City of San Bernardino’s officials are coalescing behind City Manager Terry Ledoux’s game plan to allow a county welfare building to progress to completion, occupation and operation at the periphery of the Muscupiabe residential district over a cacophony of protest.
Calculating that the anger of residents in the Muscupiabe District have over the unwanted project in their midst will not translate into a willingness to expend enough money to wage an extended legal battle contesting the project’s approval, city officials have resolved to support the well-heeled developer of the project and his prospective tenant, the County of San Bernardino, in seeing the project through to completion.
City officials believe they can weather the concerted opposition to the project and stand by the much maligned secretive approval given to the project last year, while sidestepping escalating calls that the county first be required to obtain a conditional use permit before the building can be occupied by its transitional assistance department.
Simultaneously, Ledoux is angling to use a threat of legal action by the building’s developer, Scott Beard, as a pretext to prevent opponents of the project from obtaining internal communications among various city officials and Beard that demonstrate the degree to which the city violated its own protocols in arranging to have the project application analyzed and considered not by the city’s planning commission but rather by a more obscure collection of city officials.
In December 2017, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors approved a recommendation from the county’s director of real estate services, Terry Thompson, and the director of the county’s transitional services department, Gilbert Ramos, that the county enter into a $14,036,184 lease agreement with 27th Street TAD, LLC, for approximately 38,150 square feet of office space to be located at the northwest corner of 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive site for occupancy by the transitional assistance department for the ten-year period beginning August 1, 2019 and running through July 31, 2029.
The county’s commitment to that arrangement, however, came prior to the City of San Bernardino, the jurisdiction in which the building was to be constructed, signing off on the project. That cart had been placed before that particular horse in large measure because 27th Street TAD, LLC is a company owned and controlled by Scott Beard. Scott Beard is the scion of Gerald Beard, a politically well-connected real estate mogul who made his first fortune with the manufacturing of Doughboy Pools before enlarging his wealth as a land speculator and developer. Gerald Beard’s son is no less less politically well-connected than his father and is indeed even more so. For the generation he has been involved in the development and the stewardship of properties he has developed or acquired and leased to deep-pocketed occupants, including governmental entities, Beard has cultivated connections among public officialdom by generous political donations to elected officials.
Beard was particularly well wired in with then-San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis, and it was assumed by county officials that Beard would have no difficulty getting an entitlement to build the 38,150-square foot facility.
The historic and quaint Muscupiabe neighborhood on the city’s northwest side is among some of San Bernardino’s strongest and most impressive residential sections. Its entryway features large pepper trees and medium size homes, some of impressive architectural character.
The transitional assistance department, which is sometimes referred to by its acronym TAD, provides a wide array of federal and state-mandated social services and income assistance programs to the residents of San Bernardino County, particularly those whose loss of jobs or income has put them at risk of becoming, or has rendered them, homeless. In common parlance, what was being planned at the northwest corner of 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive was a welfare office.    Such a use of the property, it was understood at City Hall, was very likely out of keeping with the expectations of a significant portion of those living in the Muscupiabe district. Recognizing that this put Beard on a collision course with that neighborhood sentiment which would create a firestorm of controversy and severe protest when the project came up for public review in the venue typically used for just such project approvals – the open forum of a planning commission hearing – city staff rerouted consideration away from the planning commission and instead placed it before the city’s development and environmental review committee, consisting of various members of city staff, primarily department heads and those from the community and economic development department.
Though the lion’s share of city committee and commission meetings, just as city council meetings, are videotaped and televised, the timing of the meetings is a crucial consideration. Whereas planning commission meetings are typically held on Tuesdays at 6 p.m., development and environmental review committee meetings are held on Wednesday mornings at 10 a.m., a time when employed adults are generally unable to attend because of their work commitments. Thus, the consideration of the TAD building at 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive was undertaken in a relatively obscure forum.
Moreover, there were other anomalies about how the project was presented and vetted, which lowered its profile and reduced the likelihood that those in the Muscupiabe neighborhood would take stock of what was coming their way.
