The third managerial transition in Rancho Cucamonga’s 48-year history this week was marred by deep controversy over a secretive move by City Hall to reverse course on a key element of its land use policy, raising the specter of graft and influence peddling impacting governmental operations within San Bernardino County’s fourth most populous city.
The abrupt shift city officials are seeking to implement with regard to the intensity of development that is to be permitted to take place within the expanse of land most recently annexed the city while those officials were withholding from the public information relating to that alteration in policy is taking place just as Elisa Cox is officially succeeding John Gillison, who as of Monday officially departed as city manager after a tenure in that capacity which began in 2011.
Among Gillison’s most significant accomplishments was the city’s 2020 annexation of 6.38-square mile Etiwanda Heights, which was then situated above the northeastern quadrant of the city. That acquisition boosted the 40.12 square miles that were then within Rancho Cucamonga city limits to 46.5 square miles. That expansion was not effectuated casually, but had come after more than two decades of contemplation and informal discussion, followed by focused and intense preparation and action toward the annexation of the 4,085 acres in question in the 2017-to-2020 timeframe. This entailed, throughout all of 2018 and most of 2019, multiple public hearings, community workshops, scoping sessions, virtual workshops, surveys, and pop-up meetings in which the community, most particularly those then-current residents living in close proximity to the 4,085 acres under consideration for annexation, were encouraged to and did weigh in with regard to their perception of the advisability of expanding the city’s jurisdiction to include the land and the standards under which the property was to be developed once it became part of the city. The predominate, indeed nearly universal sentiment, expressed throughout this process was that the rustic and virtually undeveloped land should not be aggressively or intensely developed. Those present at the meetings, workshops and scoping sessions voiced, and the city staff summaries of that input documents consistently strong opposition to “apartments,” “condos,” “high-density,” and “multi-family housing.” Staff reports show residents explicitly added “No Apartments” and “No Condos” to priority boards during workshops. That input was utilized to inform what ultimately became the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, a binding planning document which was was ultimately given approval by the city council in November 2019.
As drawn up and ratified, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan permits a relatively narrow swath of property that was previously within the city limits, featuring chaparral, grasslands and oak woodlands alongside a natural alluvial creekbed, to be developed with something on the order of 90 to 100 homes. Further, under the plan, another 790 acres in the annexed property is to be designated as eligible for a variety of residential uses, including senior living cottages, some relatively small single family units as well as a number of half-acre sized lots to be zoned to allow equestrian use. Overall, the lion’s share of the land to be annexed, 88.2 percent or 3,603 of its 4,085 acres, is zoned for “rural/conservation” land use where no development is to occur.
The adopted plan reflected a prohibition on multifamily units by providing only single-family housing types in the designated “neighborhood area” within Etiwanda Heights. Overall, documents show, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan was to allow “2,700–3,000 single-family homes” to be built while ensuring that there were to be “no multi-family units across the 790 acres” zoned to be developed residentially. The adopted plan reflected this by providing only single-family housing types in the so-called neighborhood area.
Thereafter, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan was presented as the land use document cited in support of the city’s application with the San Bernardino Couny Local Agency Formation Commission to annex the 4,085 acres. That effort concluded successfully on November 9, 2020, when the Local Agency Formation commission, known by its acronym LAFCO, gave approval to the annexation. Throughout LAFCO’s processing and ultimate granting of that request, Rancho Cucamonga officials gave repeated assurances that the city was committed to abiding by the development standards and limitations contained in the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, including assurances that upon the 6.38 square miles transitioning from unicorporated San Bernardino County land to property lying within Rancho Cucamonga municipal boundaries, that portion of it deemed suitable for residential development would consist of unattached single-family homes, each with its surrounding and separate yard. There were multiple attestations of this commitment, made by city officials in both verbal and written form, including the The 2020 LAFCO annexation approval summary, dated November 9, 2020; city website announcements and at public presentations surrounding the annexation.
