In the City of Big Bear Lake, where the political game is played as or more ruthlessly than anywhere else in San Bernardino County, the forces in control of the community this week installed two key functionaries to maintain the establishment’s hold on the machinery of governance.
The city council on June 11 appointed Jim Eakin and Ernesto Mendoza to the planning commission and reappointed Michael LoGrande and Lisa Bist to the panel.
The action came two months and two days after former Planning Commission Chairman Jeff Holoubek was removed in a coup, which no one affiliated with the city or familiar with the details is willing to talk about.
Key to understanding the reality of life in the rustic paradise hidden away in the northeast corner of the San Bernardino Mountains is that control over the machinery of governance in the county’s second smallest municipality population-wise and third smallest city geographically lies not with the city’s residents but a mix of the locally-based entrepreneurs and both national and international corporations running the community’s booming tourist industry.
A skiing mecca in the winter and early spring, a co-claimant with Lake Arrowhead as the boating capital of San Bernardino County from spring until mid-fall, a major swimming venue in the summer, a place where hiking, camping and fishing are ongoing year round and the spot for upland game bird and California mule deer hunting in season, Big Bear has almost as many outsiders breathing its rarefied,1.277-mile-high oxygen-thin atmosphere on a daily basis than natives who call it home. While its status as a tourist community first and foremost has 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, the influx of temporary residents into any given locale and in particular within the city limits of Big Bear Lake has left many of those who actually call Big Bear Lake home – the residents of the city – with the impression that they are second class citizens.
A demonstration of this reality is how the city has come to terms, or more accurately, not come to terms, with the short-term rental dilemma.
With a population of 5,621, the 6.42-square mile city boasts 9,950 housing units, 8,292 of which are single family residences. The city thus has the largest dwellings-to-residents ratio among all cities in California, and indeed can claim the distinction of being among the a very limited number of cities throughout the entire world where the people who live there are constantly outnumbered by those who don’t by such an impressive margin. In practical terms, what that means is, in fact, the city has more dwellings serving as short-term rentals than it has residences.
Big Bear Lake features 8,292 single family homes and cabins, 86 duplexes/triplexes/four-plexes/condominiums, 1,078 apartment units and 494 mobile homes. In many cases, the mountain cabins that proliferate within the City of Big Bear Lake were never considered to be primary residences but rather served as second or vacation homes for those who lived elsewhere. Over the last three decades or more, a significant number of homes and cabins have simply been converted into temporary accommodations, both with and without regard to local ordinances or regulations. Nearby residents have been put at the disadvantage of having, for a short time, neighbors they do not know and who in some cases have little or no regard for others they are not likely to ever see again. On occasion, those guests have proven to be poor, if temporary, neighbors, creating disturbances, inviting dozens, scores or even hundreds of others to parties on the premises they have leased or rented, involving parking and traffic problems. Rarely but still potentially, such parties can prove to be raves, with highly intoxicated participants. Excessive noise has been an issue in some cases. Bonfires have been a feature of some such gatherings. In a smattering of cases, those lodging at the rental properties or their guests grow aggressive or confrontational with nearby residents.
The Big Bear Lake City Council found itself caught between on one side the full-time residents who have been clamoring for tough restrictions to be imposed on both tourists and the owners of vacation rental units and on the other side by both absentee landlords and present landlords who are making a killing by renting their properties on a temporary basis and want nothing in place that will discourage renters from coming to Big Bear Lake.
In general and with only a few exceptions, city council members have proven more responsive to the wealthier landlords than the city’s homeowners. While not, exactly, ignoring the plight of the city’s common residents, the council collectively responded to the calls for a strict ordinance by instituting what 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 contingent of city residents who did not believe that City Hall had gone far enough, in April 2021, formed a formal coalition, ultimately taking on the name Big Bear Lake United to Limit Short Term Rentals. They lobbied for more vigorous regulation. Big Bear Lake United to Limit Short Term Rentals’ members made a concerted call for a cap on vacation rentals, and they pushed the city to increase the transitory occupancy tax – i.e., the city’s bed tax or hotel tax – from 8 percent to 12 percent, based on their argument that 35 percent of the calls for service from the fire department or sheriff’s department in Big Bear Lake involve short term rental properties and/or visitors to the city. In August 2021, the Big Bear Lake City Council voted 4-to-1, with then-Councilman Alan Lee in the minority, against a proposed cap on vacation rental permits, with the controlling council majority members indicating they wanted to give the regulations that exist an opportunity to work before they put more restrictive measures into place.
