By Mark Gutglueck
In a move deemed favorable by those in his personal circle, among his professional associates and his supporters and viewed with alarm by some of his colleagues and political reformers, Councilman John Echevarria is going to run for Colton Mayor in this year’s election.
Echevarria, who was born and raised in San Bernardino, went into a career in law enforcement, starting with the Upland Police Department in 1999, the same year he moved to Colton. In 2002, he made a lateral transfer to the San Bernardino Police Department. In November 2020, a little more than two years after he had been promoted to sergeant with the SBPD, he was elected as Colton’s District 5 city council representative.
At that time, the Colton City Council, led by a mayor elected at large, consisted of six members representing six districts within the 16.06-square mile city,  That was set to change, hovever.
In 2018, Colton’s voters, with 5,321 in favor and 4,469 opposed, had passed  Measure R, which called for reducing the seven-member mayor and council unit from a mayor elected at large and six council members elected by the constituents in a half dozen districts to a council consisting of an at-large mayor and four council members from as many districts.
n accordance with the terms of Measure R, in the November 2020 election, districts 3, 5 and 6 were up for election, but only for 2-year terms. Districts 1, 2, and 4 were not up for election in 2020. In the November 2022 election, all districts in Colton were contested, with the new districts 3 and 4 being conducted with 4-years at stake and districts 1 and 2 involving 2-year terms.
The neighborhood in which Echevarria resided, which had been in District 5, was contained within District 4, In 2022, Echevarria was retained on the council, this time representing District 4.
Echevarria has his admirers. Many see him in a very positive light based upon his professional standing and accomplishments. As a first responder in emergency situation and an upholder of the law, those who are safety-minded, establishmentarian in their approach to life and pro-law enforcement in their general bearing consider Echevarria to be a resolute {good egg], a model of virtue who embodies the finest instincts and attributes, making him undeniably well-suited to serve as community leader. And Echevarria is not just any policeman, but one who advanced to the rank of detective, then sergeant and now lieutenant. Having now been a policeman for 26 years, assuming his excursion into elected posts does not move him into higher political office, it is anticipated that before he retires after achieving 34 years in the law enforcement profession in 2033, he will move into an even higher position with the San Bernardino Police Department’s Command Staff than the Western District Commander post he now holds, almost assuredly as a police captain, possibly as assistant police chief and perhaps even police chief when San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman retires.
Some of those in Colton have no problem acknowledging Echevarria’s value to the people of Colton.
“My councilman’s better than yours,” is a constant refrain of District 4 resident Jacqueline Maypray.
“John Echevarria’s constituents are blessed to have a man like him in a leadership role fighting for them and their community!” according to Marti Christiansen.
Accordingly, a network has gotten behind Echevarria to encourage him to move up the political evolutionary chain. It is no secret that they, and Echevarria himself, have their sights set on that of San Bernardino County Fifth District supervisor, a position in the California Assembly, the California Senate or perhaps the United States Congress. While the elected position he now holds – Colton Fourth District councilman – might prove to be an adequate or even more than adequate base from which to vault into one of those elected billets, the position of Colton mayor has greater prestige than that of councilman. For that reason, Echevarria is seeking to claim the mayor’s gavel from Frank Navarro in November, whether Navarro is ready to surrender it willingly or not.
As attractive of a candidate as Echevarria is on paper and to his supporters and professional and personal associates, paradoxically there are aspects to his fast-moving political ambition which are for many people, both inside and outside of Colton, troubling. While some of those issues may be a matter of superficiality or style or perspective, there are meaningful and deep matters of substance involved which are moving individuals and forces into position to snuff Echevarria’s electioneering hopes into oblivion and remove him as a horse at the gate in the Inland Empire’s political sweepstakes entirely.
Among San Bernardino County’s 24 cities and incorporated towns, 14, more than half – Chino, Montclair, Upland, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Rialto, Colton, Grand Terrace, San Bernardino, Needles, Barstow, Adelanto and Apple Valley – elect their mayor directly. The other 10 – Chino Hills, Loma Linda, Highland, Redlands, Big Bear, Yucaipa, Yucca Valley, Twentynine Palms, Victorville and Hesperia – entrust the members of the council to choose from among themselves on whom the honorific of wielding the mayoral gavel is to be conferred.
In the fourteen cites where a mayor is elected, the timing of the mayoral election is a subtle though very real matter of political import. No city in the county, on a normal basis, holds the elections for all of its elective posts simultaneously. Now that all cities and towns in San Bernardino County that previously held their municipal elections in odd-numbered years have discontinued that practice, their mayoral/city council elections take place at staggered intervals in even-numbered years, such that the election of some mayors and council members around the county occur in presidential election years and some fall in gubernatorial election years. Now that Colton has reduced its city council/mayor panel to five members, only San Bernardino, with its seven council members and a mayor, and Needles, with its six council members and a mayor, have council/mayor panels of more than five.