One of those was the mislabeling of the project. While at the county no bones were made about what the project was – a building to house an office of the transitional assistance department, a division of the county’s human services department – at the city level, an architect’s inaccurate description line on a rendering for the building in which “resources” was substituted for “services” in the heading human services was adopted as a general description of the building along with the use of the acronym for transitional assistance department – TAD. For virtually everyone who was unfamiliar with the acronym, this changed the implication to suggest that the building was intended to house the county’s human resources or personnel department.
A second misnomer was applied to the project. In internal memos to the city council relating to Beard’s proposal as well as in the disclosure notifications to the residents living in proximity to the project, the structure to be built was referred to in planning profession jargon as one which would feature “office professional” uses, or as a “professional office” building. Those terms carry a different connotation than the designation “commercial office,” which more accurately fits the actual 27th Street TAD, LLC project. A professional office refers to a workplace where employees of a company work in a clerical and corporate environment, functioning separately in cubicles or at desks or interacting with one another or both but essentially with little or no contact with the company’s clients and customers on site. This use generally involves a less substantial flow of traffic into and out from the site. In a commercial office, in addition to housing the employees of the businesses located at that location, those venues involve a daily or constant influx of customers to those businesses, entailing a much more substantial number of people and vehicles into, on and departing from the site on a constant basis during normal business hours. It thus appears that the city’s representation of the 27th Street TAD, LLC project obscured not only that the building upon completion would be a welfare office but that there would be a substantial amount of traffic into and through the area around the project in terms of people and cars coming onto and leaving the site.
2018 was an election year. Prior to the election being held, in October, the move toward having the development and environmental review committee pass judgment on the project at 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive was set. On November 6, incumbent Mayor Carey Davis was defeated by challenger John Valdivia, who since 2012 had been the city’s Third Ward Councilman. The election had an implication for the project proposal, as Beard was not only one of Davis’s primary backers in terms of political contributions, but his de facto campaign manager.
Thus, Beard, it turned out, had bet on the wrong political horse. Though the election was over November 6 and the outcome in the race clear by the morning of November 7, there was yet a six-week lag until those victorious in the November 6 race would be sworn in and installed in office on December 19. For that duration, Carey Davis would remain as mayor, a lame duck, but nevertheless yet the mayor and capable of exercising the full measure of political power in that capacity.
There ensued a mad rush to have Beard’s project fully approved, while City Hall was yet under the sway of Carey Davis. Thus it was that just eight days after the election, on November 14, 2018, the project at 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive was taken up by the environmental and design review committee during a hearing in which the project was identified on the agenda as “an office building” and the zoning on the site as “commercial office.” The agenda further minimized the impression that the project would have a substantive impact on the area by saying it was “categorically exempt” from the requirement that an environmental impact report relating to the project be provided.
With no residents present to inveigh against the project, Beard’s request that he be given entitlement to build it came off without a hitch.
It was not until after Beard’s contractors fenced off the site and began grading there earlier this summer that the residents of the neighborhood took notice of f what was happening. A few made inquiries, learning that a welfare office was going to go into the neighborhood.
27th Street and Little Mountain Drive lies at the confluence of the city’s 2nd, 5th and 7th Wards, represented by council members Sandra Ibarra, Henry Nickel and Bessine Richard, respectively.
By early August, the Muscupiabe neighborhood was awakened and up in arms. Ibarra, in whose Second District the project is located, and Nickel, whose Fifth District borders the project site, took up the cause for the area’s residents, vectoring attention to what had occurred in November, and advocating that the city apply some remedy to the situation. At the August 7 city council meeting, after they insisted that the burgeoning crisis come up for discussion, former City Attorney James Penman advised the city “preserve the status quo and freeze the situation …  by issuing a stop work order.” Penman told the council it should “stop and freeze everything in order that you can do a proper investigation to determine what happened. If you don’t issue the stop work order, the developer continues to build and acquires vested rights. Later [when] the residents get a writ of mandate and make him stop, he is going to sue the city for allowing him to continue to build and spend money.”
