Upland city officials, for the most part, have headed for the tall grass when approached about indications that for some 18 months they deliberately neglected to undertake repairs of the most seriously deteriorating span of Foothill Boulevard running from Euclid Avenue to the city and county limits at its west end as a ploy to convince the city’s residents to support an increase in sales tax to be paid by shoppers within the 15.66-square mile city.
According to City Hall sources in a position to know, the strategy was thought up by Mayor Bill Velto. Nevertheless, according to City Councilman Rudy Zuniga, the plan to convince the city’s voters that they should get behind the tax increase, which will generate for the city, it is estimated, somewhere in the neighborhood of $21 million, did not originate with Velto.
Whether the concept of engaging in the benign neglect of West Foothill Boulevard was a product of Velto’s mentation or that of someone else, he and what was at first three members of the council and ultimately all four council members have come to believe that the greater good of the community is being served by allowing what is the city’s most heavily traveled thoroughfare to fall further and further into disrepair.
In 2022, Mayor Velto and the city council, consisting of Rudy Zuniga, Shannan Maust, Carlos Garcia and James Breitling, supported by City Manager Michael Bray and Assistant City Manager Stephen Parker as well as the city’s elected treasurer, Greg Bradley and assisted by City Clerk Keri Johnson, worked through the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office to place Measure L on that year’s November ballot.
Measure L called for the collection of an additional 1 percent sales tax on retail sales within the city, the proceeds from which, estimated at that time as exceeding $16 million per year, were to fall entirely to City Hall for spending on municipal programs at the discretion of the city council.
Despite the appeals of the council to the electorate, which included claims that the city’s governmental structure was in financial difficulty, voters on November 8, 2022 cast 10,222 votes, equal to 44.6 percent, in favor of Measure L, while 12,697 votes, translating to 55.4 percent, were tallied against it, consigning Measure L to defeat.
The voters’ decision was for the city council and other city officials a bitter pill to swallow. At the same election, voters in adjacent Ontario, which has more than twice Upland’s population and more robust commercial districts, passed Measure Q, which city officials there anticipated was to provide that city with more than $90 million in added revenue per year.
Reports have reached the Sentinel that Velto was livid in the aftermath of the 2022 election results, and that he denounced the intelligence of those of his constituents who had rejected Measure L in explicit terms when the definitive results of the election were revealed.
Subsequently, the appropriate response by the city to the voters’ collective decision was discussed among the mayor and council, with mention that the voters needed to be “taught a lesson… punished” or otherwise “put in their place,” according to one city employee. There was further discussion of how the defeat of Measure L was relatively narrow and that much could be learned by analyzing what had gone wrong with the promotional effort for the measure, which had not been sharply coordinated.
In relatively short order, a decision was arrived at to approach the voters with a redo of Measure L in 2024, a presidential election year rather than a gubernatorial election year when voter turnout would be greater. Upland city officials soon formed a consensus opinion or hope that in such an electoral forum, with a more concerted and intensive effort to reeducate Upland’s voters as to what was at stake in the taxing proposal and the use of the funds to be generated, victory for a sales tax measure could be had.
It was at that point, according to internal sources at City Hall, that city officials hit upon the strategy of utilizing Foothill Boulevard, the most prominent and commonly/frequently used feature of the city, as an exemplification by perpetuating its already poor state of repair particularly on the west side of the city to lay the foundation for an appeal to the city’s voters that they support a replication of Measure L when the opportunity would next present itself.
One weakness in the city’s 2022 campaign on behalf of Measure L, city officials were aware, was an overriding perception on the part of the city’s voters that the city was decently-fixed financially and did not have a real need for more money than it already received from the traditional sources of revenue available to cities in California, consisting of a portion of the property tax collected by the county levied on land within the city that is passed back to municipalities, sales tax already collected by the State of California, a portion of which is passed back to cities, a percentage of taxes on gasoline collected by both the state and federal governments returned to the cities from which those taxes are derived, and a host of subventions involving cities, counties, the state government and federal government.
Letting Foothill Boulevard fall into a further state of disrepair would attract the attention of the city’s population in a way that would convince the city’s voters that City Hall is indeed so strapped that it has insufficient funding to engage in routine and basic maintenance of municipal infrastructure, according to the electoral game plan hatched at Upland City Hall. This idea, the Sentinel was told, revolved most prominently and perhaps predictably around Velto, who had taken the voters’ rejection of Measure L quite seriously and personally. Some believed that strategy had been devised by Velto.
Other elements of the strategy were evolving in late 2022 and early 2023, including city officials playing very close to the vest their future intention with regard to placing another sales tax measure on the 2024 ballot. Such secrecy was warranted because in 2022, there had been an entirely unanticipated uprising of individual city residents, a collective of city residents and preexisting forces from outside the city which extended to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and Reform California, who made an effort to oppose Measure L. While it was unknown precisely how effective the No on L campaign had been, it was thought that it might be wise to not give those who had participated in it a forewarning of what was to come.
What is reported to the Sentinel is that a directive from Velto and the city council delivered through the city manager and the assistant city manager went to Upland Director of Development Services Robert Dalquest and Upland Director of Public Works/City Engineer Braden Yu that they should stand down in terms of carrying out any repair or paving work on Foothill Boulevard.