As a consequence of these staggered elections, in those cities where the mayor is elected directly, there is at least one member or hopeful member of the council and in some cases two or three members of the council or hopefuls who run for election or must stand for reelection in the same year and in the same balloting that the mayor runs. There are also members of the council in those cities where the mayor is directly elected who run for election or stand for election in the year where the mayor is in midterm and is not running for election. Thus, for some incumbent council members – those whose electoral term is the same as the mayor’s in their city – who must risk their incumbency as a council member to run against an incumbent mayor. Conversely, there are politicians – incumbent members of a city council in a city with a directly elected mayor whos terms is staggered from their own council term – who do not risk their incumbency as a council member if they choose to challenge the incumbent mayor. In the case of an officeholder – a council member – whose term is staggered from that of the mayor, if he or she runs for mayor and is unsuccessful, he or she will remain on the council to complete his or her term that he or she was elected to two years previously. In the case of a council member whose term corresponds with that of the mayor’s term who takes it upon himself or herself to run for mayor and loses, he or she will not remain in office past the month following the election, given that one cannot run for both mayor and council member at the same time.
In Colton as it now stands, the council members or hopefuls in District 1 and in District 2 stand for election or reelection in presidential election years. The council members or those seeking office in District 3 and in District 4 stand for election or reelection in years corresponding with California’s gubernatorial election, as does the mayor. In this way, because of the timing of the elections in Colton, for Echevarria to run for mayor, he must risk losing his incumbency on the council. If he manages to win in the 2026 race for mayor, which in this case presumably means defeating the incumbent, Frank Navarro, he will remain in political office. If, however, he does not succeed in unseating Navarro in the November 3, 2026 election, he will have to leave office in December 2026, when the winners of the previous month’s election are sworn in to serve over the next four years.
One element of the paradox that Echevarria embodies is his status as a vaunted law enforcement officer. As noted, for establishmentarians or those fond of law and order who have a positive impression of police in general, Echevarria is likely to garner their votes. Nevertheless, Echevarria’s appeal in this way is indistinguishable from the classic identification of the ideal police officer – a personality of command presence. Police officers expect, indeed demand, respect in the form of obedience from those they encounter. They brook no meaningful discussion beyond that of their own choosing and tolerate no arguing or reasoning that will lead to anything other than the outcome and resolution they expect. There is no give and take, no consideration of alternatives, no debate and no compromise in dealing with a police officer in the field. In Echevarria’s five years in elected office, the formula he has applied in governing has been a replication of how he comports himself in his professional life. Where there have been differences of opinion, if he has the political muscle on his side, which is usually the case in the form of the votes of Second District Councilwoman Kelly Chastain and First District Councilman David Toro who have gravitated into an alliance or semi-alliance with him on the council dais, things go Echevarria’s way. There is no middle ground, no compromise. In those very rare cases where there have been policy disagreements and he did not have the requisite votes to prevail because either Chastain or Toro was not with him on that particular issue, he simply lost. There was no effort at finding middle ground or compromising. The art and skill of compromise is not an element of Echevarria’s political armory that he has cultivated. He defaults, virtually always, to his command presence, the expectation that his mere presence and will to prevail will prevail.
It is not widely known how financially rewarding being a police officer has been for Echevarria. Police officers in San Bernardino are very well paid. In Echevarria’s case, he is now approaching making half of a million dollars per year, all told, for his service as a police lieutenant. In 2023, the last year for which figures are available, Echevarria, then a sergeant, was paid $179,137 in base salary, another $44,103 in overtime, together with $16,567 in pay add-ons and perquisites, together with $178,787.12 in benefits and deferred compensation, which included $125,196.12 deposited into his retirement fund, for a total annual compensation of $418,594.12. With his promotion to lieutenant and other raises, at present, Echevarria is being paid, in total, somewhere between $470,000 and $480,000 in 2026.
His run for mayor, if successful, would complicate salary and contract negotiations between the city and the Colton Police Officers Association. Colton police officers, at present, are paid at a scale that is calculated at 76.7835 percent of what police officers in San Bernardino are paid. Were Echevarria to become mayor, the police union almost assuredly would use his salary as a bargaining issue, quite likely starting with a demand that Colton officers be remunerated at a level in line with what the mayor is being paid to San Bernardino officers, starting with a comparison between what Colton is paying its police lieutenants vis-à-vis what San Bernardino is paying Echevarria. Echevarria would not be in a position, given his salary and benefits, to counter that, in comparison, Colton police officers are not underpaid.
The reality is, however, that Colton is simply not in a position to escalate pay for its employees beyond what it is already paying them.
