On November 8, San Bernardino County’s voters passed Measure D by close to a three-to-two margin.
Measure D was designed by the board of supervisors to undo Measure K, which was passed by more than two-thirds of the county’s voters in 2020. Measure K set the supervisors’ individual salaries and benefits at $60,000 per year and restricted them to a single four-year term in office. The political reform-minded Red Brennan Group had sponsored Measure K. The justification for reducing the supervisors pay and curtailing them to a single term in office, the Red Brennan Group maintained, was that the roughly $260,000 in total compensation the supervisors are provided puts them in an earnings bracket that leaves them out of touch with the county’s voters, who average $67,903 in total annual income per year. Continue reading →

Twelve of 16 local measures presented to San Bernardino County’s voters passed on November 8.
In Rialto, Measure A, put forth by the Rialto Unified School District to authorize the issuance of $340 million in bonds to update safety systems, renovate classrooms and make other facility upgrades at all campuses in the district, passed the 55 percent approval threshold with 7,443 votes or 69.59 percent in favor and 3,408 or 31.41 percent opposed. To debt service those bonds, homeowners will be required to pay on a yearly basis 6 cents per $100 of the assessed value of their homes for the next 27 years.
Measure D, voted on countywide, passed with 148,855 voter endorsements to 103,180 no votes, 59.06 percent to 40.94 percent. Measure D erases the reduction in the combined yearly salary and benefits of the individual members of the board of supervisors to $60,000 and further does away with limiting the supervisors to a single term, provisions that were added to the county charter by the passage of Measure K in 2020. Under Measure D, the supervisors will instead receive total annual compensation of $271,817.79. Measure D’s passage also allows those supervisors already in office to serve three more four-year terms and all future supervisors to serve three terms in office
Measure EE, voted upon countywide, authorized San Bernardino County officials to importune State of California officials to provide them with what the sponsor said is the county’s “fair share” of state and federal funds while simultaneously threatening to have San Bernardino County secede from the state if Sacramento is not forthcoming with that money. It passed, with 128,892 votes or 50.63 percent in favor and 125,696 pr 49.37 percent in opposition. Continue reading →

Out on San Bernardino County’s East Coast, in a clean sweep of historic proportion, Needles voters in one fell swoop made a majority changeover in four of their seven municipal leaders as a result of this month’s election.
On November 8, according to the latest release by the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters, Janet Jernigan polled 408 votes in the race for mayor, giving her 55.66 percent of the 733 total votes cast, putting her well ahead of her competitors, James M. Jones, with 278 votes or 37.93 percent, and Sandra Queen Noble, who had 47 votes for 6.41 percent.
Jernigan will replace Jeff Williams, a longtime member of the city council and mayor.
Also elected this year, though confirmed may be the more proper term given that all three were unopposed, were Jamie McCorkle, JoAnne Pogue and Henry Longbrake. Continue reading →