Multiple entities in the region that includes the nortwesternmost tip of San Bernardino County are awaiting Orange County Superior Court Judge William Claster’s determinations with regard to a complex set of contentions among numerous governmental and business entities pertaining to water rights and usage in the West Mojave Desert.
At stake is how the overdrafting of the water table in the Indian Wells Valley, which lies at the confluence of San Bernardino, Kern and Inyo counties.
Under scrutiny is the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority’s Ground Water Sustainability Plan, the strategy designed by the controlling majority of that regional joint powers authority to share the valley’s precious water resources, which some interested parties hail as necessary and other entities consider unfair and unworkable.
Complicating the matter is that the Indian Wells Valley Water District, which is the dissenting member of the groundwater authority, in September reinstituted a legal challenge to the sustainability plan in the form of a reverse validation action.
The issues at play extend back more than a decade.
In 2014, in the face of a persistent drought, then-Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency with regard to California’s water situation and then signed into law the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which classified 21 groundwater basins in the state, including the one in Indian Wells Valley, as being in a state of critical overdraft. Continue reading →

The off-duty San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department narcotics detective who on October 27 intervened to end the high-speed flight of the suspect who had an hour previously gunned down one of his colleagues has been identified.
Shortly after noon on October 22, Angelo Saldivar, who was at that time living at 6323 Ashton Court in San Bernardino, traveled by motorcycle to 12346 Hollyhock Drive in Rancho Cucamonga in Rancho Cucamonga, a condominium complex where he had previously resided with his former wife, Veronica Garcia Saldivar, also known as Veronica Garcia Zaragosa, and the couple’s daughter in Unit 2. On November 13, 2024, Veronica Garcia Saldivar Zaragosa had initiated divorce proceedings against Saldivar, which were concluded on July 30, 2025, when a divorce decree was granted, with the notice of the entry of judgment filed on August 20, 2025.
On October 27, Saldivar had come to Rancho Cucamonga on a misbegotten mission to forge a reconciliation with his ex-wife, an effort which, likely moribund from the outset, escalated into an anger-filled verbal altercation. Saldivar’s shouts and Garcia Saldivar Zaragosa’s screams resulted in neighbors making 9-1-1 calls to report the disturbance, one of which reported that the male involved in the family altercation, now known to have been Saldivar, was seeking to force Gacrcia Saldivar Zaragosa into her car at gunpoint.
Both Angelo and Saldivar are known to have owned numerous firearms. At some point after the former couple had begun their argument but before responding law enforcement officers arrived, at least two and perhaps as many as four gunshots rang out. Continue reading →

In memory of Mary Watson-Ortiz, the musicians of the Ontario Chaffey Community Show Band are proud to present Home for the Holidays on Monday, December 15, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
The concert will be held in Merton E. Hill Auditorium located on the campus of Chaffey High School at the corner of Fifth Street and N. Euclid Avenue.
The Woodwind Celebration Ensemble will present a pre-concert recital in the auditorium lobby at 7:00 p.m. Complimentary coffee and cookies will be served in the lobby prior to the concert.
The performance is free to the public.
The December concert features a repertoire of traditional and contemporary holiday music highlighted by talented soloists, including return engagements by guest artists Bobby Collins and Skip Cain. Show Band vocalists Joscelyn Washington and Natasha Le will be supported by the musicians of the Show Band.
The concert will include renditions of many holiday favorites, including Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, a Hanukkah Celebration, and a Christmas Medley sing-along.
Show Band vocalist Jocelyn Washington will be featured on Oh Holy Night along with the famous song written by Mark Lowry of the Gaither Band, Mary Did You Know?
Natasha Le will perform Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
The Show Band is honored to feature Bobby Collins and Skip Cain in this year’s holiday concert.
Bobby Collins will sing The Christmas Song, Grown-Up Christmas List and We Need a Little Christmas.
Skip Cain will perform White Christmas by Irving Berlin from the 1942 musical Holiday Inn.
The Show Band will be featured on these and other selections, including a jazzy winter composition entitled Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow! and March of the Toys from Disney’s Babes in Toyland. Continue reading →