That was not good enough for the group of residents animated about the issue of vacation rentals. Big Bear Lake United to Limit Short Term Rentals embarked on an effort to bypass the city council, and its members set about gathering signatures on a petition to place on the November 2022 ballot an initiative calling for a limit on the number of vacation rentals in the city. The city council majority was startled to learn that the referendum’s advocates were able to get 762 of the city’s 2,887 registered voters to sign the petition, qualifying the measure to go to a vote. The San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters designated the initiative as Measure O, which 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?”
Simultaneously, a counter-movement was mounted. One of the features of that movement was an ostensibly unconnected but in actuality related effort to recall Councilman Lee from office, one that was heavily supported by the four other members of the city council.
The members of homegrown and grassroots Big Bear Lake United to Limit Short Term Rentals collectively raised $19,649.59 to run the campaign to convince their fellow residents in Big Bear Lake to vote for the measure. They actually spent $24,231.47 on their campaign, going $4,581.88 into debt, which those at the movement’s helm had to make up for after the election. During the course of the campaign, 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.
Meanwhile, those opposed to Measure O, banding together under the sobriquet Residents for a Better Big Bear, formed the No on O Committee. To bankroll that effort, $173,978.07 was raised, 98.44 percent of which – $171,278.07 – was provided by individuals or entities outside of Big Bear Lake. The San Francisco-based Committee to Expand the Middle Class, an entity sponsored by AirBnb, Inc, put up $50,153 to support No on O. The Los Angeles-based 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 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.
There was a degree of commonality between the forces arrayed against Measure O and those intent on forcing Lee from office by recalling him. The committee to recall Lee collected $25,764.44 and spent $21,847.59. Bankrolling the effort to recall Lee were 21 individuals or entities, the vast majority of whom had ties to the resort/tourism industry. The largest was CPRPRO, an organization of local resort owners, which ventured $10,000 toward the effort. The California Real Estate Political Action Committee provided $999.99, which was almost matched by the $995.19 provided by Patricia Hafen, the owner of the Pilates Studio in Big Bear.
Lee did not field a campaign to resist the recall.
Two Big Bear District 1 residents, Kendi Segovia and Jim Eakin, offered themselves as alternate candidates should the Lee recall succeed, which it did, with 210 votes or 74.2 percent in favor of removing him from office and 73 votes or 25.8 percent voting to keep him in place. Segovia, who served as the treasurer in the Lee recall campaign, prevailed, with 154 votes or 62.1 percent and Eakin, who likewise was involved in the effort to get rid of Lee, claiming 37.1 percent.
Retained in office by convincing margins in the 2022 Big Bear Municipal election were longtime Councilman/Mayor Rick Herrick in District 2, District 3 Councilman Randall Putz and District 4 Councilwoman Perri Melnick. Segovia was welcomed aboard by Herrick, Putz and Melnick as the newest member of the Big Bear tourism industry-aligned establishment.
Over the next two years would come some subtle and some pronounced shifts in the community. District 5 Councilwoman Bynette Mote, first elected in 2020 and who had sided with the anti-Lee forces on the council and in the community while seemingly rooting herself into the Big Bear establishment, throughout 2023 found herself being slowly disenfranchised as she evinced a degree of independence from the mainstream and concern for residents’ interests in the conflict with local hospitality and tourism businesses. In April 2024, she abruptly resigned from the city council.