When Ibarra and Nickel sought to usher the council toward doing just as Penman was advising, taking action before Beard proceeded with actual building activity beyond the grading he had done up to that point, they encountered resistance from the remainder of their council colleagues. Deputy City Attorney Sonia Carvalho advised against imposing a stop work order on Beard after the city had given him approval to proceed with the construction of the building, telling the council the city could in the alternative seek to require that Beard’s intended tenant – the county – obtain a conditional use permit to operate a human services office at that location. The council receded from any direct action at that point, instead voting to have City Manager Teri Ledoux and city staff proceed with an  investigation into the situation Ledoux said she had already initiated, and report its findings back to the city council on August 14.
By August 14, however, Beard was threatening to sue the city if it took any action whatsoever – against him, his company, or the county – that would interfere with the completion of the project. In an auger of things to come, Ledoux refused to release the investigation she had undertaken, claiming it involved confidential information that would be improper to release while the prospect of legal action by Beard yet hung over the city. Muscupiabe District residents, who had earlier been led to believe the investigation’s results would be forthcoming and that the answers to the questions they were promised would be provided grew more disconcerted than previously. One of those, Kathy Mallon, who lives in the Blair Park Neighborhood immediately adjacent to the Muscupiabe District, submitted, on August 17, a request made under the California Public Records Act that the city produce information, documents and data that many people previously assumed would have been forthcoming with Ledoux’s so-called investigation.
Referencing “APN 0148-021-66, Northwest corner of Little Mountain Dr and W 27th St.,” Mallon wrote, “Please provide all permit application documents filed by 27th Street TAD and ATC Design Group” and “Please provide all staff reports used in support of the D/ERC [Design and Environmental Review Committee] evaluation” and “All email communications between staff and city administrators either internal or with the applicant/property owner. List below of known city staff and administrators to include but not limited to: R Carey Davis, Benito Barrios, Andrea Miller, Teri Ledoux, Jeff Bloom, Oliver Mujica, Brian Gumpert, Gary Akers, Hernando Cotangco, Robert Sepulveda, Robert Linberg, James Lane, Gracie Johnson, Stephanie Sanchez.”
Benito Barrios was the Second Ward Councilman in 2018. Jeff Bloom was the city’s acting community development director in 2018. Mujica was and is San Bernardino’s planning division manager. Gumport is with the city’s building and safety division. Akers is with the city’s land development division. Sepulveda is with the city’s public works engineering division. Lane is with the city’s environmental control division. Johnson is the city’s integrated waste division representative. Sanchez is the commission’s secretary. Miller was then the city manager.
Mallon sent her public records request via email directly to City Clerk Gigi Hanna, with electronic carbon copies to Ledoux, Nickel, Mayor John Valdivia and Ibarra.
In the four weeks since, the city has utilized a series of stalling and delaying tactics to avoid having to turn over the communications Mallon requested.
This week, city officials indicated Mallon will at last be provided with the materials she requested on September 17, a full month after her request was made. Word now comes, however, that officials will renege on that commitment again. The Sentinel is informed that Ledoux will assert a categorical exemption to having to supply the emails, texts, memos, and instant messages on the basis that doing so would harm the city’s legal position if Beard, as he has threatened, files suit against the city.
According to one well-placed city official, “There are memos and communication about this. The law allows the city to withhold information connected to pending or existing litigation and Beard has publicly stated that he will sue over this and I believe it has been discussed in closed session. In Public Records Act requests like this, it is Best Best & Krieger [the law firm the City of San Bernardino contracts with to serve as its city attorney] that reviews the request and determines what to release.”