Despite reports, widespread belief, and general perception to the contrary, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has been cooperating with the federal government in efforts to effectuate the arrests and deportation of individuals present in the country illegally, according to members of the department and documentation obtained by the Sentinel.
Immediately after Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, his administration began gearing up for an aggressive enforcement of U.S. immigration law. That effort included Tom Homan, who had served as the director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency during Donald Trump’s first term in office, taking charge of the former agency he headed as well as orienting himself with regard to all aspects of the function of the Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration,
the Department of Enforcement and Removal Operations and the Department of Justice. Those federal agencies were involved in rounding up illegal aliens, and were to be instrumental elements that Homan intended to wield in his appointed role, announced by President-elect Trump in November 2024, of “border czar.”
By February, Homan and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security hand initiated action in Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Washington. Virginia, Maryland, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Tennessee, Connecticut, Michigan and Ohio, which ranked as the states with the second through the nineteenth largest number of undocumented foreigners living within them. Less intense, what were referred to as “token” efforts were taking place in Oregon, Indiana, Utah, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Montana.
Prior to raids being initiated in those states, as had traditionally been the case with regard to the operations of the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, going back generations, elements within the individual state governments were made aware, either through direct contact with federal officials or indirectly through resource coordination efforts, of what was coming.
Holman held off on launching what he and President Trump intended to be the largest, most energetic and ultimately most comprehensive illegal alien roundup, Operation Alta California, targeting the Golden State where the largest number of illegal aliens in any single state, estimated at 2.7 million, were residing.
Along with other members of the Trump Administration, Holman anticipated that California officials would prove less than cooperative, indeed obstructive, toward the effort to arrest and deport on a massive scale the illegal immigrants living in California. Continue reading →

Yucaipa has settled upon Sean Moore as its next city manager.
He is to replace, perhaps as early as next week, Jennifer Crawford, who has filled the role of interim city manager since April, shortly after the departure of Chris Mann, who was city manager for slightly over two years.
Moore has been the last four years the city manager of the Los Angeles County city of Lawndale. While Lawndale, at 1.97 square miles, is less than one-fourteenth the size of Yucaipa geographically, it’s population density of 14,733 per acre makes it far more urbanized than Yucaipa, with its population density of 1,982 per square mile.
It is the collective hope of the Yucaipa City Council that bringing Moore in as the city’s top administrator, making him the fourth person to hold the post in less than three years, will bring the curtain down on the most chaotic and unstable period in the 36-year history of Yucaipa.
The question at this point is whether Moore’s relatively uneventful tenure in the previous governmental posts he has held has adequately prepared for the vicissitudes of conflicting interests in Yucaipa, where the majority of residents want to maintain a slower-paced lifestyle in a semi-rural community while deep-pocketed developers and landowners of large swaths of property are focused on the opportunity they see to further enrich themselves by transforming the city from the home of 56,293 residents to a community more in keeping with the likes of Fontana and Corona with a mix of wall-to-wall residential subdivisions, complimentary commercial strip malls and a mix of warehouses that will zoom the population to upward of 100,000. Continue reading →

With Chino Hills Objecting

SBC County Is Shoehorning West End Cities Into Utilizing Fontana Homeless Navigation Center

San Bernardino County, which according to a survey conducted early this year has at least 3,837 people who have no roof over their heads within its 20,105-square mile confines, appears to be making significant strides in redressing the social scourge of homelessness.
At various points over the last decade or so, at least four of the county’s 24 municipalities and the county government itself has taken the lead in the effort to reclaim the lives and dignity of the region’s destitute.
Not surprisingly, those entities consistently most involved in that effort have included San Bernardino, Fontana and Victorville, three of the five places in the county where the problem of those living on the streets or under what are very dire circumstances is most pronounced.
Recently, Fontana has found itself in the lead once more. Somewhat ironically, however, it has drawn criticism from officials in other San Bernardino County jurisdictions for the intensity with which it has met the homelessness challenge head-on, even as the cities those officials critical of Fontana have shrunk from dealing with the homelessness challenge.
In San Bernardino there are five comprehensive homeless shelters. One is Mary’s Haven, a 12-to-24-month transitional living program for displaced women with young children. Another is Mary’s Village, which features 85 beds for homeless men, and which is run by the same Catholic social services missionaries who operate Veronica’s Home of Mercy I and Veronica’s Home of Mercy II, each providing 40 beds and other support and social service for homeless women. Another is the former All Star Lodge, which was converted by the County of San Bernardino in conjunction with the State of California’s Homekey Program into 76 single and two-bedroom units that provide interim to permanent housing for individuals and families. Continue reading →