Ultimately, in making its annexation application and throughout LAFCO’s processing and ultimate granting of that request, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan formed the basis of how the city was proceeding toward the eventuality of expanding its boundaries. In this way, the city and its officials were doubly committed, and the city’s residents doubly assured, that there were to be no multifamily residences constructed in Etiwanda Heights and there was to be no high-density development of the property, and what development was to occur there would be within a subdivision or subdivisions of a density between 3.3 units to the acre and 3.67 units to the acre, an intensity below that which had occurred in the city’s residential tracts in the 1980s and 1990s. City officials’ repeated commitments to adhere to these standards were manifest in the 2020 LAFCO annexation approval summary, dated November 9, 2020; announcements on the city’s website; and city officials’ verbal statements during public presentations surrounding the annexation.
Throughout the remainder of Gilllison’s official tenure as city manager – a period of slightly more than five years running through November 30, 2025 – the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan had remained operative.
Contained within Etiwanda Heights was 1,252.21 acres of land owned by the San Bernardino County Flood Control District. Following the Army Corps of Engineers construction of a regional flood control system that included concrete channelization some two decades ago, the use of the acreage for damming, diversion purposes and containment basins ceased, although those basins remained operative, following normal precipitation or deluges, for percolation purposes. The county declared the property as surplus during the fist decade of the 21st Century and for a time entertained purchase and development proposals from various entities entities, including a competition in 2009 that was never resolved. Unbeknownst to the public, last year the county entered into confidential and exclusive negotiations with developer James “Jimmy” Previti and representatives of his company, Frontier Enterprises. On the day prior to Thanksgiving 2024, November 27, 2024, in a closed-door session from which the public was excluded, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors worked out the final details and then ratified the sale of the 1,252.21 acres – slightly less than 1.96 square miles – for the agreed-upon price of $93 million, or $74,275.21 per acre. Though ownership of the property changed hands, it remained within the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan Area, and subject to the land use standards and restrictions contained in the document in its finalized form when ratified by the city council in 2019 and memorialized for a second time during LAFCO’s 2020 processing and ratification of the annexation of the 4,085 acres within which the 1,252.21-acres flood zone purchased by Previti lies.
In August 2025, it was announced that Gillison was to depart as manager as of December 1, at which time he was to be succeeded by Elisa Cox, who had been serving as the city’s second-in-command as assistant city manager since May 2002, had deputy city manager between August 2016 and April 2022 and prior to that had been assistant city manager in Sierra Madre for 22 months after having served in the capacity of that city’s human resources director and, previously, its head of community and personnel services.
The slightly-more-than-three-month duration of Cox’s transition into the position of city manager ensued. On November 18, 2025, as the countdown toward Cox’s inheritance of full oversight of City Hall was proceeding apace, public notice was given on that on December 10, 2025, the planning commission is to discuss and consider an alteration of the city’s planning standards as pertains to Etiwanda Heights in the form of a specific plan amendment – meaning most apparently the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan – which would add nine new building types, including duplexes, quadplexes, 12-plexes, walkups, so-called cottage courts, several higher-density small-lot product types, new block configurations, a density transfer mechanism and objective standard changes along expanded regulating zones permitting those products. The proposed amendment clearly presages the introduction of multi-family housing types that were excluded in the adopted 2019 Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan and referenced in the city’s 2020 public commitment.
On the same day that the notice went out a handful of people followed a few days later by even more local residents grew alarmed at what they perceived to be in the offing. A number of them initiated inquiries with City Hall to ascertain, precisely, what was happening, why it was happening, who was driving the proposed land use and policy change, whether this had been triggered by a proposal at odds with the previous development standards that originated with a landowner/developer or whether the change was being pushed by either elected city officials or city staff. According to several of those city residents who made those inquiries, city officials – from those at the level of the planning division up to that of city administration and the city council – stonewalled them.
