 residents, is San Bernardino County’s second-smallest city population-wise, slightly ahead of Needles, and the county’s third-smallest city land-wise, ahead of Montclair and Grand Terrace.
Because of its location, the City of Big Bear Lake is involved with as a co-participant in or in some fashion coordinates with several of its neighboring communities through various governmental agencies, including the Big Bear City Community Services District, the Big Bear Fire Authority, the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency, the Bear Valley Community Healthcare District, the Big Bear Valley Recreation and Park District, the Mountain Area Regional Transit Authority, and the Big Bear Lake Department of Water.
Despite its vaunted and more advanced status as a full-fledged municipality and the prestige that confers upon it, within the context of the San Bernardino Mountain communities and Big Bear Valley, the City of Big Bear Lake is not the largest entity either in terms of land, population or political muscle. Big Bear City, which despite its name is not actually a municipality, is larger in area – at an expansive 32.03 square miles – with 12,738 residents. The City of Big Bear Lake has 2,929 registered voters. Big Bear City has 7,843 voters. While common interest unites the majority of Big Bear Valley’s residents with regard to many issues, there have been over the years matters which have split the populace, and on occasion those divisions have put a significant number of Big Bear Lake residents on the other side of the question than the general sentiment that prevailed with Big Bear City residents, such that by virtue of their sheer numbers, those in Big Bear City prevailed when a decision was ultimately rendered. This has not sat well with Big Bear Lakes leadership, particularly its elected leadership, i.e., its city council.
Very few communities are monoliths, and that is certainly the case of Big Bear Lake. Within the City of Big Bear Lake, among its 5,049 residents, there are sharp differences, which manifest in different ways. One such difference is the variance in attitudes between those who live in the city on a permanent basis and those whose primary residence is elsewhere but who own a second home in Big Bear Lake. Another typical difference is political orientation. The Republican Party predominates in Big Bear Valley, just as it does in Big Bear Lake. In Big Bear Valley, 46.4 percent of registered voters are Republicans, 25 percent are Democrats, 18.9 percent are not registered with any party whatsoever and 9.7 percent are registered with the American Independent Party, the Green Party, the Libertarians, the Peace & Freedom Party or other more obscure political organizations. In Big Bear Lake, 44.4 percent of the city’s voters are registered as Republicans, while 26.2 percent identify as Democrats and 20.2 percent have no party affiliation, with the remaining 9.2 percent belonging to the smaller parties.
The City of Big Bear Lake is a tourist mecca. One of its defining features is the Bear Mountain Ski Lodge and its ski runs, located in the city’s Moonridge area. Another is the Snow Summit skiing facility, located near the city’s “Village” or downtown commercial district, known for its night skiing and snowboarding. The ski season runs from mid-December to mid-March in Big Bear Lake, and the town transforms into a forum for warmer weather diversions usually in May, with boating, water-skiing and swimming taking place on the lake into October. In addition, the nearby forest attracts campers and hikers for much of the year and the hunting season for pronghorn and bighorn sheep generally runs between early December and early February, bear hunting from early October to late December and quail hunting from late October until mid-to-late-January.
Thus, there is a natural divide among those in Big Bear Lake who see it as a place to live and reside, while either raising a family or in retirement, and those who value it as a place to make money. There are those who want to pursue a happy medium, which entails imposing a degree of regulations on tourists and those who are in the city on a temporary basis. In recent years, the so called AirBnB industry has made inroads in the San Bernardino Mountain communities. Also known as short-term residential units, Air BnBs typically involve a single family home, condominium or an apartment where the owner will make available a room with an air mattress to paying “guests” who remain in place overnight, a weekend, a few days or a week or two while the host remains in place and provides cooked meals. Occasionally in such an arrangement, the host will vacate the premises entirely to allow the temporary tenant to have the run of the place for a similar duration.
By 2015, the AirBnB phenomenon was common enough in San Bernardino County’s unincorporated mountain and desert communities that the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors moved to impose a minimal set of guidelines on such operations through an ordinance. While in the majority of cases, the temporary rentals represented only minor complications, in at least some cases, nearby residents were been put at the disadvantage of having, for a short time, neighbors they did not know and who had little or no regard for others they were not likely to ever see again. On occasion, those guests proved to be poor neighbors, creating disturbances, inviting dozens, scores or even hundreds of others to parties on the premises they had leased or rented, involving parking and traffic problems. On a few rare occasions, such parties manifested as raves, with highly intoxicated participants. Excessive noise became an issue in some cases. Bonfires were a staple of such gatherings. In some isolated cases, those lodging at the rental properties or their guests grew aggressive or confrontational with nearby residents.