As noted, Echevarria’s level of remuneration as a police officer in San Bernardino is not widely known, neither generally nor in San Bernardino nor in Colton. The celebration of him as a dedicated and hardworking peace officer and first responder, which has been a part of his past electioneering efforts and which, it is anticipated, is to be a major element of the appeal to voters in the 2026 mayoral race, would be undercut, perhaps marginally or perhaps significantly, were it to be widely disclosed that he is being paid nearly a half of a million dollars annually in his role as a police lieutenant.
Impacting on the question of whether in his roles as a public servant he is indeed serving the public or actually serving himself is a controversy Echevaria involved himself in recently, when the the Colton City Council, by a 3-to-2 margin in which the ruling coalition of Chastain, Toro and Echevarria prevailed, in November voted to up the city council’s pay by 364 percent.
In all the time that Echevarria had been serving as city council member, from December 2020 until December 2024 he had been paid $400 per month with a vehicle allowance of $220 per month. In 2023, the council took action to up the monthly stipend from from $400 to $440 and the automobile allowance from $220 to $242, effective as of December 2024.
In November 2025, Echevarria, Toro and Chastain, over the objections of Mayor Frank Navarro and Councilman Luis Gonzalez, voted to consolidate the stipend and automobile allowance into a single monthly payment of $1,600, the maximum amount that could be provided to a city council of a city with a population in the 50,000-to-75,000-population range. That change is to be effective in December 2026.
In casting his vote in favor of the pay increase for the council, Echevarria insisted his support of the change did not touch on wanting to boost his own remuneration but rather on making certain that holding office in Colton, which he, Toro and Chastain noted requires a considerable time commitment, is not seen as so monetarily unrewarding that those who have decent leadership skills forego seeking office because they must give up more financially rewarding opportunities outside the arena of public service or holding elective officer. Echevarria noted that he was himself fortunate enough to be well-paid during his day job, so he did not need the money but that others who were not as well-fixed fianancially as he was might not run for mayor or city council because doing so would mean they would have to develote time away from what were for them their normal workings hours during which they could be supporting themselves and their families. Offering officeholders the $1,600 a month would offset for many the financial sacrafice they would have to make to serve as a councilman. Councilwoman or as mayor, Echevarria said.
Hidden, however, is the implication the council/mayoral pay increase would have on Echevarria and his bottom line under a scenario where he draws his professional career as a law enforcement officer to a close early to intensify his political career. For most law enforcement officers in California, including those employed by the City of San Bernardino, their employment benefits include eligibility to retire at the age of 50 and begin drawing a pension equal to the officer’s highest annual salary times 3 percent times the number of years they were employed in the law enforcement field. Thus, an officer who began working for a police department or law enforcement agency on his 21st birthday and retires at the age of 50 would be eligible to get a pension equal to 87 percent [29 years times 3%] of the highest salary he (or she) received from the public entity – i.e., the police department – that employed him (or her) during those 29 years. In many or even most cases, those employed as police officers do not retire immediately upon reaching the age of 50 but instead extend their employment until having worked 33-and one-third years in the law enforcement field, at which point he (or she) is entitled to 100 percent of his (or her) annual highest salary while employed as a police officer.
Echevarria now has more than 26 years invested in his career as a law enforcement officer, such that at the age of 50 he would be – as of the current date, if he were to withdraw from employment right now – qualified to draw roughly a pension of roughly $172,056.76 [equal to his current annual salary of $216,423.60 X 3 percent time 26.5 years]. It is reasonable to anticipate that he will advance, before he retires from the San Bernardino Police Department to the rank of captain, which will likely provide him with an annual salary of roughly $275,000 per year by late 2032, when he will have achieved 33-and-a-third years in law enforcement, entitling him to a pension equal to 100 percent of his salary.
It is reasonable to expect that Echevarria, given his political ambition, would, upon achieving the post of mayor, seek, at the earliest practical date, higher office, be that San Bernardino County Fifth District supervisor or a position in the California Assembly or the California State Senate. His prospects of unseating current Fifth District County Supervisor Joe Baca Jr would be relatively slim, given Baca’s hold on the post. Given Assemblyman James Ramos’s hold on the 45th Assembly District and his personal wealth which has been previously and can be again used to bankroll his electioneering efforts, would likely render Echevarria’s challenge of Ramos to be even less likely to succeed than a race against Baca. It would thus appear that Echevarria’s effort to move up the political ladder in 2028 would involve seeking to succeed Eloise Gomez-Reyes, who is prevented by California’s term limit law from seeking state legislative office after her current term, as California state senator in the 29th District. As Echevarria, if successful in running for the State Senate in 2028, would need to resign from his position with the San Bernardino Police Department in December 2028 to be sworn in as a state senator, he would have at that point roughly 29-and-one-third to 29-and-one-half years as a police officer under his belt. This would entitle him to an annual pension for the rest of his life of somewhere between $202,028.38 [his anticipated $229,603.80 salary as lieutenant in 2028 X 3 percent X 29.33 years] and $203,199.36 [his anticipated $229,603.80 salary as lieutenant in 2028 X 3 percent X 29.5 years] if he remains in the rank of lieutenant or somewhere between $221,734.80 [his anticipated $252,000 salary as captain in 2028 X 3 percent X 29.33 years] and $223,020 [his anticipated $252,000 salary as captain in 2028 X 3 percent X 29.5 years].