The calculation city management is making is that it has more to fear from Beard than it does from the irate citizenry in the Muscupiabe District. Five-sevenths of the current city council – First District Councilman Ted Sanchez, Third District Councilman Juan Figueroa, Fourth District Councilman Fred Shorett, Sixth District Councilman Jim Mulvihill and Seventh District Councilwoman Bessine Richard do not represent constituents directly impacted by the project and therefore will encounter no untoward consequences for allowing Beard and the project to proceed. As members of a seven-person decision-making panel, Ibarra and Nickel have insufficient political muscle to force any action with regard to the project, such as instituting a requirement that before the county occupies the building with the transitional assistance department that it first obtain a conditional use permit, through which process conditions on that occupancy could be mandated that might mitigate the impacts upon the Muscupiabe neighborhood.
The Sentinel is reliably informed that Ledoux, in addition to withholding the communications Mallon requested from Mallon, is preventing the documents from being released to either Ibarra or Nickel.
Of interest and consequence in all of this is Mayor John Valdivia’s stance with regard to the project. Ostensibly, Valdivia carries no brief, and has no love lost, for Beard, who after all was the single strongest electioneering force on behalf of his opponent in last year’s election. The residents of the Muscupiabe District, those who were shortchanged by his rival, would seem to be his natural constituency, a group for whom he could now go to bat and whose support forever after would then presumably be his. Inexplicably, however, Valdivia has not embraced the Muscupiabe District’s cause. He spurned both the Muscupiabe Neighborhood Association and the nearby Blair Park Neighborhood Association early last month when they invited him to a forum at which their grievances were to be articulated to county officials including Supervisor Josie Gonzales, San Bernardino County Real Estate Department Director Terry Thompson and San Bernardino County Transitional Services Director Gilbert Ramos as well as Ledoux and current San Bernardino Community & Economic Development Director Michael Huntley, along with Beard himself. Valdivia has continued to hold the residents of the Muscupiabe District at arm’s length. Instead, he has sided with Ledoux, whose strategy appears to maintain the rectitude of the city’s action in approving the project in November and simply stonewalling and outlasting the resistance the Muscupiabe District residents are putting up. Ledoux’s calculation is that the members of the Muscupiabe neighborhood will neither collectively nor individually put up the money needed to hire an attorney to challenge the city’s approval process in court. For the residents, this has created a Catch 22-type scenario as applies to the communications Mallon has requested. It is widely assumed among those opposed to the project that somewhere in the communications the city is hiding and refusing to hand over is a smoking gun or perhaps more than one smoking gun, a sentence or paragraph where the desirability of keeping the consideration of the project from taking place in the far more open forum of a planning commission hearing as opposed to the obscure confines of the city’s development and environmental review committee is explicitly stated. Considering the way in which Ledoux is intent on keeping those communications under wraps, several people have come to believe that what she is attempting to keep from surfacing is a direct order from top echelon city official to someone in the city’s community development division to not have the planning commission review the project. Ledoux’s reluctance to allow open access to the communications among Beard, the former mayor, the former city manager and top city planning officials is a strong indication, several people have openly indicated, that some San Bernardino city official or officials in 2018 pulled strings to prevent the proposal for a welfare office now scheduled to be placed into the Muscupiabe residential district from being considered and vetted properly in an an open process commensurate with the serious impact the project will have on its immediate environs.
Were the residents of the Muscupiabe District to obtain such a piece of evidence, any legal challenge of the project approval they pursued would almost certainly succeed.
For that reason, Mallon and other Musciabe District residents find it particularly galling that Ledoux is using a threat of legal action against the city by Beard, whom they suspect of colluding with the city against their interests, to prevent them from obtaining evidence of that collusion so they can marshal proof that they are at the very least owed a chance to have the project reconsidered in an open forum where all of the impacts of the project are given a complete and unvarnished airing before they are consigned to coexist with what they consider to be a development that is incompatible with the present ambiance of their neighborhood.
At this point, the ball is now in the court of the residents of the Muscupiabe District, who face the option of accepting the city-dictated inertia of letting the project run its course through to completion or employing an attorney to legally contest the city’s approval process.