Last month, on September 11, the Sentinel made an attempt to contact Dalquest and sent him an email seeking from him whether it was accurate that the city had put out a directive to him and his department to engage in the benign neglect of Foothill Boulevard. On September 11, the Sentinel made an attempt to contact Velto and on September 12 sent him an email inquiring of him whether it was accurate that he and the city council, through the city’s administration or directly, had instructed Dalquest and Yu and their departments to hold off on any repairs, refurbishings or paving of Foothill Boulevard in the aftermath of Measure L’s failure to obtain majority passage in the 2022 election. Neither Dalquest nor Velto responded to the Sentinel’s inquiries.
The Sentinel is given to understand that Yu was disturbed by what he saw as an attempt at micromanaging his department from the level above him, though he was straitjacketed into a position wherein he had no choice but to comply with those instructions, as his spending authority as a department head was somewhat limited and any disbursements toward projects otherwise under his control were directed from financial authority at City Hall, which was under the direct purview of Assistant City Manager Parker. Yu was, however, aware that city officials in both the city manager’s office and assistant city manager’s office/finance department were actively seeking from the federal, state and county government financial assistance specifically for infrastructure and road maintenance and improvement projects, including ones for Foothill Boulevard. Most specifically, Yu knew that City Manager Blay was in a dialog with individuals from the offices of Second District County Supervisor Jesse Armendarez and Fourth District San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman about obtaining money from the county intended specifically for the repaving of the most seriously eroded portion of Foothill Boulevard, the span running from Euclid Avenue to some 300 feet west of Monte Vista Avenue at the county line between San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties, which is the boundary between Upland and Claremont. Yu knew this because Blay needed from the public works division specific information with regard to Foothill Boulevard and its current conditions in order to pursue the city’s requests of the county. The City of Upland, along what is a north/south divide, lies within both the Second and Fourth county supervisorial districts.
Yu was concerned about perpetuating the neglect of Foothill Boulevard for multiple reasons. Erosion or crumbling of the surface pavement is an ongoing reality that occurs, and which is, ideally and typically, redressed by municipal public works divisions on a regularly scheduled basis based upon the available revenue to that particular city. Such erosion can result in an unevenness in the road surface and gouges in the asphalt that range from minor pockets to holes to the beginning of what are termed, in the popular parlance, potholes. While the proliferation of such faults in the roadway are undesirable, there existence is inevitable. In most cases, such conditions do not, however, become critical until the overlying pavement, referred to as the surface course, is breached, exposing the base course, the layer immediately beneath the surface course, which provides additional load distribution of the traffic running over the roadway. Minor holes generally will not reach the base course. Potholes essentially represent a spot where the surface course is completely gone, and the base course is exposed, such that erosion into the base course has begun or is imminent. This represents a greater problem than the normal or basic maintenance issue of engaging in repaving on a regular basis, since damage to the base course must be repaired before paving over the top of it to recreate or reestablish the surface course can be undertaken. Simply paving over a portion of the road where the base course has been compromised will result very quickly, once the weight of vehicles is again being applied to the road, in the newly lain pavement crumbling.
An even more serious circumstance can come about if, in addition to the pavement, i.e., the surface course, being removed and the underlying base course being damaged, the substrate beneath the base course, referred to as the subbase course, becomes damaged. The subbase is the third, and last, layer of man-made material of which a road or street is composed, lying over the subgrade, the foundation for the road which consists of compacted natural soil.
In a case where the pavement at the top of the road has been pierced, leading to severe damage to the base course which goes beyond the second layer to involve damage to the third layer or subbase, the destruction of the roadway compounds to a level that is difficult to calculate precisely in any given circumstance. In the worst-case scenario, the subsidence in the subgrade can take place if the three layers above it have been compromised. Reestablishing that foundation, with a roadway stretching in two directions around it, presents a substantial problem that requires extensive applications of engineering and practical resources, which can prove to be prohibitively expensive. Even in a case where subsidence has not occurred, repairing the subbase, which is again surrounded by roadway in two directions, requires a skillful and expensive application of engineering and practical wherewithal. After the second and third layers of the road have been repaired, the repair of the base course, i.e., repaving, takes place.
What Yu found himself faced with was a circumstance in which the city was running the risk of having patches all along Foothill Boulevard which had already deteriorated to the point where the pavement was gone and the base course had sustained in many of those cases substantial damage to the point that the subbase was in peril. If the subbase went, the only saving grace for the city would be luck, as the possibility of the subsidence of the earth beneath the roadway would be the next waystation on the city’s itinerary toward a disaster that would cost even more money to redress. As a licensed engineer who was serving in the capacity of Upland’s public works director, Yu’s professional reputation, indeed his future, was on the line. He did not like the situation he had been put in, not one little bit.
After much back and forth between Bray and both the offices of Supervisor Armendarez and Supervisor Hagman in 2023, in early 2024, Supervisor Armendarez came through with $2 million in money from the county to be used by the City of Upland to go toward the repaving of West Foothill Boulevard. Shortly thereafter, that $2 million was matched with another $2 million from the county, this time arranged by Supervisor Hagman.
As is typically the case, however, that available money could not be applied immediately. Preliminary plans and specification for the work had to be articulated, at which point those rough plans were to be laid out into what is, in governmental parlance, called a request for proposals. The request for proposals is an invitation for bids from contractors to do the work described. Under both state and federal law, governmental entities are to conduct an open bid process on such projects and are required, with only the rarest of exceptions in certain extenuating circumstances, to award the contract to what is considered to be the lowest “responsible and responsive” bidder. The language responsible and responsive signifies that the bidder must have the requisite equipment, manpower, experience and record of accomplishment with regard to previous work for the entity offering the contract to have full confidence the work will be done to a satisfactory standard at the cost offered by the bidder.