Thus, if Echevarria leaves the police force to become state senator in December 2028, he will need to sacrifice the difference between the $275,000 per year pension he will receive after retiring as what is likely to be a police captain and the pension in the range between $202,028.38 and $223,020 he will pull by retiring roughly four years early to move into heavy duty elective politics, a difference of somewhere between, approximately, $51,000 to $72,000.
Viewed from this perspective, Echevarria’s vote in November 2025 to up his pay and that of his colleagues on the Colton City Council can be seen as being somewhat more venal than he stated at the time. The $1,600 per month stipend to be paid to the mayor and council members in Colton beginning in December 2026 translates to an annual salary of $19,200 per year. Coming as it does from a governmental entity, that $19,200 will be added to the maximum amount of money Echevarria will be paid while employed as either a police lieutenant or police captain if he retires in December 2028 to move into position as a state senator. That $19,200 added to his anticipated $229,603.80 salary as lieutenant in 2028 or to his anticipated $252,000 salary as captain in 2028 would boost the multiplicand in his pension calculation to either $248,803.80 or $271,200, boosting the pension he will receive over the course of the rest of his life.
While his supporters and Echevarria himself represent him as a someone who is serious about the responsibility he is taking on and committed to studying the issues he must deal with in the decision-making process, those involved in Colton government observe that he often appears to be winging it, without any sort of in-depth understanding of the issues brought before the city council and that he lacks institutional knowledge of the city or what has taken place there historically or going back to any time before he was elected to the city council, including occurrences or matters of significance from ten, 15, 20, 25, 30 or 40 years ago.
In this regard, his not being up on the issues coming before the council or the facts in which the ongoing decision being made are grounded in has resulted in some awkward moments where he begins to pressure either city staff or his council colleagues for the city to take action or move things in a certain direction that is out of keeping with reality. This combined with his police officer personality in which he uses his presumed authority to order those with whom he comes into contact around and make assertions that are factually incorrect has rubbed many at Colton City Hall the wrong way.
One of those pertained to the use of revenue that was being generated as a consequence of the passage of Measure S in November 2022. Measure S called for levying an additional 1 percent sales tax on transactions within the Colton City Limits to be used to support general government services and ensure the city could maintain its essential functions. While the proposal called for utilizing the money for maintaining funding to continue various municipal programs, including police patrols and fire protection, it was not promoted as a tax specifically intended to increase public safety initiatives but to employed to shore up the city’s finances generally. It is a peculiarity of California law that initiatives to create new taxes or increase existing taxes earmarked for a specific purpose, called a special tax, require two-thirds voter approval to be put into effect. Initiatives to create new taxes or increase existing taxes that are not designated for any specific purpose, called a general tax, need only get majority approval – 50 percent plus one vote – to be passed and go into effect. While Echevarria was one of those who joined with Mayor Frank Navarro, Councilman David Toro and Treasurer Aurelio DeLa Torre in promoting the Measure I proposal, as a consequence of his general lack of knowledge regarding local government and governance generally, Echevarria did not recognize the nuance with regard to special taxes and general taxes, and that presenting a tax as a general tax would give it a greater chance of passage because it had a much lower – one vote more than 50 percent – threshold for passage than that for a special tax – two-thirds or 66.667 percent.
Substantial discussions took place during the run-up to the November 2022 election about how the estimated $9.5 million to be generated by Measure S was to be utilized. A consensus was arrived at which included using a portion of the money to hire six police officers to backfill the officers that had been lost in 2009 during the economic downturn, as the city’s finances were at a low ebb, police officers left the department and funding to fill the positions did not materialize. A reality for the city at that point was that the department was unable to attract applicants for the police job because other police departments were offering hiring starting salaries for its officers.
The city was in the course of raising the department’s starting salary for new police recruits and had appropriated money to hire six officers. At that point, Echevarria, prior to the six officers being hired, leapt into the breach, claiming the city had not kept faith with its commitment to the voters who had approved Measure S. He wrongfully characterized Measure S as a special public safety tax, ignored that six officers were in hiring pipeline, demanded that three further police officers be hired, called for the hiring of a single additional firefighter and accused both staff and members of the city council of
plotting behind his back, despite public safety programs getting 70 percent of the Measure S funding. His slamming of everyone else did not sit well with those he targeted in his comments and led to not just the belief that Echevarria did not know what he was talking about but counter-accusations to that effect.