The regulations, in the form of an ordinance first passed in 2015, updated in 2019 and further refined in 2023, was applicable in those areas falling under the county government’s jurisdiction but had no bearing within the boundaries of the county’s 22 incorporated cities or its two incorporated towns, where municipal ordinances were in place. In this way, those county regulations were the law in Big Bear City, Sugarloaf, Fawnskin, Holcomb Valley, Sugarloaf, Erwin Lake, Baldwin Lake and Lake Williams. They had no impact whatsoever in Big Bear Lake, however, where the influx of temporary residents into the 6.42-square mile locale was creating nuisances for those living in proximity to properties that had been leased out or rented on a temporary basis that were no less intense than anywhere else. Gradually over the last ten years and then more loudly still in the last four-to-six-years, Big Bear Lake’s full-time residents began importuning the members of the Big Bear City Council to impose tough restrictions on both tourists and the owners of vacation rental units. Tourism in Big Bear Lake had proven highly profitable and advantageous to the operators of the community’s skiing resorts, lodges, hotels, motels, boating rental businesses, the owners/landlords of short-term rentals, property owners, investors, real estate speculators and the like.
Big Bear Lake’s absentee landlords and the landlords who lived on or proximate to the property they were renting out and who were making a killing by renting their properties on a temporary basis wanted nothing in place to discourage short-term renters from coming to Big Bear Lake. They sought to discourage the city council from taking any action whatsoever. The council sought to take a middle path, passing an ordinance that many local residents considered to be watered-down measures to create a regulatory regime that involves a modest licensing requirement and fines on cabin owners on whose properties problems manifest, with the potential for revocation of those licenses if the nuisances persist on a given property.
A substantial number of the city’s residents who were not involved in the tourist industry did not consider that regulation to be sufficient. In response, they placed on the November 2022 ballot for Big Bear Lake’s voters two initiatives, Measure O and Measure P.
Measure O asked “Shall a measure be adopted to amend the Big Bear Lake Municipal Code to limit the number of vacation rental licenses the city may issue to a maximum of 1,500 and limit the number of vacation contracts to 30 per year per property, excluding home-sharing arrangements, limiting duplexes, triplexes and four-plexes to one vacation rental per property, and enacting additional further limitations and regulation for vacation rentals?” Measure P called for increasing the hotel tax from 8 percent to 9 percent on January 1, 2024, and then increasing it from 9 percent to 10 percent on January 1, 2025, with the revenue dedicated to general services in the city.
At that point, a wake-up call went out to the local tourism industry and those who were heavily invested in turning a profit on short-term rentals, one that declared the long-term residents of Big Bear Lake were militating to clip the wings of the local tourist trade.
The the committee in favor of Measure O, consisting of Big Bear Lake United to Limit Short Term Rentals and local residents, collected $19,649.59 to run the campaign to convince Big Bear’s residents to vote for the measure, going into debt in that effort by spending $24,231.47 on a campaign that involved signs and mailers.
The No on O Committee raised $173,978.07 to defeat it, of which $171,278.07 came from individuals or entities outside of Big Bear Lake. The Committee to Expand the Middle Class, an entity sponsored by AirBnb, Inc, put up $50,153 to support No on O. The California Association of Realtors Issues Mobilization Political Action Committee donated another $49,999. The National Association of Realtors put up $49,999.99.
The committee in favor of Measure O spent $8.39 per voter registered in Big Bear Lake in the effort to convince them they should support the initiative.
The committee against Measure O spent some $60.26 on each of the city’s registered voters in the effort to convince them they should reject the initiative.
When the votes were cast and counted, it appeared the discrepancy in the amount of money spent on the two campaigns controlled the outcome. There were 832 votes or 41.39 percent in favor of Measure O and 1,178 votes or 58.61 percent in opposition to it.
Measure P, which had no committees promoting nor fighting it, passed with 1,044 votes or 53.87 percent in favor and 894 votes or 46.13 percent opposed.
Illustrated in the battle over Measure O was the intensity of will within the Big Bear Lake business community – essentially the tourist trade – to protect its bread and butter and the degree to which the financial interests of the city’s business owners were at odds with the quality of life of the city’s residents. Revealed as well was the conflicting loyalty that a majority of the Big Bear Lake City Council had between on one hand the city’s businesses and business owners and on the other hand the city’s residents. Given the amount of money those businesses and business owners were willing to throw to the city’s politicians, it appeared to many that the business community exercised greater control over Big Bear Lake City Hall than did Big Bear Lake’s citizens.