Such requests for proposals are not effectuated overnight, and for a time, Foothill Boulevard remained in its tattered and worsening-by-the-day condition. The strategy of keeping Foothill in a benign state of disrepair in order to influence Upland voters with regard to a sales tax proposal they didn’t yet know was coming their way was at risk, however, as a result of the funds being in place to effectuate the long-needed refurbishing.
In April, Yu broke the extended streak during which the roadway along Foothill Boulevard was being forsaken, when he proceeded with a project to repair some of the substrate damage at the intersection of Mountain Avenue and Foothill Boulevard, which was capped with repaving.
A similar repair to a small patch of the eastbound Foothill Boulevard Roadway near the intersection with Mulberry Avenue, which lies east of Mountain but is still on West Foothill Boulevard, also took place in the same timeframe.
What is unknown is the degree to which what Yu had done was in defiance of the benign neglect strategy he had been ordered to carry out or whether the repair was done with the blessing of his higher-ups at City Hall or his political masters, the mayor and city council. No one at his point is willing to say one way or the other. Based upon circumstance, the conclusion of many is that it was the former rather than the latter.
On April 23, 2024, Yu was summarily fired. He was informed in a letter written that day by Blay.
In the interim since, the city has not put a project to repave West Foothill Boulevard out to bid with an issuance of a request for proposals.
The council’s intent of placing on the upcoming November 5 another sale tax measure remained under wraps.
After 5 p.m. on July 17, 2024 Upland City Clerk Keri Johnson posted the agenda for the July 22 Upland City Council meeting. On that agenda was an item relating to a city council resolution to ask the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters to put an initiative on the November 5 ballot that would have revamped the city’s current business licensing fees, permits and taxing schedule, which have been in place for more than three decades.
The changes to the business licensing fees and taxes were to have, if passed, city officials predicted, provided the city with somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 million more in revenue than it currently collects.
There is a question now, in the light of subsequent events, whether the city council was sincere in voting to place the business licensing fees and tax initiative on the ballot on July 22 or whether it was engaging in a calculated piece of misdirection – what some have called a “bait and switch” move – to further lull the perceived opposition to a sales tax increase into a state of complacence.
Four days later, Assemblyman Chris Holden, whose district includes Upland, had a meeting with a group of Jewish Women. During the course of that meeting, Holden made a Powerpoint slide presentation relating to how much money the City of Upland would derive in the event its residents voted to pass a sales measure in the November 2024 election. Holden’s presentation was thorough and complete. As, at that point, the City of Upland had done nothing officially or publicly to hint at an effort to place a sales tax proposal before the city’s voters this year, it appeared that Holden was either mistaken or he was privy to something members of the public were not, namely that Upland city officials were going to seek a sales tax increase and that they were purposed to do so this year.
The San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office’s deadline for submitting a proposal to place a measure on the ballot, containing all order of documentation, data and specifics that under normal conditions take weeks if not months to prepare, amass and collate, was 5 p.m. on August 9. At 12 noon on August 8, Keri Johnson, citing an urgent situation, posted notice of a special meeting to take place 24 hours hence. That 24-hour notice is the bare minimum noticing requirement specified in the California Government Code for out-of-the-ordinary meetings that do not rise to the level of a life-and-death emergency. The two items contained on the agenda for the August 9 noon meeting was a resolution rescinding the city council’s previous request of the registrar of voters office that it place the business licensing and tax revamping measure on the November ballot and another resolution calling for the placement of a 1 percent sales tax measure on the ballot.
On August 9, the council met in the council chamber at Upland City Hall, with the mayor and three of the council members present and Councilman Zuniga participating remotely from his workplace in the midst of what was for him an intensive double-shift day on his job. The city council voted to pass the resolutions, completing the meeting before 1 p.m. Johnson put the finishing touches on everything, including certified copies of the memorializing of the city council’s votes that day along with the other required documents to apply for a place on the ballot, which was provided to the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office prior to 3 p.m., with more than two hours to spare before the deadline.
Word spread like wildfire through Upland that city officials, led by Velto, were engaged in something highly deceptive. Indeed, residents examining the language the city proposed putting into the measure which was accepted by the registrar of voters was less of a straightforward description of a sales tax than a biased screed in favor of the measure. A handful of city residents, who had been rocked back on their heels, banded together to retain Upland-based attorney Cory Briggs to challenge the ballot measure language. When the matter was taken up by Superior Court Judge Stephanie E. Thornton-Harris, she entered a finding that city officials were attempting to deceive the city’s voters, and she issued an order that the wording of the Upland sales tax measure which is to appear on the November 5 ballot with the registrar of voters office’s designation of Measure N had to be changed to a straightforward and impartial form if the measure were to be allowed on the ballot.
Very soon after the city council’s pivot away from the measure to revamp the city’s business licensing fees to a sales tax initiative, several people who were acutely aware of the city’s neglect of Foothill Boulevard and were in a position to know what had befallen Yu came forward, speaking to the civically active members of the community, the Sentinel and other organs of public information dissemination.