Echevarria’s ignorance and confusion with regard to what is actually going on at Colton City Hall is a byproduct, a good number believe, in his having spread himself too thin.
Echevarria is referred to by a fair number of Colton’s residents as “Superman.” That epithet is one made both seriously and sarcastically, and is based upon his prodigious claims of accomplishments. In addition to being a police lieutenant in San Bernardino, a job which requires the devotion of at least 40 hours per week and another four to eight hours of overtime, and a councilman in Colton, Echevarria is involved in an impressive number of outside activities as well as one’s related to his public positions that go well beyond the call of duty. He is the founder and president of a running club, through which he participates 5K and 3K runs at various locations, generally on weekends, in far flung places such as Big Bear Lake and Ventura. He regularly attends Mass on Sunday. He has been active in the Colton Chamber of Commerce, along with the Rotary Club and Lion’s Club. At the end of the year in 2024, he posted on Facebook, “When you gave me the privilege of representing you on the Colton city Council, I promised you that I would report back to you annually what I’ve done as your representative.” Echevaria then claimed he had, in 2024, engaged in “251 local visits/spotlights, 401 telephonic/zoom meetings, 23 training seminars and another 21 training seminars, made 20 district appointments, engaged in 404 local media highlights, facilitated 848 citizen concerns, hosted or attended 187 meetings, put out 74 informational bulletins, had 4,644 constituent contacts, attended 88 local government events, participated in 51 community clean ups, participated or attended 101 community engagement events, attended 98 council meeting, participated in 33 special commission or emergency meetings and put out 15 press releases.”
For many, those claims came across as a bit suspect, as in the entirety of 2024, the full city council met only 25 in regularly scheduled and special meetings throughout 2024, though his reference may have been to not just those agendized meeting but another 73 one-on-one meetings he had with his council colleagues.
There doesn’t appear to be anyone who is questioning Echevarria’s energy and active approach. From this standpoint, indeed, he comes across as “Superman,” capable of moving at superspeed, carrying out dozens or even scores of tasks in the time the average person can tend to three or four or five. Still, a common lament is that while he is present physically, Echevarria is not fully mentally engaged while he is out and about, and is insufficiently focused on the business he is engaged in, and therefore unfamiliar with the action he is taking or the items he is voting upon, to some degree just going through the motions, not giving the matters his constituents have entrusted him with overseeing the amount of attention they need to be cogently dealt with.
This harkens to Echevarria’s previously referenced lack of institutional memory when it comes to civic issues in Colton, a curious condition for a city council member who wants to be mayor. In the late 1990s, Colton was consumed by scandal when then-Mayor Karl Gaytan and council members Don Sanders and James Grimsby and former Councilman Abe Beltran were arrested by the FBI and charged with soliciting and accepting bribes and convicted. Gaytan, Sanders and Grimsby were removed from office. Money was, it was revealed, flowing in omnidirectionally to mayors and council members from those with business before the city whose projects, contracts and franchises were subject to approval by mayoral and council votes. The affair that had touched off the revelations pertained to the 1995/1996 closing out of the city’s sanitation department and the awarding of the trash hauling franchise to Taormina Industries. A report generated by former Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Mark McDonald, who had been hired by the city at the instigation of then-Police Chief Bernie Lundsford and then-City Attorney Julie Biggs determined that Taormina had bribed former Mayor George Fulp, Councilman Sanders and Councilman Beltran to get them to override the determination of an independent consultant, Richard Tagore-Erwin and the company he headed, the R.W. Beck Company, that the city’s maiden trash hauling franchise should be awarded to Burrtec Industries following an open bidding process. Instead, Fulp, Sanders and Beltran strong-armed Tagoere-Erwin into altering his report on the bid analysis to indicate that Taormina industries should be considered a qualified applicant for the franchise and intimidated then-City Manager Malik Freeman and then-Assistant City Manager Daryl Parrish into authoring a report recommending passage of an item placed on the city council’s May 16, 1996 meeting agenda to confer the franchise upon Taormina. At that meeting, the city council, by a 6-to-1 margin, with then-Councilman John Hutton dissenting, approved the franchise contract with Taormina.