Gravitating into the elected council positions in Big Bear Lake, as elsewhere, are those who are generally more assertive and domineering than the average resident, those who consider themselves better equipped than their fellow and sister citizens to engage in the decision-making process, ones who see themselves as better informed, smarter, wiser and decisive than the average Big Bear Lake homeowner.
The most dominant member of the city council at present is also its longest-serving, Rick Herrick.
Four years after becoming, in 1990, the president and chief executive officer of Parallel Broadcasting Inc, the parent company of KBHR 93.3 and 102.5 FM radio, Herrick took up residence in Big Bear Lake in 1994. As the co-owner, with his wife, of Parallel Broadcasting, the then-30-something Herrick he used his substantial gifts, including his radio voice and matinee-idol looks, to obtain substantial notoriety and positioning within the mountain community. He acceded to president of the Big Bear Chamber of Commerce, was a board member of the Big Bear Valley Recreation and Park District and, from 1999 until 2005, a commissioner on the board of the Big Bear Lake Department of Water. First elected to the Big Bear Lake City Council in 2006, he was reelected in 2010, unopposed in 2014 and 2018, and elected to represent District 2 in the city’s second by-district election in 2022. He was the top vote-getter among city council candidates in 2006. He has been chosen to serve as mayor six times during his 18-year tenure on the council. He is the chairman of the Big Bear Alpine Zoo Nay Foundation. As an elected official he has been selected for or appointed to several joint powers or adjunct governmental agency boards, including those overseeing the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, the Big Bear Fire Authority and the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency, of which he is currently the vice chairman. His membership on the latter panel is in some measure an outgrowth of the extensive experience he picked up during his time on the board of the Big Bear Lake Department of Water. Now 67, he touts himself as a stolid, rock-ribbed Republican.
Randall Putz, the council’s second-longest serving member, is six years Herrick’s junior, also a Republican and has been on the council since 2014, having previously been a member of the school board. Observers of Big Bear Lake politics say Putz’s votes have gone right the line with with those of Herrick and that there has been no issue of real substance in the city over the time of their shared tenure on the council where they have disagreed. Some Big Bear Lake residents have referred to Putz as “Little Rick” or Herrick’s Henchman.” The latter epithet came about following the collective city council’s reaction to the election of Alan Lee to the city council representing the city’s District 1 in 1990. Members of the council and city employees in 2021 took issue with his comportment and in early 2022 voted to reprimand him and adopt rules of order for the council meetings.
One constant refrain from Lee was that Herrick and Putz were agents acting on behalf of the Big Bear Lake business community and against the interests of the city’s residents. He maintained the other two members of the council – Bynette Mote, who had been elected to represent the city’s District 5 in the same 2020 election that brought him onto the council, and Perri Melnick, who was appointed to the Big Bear Lake City Council in July 2021 following the resignation of Councilman/Mayor David Caretto – were, as he termed them, “unwitting pigeons” or “suckers,” who were going along with the more dominate Herrick and Putz because they were either not smart enough to recognize they were being manipulated to the detriment of those they were representing or did not have the strength of character to stand up to them.
Later that year, the members of the council participated in what ultimately proved to be a successful recall election against Lee. Some members of the community have indicated they believe that Putz served as Herrick’s surrogate in leading the attacks that proved to be Lee’s undoing.
Held in conjunction with the November 2022 recall of Lee was an election to choose his replacement. Kendi Segovia prevailed in that race. During the same balloting, Herrick, representing District 2, Putz, representing District 3 and Melnick, representing District 4, maintained their positions on the council.
One of the casualties of Lee’s time on the city council was then-City Manager Frank Rush, who had been brought in to replace his predecessor Jeff Mathieu. To fill the gap created by Rush’s departure, the city council in August 2022 hired Erik Sund, who had been city manager in San Clemente, to replace him.
In the aftermath of the 2022 election, with Lee removed from office, Herrick, Putz and their appointee to the council, Melnick, elected, Measure O defeated and Sund in place as city manager, the long-term agenda that Herrick and Putz were pursuing was steamrolling along. Both Herrick and Putz had attained – Herrick on multiple occasions – the honorific of being mayor. Their priorities consisted of staying the course with regard to Big Bear Lake maintaining itself as San Bernardino County’s and the region’s premier resort community. To that end, they wanted to perpetuate the full council endorsement of their policies as administered by Sund and carried out by the city’s 82 full and part-time employees. In a gesture widely interpreted as one of enlightenment and generosity of spirit and philosophy writ large, they orchestrated, in December 2023, the elevation of Melnick to the post of mayor and Segovia as mayor pro tem. By that point, however, the other woman on the council, Mote, who had been on board with Herrick, Putz and Melnick during the two-year tenure of Lee, had grown distant and disenfranchised from her colleagues. This was in no little measure as a result of a personality clash with Sund, who was in a headlong pursuit of meeting the expectations of those he recognized as the council’s controlling entities: Herrick and Putz. In February 2024, Mote abruptly resigned.