-Mark Gutglueck

Her efforts to properly carry out her assignments as San Bernardino City Manager earned her the enmity of the city’s mayor, Andrea Travis Miller claims in a lawsuit she has filed against her former employer.

In that suit, Travis Miller maintains she was retaliated against, subjected to a “hostile” work environment, discriminated against and suffered gender bias. She says that tension between her and Mayor John Valdivia and his staff members was at the root of much of the shabby treatment she endured.

Travis Miller’s suit filed in San Bernardino County Superior Court, reiterates many of the issues she previously highlighted in a claim she filed against the city in July in the aftermath of her April 3 suspension and May 29 firing, while fleshing out further detail with regard to how the city and its leaders failed to take any corrective action or discipline those who were responsible for what she experiences.

In the breach-of-contract lawsuit filed Tuesday, Travis-Miller maintains several of the city’s elected officials knowlingly and deliberately violated the city’s  charter, which was revamped in 2016, particularly with regard to provisions that empowered her as city manager vis-à-vis the mayor.

She was the victim, according to Travis Miller and her attorney, Milad Sadr, of  “a concerted effort” orchestrated by Valdivia and his minions following his elevation to the post of mayor after he defeated his predecessor, Carey Davis, in the November 2018 election.

Valdivia evinced a shocking degree of chauvinism, according to the suit, including having “questioned why the city had a female city manager or the wisdom of having women in government” which ultimately had the effect of leaving her isolated from other members of city, excluded from meetings, and shunted aside in such a way that she was “cut off [from] the flow of information or communications intrinsic to her essential job duties.” She was, according to the suit, unjustifiably subjected to “negative performance reviews, reduction in authority, administrative leave and termination.”

The Chino Valley Independent Fire District Board this week voted to consider censuring board member Winn Williams for a third time in less than eight months at its upcoming October 9 meeting.
Personality conflicts have plagued the relationship between Williams, a former fire captain employed by the district, and his fellow board members from very shortly after he assumed office late last year.
Williams previously served a two-year term on the board from 2004 to 2006 and was returned to the board by voters last November. After he retired from the district as a firefighter in 2002 following an extended leave following an injury on the job in 2000, Williams in 2008 initiated an effort, at the age of 59, to be rehired as a firefighter, asserting he had by that point recovered from his injury. When the district declined to rehire him, he engaged in a series of three legal actions to be reinstated as a firefighter, two in state court and one in federal court, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful.
Williams maintains the tense relations between him and other members of the board and the hostility of staff toward him that manifested almost immediately upon his swearing in in December 2018 is unnecessary and unjustified. He says the enmity he is subjected to is an outgrowth of his having unseated in last year’s election longtime board member Ed Gray, with whom he says the other members of the board had a chummy relationship.
The four other members of the board – John DeMonaco, Harvey Luth, Sarah Evinger-Ramos and Mike Kreeger – contend that Williams is obsessed with his own personal issues relating to his inability to rehire with the district, which prevents him from focusing on the district’s current challenges and demands. They say that having to work with a board member who has thrice sued the district puts them in an awkward position. His constant negativism with regard to the department’s personnel, in particular Fire Chief Tim Shackelford, prevents them from having even the semblance of productive discussions with him, they contend.
The declension in the working relationship between Williams and his colleagues and key district staff was so immediate that by February, little more than two months after Williams had assumed office, he was censured by a vote of his colleagues. That censure was based on the contention that Williams was unduly harassing district employees and making use of district assets for his personal use. Williams denied the allegations.
Censures of elected officials are exceedingly rare, and usually are a move of last or near-last resort by members of a governing board against a colleague with whom they do not get along. The February censure of Williams appears to be the most rapid application of the censure process against an elected official in San Bernardino County history.  It carried with it the imposition of what can only be described as extraordinary conditions that place extensive limitations on how and under what circumstances Williams can interact with, monitor and come in contact with district employees. It also restricts Williams’ access to district facilities.
Williams’ contention has been that the restrictions that had been placed upon him interfered, unnecessarily and illegally, with his ability to function as an elected representative of the voters in his capacity as a board member overseeing the district’s operations.