Thereafter, at multiple junctures, successive city council’s extended the city’s trash franchise with Taormina and its corporate successor, Republic Industries and then Taormina/Republic’s corporate successor, CR&R. In 2023, with the City of Colton not having held an open bidding process on the city’s trash franchise for more than two-and-a-half decades since the orginal graft-tainted process in which Taormina was chosen over the company, Burrtec, deemed best qualified to be entrusted with the franchise, the ruling coalition of Chastain, Toro and Echevarria, over the objections of Mayor Navarro and Councilman Gonzalez as well as City Manager Bill Smith and his senior administrative officers at City Hall, began moving toward rolling the trash franchise over once more and extending the arrangement with Taormina’s corporate successor, CR&R until 2037, such that Colton would go 40 years without subjecting one of its major franchises to an open public bid process. Ultimately, in February 2024, Chastain, Toro and Echevarria voted to extend CR&R’s hold on the franchise until 2037.
During the council’s process in considering the extension of CR&R’s franchise and granting it, the council took a vote at its September 18, 2023 meeting on a motion made by Chastain and seconded by Echevarria, to extend the CR&R trash hauling franchise from 2026 until 2036. That motion failed on a 2-to-3 vote, with councilmen Toro and Gonzalez and Mayor Navarro in opposition. Toro then made a motion to have the city council conduct a public workshop to go over the proposal to extend the franchise contract without conducting a public bidding process. That passed on a 3-to-2 vote, with Chastain, Echevarria and Toro prevailing. That workshop was held on November 1, 2023. The consideration of the franchise extension was continued, ultimately to the city council meeting of February 20, 2024. At that meeting, the council by a 3-to-2 vote, with Chastain, Toro and Echevarria prevailing over the dissenting Navarro and Gonzalez, extended the city’s trash franchise for the third time with Taormina/Republic/CR&R, locking in a contract that has been prolonged for 40 years without any competitive bid process.
Echevarria’s vote on September 18, 2023 to extend the CR&R trash hauling franchise from 2026 until 2036 appears to have been a violation of California Government Code Section 84308, commonly known as the Levine Act, which prohibits a local official, both elected and appointed, from voting on or participating in any matter or decision-making process impacting a person or company from whom or from which the official has received a political donation of $500 or more within either a year before or a year after the donation is made. In Echevarria’s case, on December 15, 2022, he received $1,497.50 donation from CR&R.
Under California Government Code Section 84308’s so-called 12-month rule, elected officials must must recuse themselves from proceedings involving licenses, permits, entitlements or contracts if they received more than $500 from a party/participant within the preceding 12 months. Under California Government Code Section 84308’s so-called post-decision restriction, elected officials cannot accept more than $500 from a party/participant for 12 months after the final decision.
Knowing and willful violations of California Government Code Section 8430 can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor, which may include fines of up to the greater of $10,000 or three times the amount of the unlawful contribution, as well as jail time for up to one year.
There were numerous business entities in Colton who prior to the city council’s vote to extend CR&R’s trash hauling franchise in Colton until 2036 expressed dissatisfaction with CR&R’s performance going back several years. Those included concerns with regard to health hazards, one of which pertained to CR&R’s failure to abide by a requirement that it steam-clean its dumpsters at least once a year, particularly those at eating establishments. Those raising this issue included at least two of Echevarria’s political supporters and campaign donors, who said in 2024 that they were baffled and disappointed in Echevarria’s unwillingness to insist upon CR&R fulfilling all the requirements of the previous franchise agreement before extending another decade. Some indicated the belief that CR&R had provided Echevarria with some order of an illegal inducement – a quid pro quo in the form of a bribe or kickback – to influence his vote to extend the contract. No tangible proof of that suggestion was ever produced. Others, including some of Echevarria’s supporters, said that his tolerance of CR&R’s failure to meet all of the criteria specified in the earlier franchise agreement and his willingness to extend CR&R’s franchise until 2036 was not an outgrowth of his having received any donations or money from the company but was rather explicated by the consideration that one of his girlfriends worked for CR&R.
The Echevarria paradox – his existential duality – extends right into the heart of his political identity, his identification as a politician.
Just as some intend describing him as “Superman” to be a true compliment and others refer to him in that manner as an ironic insult, there are those who are sincere in describing him as a skillful politician and others who apply that description to him in a deprecatory fashion.
Within the San Bernardino Police Department, there are those at a rank above him, those in capacities equal to his own and those below the level of lieutenant who believe he has a promising future in elective office ahead of him and that after he punches his obligatory ticket as councilman and mayor in Colton he will readily move up the political chain, perhaps to county supervisor, then into the state legislature and perhaps beyond that to Congress. His experience as a street police officer and now in a command role provides him with a perspective that might prove valuable to the community, California and society as a whole if is given a place within the governmental establishment at the County Administrative Building on Arrowhead Avenue in San Bernardino, at the Statehouse in Sacramento or in Washington, D.C. At least a handful of those at the police department see such potential in him. Clearly, having been elected twice in Colton in what are two overlapping but not precisely the same districts shows that there are those who trust him to represent them and their interests at City Hall. To some of his constituents, he is perceived as someone who can make government answerable to them.