Similarly, Segovia ran into difficulty when she advocated, as an appointed member of the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency Board that the community take a cautious approach before committing to moving forward with the $510 million Replenish Big Bear project to construct a modern sewage and wastewater treatment plant to service a mountain area population of 18,000, including those in the City of Big Bear Lake, and deliver to 2,210 acre feet of purified water per year that will be discharged to Big Bear Lake tributaries and sustain the level of Lake Big Bear, which has been diminishing during drought and near-drought conditions over the past two decades.
Segovia’s hesitation in backing the Replenish Big Bear Project came as the 2024 election, in which she needed to stand for reelection to remain on the council, was approaching. Both Herrick and Putz, who previously appeared to be on good terms with Segovia and were considered to be her supporters in the reelection effort, turned on her. Herrick, who owns Big Bear’s local radio station, swung his support to Eakin, who had belatedly declared himself as a write-in candidate. Herrick and Putz, ultimately backed by Melnick, threatened to rescind Segovia’s appointment to the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency Board.
Eakin’s write-in challenge of Segovia proved unsuccessful, but Putz and Herrick did not de-intensify their challenge of Segovia, letting it be known that they, together with Melnick, yet controlled the city council and its decision-making process and that any dissension on the council that might weaken the prevailing ruling coalition was viewed very dimly, not just by them but by the deep-pocketed tourism industry interests that would not hesitate to snuff Segovia’s fledgling political career out if she failed to take a more prudent approach toward respecting the powers that be in the Big Bear Lake Community. In relatively short order, Segovia was brought to heel, and the Replenish Big Bear Project is on a trajectory toward realization.
Simultaneous to all of this, the election to determine who would fill the vacancy on the council created with the resignation of Mote was approaching as 2024 progressed. Two contestants ultimately vied for the post, one being Chuck Hicks, a member of the Big Bear Airport District Board of Directors, and the other Big Bear Lake Planning Commissioner Jeff Holoubek.
Holoubek qualified as a member of the Big Bear establishment not only as a member of the planning commission but its chairman. The planning commission, while an independent body in concept, in general was in sync with the priorities at City Hall as determined and set by the city council as a whole. Moreover, the members of the commission serve at the pleasure of the city council, such that if the commission as a body or commissioners on their own were to prove problematic, they could be removed in short order. There was little or nothing to suggest that once elected to the city council, Holoubek would represent any threat to the status quo.
Hicks, on the other hand, made those at City Hall nervous. As a veteran who had served with three branches of the military, a licensed pilot, an attorney-at-law and a motorcyclist, he represented the type of individual with a varied background, financial wherewithal, strength of personality and streak of defiance that might prove ungovernable, someone at least slightly akin to Lee.
Just as the 2024 election season was getting underway, Big Bear Lake used its governmental authority to, depending on one’s individual perspective, obstruct Hicks or help Holoubek, or both. Despite the consideration that Hicks had lived in Big Bear Lake since 2010, the city demanded from him proof of residency. When he provided it, the city deemed it inadequate and disqualified him as a candidate in District 5. Hicks protested. The city doubled down, declaring that he would not be on the ballot. Hicks filed suit against the city and the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters. Despite his status as an attorney, he did not represent himself, but brought in an attorney steeped in California Election Law. The matter went before a judge and the court. After an examination of a full range of evidence, including the title to Hick’s Big Bear Lake home, the registration of his motorcycle and various utility bills, the judge ruled that Hicks was indeed a Big Bear resident within District 5, going so far as to award Hicks attorney fees in making the judgment.
Perhaps in part because of the publicity that attended the city’s unsuccessful effort to bar Hicks’ candidacy and the name recognition boost Hicks derived and the conclusion at least some of the voters in Big Bear District 5 drew as a result, in the November 5, 2024 balloting and accompanying mail-in votes, Hicks prevailed, receiving 229 or 55.9 percent of the vote to Holoubek’s 173 or 43.03 percent.