The Sentinel on September 11 initiated efforts to get Velto and Dalquest, who unlike Yu is yet with the city, to shed light on the order to stand down with regard to repairing Foothill Boulevard. After more than two weeks went by without their response, the Sentinel attempted to take the matter up with the rest of the city council, initiating inquiries by email on October 1 with Zuniga, Maust, Garcia and Breitling. Those emails, which were nearly identical, sought from each whether they had signed onto and participated in what the Sentinel in the email characterized as Velto’s plan to engage in the benign neglect of Foothill Boulevard to convince the city’s voters that City Hall is strapped financially and needs money to take care of basic municipal needs, programs and infrastructure. The Sentinel’s emails did not engender a response, with the exception of a terse return from Zuniga, who offered the information that it was not Velto who devised the strategy of holding off on the repair of Foothill Boulevard.

After the removal of the last underpinning of what was previously a layer of interwoven federal, state and local legal and social regulations preventing the upending of homeless encampments, the City of San Bernardino is set to force hundreds of able-bodied dispossessed from its municipal parks.
For decades, the county seat for multiple reasons has been a magnet for the homeless population, including those local citizens who through financial adversity lost their homes or the means to rent one, as well as those leaving, in particular Los Angeles/Los Angeles County and moved eastward, and many who have come to California from other states.
The warm or at least warmer weather in the fall, winter and spring in Inland California makes for less onerous nights for those without the advantage of a roof over their heads. Moreover, when the homeless population in California began to surge in the late 1990s and early 2000s, some San Bernardino County and San Bernardino city officials overreacted, utilizing draconian means that went beyond being harsh to outright cruel, inhumane and criminal to dissuade those who were unhoused from coming to the area or to persuade those who were already here to leave, as well as to prevent local do-gooders from assisting them. This provoked a backlash against such efforts, including some intervention by activist lawyers who went to bat for the homeless in a courtroom setting, forcing a recognition of how local authorities had crossed the line and sparking some court rulings that tied the hands of both the police and code enforcement divisions to prevent them from, publicly and openly at least, intimidating the homeless, roughing them up, kicking them, punching them, striking them with objects, seizing their bedding, tents, clothing, and other personal effects and throwing them into the trash, siccing police dogs on the homeless, arresting and jailing them on trumped-up charges, dousing them with insecticide, lighting them on fire and offering them cyanide-laced food to kill them. The San Bernardino Police Department, in particular, got itself and some of its officers into trouble when those officers assaulted, beat into submission, arrested and seized the cell phones of citizens who sought to video the police as they physically abused the homeless.
Simultaneously over the years, at the national and state level laws were passed that were both aimed at giving the homeless a minimal layer of protection and at providing authorities, both local and state, with the ability to drive the homeless off the streets or out of a given community entirely. The homeless-friendly laws remained in place while challenges to the laws barring homelessness or the homeless were in many cases challenged and overturned.
One of the more basic provisions in the law of the land with regard to homelessness had for decades been embodied in the 1962 case of Robinson v. California. Another legal milestone with regard to the homeless came into place more recently, with the 2018 case Martin v. Boise. In Robinson v. California, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits criminalization of a status, as opposed to criminalizing criminal acts, in striking down a California law that criminalized being addicted to narcotics. By extension, this applied to being homeless, such that it made applying traditional vagrancy laws difficult, problematic or even impossible. In this way, from that point on, at least until very recently, an individual could not be prosecuted for being homeless. In Martin v. Boise, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that city officials in Boise, Idaho, could not enforce an anti-camping ordinance whenever its homeless population exceeds the number of available beds in its homeless shelters. Since the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to this case in 2019, it became binding precedent within the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit includes the nine western states and all of the Pacific Islands.
Both Robinson v. California and Martin v. Boise had the practical effect of preventing government in general and local governments in particular from declaring open warfare on the homeless.
In San Bernardino County, government officials appeared to be divided on the issue of homelessness. Some were compassionate toward those who had fallen into such a state, and were against, generally, utilizing the power of the law to prohibit them from inhabiting public space. Other officials believed that such compassion was misplaced, and that the proliferation of those unable to fend for themselves by maintaining a domicile was a substantial factor in the deterioration in the quality of life of those who were not homeless, i.e., those citizens residing in homes in neighborhoods contained in the cities and unincorporated communities throughout San Bernardino County. They pushed for and sometimes achieved laws, ordinances and policies which they insisted did not fly in the face of the Martin v Boise or the Robinson v. California standards. In this way, cities and the county passed, or emphasized the enforcement of existing loitering ordinances, which were distinct from vagrancy laws. Another approach, one that was used by the City of San Bernardino, at least for a time, was to arrest those who remained in the city’s parks after sunset – generally meaning 8 p.m. in the summer and 5 p.m. in the winter and times in between in the spring and fall – and to transport them to the sheriff’s department jail in Rancho Cucamonga, known as the West Valley Detention Center, to be booked. In some cases, sheriff’s personnel might book the arrestees, but would immediately release them. Others brought in, particularly ones with no substantial previous criminal records, would be released without being booked. Generally, the only ones that would be incarcerated would be those who had outstanding warrants. Those arrested and transported to the West Valley Detention Center, booked or not, would then face the challenge of walking the 20 miles back to San Bernardino. By the time they would return, many would discover that their possessions – their tents and sleeping bags, camping stoves, clothes and whatnot, were gone, having been thrown out by the police or visitors to the park, appropriated by some other homeless individuals or removed by a person or persons or an entity unknown. After being subjected to this ordeal three or four or five times, many opted not to return to San Bernardino.