At the same time, there are those who recognize him as being a classic politician, someone who can talk out of both sides of his mouth and not only get away with it but move himself on up by doing so.
A first case in point pertains to the wild burros who have proliferated in Reche Canyon. Attitudes toward the animals varies among those who encounter them while driving along the road that winds southward in the rustic area where the lower part of San Bernardino County abuts the northern end of Riverside County. Some consider them to be not only a nuisance but a hazard in more ways than one that should be, if not outright slaughtered and exterminated, removed from the Canyon elsewhere. Others consider them to be an endearing element of the Canyon and surrounding wildlands. They want them them protected and left to freely roam. When approached by a man who made it clear that he wanted to see the donkeys gone and gone forever, Echevarria said he agreed and was working on a way, or ways, to accomplish just that. At the same time, those who are seeking to keep the burros in place consider Echevarria to be an ally.
Another issue is semi-rustic but gradually urbanizing Reche Canyon has been development.
A proposal to build the 2.9-acre Reche Canyon Plaza, to consist of a 24-hour gas station and retail center be located at 2501 Reche Canyon Road, came before the city council for final approval in October 2024. The proponents of the project believed that he was in favor of it. Many residents of the area were opposed to it, saying that they had concerns with regard to traffic and congestion, dangers with regard to vehicle ingress and egress and its incompatibility aesthetically with the canyon and how it would further erode the Reche Canyon district’s rural charm.
At the October 1, 2024 meeting, with Councilwoman Chastain absent, Councilman Gonzalez made a motion to deny approval of the project. That motion did not gain a second and therefore was not voted upon. Thereafter, Councilman Toro made a motion to approve the project, which was seconded by Mayor Navarro. The vote was taken. Toro and and Navarro voted to approve the project and Gonzalez opposed it. Echevarria abstained. The project was therefore given the first of two needed approvals.
On October 15, 2024 with Councilwoman Chastain in attendance, the council was scheduled to give a second and final approval to the Reche Canyon Plaza project, what is referred to as a second reading. At that point, knowing that Chastain was in favor of the project, Echevarria joined with Gonzalez in casting a vote against it, such that the project was given final passage on a 3-to-2 vote. Later, when residents of the Reche Canyon area complained that Echevarria had crossed them up, he disputed this, referencing his October 15 vote against the project. Nevertheless, it was understood my several of his constituents who were against the project that on October 1, 2024, when his vote against the project would have shut the door on it by having the matter stall out on oa 2-to-2 tie, Echevarria had held out on them by abstaining instead of forthrightly opposing the project. It is incidents such as this that have resulted in Echevarria’s reputation as a duplicitous politician.
Last Month, Echevarria’s reputation as a calculating political animal deepened when he voted to eradicate the city’s so-called “cooling off period, as it was thereafter accompanied by the announcement of his intent to run for mayor, which put the vote in context.
At its February 17, 2026 meeting, the Colton City Council took up a discussion of removing a provision that has been in the Colton Municipal Code for more than three decades which prohibits former Colton elected officials from being appointed to any city board, city commission or city committee for two years after leaving elected office. Colton Municipal Code Section 2.3O.O6O states that “No former elected official of the city is eligible for appointment to any board commission or committee for two years following expiration of the term of his or her elected office.”
Echevarria suggested that the council consider doing away with Colton Municipal Code Section 2.3O.O6O entirely.
Councilman Gonzalez countered that there were good reasons for limiting the influence of just-departed elected officials and preventing them from extending their control over municipal policy immediately after leaving office. He said previous city councils – in 1993, 2014, 2017 and 2022 – had considered throwing out Colton Municipal Code Section 2.3O.O6O but ultimately decided to keep it in place. “The two-year cooling-off period is well thought out,” Gonazlez said.
Mayor Navarro, too, opposed Echevarria’s request, indicating he believed putting departing elected officials into powerful decision-making or recommendation-making posts at City Hall would be harmful to the city’s reputation and public image.
“The two-year window is not strict,” Navarro said. “It’s very reasonable and it provides the city with protection.”
Echevarria said the Colton should do away with the limitation, since it would potentially prevent a well qualified former elected city officials such as a mayor, council member, treasurer or city city clerk from being able to serve in an appointed capacity. The council members and other elected officials bring a lot to the table based on their extensive experience and knowledge, Echevarria argued. Using that rationale, Echevarria was able to convince Chastain and Toro to vote with him to ditch Colton Municipal Code Section 2.3O.O6O
On February 27, at Loud Burger in Grand Terrace, Echevarria announced he is going to run for mayor.