Big Bear Lake is a man-made body of water, created as a reservoir to provide irrigation in the area around Redlands in 1884/1885. The Rock Dam was replaced by the 20-feet-higher Eastwood Dam, placed some 200 feet further west, in 1912. Water issues in the City of Big Bear Lake, it goes without saying, are crucial to the city. Recurrent drought conditions in the last decade had led to a noticeable draw down in the level of the lake water, which has represented a threat to the summer tourist industry and the city’s identity in general. Predictably, efforts aimed at redressing the drop in the water level in lake have ensued. One such proposal, the Replenish Big Bear Project, has generated controversy.
Put succinctly, the Replenish Big Bear Project relies upon recent advances in technology to reclaim the domestic wastewater – effluent – of the Big Bear Valley and then direct it into Big Bear Lake to maintain the lake’s historic water level.
The Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency has since its inception used traditional sewage treatment methodologies which are of a more primitive nature than the more advanced modalities currently available. Thus, previously, the reclaimed water would be used for landscape and other types of irrigation and the sludge would be disposed of by various means, including by placement in landfills, being incinerated, or recycled to the soil by use in agriculture, mine reclamation or horticulture.
The Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency proposes substantial upgrades – at a cost of roughly $86 million – to its sewage treatment plant as part of its Replenish Big Bear Project, which would then require another $5 million to $6 million per year in operational costs. The state-of-the-art system is to involve an initial sand filtration process followed by the use of ultrafiltration membranes involving bundles of hollow membrane fibers with pore sizes so small that bacteria and viruses cannot pass through them, backed by high pressure pumping of the water through semi-permeable membranes, after which the water is to be subject to ultraviolet disinfection and an oxidation process. That water will then be returned to Big Bear Lake in a quantity sufficient to prevent the level of water in the lake from dropping as it has in recent drought years.
The City of Big Bear Lake, as a participant in the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency, is represented on the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency Board of Directors by Herrick, who has come out in favor of the project. The city has two seats on the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency Board of Directors. The city’s other current member on the board is Segovia.
There are a myriad of water and wastewater issues in Big Bear Valley.
One such issue that lurks below the surface is the proliferation of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances – commonly referred to as PFAS – in the region’s water supply.
Also known as perfluorochemicals or PCFs, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances are compounds with water-repellent and oil-repellent properties. They are used in the production of both industrial and everyday household products such as stain-resistant carpets and furniture, waterproof clothing, shoes and outdoor gear, cosmetics and personal care products, food packaging, firefighting foam, cleaning products, industrial surfactants and non-stick cookware. They are commonly used in the aerospace, construction and electronics and in military and firefighting contexts.
Referred to as “forever chemicals,” PFAS chemicals don’t break down easily over time and are water soluble. Scientists, environmentalists and health professionals have concerns these chemicals could build to levels that d result in environmental and human health harm.
If absorbed by humans or animals in substantial or beyond-safe-threshold quantities, they can alter the metabolisms of humans and animals, impact fertility, reduce fetal growth, decrease birth weight, cause changes in liver enzymes and increase the risk of obesity and certain cancers, impact immune response, increase cholesterol levels, decrease vaccine response in children and increase the risk of high blood pressure or pre-eclampsia in pregnant women.
Within the last four to five years, PFAS have been turning up in significant quantities in the San Bernardino Mountain Communities’ water, prompting concern.
It is believed, though not scientifically established that the uptick in PFAS contamination in the mountain communities is a result, primarily, of the use of firefighting foam in fires that have occurred in the mountains over the last decade to decade-and-a-half and, secondarily, because of the use of waterproof clothing and gear by winter sports participants. The presence of PFAS has garnered far more attention on the western side of the San Bernardino Mountains, in the area in and around Lake Arrowhead, than it has on the eastern side, in Big Bear Valley. A factor in this has been the aversion that the tourist industry in Big Bear Lake has for any negative publicity that might impact the substantial numbers of those coming to the community during its ten-month long annual tourist season.
Among a majority of, though certainly not all, Republicans, taking up environmental causes is unfashionable. This is particularly the case in the Big Bear community, since a focus on the downside of things like forever chemicals proliferation carries with it the potential of not only negative publicity but the application of regulations – regulations extending to things like waterproofing, and firefighting foam. The comibation of such regulations and publicity could have a deleterious impact on the business activity in Big Bear Valley and life there in general.