Four months after his initial censure, in June, the board censured Williams a second time, on that occasion for his having disregarded the expectations of his comportment set out in the February censure.
There seemed to be little improvement in the relationship between Williams and the other members of the board thereafter. Indeed, from week-to-week and month-to-month, it seemed, the other four members of the board were in a competition with one another to establish which one of them had the most pointed differences with Williams.
In August, DeMonaco sought a third censure against Williams, based on an incident that occurred after the conclusion of the fire board’s July 10 meeting, which he said consisted of Williams having had physical contact with him on his back and neck as they were engaged in an intense argument. Williams insisted that DeMonaco was mischaracterizing and exaggerating a gesture that was made as he voiced a sincere appeal to see if the contretemps between him and the rest of the board could be resolved. The remainder of the board declined to join with DeMonaco in having Williams reproved publicly and officially a third time, what some interpreted as a signal that a more civil accommodation among all five board members was in the offing.
Little more than a month later, however, Williams’ contempt for Chief Shackleford was again on display with several of his comments from the board dais at the September 11 meeting.
According to Williams, Shackleford has continued to evince a level of “incompetence” which he said “has put this entire community in danger.”
That proved to be too much for DeMonaco, Luth, Evinger-Ramos and Kreeger, who voted 4-to-0, with Williams abstaining, to consider the third censure of Williams at the first board meeting in October. That censure motion was not based upon Williams’ comments aimed at Shackleford but rather his previous criticism of the district’s clerk of the board, Sandra Heney.

In the face of troubling local economic signs, the county board of supervisors this week made a move to boost the paychecks of county workers.
The jury is yet out on whether that move to artificially buoy the local economy will have the desired impact, or whether greater governmental commitments to employee salaries and benefits will deprive county residents of services and assistance they need to negotiate what some prognosticators are saying will prove leaner financial times just ahead.
Alarmingly, San Bernardino County’s unemployment rate, which had dipped to a near historic low of 3.3 percent this spring, in just over four months has zoomed up to 4.2 percent.
Those working, while not exactly in the poorhouse, are doing comparatively worse than virtually all of their counterparts in the country’s top 50 municipal areas. San Bernardino was next to last when it came to weekly wages before taxes and other payroll deductions – $931 weekly. That was a mere $4 above those in dead last at number 50 – the $927 paid to worker in adjoining Riverside County south of San Bernardino County’s boundary. In contrast, over the county’s western border, in Los Angeles County, workers there bring down an average of $1,282 weekly, putting the County of the Angels at number 22 among the Top 50 U.S. municipal areas. Orange County workers are faring even better with average gross wages before taxes and deductions of $1,287 per week, making it Number 20 among the country’s 50 leading municipal areas.
Meanwhile, the county’s residents who rent rather than own the premises in which they live and like the rest of Americans are dealing with a 2.6 percent inflation rate, have seen rental rates increase by 5.1 percent over the last year. A two-room apartment now runs the average renter $1,550 per month.
From the beginning of Spring 2017 to the very end of winter 2018, the combined economy of Riverside and San Bernardino grew, if not phenomenally, then very well, at 4.5 percent, the ninth-best improvement among municipal areas nationally in that timeframe. Nevertheless, between the beginning of Spring 2018 and the end of winter earlier this year, that red hot growth had cooled to a 1.6 percent rate. Though that was better than flatlining or a decrease, there were yet 65 other metropolitan areas throughout the country with economies growing more rapidly.
When it rains, it pours. The first week of September, employees of Haralambos Beverage Company learned that last month the company had informed the state’s Employment Development Department that beginning October 11, it will lay off 53 workers at its Redlands facility, including 36 sales personnel, 15 employed in operations and two managers.