As was the case with the elected leadership in other cities, San Bernardino’s mayors and city council members over a long span of time were torn over whether the city should accept money available from the State of California for the support of various homeless assistance programs. There was a degree of debate and difference between the elected officials and the city’s residents with regard to accepting the funds. Some felt the city should accept whatever funding was available. Others were skeptical, believing that unless the programs for the homeless being undertaken proceeded all the way to creating housing that was sustainable and would reduce significantly or eliminate the homeless population, the city should not involve itself in such half, quarter, eighth or sixteenth measures. Others said many homeless were in that state by choice and did not want to be housed. Others argued that providing shelters for the drug addicted or alcoholics only enabled them in pursuing their proclivities. Others still asserted that successful homeless assistance programs would have a “magnet effect,” and would attract ever more homeless to the city.
San Bernardino more than two decades ago, when the problem was far less acute, had dubiously distinguished itself as the haven for more homeless than any other city in the county, and by a substantial margin. Traditionally the city with the next most dispossessed having taken up presence there was Victorville. Beginning in 2007, the City of Ontario began to bear the homeless onus as well, when about 20 ragtag squatters who occupied open property just west of Ontario Airport without authorization created what soon was attracting more and more people, many of whom were in vehicles and would pitch tents immediately adjacent to their cars. In this way, over the course of more than five years, the shantytown there, which was quasi-sanctioned by city officials, grew to a population of roughly 400, putting Ontario on a trajectory to surpass Victorville and eventually San Bernardino as a homeless host. City officials there, however, made a concerted effort beginning in 2012 to move those who did not have vehicles into shelters around the city and began enforcement with regard to the vehicles, many of which were not licensed. By February 2013, the Ontario’s Hooverville was essentially defunct, with only five hardcore residents remaining.
In cooperation with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, San Bernardino County, through its Department of Behavioral Health and working in conjunction with the San Bernardino County Homeless Partnership in collaboration with the Office of Homeless Services and in consultation with the Institute for Urban Initiatives, conducts the so-called point-in-time-count of what the Department of Behavioral Health calls San Bernardino County’s subpopulation, meaning those who are unhoused. The count is carried out during a single 24-hour period in either January or February. Consistently over the years without a single exception, San Bernardino is the jurisdiction with the most people who have no place to go.
According to the point-in-time counts, in 2015, San Bernardino had 767 homeless; in 2016, 564; in 2017, 491; in 2018 646; in 2019, 890 homeless; and in 2020, 1,056. In 2021, because of the COVID pandemic, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, San Bernardino County, The San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health, the San Bernardino County Homeless Partnership, the Office of Homeless Services and Institute for Urban Initiatives forewent making a survey. In 2022 1,350 homeless were counted in San Bernardino; in 2023 the county seat held 1,502 destitute; and in 2014, there were 1,417 total homeless in the city.
Over the years, though a fair number of the homeless in San Bernardino had set up paupers’ quarters on the streets, in alleyways, in the Santa Ana or Lytle Creek riverbeds or around them, under railroad trestles or freeway overpasses, or hidden in chaparral or landscaping along the freeways, the lion’s share of those without a normative place to live had gravitated to the city’s parks.
In particular, 44-acre Seccombe Lake Park, just east of downtown, was attracting many people, with hundreds sleeping there every night. Beginning more than four years ago, city officials began with an effort to enforce the night curfew and slowly, those living there left. Thereafter, to effectuate a homeless lock-out at Seccombe Lake Park, the city committed to developing a portion of the park’s acreage into an affordable housing project.
But that did not erase the city’s homeless dilemma, as most of those who left Seccombe Lake Park migrated elsewhere in the city, primarily 64-acre Perris Hill Park, which was already popular with about one-tenth of the city’s homeless people, and 14-acre Meadowbrook Park.
Perris Hill Park is considered one of the city’s quintessential parks, with some of the city’s most treasured amenities, including the Roosevelt Bowl and Fiscalini Field,
City officials sought to apply creative ways of getting the homeless to leave its municipal parks, with varying degrees of success. In February 2023, the city council declared homelessness a local emergency, using that declaration as a dictum calling for relocating the homeless off of public property.
In January of this year, Federal Judge Terry Hatter Jr. issued a preliminary injunction preventing the City of San Bernardino from removing unhoused people living in its parks and on the city’s sidewalks and public area. Judge Hatter’s ruling was made in reaction to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the social action group SoCal Trash Army and three individuals – Lenka John, James Tyson and Noel Harner – who were down and out and living in Meadowbrook Park. In May 2023, the city closed down Meadowbrook Park, which is adjacent to the 11-Story courthouse, The San Bernardino Justice Center, in downtown San Bernardino. The shuttering of Meadowbrook Park was done, the city claimed, for maintenance in May 2023. City officials told those living in the park that they would offer them some alternative but never did.
In the suit, John, James Tyson and Noel Harner alleged the city violated their constitutional rights and destroyed or jettisoned their personal property, including medicine, vital documents medical equipment and tents. Harner, who is confined to a wheelchair, maintained in the suit that he was given a one-week voucher to stay at a motel upon being kicked out of Perris Hill Park, but was given no assistance in transiting to the motel or conveying his belongings there.