Segovia is a Republican and by all other appearances, seems to fall within the Big Bear Lake mainstream. She is not, or so she has said, outright opposed to the Replenish Big Bear Program. Nevertheless, in response to the concerns expressed by some of her constituents to inadequacies in the environmental impact report that the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency, as the lead agency on the Replenish Big Bear Program had arranged to have drafted for the proposed undertaking, on August 12, 2024, she voted as a member of the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency Board of Directors, along with her fellow board John Russo and Larry Walsh against accepting the Replenish Big Bear Program’s final environmental impact report and its parallel mitigation monitoring and reporting program as integral and satisfactory. A majority ‘yes’ vote on the environmental certification would have essentially approved the project. Instead, Russo, Walsh and Segovia consigned the project to further delays and refinements before it can proceed, if it is to be pursued at all.
Herrick and the other Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency member, Jim Miller had voted in favor of the environmental impact report and approving the program.
Insofar as Segovia was concerned, the board’s action did not knell the death of the Replenish Big Bear Program as much as it signaled the need for every I to be dotted and all Ts to be crossed, such that the project would not have a deleterious impact on the environment.
For Herrick and Putz, this was not just needless foot-dragging that would either perpetuate the diminished water level in the lake or greatly delay the erasure of that shortcoming, threaten the profitability and or existence of many local businesses and cross up their political supporters, it was unnecessarily prolonging the environmental certification process for the program. There was a need, a very real need, to put the environmental certification of the program behind them, less a too-scrupulous examination of the region’s environmental issues take place, one in which the mounting problem of the perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances “forever chemicals” come to the fore and enter public consciousness in a big way, such that those who ski at the resorts or fish or swim or waterski or boat at the lake in the summer decide that they’d rather not subject their livers, kidneys, lungs and delicate mucous membranes to the cancer causing agents present in Big Bear’s snow and water in quantities tens or hundreds of times greater than the threshold deemed safe by the federal government.
In November, Segovia was due to stand for reelection in the First District and an election was to take place in which the gap on the council that had come about because of Mote’s resignation was to take place. Having previously committed to supporting Segovia, neither Herrick nor Putz was in a position to endorse her opponent in the race, write-in candidate Jim Eakin, who, given the nature of write-in candidacies, had virtually no chance of winning. At the same time, both were alive to the prospect that the Fifth District slot on the council could be filled with a member at odds to the existing political establishment in the city, in which case their lock on the council would be in jeopardy if Melnick were to link up with Segovia and that member to form a three-member ruling coalition. While Herrick and Putz were reasonably comfortable with one of the candidates, Jeff Holoubek, whom they had twice appointed to the city’s planning commission, they were alarmed at the possibility that Holoubek’s declared competitor in the District 5 race, Big Bear Airport Board Member Chuck Hicks, might make it onto the council.
After Hicks took out and filed candidacy papers in July 2024, Big Bear Lake City Clerk Erica Stephenson, who is also assistant city manager, at the prompting of Herrick and Putz, undertook to examine whether Hicks met the residency requirements specified in the municipal code pertaining to candidacy for the city council. That verification effort appears to be one that was specially undertaken, as the standing policy in Big Bear Lake as in virtually every other municipality in San Bernardino County is to accept at face value the certification given by candidates made under the penalty of perjury that they are residents of the jurisdiction in which they are seeking election. Stephenson claimed that she was unable to certify that Hicks met the residency requirements and, accordingly, refused to certify him as a candidate for the city council. Upon being informed that Stephenson was denying him a place on the ballot, he city of Big Bear Lake will be paying council candidate Chuck Hicks Jr. $23,500 after initially denying his application to run for City Council due to residency concerns.
As explained by the city’s attorney during the meeting, “The city clerk was unable to certify that Mr. Hicks met the residency requirements of the municipal code. Thus, the city clerk could not certify him as a candidate for council.”
Hicks’ residency affidavit is posted online. It includes copies of a California Department of Motor Vehicles registration for a 2005 Kawasaki motorcycle and a bill from. Court documents noted the city of Big Bear Lake had challenged the validity of the DMV document presented.
Hicks, on August 7, sought a writ of mandate to compel the City of Big Bear Lake to accept his nomination for office and register him as a candidate for City Council. That request was granted by the San Bernardino County Superior Court when Stephenson was unable to contradict the validity of the Hick’s affidavit of residency, his registration of a motorcycle he owns at his address in District 5 and a utility bill in his name at the same address from Bear Valley Electric Services.