In an effort to make an inroad against the deteriorating financials besetting the county, the county’s governmental structure announced this week that it has come to terms with Teamsters Local 1932, the collective bargaining unit for slightly more than half of the county’s approximately 22,000 employees, to provide those represented employees a 2.5 percent uniform wage increase effective tomorrow, Saturday, September 14, 2019, to be augmented by a matching 2.5 percent raise as of July 18, 2020, a third 2.5 percent accretion on July 31, 2021, followed with a 3 percent across-the-board hike on July 30, 2022.
Where it can, the county will also allow those employees reaching an accumulation of a specified number of hours at a given pay grade or level to move up in remuneration, receiving what is called a “step raise” immediately upon registering the designated number of hours. Those employees in positions for which the qualifications are forbidding, thus making them difficult to fill, will see even more generous increases.
Altogether, the deal with Teamsters Local 1932 is to set taxpayers back some $345.7 million beyond what the current projected personnel costs are to be for the county between now and June 30, 2023.
While it is hoped the extra money in the hands of slightly over half of the county’s workforce, increasing that segment of the county population’s disposable income, will have a “trickle-down” positive effect on the San Bernardino County economy as a whole, the diversion of that money into the pockets of the county’s public employees will in some measure detract from the county’s ability to provide services for its residents, including some of those whose circumstances under the challenges of the current dip and what is projected to be a more massive fiscal contraction beginning in 2020 will be most heavily impacted.

Among the definitions of politics is “the wielding of power.”
In the Yucaipa Calimesa Joint Unified School District, an object lesson in how power is wielded was recently provided when a student representative on the school board was chosen for the 2019-20 academic year.
The choice –  Yucaipa High School senior Atalie Bogh – boasts impressive credentials, including the 4.7 “academic weighted” grade point average she has compiled from the ninth grade though the eleventh grade, standing as an associated student body representative, participation on the cross country and track teams as well as involvement with the school’s Interact Club.
That portfolio appears to be justification enough for her appointment as the student representative on the school board, even in the face of other well-qualified candidates.
Politics is politics, and whatever those other candidates may have had to offer will take a backseat as Atalie Bogh’s selection reflects another dynamic, or set of dynamics, all of which come back to the wielding of power, the power of politics.
Atalie’s mother, Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, is a member of the Yucaipa Calamesa School Board. What’s more, Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh is now running for California State Senate in the 23rd Senate District. What’s even more, Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh is making that run with the endorsement of the incumbent in the 23rd Senate District, Mike Morrell.
Add to that consideration that Atalie’s father, Greg Bogh, is currently a Yucaipa Councilman and former Yucaipa mayor. Her uncle, Russ Bogh, was initially defeated by fellow Republican Jan Leja in his run for the Assembly in the 65th Assembly District in 2000, but thereafter Leja agreed not to take the position she had been elected to in California’s lower legislative house after she pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in that race. Russ Bogh won special election to replace her. In 2002 and 2004 he was reelected to the Assembly in the 65th District, which at that time straddled both San Bernardino County and Riverside County. The 65th District included Yucaipa.
Similarly, the Yucaipa Calimesa School District covers a portion of both San Bernardino County and Riverside County.
Atalie’s selection just happens to boost her mother’s prospects in the upcoming March primary, and will likely not hurt her father’s chances for reelection in another three years. Last year no one surfaced to challenge him in the Yucaipa District 2 race.
Whatever the credentials, qualifications, academic and extracurricular participation of the others competing for or considered as the student representative on the school board, appointing the scion of Yucaipa’s most powerful political family to the largely ceremonial and non-voting student representation position was the safest choice the Yucaipa High School faculty could make in terms of their career longevity and the district’s inner, and the community’s general, politics.

By John Valdivia, San Bernardino Mayor
Think about a situation where you might encounter a law enforcement officer. For most people, the situation they imagine is negative.
In San Bernardino, local police are changing that perception while making our community a safer environment to live and do business. We’ve restructured the force, and these efforts are already paying positive dividends for San Bernardino.
The city has partnered with the San Bernardino Police Officers Association to bring a new playground to Littlefield/Schultis Park, and we are encouraging members of the community to get involved to make this a reality, including taking part in the BBQ fundraiser hosted by the SBPOA coming up September 26 to support the project.