Holoubek remained on the planning commission and its chairman for the next five months, but in late March, for reasons that have not been explicated, City of Big Bear Lake officials quietly resolved to bundle Holoubek up and send him packing. This was done quietly, with no public revelation that it was coming until the agenda for the April 9 city council meeting was posted at 5 p.m. on April 4. That agenda item, place on the consent calendar with what are deemed to be other noncontroversial items, read simply, “Approve the removal of Jeff Holoubek’s planning commission appointment without cause.”
Holoubek came to the April 9 meeting and addressed the council prior to the vote on the consent calendar.
He said that the it was a “very sad day for me. Until today, I was your chairman of the Big Bear Lake Planning Commission. About two weeks ago, I received a telephone call from our city attorney, Steve Deitsch, to say that an accusation had been made against me. He said I could either resign as planning commissioner or I would be publicly fired, here today. My response was and is that the claims are not true, and my own personal sense of integrity will not allow me to resign for something I did not do. I’ve pleaded with the city council for an investigation. I’ve even agreed to a polygraph test. However, I’m told that I’m not an employee and am not entitled to an investigation or an audience before the city council or any due process whatsoever. What is happening here today is wrong. I am being wrongly accused, and this city council seemingly has no interest in the truth.”
Without giving a rationale for its action, the council voted to remove him. The planning commission has operated at 4/5s strength since, with the remaining members being Michael Beveridge, Lisa Bist, Michael LoGrande and Sara Schacht. The commission elevated Michael LoGrande to the chairman’s spot.
Bist’s, LoGrande’s and Schacht’s terms were scheduled to elapse this year. Beveridge’s term, as was the case with Holoubek’s until he was removed prematurely, is to run to 2027.
The city council on June 11 took up making appointments to fill the Holoubek vacancy and the positions held by Bist, LoGrande and Schacht going forward.
Thus, the council was looking at the possibility of doing a major remake of the commission.
Bist, LoGrande and Schacht applied for reappointment and Mary Ann Berges, Jim Eakin, Jaime Gilles, Daniel Gulbranson, Scott Jeffress, Ernesto Mendoza and Mike Rotman sought consideration as well.
The council, using a ranking system in which they considered the 10 candidates for the four posts and selected five in descending order, gravitated to retaining Bist and LoGrande, while putting Mendoza and Eakin into the places formerly held by Schacht and Holoubek.
Melnick, who is now the mayor, in order chose LoGrande, Bist, Mendoza, Eakin and Schacht. Segovia chose Bist, LoGrande, Berges, Mendoza and Rotman, excluding from her list Eakin, who had competed with her to succeed Lee in 2022 and who ran as a write-in candidate against her last year. Herrick wanted Schacht, LoGrande, Eakin, Bist and Mendoza. Hicks chose only four, those being Mendoza, Bist, Berges and Eakin. Putz pressed for the appointment of Bist, LoGrande, Eakin, Rotman and Schacht, in that order.
Schacht, who had been serving as the commission’s vice chairwoman since Holoubek’s exit and LoGrande’s promotion to chairman, was offered a consolation appointment as an alternate if any of the four selected do not work out or resign.
The sacking of Holoubek and its mysterious circumstances is troubling for some given the controversy around LoGrande.
LoGrande has a pedigree and resume which arguably make him the best qualified individual to be on the planning commission. He was the planning director for the City of Los Angeles for five years, from 2011 until 2016, and held high-ranking and middle level positions in municipal planning and community development divisions prior to leading the planning department. As such, he has urban planning and development issue expertise unrivaled not only in Big Bear, but throughout other planning commissions in San Bernardino County.
There are, however, questions about his honest, integrity, trustworthiness and whether he might abuse the authority he has acceded to based on whether his loyalty will lie with the city or those looking to develop there.
The City of Los Angeles has a provision in its city code, LAMC § 49.5.13(C)(1), which imposes a so-called “cooling off period” before a city department head can begin lobbying the city and particularly the department he headed. LAMC § 49.5.13(C)(1) prohibits a former high-level City official from receiving compensation for attempting to influence action on any issue in any city agency for one year after leaving the City of Los Angeles’ service.
