The 45-day ban the Rialto City Council imposed on the consideration of newly filed warehouse project applications within its city limits that was approved on January 28 will be extended to 6 months and 29 days, the Rialto City Council unanimously decided on February 25.
At its final meeting in January, the council voted 4-to-1 with Councilmember Andy Carrizales dissenting, to impose a 45-day moratorium on the acceptance of any further applications for the construction of warehouses.
A cross section of Rialto’s residents has come to believe that the city has a glut of warehouses or distribution centers/logistics facilities, and that too many existing ones are located much too close to or within residential neighborhoods and that others are unacceptably proximate to schools. In response to those complaints, city staff began examining the city code and the Rialto Development Code to ascertain what leverage city officials possess to prevent the further proliferation of warehouses into areas deemed incompatible with them and their function.
There are more than 934 million square feet of warehousing in San Bernardino and Riverside counties at present, with more being built. That includes 3,034 warehouses in San Bernardino County. In 177,961-population, 50-square mile Ontario there are 289 warehouses larger than 100,000 square feet. In 213,000-population, 43.07-square mile Fontana there are 142 warehouses larger than 100,000 square feet. In 92,988-population, 29.6-square mile Chino there are 118 warehouses larger than 100,000 square feet. In 174,453-population 40.12-square mile Rancho Cucamonga there are 109 warehouses. In 223,728-population, 59.2-square mile San Bernardino there are 75 warehouses larger than 100,000 square feet. In 73,280-population, 36-square mile Redlands, there are 56 warehouses larger than 100,00 square feet.
Rialto, with its 104,380 population, is, at 24.1 square miles, more compact than those other cities and thus more densely populated. At present, it has 47 warehouses of more than 100,000 square feet.
In 2021 and 2022, the cities of Colton, Chino and Redlands each imposed a temporary moratorium on the further construction of warehouses in their jurisdictions, and the San Bernardino City Council by a five-sevenths majority very nearly did the same in June 2021. That effort to declare a moratorium on further warehouse construction within the county’s largest city failed because the five-sevenths margin of passage was less than the four-fifths vote of a governmental entity’s legislative body that is required under California law.
What was learned by Rialto city staff is that some zoning restrictions apply in Rialto to limit where warehouses can be constructed, but there are plentiful examples of juxtapositions of zones that permit incompatible uses to exist adjacent to one another in places all over the city.
In imposing the moratorium in January, it was the intent of the council to give staff time to come up with a plan by which a refinement of the zoning code could be made and requirements created for distancing any future warehouses from schools, homes, apartments and uses where people congregate, together with requirements for buffers or physical barriers between warehousing and other structures.
Many people feel that the large diesel-powered semi-trucks that are part of distribution facility operations with their unhealthy exhaust emissions together with the bane of traffic gridlock they create should be kept away from and out of residential neighborhoods altogether.
In the less than a month that the moratorium was in place, city officials were unable to formulate any plan with regard to zone changes, ordinances or regulations to effectively offset the intrusion of warehousing into the city’s residential districts. It was thought advisable to give staff and the council more time to arrive at such a strategy. Under California law, a moratorium on the building of a designated type of development can be imposed for a period of up to a year. Thus, the city, led by newly-installed City Manager Tanya Williams, decided to set before the council the option of extending the moratorium for another ten months and 15 days beyond the one that is already in place and was set to lapse on March 14.
Councilman Ed Scott, who was perhaps the strongest advocate of the moratorium in January, expressed concern that going with a moratorium until January 27, 2026 would be a bit much. Therefore, the council voted to vote extend for six months, as of that evening, the moratorium which at that point had already been in place for 28 days, meaning it will remain in place until midnight August 26, 2025.
Joining with Mayor Joe Baca Sr, Councilman Ed Scott, Councilwoman Karla Perez and Councilman Edward Montoya Jr in supporting the ban this time was Carrizales, despite his previous opposition.
Carrizales made an abrupt turnaround, at least in part out of reaction to the response to his opposition to the moratorium in January. Many suggested that Carrizales had shown disregard for the prevailing sentiment in the city because he was unduly influenced by money provided to his electioneering fund by developmental interests involved in building warehouses.
Carrizales was heavily supported in his successful bid for reelection in November 2024 by elements of the building industry, including those with interests in warehouse projects or potential warehouse projects. Those donors include GR Advisors Group, which gave him $5,500; Michael Tyre of Howard Industrial Partners, who gave him $5,500; the San Bernardino County Business Owners Political Action Committee, which gave him $2,500; the Building Industry Association of Southern California, which provided him with $2,500; and the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, which boosted his electoral effort with another $2,500.
While they pulled up short of stating that Carrizales was out-and-out being paid off, a handful of Rialto residents said that his vote in January had demonstrated a lack of integrity and weak character, illustrating his inability to say no to those who are bankrolling his political career, particularly when those deep-pocketed donors have goals and objectives at odds with the interests of his constituents.
-Mark Gutglueck