In his ruling, Judge Hatter made a finding that the city discarded and/or destroyed the displaced homeless residents’ belongings, did not accommodate their needs and “likely” engaged in a violation of their constitutional rights as well as those under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Judge Hatter barred the city from removing or displacing unhoused residents and their belongings pending further judicial review of the matter. He said the court would consider vacating the order if the city can formulate a binding policy by which it replaces homeless encampments with housing options for those to be displaced.
This summer, however, there was a sea change with regard to how local agencies, municipalities, cities, towns and counties can deal with the homeless. On June 28, 2024, The U.S. Supreme Court entered a ruling in the case of City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which pretty much erased the protections under the law that the homeless enjoyed which stemmed from both the Martin v Boise or the Robinson v. California.
In 2013, the Grants Pass City Council, with its president openly stating the city wanted to “make it uncomfortable enough for [homeless individuals] in our city so they will want to move on down the road,” began enacting a series of anti-camping, anti-sleeping, and parking exclusion ordinances, which were augmented with civil fines ranging from $295 to $537.60 if unpaid, along with imposing criminal penalties of trespassing on repeat violators who continued to reside on public land. The Oregon Law Center filed suit against Grants Pass on behalf of homeless individuals Gloria Johnson, John Logan and Debra Blake in the U.S. District Court in Oregon, challenging the ordinances. The district court and The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, relying on Martin v. Boise, rejected the city government’s assertion it its defense of its ordinances preventing the city from enforcing its anti-camping ordinance against homeless people. The U.S. Supreme Court took up a review of the Ninth Circuit ruling, finding, ultimately, the punishments of fines, temporary bans from entering public property, and one-month jail sentences were neither cruel nor unusual; that the Grants Pass’s anti-camping ordinances were neutrally applied against both the homeless and those who are not homeless; that it was not established that the homeless had no place other than parks or parking lots in which to sleep; that local and state officials and courts are free to determine whether the homeless by violating anti-camping were conscious of their guilt by violating anti-camping ordinances and that remedies to the homeless issue throughout the United States are too complex to be addressed by unelected members of the federal judiciary. The upshot was that the Court held that local government ordinances with civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment of homeless people and local governments can ban the homeless from public areas.
When it rains, it pours.
In the same timeframe, Governor Gavin Newsom, during whose tenure as governor the state, between 2019 and 2021 spent $9.6 billion trying to alleviate homelessness and from 2020 onward spent another $3.7 billion on Project Homekey, a plan to fund local governments in their efforts to combat homelessness, grew acutely frustrated and impatient with the lack of progress in solving the homelessness crisis. He was going to cut off any further state homeless program funding to cities which had not shut down encampments and moved those in them to indoor shelters.
Within a fortnight, San Bernardino city officials who for years had been themselves frustrated in being unable to clear the homeless out of both high-profile and low-profile public places, felt as if the constraints, or most of them, had been removed.
To be sure, there were a few minor obstacles in the way – such as Judge Hatter’s ruling and the need to provide those who will be force out of the parks with housing shelter options.
On August 2, after extensive discussion between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union, a joint stipulation to dismiss the case brought by SoCal Trash Army, John, Tyson and Harner was filed and on September 25 Judge Hatter granted that motion for dismissal.
On Wednesday, October 2, at a press conference held at the San Bernardino City Hall on Wednesday, before a large gathering of media, local officials, and community members, San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran, flanked by members of the city council said, “The lifting of the injunction gives us options for addressing unhoused individuals and their property compassionately as we clean up our parks.”
Tran said the restoration of the parks as places of recreation qualified as “the number one concern we hear from our residents.”
City officials distributed copies of an updated policy for conducting encampment cleanups during the press conference.
“We have been able to codify and clarify many of our encampment cleanup policies to protect our homeless, their belongings, as well as city staff and contractors,” said San Bernardino Acting City Manager Rochelle Clayton.
Among the updates to the encampment cleanup policy are the city’s designation of a disabilities coordinator to oversee requests by disabled individuals for reasonable accommodations before and during an encampment cleanup; the city’s pledge to train all employees and contractors participating in a cleanup in the city’s policy and procedures; the city’s development of a brochure to inform and educate homeless individuals about the city encampment cleanup policy.”
“The lifting of the injunction gives us the opportunity to clean up our parks,” said Councilman Fred Shorett. “But we have to do that with compassion and with thought about where these people will go.”
Yesterday, October 3, San Bernardino Spokesman Jeff Kraus informed the Sentinel by email that “The city expects to resume encampment cleanups in the coming weeks. U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter lifted an injunction prohibiting the city from conducting homeless encampment cleanups. This follows an agreement reached between the two parties that updated city policies on how cleanups are conducted.”
According to Kraus after Judge Hatter’s January injunction prohibiting the City of San Bernardino from conducting encampment cleanups, “…the number of tents at city parks has grown significantly, with very few homeless individuals willing to accept alternative housing solutions. As a result, usage of the parks by residents has declined and conditions at many parks has deteriorated. The city anticipates that encampment cleanups at its parks will resume in the coming weeks, starting with the posting of advance notices at locations where cleanups are planned to take place.”
According to Kraus, “The City of San Bernardino has committed nearly $60 million in local, state, federal, and grant funding to address homelessness, including the construction of two full service, comprehensive homeless housing facilities, the creation of a homeless outreach team, and funds for hotel vouchers to be issued to augment local shelters while the new facilities are being built.”
The funding for the vouchers the city is providing to interested homeless individuals originated with $1 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act grants.