While it is abundantly clear that there has been a reversal of attitude on the part of the city’s public officials with regard to Etiwanda Heights, most notably with regard to the prohibition on residential development of an intensity/density greater than single family units or cottages intended for senior citizens, who or what is driving the shift was not made clear. Sources deep within City Hall have told the Sentinel that the change was played very close to the vest, and that information relating to the liberalization of land use standards on the property was not shared generally within the city’s planning division but rather on a strict need-to-know basis, meaning only among the city manager, i.e., Cox; the deputy city manager/director of community development, the city planner and no more than two of the city’s associate planners.
When residents asked specifically how the duplexes, quadplexes, 12-plexes, walkups, cottage courts, and the high-density small-lot units squared with the city’s commitment to construct single-family homes on the residentially-zoned property in Etiwanda Heights, they were met with silence. Similarly, inquiries with regard to who was making the request and whether it originated externally with Previti or other landowners within the district or if the proposal was generated internally by the mayor or members of the council, the planning commission or city staff went unanswered. In at least one case, a resident who pushed to obtain a greater explication of what the amendment was to entail and how many single-family units were to be converted to duplexes, quadplexes and 12 plexes as well as whether the term walk-up was a euphemism for an apartment building, he encountered hostility from city staff.
Redfin defines walk-up as “a type of apartment that doesn’t have elevators [in which] stairs are the primary way to navigate throughout the building.”
After being told that the action to be taken at the December 10 planning commission meeting had been personally planned by Cox as the “signature” kick-off to her era as city manager, the Sentinel initiated, or attempted to initiate, its own inquiries with Cox. Those included seven attempts to reach her by phone and a 2,748-word email delving into the particulars of the evolution of the terms memorialized in the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, the city’s representations with regard to it during its 2019 adoption, the city’s commitment to its terms in the successful 2020 annexation drive and what had transpired since that necessitated the rescission of those terms.
Prior to the Sentinel’s attempted communication via email, Cox’s executive staff diverted the inquiry to the city’s planning division, where an associate planner said a senior department member knowledgeable about the proposal would reach back with an explanation of what the proposed changes entail, why they are being proposed and what the city’s motivation in pursuing them is, who requested and who formulated them and their timing. No one from the city’s planning division has followed through with that promised contact as of press time.
In the meantime, several of those most concerned about what was happening swung into action and began circulating a petition calling upon the city officials to protect the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan.
Word emanating from City Hall was that Previti was referencing recent state law intended to cure California’s housing shortage by liberalizing development standards to demand that the city increase by a factor of two the density permitted within the residential component of the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood, that he was requesting the minimum lot sizes on the single family residential units be reduced to 8,000 square feet, proposing multifamily housing across a good portion of the land previously intended for single family units and that he wanted some of the property zoned for rural/conservation preservation adjacent to the residential land to be converted to be redesignated for commercial use such that he would be able to place apartments next to the commercial site.
Cox, it was said, did not have the stomach to oppose Previti’s request or the patience to negotiate a compromise. As a consequence, city sources said, Cox had ordered the withholding of information pertaining to the upcoming action to the bare minimum 72 business hours required under the law to reduce the time window during which city residents would have precise enough information to effectively oppose the specific plan alteration and zone change.
Despite her lack of experience with regard to land use issues, according to a city staff member, Cox had instructed the planning division to generate a report for the December 10 meeting bearing a recommendation that the city go forward with the developer’s proposal to construct 2,600 multifamily units in the neighborhood area.
Cox thereafter intends, as early as the February 4 Rancho Cucamonga City Council meeting but more likely at the February 18 meeting and no later than one of the meetings in March, to present the anticipated planning commission recommendation to the city council. This will allow, Cox has calculated, the city council to justify abrogating the commitments made in the 2019 version of the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan by referencing the planning commission’s call on December 10. In the face of any procedural or legal challenge by city residents that ensue, Cox is prepared to have the city council kick the issue to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which she is confident will utilize the State Housing Crisis Act of 2019, enacted by the California legislature’s passage of Senate Bill 330, as well as other provisions of state law which prioritize expanding the state’s housing stock above enforcing local land use regulation to to ratify the zoning change and untrack any effort to contest the city’s action.