In October, in response to Hick’s motion before the court to recover, as the prevailing party, his legal costs for having to sue to have his candidacy qualified, the council voted to the council agreed to pay Hicks’ attorney’s fees in the amount of $23,500.
On November 5, Hicks defeated Holoubek 229 votes or 56.97 percent to 173 votes or 43.03 percent.
The first regularly scheduled meeting of the Big Bear City Council after the election was scheduled for its normal time, at 5 p.m. at City Hall on December 11. The city, however, scheduled a specially-called meeting at 4 p.m. that day, one hour in advance of the meeting, at which the council was scheduled to formally acknowledge and accept the results of the November 5 election, swear both Hicks and Segovia into office, then make the appointments of its officers, i.e., the mayor and mayor pro tem, for the upcoming year and consider rules of order for the city council. Hicks, however, had a scheduling conflict, in that the airport board of which he was still a member, was scheduled to meet at its regularly scheduled time of 4 p.m. on December 11 as well. Prior to the meeting, Hicks informed the city he would be unable to attend the specially-called meeting, as he was previously scheduled to attend the airport board meeting.
Without the yet-to-be-installed councilman present during the specially-called meeting, Councilman Putz took a swipe at Hicks.
“So we have a gentleman who wanted to be on council so badly that when he couldn’t satisfy the residency requirements, he sued the city and cost us all tens of thousands of dollars,” Putz said, seemingly dismissing that Hicks had established through the litigation he undertook that he had met the residency requirements to run for and hold office. “And he can’t make it here for the swearing in?”
Upon Segovia’s investiture, the council took up the matters on the specially-called meeting’s agenda.
What was revealed during the discussion of the council’s rules of order was that Putz, who had requested staff look into such rules pertaining to the comportment of city council members in August after Segovia’s vote with regard to the Replenish Big Bear Program environmental impact report, and Herrick were angling to restrict members of the council from voting, as members of adjunct governmental committees or commissions or as board members to outside joint powers authorities in which they represent the city, in any fashion with which the council majority disagrees.
As City of Big Bear Lake or city council designees, the members of the city council serve as representatives to/board members/directors of the California League of Cities, the Southern California Association of Governments, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, the Mountain Area Regional Transit Authority, Big Bear City Community Services District, the Big Bear Fire Authority, the Big Bear Lake Fire Protection District, the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency and the Mojave Desert Mountain Integrated Waste Joint Powers Authority.
Putz said the contemplated rules were “not intended against any one particular council member” and the formulation of of restrictions to be placed on the council, including removal from an appointed post “was not intended to single anyone out.” He sought to assure the public and somewhat unconvincingly Segovia that the move to restrict how council members can act or vote was benign and meant merely to give the council guidance. “It’s a very difficult needle to thread sometimes, balancing our personal beliefs, what our constituents in our district might think, which may be different from our constituents in the whole city.”
His approach and that of Herrick was to suggest to Segovia that there are positions with regard to the various issues the city and other agencies face that are correct, which they both have the intelligence, wisdom and experience to discern and that the city’s representatives on the various adjunct governmental and joint powers authorities should vote as they would or face the consequences of losing their appointments as representatives to those boards.
Putz said he wanted to “memorialize in our rules of order [standards] to more clearly define what happens after someone’s appointed, what any remedies, if there’s issues [with the way an appointee votes], there might be, if that turns out to be the mayor can rescind an appointment or the board can move to remove someone.” He said he wanted the council “to remind us where our heads should be at when we are representing the city on these various boards.”
The basic idea, Putz said, was he wanted “to have clarity, have harmony.”
Segovia at first sought to interpret what Putz’s suggestions as a request that the individual council members keep their colleagues abreast of what issues or actions are being taken up by the various intergovernmental entities the city is part of, before she more directly stated that what he was advocating was that the council move away from independent thinking.
“I guess we need to drill down then on what everybody’s doing on their respective boards, give a full briefing on what each one of us is doing so that we know each decision you are making, I’m making, Perri is making,” Segovia said.
It was noted at one point that a lot of territory and issues are covered in joint powers authority board meetings and that at least some if not most of the matters taken up by them have no direct impact on Big Bear Lake, such that in-depth reports of the meetings was not what was being called for. The point was made that the concern was for how the city’s representatives were casting their votes.
That provoked Segovia.
“This sounds to me like groupthink,” she said. We’re obviously talking about Replenish Big Bear. We all know what we are talking about.”
