More than three months ago, Ontario’s mayor and city council voted to spend $1,255,000 in city funds to place two ballot initiatives before the city’s voters.
Thus, on March 24, Ontario’s residents will have the opportunity to vote yes or no on two ballot measures, Measure V and Measure W.
Despite spending more than one-and-a-quarter-million dollars to hold that special election, the mayor and all four members of the council are in agreement: the city’s residents should reject both Measure V and Measure W.
Both measures pertain to hotels and motels, what is also referred to as the “hospitality industry” in Ontario. The were forced on the city by Unite Here Local 11, a union representing those who work in hotels throughout Southern California. The members of the city council expressed the view that the measures will increase costs borne by those who stay at motels and hotels in the city and will hurt the efforts City Hall is making to build Ontario into a convention magnet, attracting thousands of outside businesses to the city temporarily and thus boosting the economy.
Measure V calls for creating a local minimum wage for hospitality workers that would rise to $30 an hour by 2030, and build in other regulations for industry workers.
Measure W would require voter approval for major hotel and event center projects.
The Ontario City Council approved the special election to be held March 24 at a cost of $1.255 million at its December 16 meeting. That decision was preceded and then followed by a series of complicating events.
On April 15, 2025, the city council approved a development agreement between the city and Diversified Pacific Development Group, LLC for the development of a 600-room hotel and related commercial uses on a 10.43-acre site located at the southeast corner of Guasti Road and Holt Boulevard, near the Ontario Convention Center.
Unite Here Local 11, representing motel and hotel workers, primarily in Los Angeles County, having anticipated the approval of the hotel project, gathered signatures on petitions to qualify two referendum for the ballot in Ontario, challenging the hotel project. Following review by the City Clerk, in coordination with the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters, both petitions were certified as legally sufficient and containing the required number of valid signatures to require that the referendums be held. Under California law, the filing of a referendum petition automatically suspends the effective date of the challenged ordinances pending further action. As a result, implementation of the development agreement and specific plan for the hotel was paused. Upon certification, the City Council was obligated to either repeal the ordinances or submit them to the voters. At the Ontario City Council meeting on July 15, 2025, the city council reconsidered the ordinances approving the hotel project and declined to repeal them. Instead, the city council adopted a resolution placing both measures on the ballot for a special municipal election scheduled for June 2, 2026. Holding the election for the two measures would have cost the city $748,000.
The city council, perceiving that Unite Here Local 11 was being obstructionist to the city’s goal of establishing a four-star hotel that will encourage top end corporations to hold meetings and conventions at the Ontario Convention Center, decided to speed up the process by putting the two measures onto the ballot in March of this year, even though doing so would cost more than $500,000 more than holding the election in June. By doing so, the city hopes the hotel project might be completed by the Summer Olympics to be held in Los Angeles in 2028.
Measure V, if approved, would create an Ontario city ordinance that would require “hotel, event center, and airport hospitality employers” to begin paying workers $18 an hour. Thereafter, the minimum wage for hotel workers would rise by $3 a year every July 1 through 2030, when the pay would reach $30 an hour. Prior to that, as of July 1, 2029, the wage rate would increase based on Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers for the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which extends to Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, although not San Bernardino County.
Measure V would also prohibit requiring hotel cleaning staff to clean more than 3,500 square feet of rooms in any eight-hour workday unless they are paid double. And workers would also not be required to work more than 10 hours in a day without prior written consent.
The ordinance also notes the danger hotel workers in guest rooms alone sometimes face. Under Measure V, employers would be required to give each worker a personal security device that could signal an on-site security guard who would be able to provide immediate assistance.
Measure W, upon approval, would overturn the City Council’s approval of Pacific Development Group’s 600-room hotel at the southeast corner of Guasti Road and Holt Boulevard, which is associated with an expanded Ontario Convention Center. Measure W would require voter approval for major hotel and event center projects in the future.
On January 28, 2026, the Ontario City Clerk’s Office received written correspondence from Richard Rios, attorney and designated representative for the referendum proponents, stating that Unite Here Local 11 wished to withdraw both referendum measures that were to appear in June.
It appears the union is ready to accept the outcome that will take place on March 24.
The Ontario City Council authored a rebuttal to the argument in favor of Measure V, saying the wage increases will prove “unsustainable” for many locally owned businesses and noting that the city has already passed an ordinance to require hotel workers be given security devices. They also say the
The opponents of Measure W say it “could destroy job-creating construction projects” and “reduce tax revenue that could lead to cuts in essential services like public safety, road maintenance, libraries and parks, and community events.”
At the February 17 Ontario City Council meeting the city council complied with the request from Rios to cancel the placement of the measures on the June 2026 primary ballot. Three of the council members also went on the record as being opposed to Measure V and Measure W.
Councilwoman Debra Dorst-Porada said that the tactics Unite Here Local 11 is engaging in were intended to extend the delay in the completion of the hotel project and have already increased labor costs and construction cost. “We hoped to have this open by the Olympics,” Dorst-Porada said. “Because of the delays, that won’t happen.”
Councilman Jim Bowman, saying he had been the president of a “couple of unions” and that there was a brotherhood and sisterhood of unions uniting “carpenters, plumbers and steelworkers,” who were “sensitive to providing jobs, nevertheless referred to Unite Here Local 11 as a “rogue union that wants to stop the very development of opportunity, of jobs and positions for everybody that wants them. They want to kill the project before it’s even built. They want raises. They want insurance. They want everything and the opportunity hasn’t even been established.”
Mayor Paul Leon reflected the view of many that Unite Here Local 11 is not engaged in legitimate organizing of American labor, but is rather pushing an agenda to increase the wages of workers who, predominately, are not American citizens.
“We’re being held hostage by a union group that wants to make sure that they’re taken care of,” Leon said. “They tried in in LA. It didn’t work. Now, they’re here.”
Measure W’s supporters maintain the measure “is about transparency, accountability, and responsible growth. Especially when public land and public dollars are involved, residents deserve clear information and a direct say.”
The two measures are the only ones on the March 24 special election ballot. Mail-in ballots were sent out beginning on February 23.
-Mark Gutglueck