We want people in San Bernardino to have opportunities to interact with law enforcement in positive settings. SBPD pop up tents are appearing regularly at spots throughout San Bernardino, and mounted patrols are distributing resources to our neighbors on horseback.
Community members are invited to attend regular “Coffee with a Cop” meetings to share their concerns or just chat. This summer, San Bernardino officers held a back-to-school block party, invited local religious leaders for a summit with clergy, and held a banquet for future members of the force.
We’re also addressing homelessness and public safety by connecting homeless individuals with resources to help them turn their lives around. San Bernardino is fortunate to have strong partnerships between city leaders, nonprofits, and law enforcement that are making our community safer and creating positive alternatives to crime. Despite budget challenges, no law enforcement officers have been laid off and in fact we are putting more officers on the street.
Finally, we’re using technology including social media and a GoRequest app, which enables people to file a report and track their report to resolution all from their mobile device.
Improved public safety is essential to turning around San Bernardino’s image and attracting visitors, investment, and jobs. A safer community is one where our businesses can flourish and our children can achieve their potential.
We also recognize such a vision is a team effort. We invite you to take part in the progress underway. Next time you see local law enforcement hosting a block party, setting up a pop up tent, or patrolling on horseback, we hope you’ll say hello and thank them for their hard work for our community.
John Valdivia was elected mayor in 2018. He was previously Third Ward Councilman.

Hall’s willowweed, known by its scientific name, epilobium hallianum, is a subspecies of the genus of flowering plants in the family Onagraceae that is extant in the San Bernardino Mountains. The Onagraceae genus contains some 197 species worldwide.
Most species are known by the common name willowherbs for their willow-like leaves. Those that were once cataloged as boisduvalia are called spike-primroses or boisduvalias. Those epilobium species previously placed in the chamaenerion group and known as fireweeds are now segregated into the genus chamaenerion.
Epilobium hallianum, a dicot, is a perennial herb that is native to California, and is also found outside of California, but is confined to western North America.
The leaves are opposite or rarely whorled, simple and ovate to lanceolate in shape. The flowers are actinomorphic (radially symmetrical) with four petals that may be notched. These are usually smallish and white or bluish-purple. The fruit is a slender cylindrical capsule containing numerous seeds embedded in fine, soft silky fluff which disperses the seeds very effectively in the wind.
Willowweed only rarely exists in conjunction with shade trees, often limiting itself to more recently disturbed patches, yielding to other plants over time. Consequently, though it functions as a pioneer plant, it does not qualify as an invasive weed.
Epilobium species are used as food plants by the caterpillars of certain lepidoptera species, most often including the white-lined sphinx known scientifically as the hyles lineata; the black-banded carpet, known scientifically as the antepirrhoe semiatrata; the yellow-banded day sphinx, known scientifically as the proserpinus flavofasciata; the ornate moth, known scientifically as the utetheisa ornatrix; and Clark’s day sphinx moth, known scientifically as proserpinus clarkiae. It also attracts the grey pug, known scientifically as eupithecia subfuscata; the mouse moth, known scientifically as the amphipyra tragopoginis; the small angle shades, known scientifically as euplexia lucipara; and the elephant hawk-moth, known scientifically as the deilephila elpenor.
The main use of epilobium by humans is as a herbal supplement in the treatment of prostate, bladder, incontinence and hormone disorders. Many of the small willowherb species are nuisance weeds in gardens. Though few are regularly used as ornamental plants, the larger willowherbs may be attractive in ruderal locales.
In the late summer, its flowers yield pollen and copious nectar which give a rich spicy honey. Its young leaves, roots, and shoots are edible, if somewhat bitter, and rich in provitamin A and vitamin C. The plant’s sap can be applied to wounds, as it has anti-inflammatory properties.
From Wikipedia, calflora.org and calscape.org

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Sentinel 09-06-19