Immediately after leaving city employment in 2016, LoGrande formed LoGrande and Company, LLC and began to work as a private consultant to developers with projects in the city. At the same time, he was also serving as a consultant to the City of Los Angeles, making $18,000 per month. During the year after he left his city position, LoGrande accepted payments from clients for attempting to influence action by the Los Angeles Planning Department regarding four different development projects.
When he was confronted about what he had done, LoGrande admitted to violating the cooling-off period requirement by attempting to influence city action less than one year after leaving city service. When the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission unanimously approved a stipulated order imposing a penalty of $281,250 on him, LoGrande accepted the penalty, which is the largest penalty the Ethics Commission has ever imposed on an individual for violations of the Los Angeles Governmental Ethics Ordinance and the second largest such penalty ever imposed when considering fines imposed on all entities, including corporations. He worked out a deal in which he paid, beginning in August 2019 and running through July 2020, $23,437.50 monthly installments on the fine.
By accepting the fine and the payment schedule, LoGrande signaled that he had made more money from the unethical/illegal arrangement than the amount of the fine that was imposed on him.
That is not the only time LoGrande has maneuvered around official government regulations.
In 2022, LoGrande ran, unsuccessfully, for a position on the Big Bear Municipal Water District Board of Directors.
He missed the deadline for filing a report with regard to his expenditures on that campaign, one that fell more than a month before the election and while the campaign was yet ongoing, preventing his opponents and the public from learning whom he was being supported by.
The California Fair Political Practices Commission on December 15, 2022 issued him a warning letter, stating, “The Enforcement Division has completed its review of the facts in this case. Specifically, we found that you failed to timely file the pre-election campaign statement. You violated the Act because you failed to file your Form 470 by September 29, 2022, the deadline to file the first pre-election campaign statement. But, for the following reasons, the Enforcement Division has decided to close your case with a warning letter rather than a fine: You were referred as part of the proactive pre-election outreach program; you filed your Form 470 immediately after you were contacted by the Enforcement Division; you filed it before the election; you were an unsuccessful candidate; and you have not had a recent prior violation of this section. Please note that while the Enforcement Division is closing this matter without a fine, your filing officer may assess late filing penalties. This letter serves as a written warning. The information in this matter will be retained and may be considered should an enforcement action become necessary based on newly discovered information or future conduct. Failure to comply with the provisions of the Act in the future will result in monetary penalties of up to $5,000 for each violation. A warning letter is an Enforcement Division case resolution without administrative prosecution or fine.”
In his statement to the council on June 11 as to why he wanted to remain on the commission, LoGrande said that he would “like to be a part of the change and growth of Big Bear.”
Councilman Putz asked LoGrande, “Do you have any personal business or employment connections and/or investments that may result in a possible conflict of interest? As an example do you have any vacation rentals, do you have any real property or business within the city limits?”
LoGrande responded, “I have my personal home, but it’s not a vacation rental. We use it. We live there. It’s not something that I rent out. I do have a consulting firm that does real estate and land use advising down the hill. I do not take clients in the City of Big Bear Lake. I haven’t since I’ve been on the commission. I never have actually. I’ve turned away clients that want to do business up here and refer them to other people that do that as a living up here. Mostly, that wouldn’t be a conflict. I can recuse myself. It’s really a perception of a conflict. My business is operated down the hill. Luckily, we can do a lot of that remotely. So, I have no conflict of interest in Big Bear. There’s no business interest for me to be on this commission.”
Putz asked, “As a current planning commissioner, how often would you estimate that you’ve needed to recuse yourself from participation?”
“Out of an abundance of caution, due to the location of my home being within a thousand feet, we had a not controversial but a little controversial R-3 [apartment residential zone] policy that affects the property within a thousand feet of me I have no ownership in. So, I recused myself at the time. Our prior planning director told me I didn’t need to, but I felt being within a thousand feet of a multi-family property that was being discussed, I should, out of an abundance of caution, recuse myself. But that’s the only time in the four years I’ve recused myself.”