Putz, who had been seeking to avoid directly forcing the issue and was hoping to subtly nudge Segovia into what he considered to be the mainstream, initially reflexively denied her assertion, but then acknowledged, “I admit that the experience with Replenish Big Bear is what prompted me to get thinking about this.”
Segovia then made an effort to explain that there were complicating and extenuating factors that went into her decision-making process that defied the simple imperative of approving the program that neither Putz nor Herrick were taking into consideration in condemning her July 12 vote.
“I didn’t want to say this out loud, but I went to the meeting prepared to vote for the EIR, but when our general manager didn’t do his job talking to people that had opposed the EIR is why I voted no,” she said.
Putz said, “Kendi, I apologize. It was not I had not intended to make this about BBARWA [the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency]. It wasn’t my intent.”
Segovia didn’t buy that for even a second.
“It is,” she responded.
Putz, who to that point had been implicitly suggesting he and Herrick are in control of the council and therefore the City of Big Bear Lake and to a larger extent the entire Big Bear Valley Community by virtue of their own votes on the council and their control of Melnick’s vote, came within an Angstrom unit of explicitly saying just that, remarking, “If the rest of you feel this isn’t an important question, then let’s just ignore it and move on and we’ll wait until it gets bad enough that then people will move to pull people off boards because they’re not happy with how that’s going. We can do it that way.”
In case Segovia did not get the point, he added a further veiled threat by rhetorically asking, “Do we think that’s a better approach?”
Herrick, in so many words, suggested that through his extended period on the council, his six terms as mayor and his previous experience as a Big Bear Lake Department of Water Board commissioner and chairman, chairman of the Big Bear Lake Fire Protection District, chairman of the Big Bear Alpine Zoo Nay Foundation and as a board member of the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency, he is more knowledgeable about the community, its needs and what is best for it than others on the council. He sought to suggest that those representing the city and its residents on the council can do alright for themselves and those they represent by being professional, respectful and deferential to those with knowledge and experience, and that the only substantial problems that raise themselves in the context of governmental and intergovernmental representation grow out of personality conflicts between or involving elected officials and other elected officials or staff members.
There was a level of contradiction and paradox in what Herrick said and its subtext, which extended to his assumption of greater authority based on his experience as was contrasted with the lesser experienced members of the council, taken together with what had the appearance of his and Putz’s brewing conflict with Segovia and Hicks.
“We have new council members coming and going every four years,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s my duty to educate the new council members coming in. It’s almost impossible to know what you don’t know.”
Herrick reversed course in short order, however.
“We have a new council member coming in,” he continued, referencing Hicks. “I’m hoping whatever committee he sits on, that he asks questions of the people who are currently sitting on it. If I am working with him in that regard, I’d be happy to share everything I know with him, but it’s pretty extensive. If you have questions, please ask. I’d be more than happy to spend any amount of time with any council member or board member and share my knowledge.”
Herrick’s statements came amid what seemed to be a devolving exchange with Segovia in which she recaptured the sense of his assertion that he did not have a duty to impart is wisdom to incoming council members by noting that he had refused to assist her in her effort to learn the ropes when she had been appointed to the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency Board of Directors. Herrick insisted that he had made no such refusal. Segovia contradicted him.
Segovia grew emotional in her description of the fashion in which she felt she was being pressured to go along with Herrick’s and Putz’s agenda and the implied threats to remove her from boards and attenuate her power and authority as a councilwoman if she did not.
“I really do not appreciate being attacked by both of you this way,” Segovia said to Herrick and Putz. “I am understanding now why [former Councilwoman] Bynette [Mote] felt the way that she did. I was dreading this meeting tonight because I knew the two of you were going to gang up on me.”
Putz sought to emphasize how important it was that the rest of the council see eye-to-eye with him and Herrick as the most experienced hands on the panel with the most refined understanding of what is in the community’s best interest. With an oblique reference to the failure to get the Replenish Big Bear Program under way, he said, “For me personally, some of the challenges we’ve been through in the last six months or however long it’s been, nine months or whatever, have not been pleasant for me. I can’t imagine they’re pleasant for other people. My hope would be we can do something differently to avoid that.”
The more assertive Herrick and Putz insisted that the redrafting of the rules of order for the council were intended to benefit the city and its residents. City staff, meaning City Manager Sund, had reached to the rules of council member comportment that had been adopted by the Victorville as part of its city council’s effort to rein in former Councilwoman Bianca Gomez, whose approach to governance had rankled her colleagues. Mayor Perri Melnick had praised the Victorville rules as being something worth emulating or modeling Big Bear Lake’s rules of order on. From Segovia’s reaction during the specially-called meeting at 4 p.m. and Hick’s reaction later that evening at the regular city council meeting, it was clear that they did not view the council majority’s effort to impose its collective interpretation of what is in the citizenry’s best interest as a guidepost as to how those in a minority on the council should vote in the same positive light.