Included in the city’s homeless services panoply is a 140-bed interim housing facility the city is building at 1354 G Street in partnership with the nonprofits Lutheran Social Services of Southern California and Dignity Moves. That project has been under way for several months and is to be finished by December. und on a Construction is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
In September, the city sought bids for the construction of a new homeless navigation center at a former school site at 796 Sixth Street. That facility will conceivably come online in another 12 to 13 months.
The city is coordinating with local shelters to provide additional bed space for the homeless.
Under the stipulation filed on August 2 and accepted by Judge Hatter on September 25, the city cannot evict a handicapped or crippled individual from the city’s parks without making arrangements for that individual to transported to and housed in a shelter or housing.
“This is not something that will be completed in a day, in a week, or even a month,” Tran said. “But together with our county and community partners, we are committed to providing a pathway to services, opportunity, and housing.”

Thirteen months after he was acquitted of first-degree murder in the 2018 killing of his one-time girlfriend’s son, Arthur Thomas Davies next week will again stand trial on the second-degree murder and assault charges which the same jury was unable to reach a verdict on.
Davies, who has been in continuous custody since the February 2018 death of 17-month-old Parker Lee Schumacher, was acquitted in September 2023 of first-degree murder charges after a trial in which Deputy District Attorney Charles Tsuei consistently and repeatedly asserted Davies had deliberately killed the child.
The jury split on the alternate charges that were at play in the trial presided over by Judge Christopher Pallone, those being a 10-to-2 finding in favor of second-degree murder and an identical 10-to-2 vote determination of a fatal assault on a juvenile.
Judge Pallone declared the now-concluded proceedings to have been a mistrial and set a retrial for last October. That schedule was not met, but Davies, his defense attorney, Zulu Ali, and the prosecutor Tsuei, who remains as the prosecutor on the case will try the facts before a jury, beginning with the selection of that jury to begin on October 7.
Young Schumacher died in February 2018 after being severely injured inside a trailer in Yucca Valley, where he was living with his mother, Karissa Caccavari, and Davies.
In Tsuei’s narrative, Davies cruelly and deliberately slammed the back of the child’s head against a hard surface, most likely the top of a counter. The prosecutor presented testimony and contestable evidence to suggest that Davies resented the child because his presence, first in the home where Caccavari previously lived with Parker’s father, Eric Schumacher, and then later in a trailer in Yucca Valley, interfered and interrupted his relationship with Caccavari .
Davies met Caccavari in December 2017. After Caccavari and her child relocated from Joshua Tree to a trailer in Yucca Valley in January 2018, Davies moved in with them. Text messages presented during the course of the 2023 trial demonstrated that Davies was disapproving of Parker’s behavior and his mother’s indulgence of the child, who was not yet a year-and-a-half old. Disagreements between Davies and Caccavari, essentially over the child, including Davies’ contention that Parker was “manipulating” his mother, led to Caccavari and Davies parting as a couple, with Davies moving out of the trailer.
Davies, however, was involved in a single vehicle mishap on the evening/early morning of February 7/February 8, 2018. Instead of Davies moving back to his parents’ house as he had been purposed to do, he resumed residing in the trailer, as Caccavari, seemingly concerned about Davies after the accident, fatefully consented to him returning.
While Caccavari was not at the trailer on February 10 and Davies was there alone with the child, Parker suffered severe head trauma. Davies contacted Caccavari to inform her of the child’s injury and after Caccavari returned, the child was taken by ambulance to the Hi-Desert Medical Center in Joshua Tree and then flown to Loma Linda University Medical Center. There, physicians determined that the child had multiple injuries, including compound fractures to the back of his skull, extensive bleeding in the brain, swelling on one side of the brain and hemorrhaging in both eyes.
The child, who was having difficulty breathing, was placed on a ventilator. He died on February 11, 2018.
The medical professionals at Loma Linda contacted authorities, believing that the child’s injuries were not from a simple fall.
An autopsy determined that Parker had a previous fracture to his skull. It is surmised that this occurred on January 21, when the child fell off a couch and was observed vomiting. Caccavari took him to the Hi-Desert Medical Center after that incident but medical staff there did not do a head or brain scan at that time because it was determined the child had the flu, which was treated.
There was conflicting expert testimony about the extent and nature of the child’s injuries at trial. The plausibility/implausibility of that testimony appears to have created a circumstance which resulted in lingering doubt that resulted in an acquittal on the first-degree murder charge and made it impossible for the jury to reach a consensus on the remaining charges.
Tsuei in making his case relied heavily upon the testimony of Dr. Melissa Egge, a forensic pediatrician. Egge contradicted and sought to dismiss the accuracy of Davies’ account that Schumacher was injured when he launched himself from Davies’ arms while the adult was holding him, hitting his head on the trailer’s linoleum floor.
Defense attorney Zulu Ali ridiculed Egge’s contention that a baby or toddler could fall from the height of a two-story window on its head and not be injured as Parker was injured.
Ali seriously wounded Egge’s credibility as well by attempting to lead the jury to the conclusion that she had committed perjury when she claimed to have done extensive examination of child injuries relating to a child falling out of an adult’s grasp.