That announcement explained what Echevarria was attempting to do with the elimination of Colton Municipal Code Section 2.3O.O6O. He is hedging his bets, such that if his mayoral bid proves unsuccessfuly, he can hopefully wangle an appointment to a Colton municipal post or board, most likely the planning commission, and retain his status as a government official in the loop . this will, he believes preserve his electoral biability in running for another government office, such as supervisor or state legislator.
Among some of his constituents, however, his use of his current authority as an elected official to change policies that have the effect of enhancing his future political viability in a host of different scenarios smacks of opportunism and personal ambition that has little or nothing to do with serving the public.

Like virtually every politician, an element of Echevarria’s make-up is a strong ego, a belief that he is well suited as a leader. The strength and intensity of his ego is such that within his area of professional expertise – law enforcement – Echevarria believes that at some level she should be provided with special license to oversee and direct the Colton Police Department. Not immediately after he was elected to the city council, but eventually, he grew somewhat heavy handed in his interaction with members of the Colton Police Department, the Sentinel is informed. There was a sense, individuals knowledgeable about police department operations say, that Echevarria, rather than staying within his lane as a member of the city council and voting with the mayor and his council colleagues to lay out policy and have City Manager Bill Smith administer that policy by directly dealing with and giving instruction to the city’s various department heads, that, at least as far as the police department went, Echevarria was bypassing Smith and having direct and improper contact with Colton Police Henry Dominguez. In 2024, Anthony Vega became police chief. There is growing concern now, as Echevarria is attempting to move into the more dominant role of mayor, that if he is elected to that post, he will obliterate the traditional separation between municipal elected officials and city staff members and either attempt to, or actually, dictate policy to Vega directly rather than forming a consensus with the rest of the city council as to what that policy should be and working down through the official chain of command through Smith as the city manager to control operations within the police department.
An important factor in whether Echevarria’s ambition to take the next step to become Colton mayor will be realized is the individual, Frank Navarro, who is currently Colton mayor. Before being elected mayor in 2018, Navarro was, over the previous six years, District 3 councilman. Prior to that, he was founding member of the civic group Colton First. In his capacities as council member and mayor, he has served on several city council subcommittees and as a member and occasional chairman on multiple regional boards and joint powers authority boards, including the Colton Community Development Block Grant Committee, the Colton Finance Committee, the Colton Traffic Safety Committee, the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission, the Inland Valley Development Agency, the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority’s Metro Valley Study Session, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority’s Transit Committee, the Southern California Association of Governments, the Southern California Association of Governments’ Regional council and the Southern California Association of Governments’ Transportation Committee.
Navarro, who has a reputation for coming to city council meetings well prepared and with a command of the information provided in staff reports and engaging in well-informed discussion before votes are taken on controversial or intricately involved issues, has a degree of gravitas that Echevarria lacks and somewhat greater recognition, as well. It is not likely that Echevarria will be able to simply power his way past Navarro if the incumbent opts to seek reelection. Navarro is dealing with last year’s death of his wife of more than 50 years. There is an indication that were she alive, he would not be running again, as he previously donated all of the money in his campaign war chest to charity. With her passing however, there is a strong suggestion that he will seek to remain at least one more term as mayor.
Echevarria retains in his electioneering fund, as of the last available documented reporting period last year, $39,848.02, putting him a leg up on Navarro. Nevertheless, Navarro has a network of past political donors who could be tapped to make it possible for him, over the course of a potential upcoming campaign, match Echevarria, dollar for dollar, campaign mailer for campaign mailer, newspaper ad for newspaper ad and radio or televison spot for radio or television spot.
From his inferior position with regard to name recognition among Colton voters, Echevarria could choose a strategy of attack against the mayor, with a barrage of negative advertising as means of taking away the positive name identification that Navarro has. That however, might prove risky, as Echevarria’s personal, associative and political vulnerabilities exist in far greater depth and width than do the incumbent’s. Were Navarro to respond in kind, Echevarri
One such example of this is Echevarria’s association with San Bernardino’s immediate past mayor, John Valdivia. Valdivia, who was San Bernardino’s Third Ward councilman fron 2012 to 2018, was elected mayor in 2018 and through his fundraising prowess appeared to be heading toward a tremendously successful political career. He was subsumed by scandal, however, as the pay-to-play ethos he embraced in his effort to raise money for his future political campaigns resulted in recurrent accusations of graft and bribery. Despite having more money than all six of his opponents in the 2022 San Bernardino mayoral election, he finished in third place during that year’s June Primary, not far ahead of the fourth place candidate. He thus did not get into the November 2022 run-off for mayor and his political career is widely considered to have come to an end. Echevarria’s association with Valdivia, their endorsements of each other and the questionable commonality in their respective support networks would potentially provide Navarro with a field day if the 2026 Colton mayoral campaign goes negative.