Of note, City Attorney Steve Deitsch seemed to be closer to Segovia’s and Hick’s position than he was to that of Herrick, Putz and Melnick.
Each individual council member is at liberty to utilize his or her own judgment in voting and does not need to heed the attitude or point-of-view of the majority in participating in the decision-making process, Deitsch opined.
“When council members separately go out into the public and speak, they, under the rules of the city council should make clear to the public whether they’re speaking on behalf of the council, meaning the council has given direction or itself made a statement consistent with what the individual council member wants to say outside of the council or, instead, whether the council member speaking outside of the city council meetings is speaking only for the council member individually,” Deitsch said.
“Regarding service on other boards such as Mountain Transit or BBARWA for example, the individual who is selected by the city council has the authority, in my opinion, to vote their individual conscience,” the city attorney continued. “The city council can provide advice, even call it direction but, in my opinion, the individual representing the city, so to speak, on that board has authority to make up their own mind at the time of the vote while voting and participating in discussions on that outside board.”
Deitsch did, however, indicate the council has the authority to take action if a council member by his or her votes as a member of an outside panel does not meet its collective expectations.
“Even though an individual may serve on an outside board and vote their individual conscience, if the city council for any reason is displeased with their service on the outside board, the city council may rescind their appointment and instead appoint another council member to fill that representative position on an outside board.”
As the council, at the 4 p.m. specially-called meeting without Hicks participating was winding down without taking any action at that time, Deitsch said, “Rules of order indicate the mayor alone makes appointments and the rules are silent about rescinding any appointments. That might be one category of issue that you might want to discuss in the future when the rules of order come back before the city council.”
When the city council convened its regularly scheduled meeting sometime after 5 p.m. on December 11, Hicks had arrived after attending the airport board meeting, at which point he was sworn into office.
During the portion of the council meeting that was devoted to the city staff’s and the council’s responses to public comments at the November 13 council meeting, Councilman Putz used the opportunity to raise the issue adjusting the city council’s rules of order and public comments.
“Society relies on civility,” he began. “When we stop being civil, our society, our city becomes unpleasant at best and dangerous at worst.” He decried the behavior of members of the public during the November 13 meeting, including what he called the use of vulgarity. “We have seen it now for some time on full display, a vocal minority that demands what they want without regard to the impact on others, that asserts they are above civility above the rules, above the law. I see no evidence they want to help or improve things. They waste taxpayer resources, saying the same thing over and over, making uninformed statements and bending the truth. The repeated, rude, foul behavior underscores my point: It is not harmless. It is not just noise. It damages our relationships. It is a distraction that prevents us from doing our jobs. It abuses our public employees and discourages capable people from participating in local government. It harms us and does material damage. Big Bear Lake has been and can be better than this. Constructive criticism is necessary and welcomed. We as a city, as a city council, have a responsibility to ensure that everyone, not just the vocal minority, have their right to free speech, a right that is limited in this forum, and like any right comes with responsibilities. We have to balance that right with our need to conduct city business and to provide a workplace for city employees free of harassment and abuse. I think we have reached a point where we need to increase the guardrails that help keep those of us who misunderstand the process and continue to struggle with being civil. I am hopeful my fellow council members will join me in the new year and take a look at our public comment process and expectations and consider adjusting the guardrails so that we can better do our work in a more productive setting. Remember, as is the case with any right or privilege, if you abuse it, you lose it. A rational person will understand this is not an attempt to suppress free speech, because a rational person would also understand that we need a good process to ensure free speech.”
Hicks said, “Before you go off that, I’m sorry, I just took an oath to the Constitution of the United States of America to come on this council. One of the things that’s in that constitution is the First Amendment that allows people to redress their government. We have no right as a council, an organization to tell people what they can or cannot say. Now, if they yell fire in a theater, different story. But if they want to come up here and call you every name under the sun, they have a right under our constitution to do it. Don’t ever forget that right, because if we lose that right we lose our country and we lose the way of life that we enjoy, period.”
In seeking to have the last word, Putz said, “In fact, this is not an unlimited public forum here. These are city business meetings held in public. We, actually, do have the ability. to some degree, to restrict what people say and how people behave in order so that we can conduct or business and do so freely.”
Hicks, however said he wanted to make clear that he as member of “this council” was “not trying to throttle free speech. I’m sorry, Mr. Putz’s comments clearly indicate that there’s a throttling trying to go on here.”