For his part, Tsuei sought to impeach Ali’s expert witness, Dr. Marvin Petruszka. The prosecutor first implied and then outright stated that Petruszka’s testimony was purchased for the price of $7,500. Petruszka was incompetent, Tsuei said, being unable to distinguish between the front and back of the child’s skull in photos and x-ray depictions of the injuries. Petruszka’s intellectually dishonesty was established by his unwillingness to entertain the most logical scientific conclusions about what had caused Schumacher’s death, according to Tsuei.
Ali argued that there was no testimony or evidence to indicate Davies was abusive and that, indeed, the opposite was the case, in that Davies, who was 34 at the time of Schumacher’s death, had been involved with a woman with children from a previous relationship and that Davies had not been abusive toward those children.
Ali successfully convinced all members of the jury that Davies had not premeditated the killing of young Schumacher. He also convinced two of the members of the jury that Davies had neither willfully nor negligently injured Parker.
Tsuei at one point engaged in a round of hyperbole he might have later regretted when he told the jury that Ali was arguing that Parker Schumacher had killed himself. Ali pointedly contested that when Judge Pallone acceded to a request by the still-deliberating jury to allow the prosecutor and defense attorney to restate and embellish on their closing arguments.
Davies, who has been in custody for more than seven-and-a-half years, remains incarcerated.
Tsuei, who has continuously committed to the scenario of deliberate murder of the child by Davies, is now seeking second-degree murder and assault of a minor convictions against the defendant, maintaining, essentially, that there was no premeditation on Davies’ part but that he killed Parker in a momentary fit of anger, resentment and desperation.
In pretrial motions heard by Judge Pallone on September 25, Ali and Tsuei haggled over what evidence should be deemed admissible in the new trial.
Ali, it appeared, was purposed, until he encountered stiff opposition from Tsuei which was more or less accepted as valid by Judge Pallone, to argue that there was a “third-party culpability” issue in the case and that he wanted evidence to that effect to be considered by the jury. Extrapolating upon Zulu’s statements, the defense attorney’s theory of third-party culpability comes down to an acto of negigence on Caccavari’s part relating to young Schumacher’s January 21, 2017 fall from the couch.
Judge Pallone did not seem convinced that the fall from the couch was in any way relevant to the child’s death. It is Zulu’s contention that the injury Parker suffered from that fall represented a preexisting condition that may have been a contributory fact in the child’s death. Zulu further believes that if he is allowed to question Caccavari about the fall from the couch, he may be able to impeach her credibility and thus undercut the that portion of the prosecution’s case that will rely on her testimony.
It has not been determined affirmatively whether Judge Pallone will permit the issue of preexisting conditions to be litigated at trial.

During internal discussions, two investigators with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department have said they are at the end of the envelope in stretching logic and interpretation to clear a fellow law enforcement officer of an inappropriate use of what may turn out to be deadly force with regard to a Fontana man who was first shot and then beaten unconsciousness while his arrest was being effectuated on September 24.
It is not the shooting of Jesus Adrian Garcia, which occurred around 2:30 in the afternoon, that is giving the investigators pause, the Sentinel has been told.
Rather, it will be virtually impossible to catalog the beating that Garcia was administered after he was shot and on the ground and no longer in possession of the weapon he had previously wielded as anything less than an assault under the color of authority, one of the investigators conveyed to a department colleague.
It is believed that the Fontana Police Department officer who assaulted Garcia was not the officer who shot him.
The investigator more than a week ago further remarked, the Sentinel is informed, that all should pray or keep their fingers crossed that the autopsy that has now been conducted does not indicate that the beating administered to the prone Garcia was a contributory factor in his death.

Charles Duggan Jr., whose four-and-three-quarters-year tenure as Redlands city manager involved him almost immediately getting off on the wrong foot with one of the most active grass roots civic engagement groups in San Bernardino County contrasted with his ability to cater on a weekly, monthly and year-long basis to the city’s elected leadership, was granted an increase in job security Tuesday.
Duggan, formerly the city manager of Auburn, Alabama and at that time the administrative services division manager and treasurer for the Marin Municipal Water District in Northern California was hired as Redlands city manager on a vote of the city council on November 5, 2019. His start date with the city was on January 13, 2020.
Duggan’s original three-year contract ran to January 2023. In October 2022, the city council extended that contract another three years to January 2026. That contract extension contained a controversial provision, what was termed an “incentive bonus.” The language in the contract stated, “Annually, beginning in August 2023, employee may be eligible for a lump-sum incentive bonus, at the sole discretion of the city council, for performance substantially above expectations. The city council will establish criteria as the basis for any bonus that may be awarded and such criteria will be delivered in writing to employee before December 31 of each year.”
That incentive bonus without specified criteria attached to it was questioned by many residents, most notably those who had previously been critical of action the city council had taken and which Duggan had facilitated.
In 2020, Duggan was paid a salary of $249,216.01, another $5,500 in perks and and pay add-ons, and benefits of $54,343.55 for a total annual compensation of $309,059.56.
In 2021, Duggan received $269,984 in salary, $6,000 in other perquisites and pay add-ons, $44,229.90 in benefits and a $21,301 annual contribution toward the pension he is to receive in retirement, for $341,514.96 in total compensation.
In 2022, Duggan took home a $267,884.51 salary, another $12,131.92 in perks and pay add-ons, and was provided with $108,518.82 in full benefits for a total annual compensation of $388,535.25.
In 2023, Duggan’s salary was increased to $288,292, his perks fell to $6,650 and his full benefits reached $112,283.78, for a total annual compensation of $407,225.78.