The Sentinel this week contacted Previti, seeking from him confirmation that it was his request for zone changes and the alteration of the specific plan that had prompted the city’s scheduling of the planning commission discussion and vote relating to the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan on December 10. In addition to asking him whether he had initiated the effort to alter the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan by requesting the city to amend it, the Sentinel inquired as to how, in his view, the proposed specific plan amendment, improved the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan and why the prohibition of multifamily units in Etiwanda Heights, as is contained in the original plan, is a bad idea. The Sentinel offered Previti the opportunity to explain how, again in his view, Rancho Cucamonga and its residents are to be benefited by eliminating the ban on multifamily units in Etiwanda Heights.
Previti did not respond by press time.
As those city employees who spoke out of school had predicted, the city did not post the agenda for the December 10 planning commission meeting until 5:56 p.m. on December 4, four minutes prior to the statutory three business day minimum disclosure deadline for public meetings required under California law. Three minutes later, at 5:59 p.m., the city emailed an umbrella response to those residents who had been making inquiries since the November 18 notice of the December 10 meeting.
In that email, the city confirmed that “the amendments” to be considered by the planning commission were “proposed by the landowner and master developer for the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan.”
The email disclosed that the changes to the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan” which were given a vague outline on November 18, had been under discussion at City Hall for approaching a full year before that announcement was made.
“The amendment request was initiated by the private developer after purchasing surplus county land,” the generic email sent to city residents stated. “The purpose of the proposed amendment is to bring the density of the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan into alignment with the city’s 2021 general plan in accordance with state housing laws. In the plan proposed by the landowner/developer, the 3,603-acre Conservation Area remains protected in accordance with the existing plan for the area, and the plan continues to exclude apartment buildings. The proposed amendment is accompanied by maps for phases 1 and 2, which are south of Banyan Avenue and the Deer Creek Channel, respectively. These phases also do not include apartments or condos; they only offer attached and detached single-family homes.”
The email asked recipients to “Please understand that proposed amendments to the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan have not been considered by the city council. Before amendments of this sort go to the city council, they are first objectively reviewed by staff for compliance with state law and the general plan. They are then reviewed by the planning commission, which serves as the advisory body to the city council on land use and community development. The planning commission’s role in the review of the proposed amended Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan is to balance community input with state law and the city’s adopted plans and policies to guide the community’s long-term growth. Upon receiving and considering all the information provided, the planning commission then provides a recommendation to the city council on how to move forward.”
According to the email, members of the planning commission were kept equally in the dark about what they will consider on December 10 as the rest of the Rancho Cucamonga community. community not made privy with regard to what they are to consider on December 10.
“The planning commission received the proposed plan and the details on the proposed amendments today, Thursday, December 4,” email stated.
The email then offered an attempted exoneration of the secrecy city officials have maintained relating to the alteration of the six-year standing policy.
“Before the city council can act on the proposed amendments, they [sic] must conduct their own public hearing,” the email stated. “Until this point, council members must remain neutral and limit their comments. During the city council’s public hearing they will consider the planning commission’s recommendation, receive input from the landowner/developer and the residents on the planning commission’s recommendation.”
According to Justin Nottingham, who is among those residents who had initiated the inquiries into the proposed specific plan amendment, by early this week, more than 580 residents had affixed their signatures to the petition calling upon the city to leave the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan as it was formulated and passed in 2019 intact.
According to Nottingham, the city’s representation that the proposed revamped Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan will yet bar apartments is misleading.
“The city may not be using the word ‘multifamily,’ but the building types make it unmistakably clear,” Nottingham said. “This is the opposite of what they promised during the annexation.”
Homeowner Chris Little concurred. “Any increase in density affects fire evacuation, traffic, schools, and wildlife corridors,” he said. “The City can’t just slip in apartments and pretend nothing has changed.”
Cox is Rancho Cucamonga’s fourth city manager in the city’s 48-year history. Having top administrators whose tenures averaged out at 16 years makes Rancho Cucamonga the most managerially stable of the county’s 24 municipalities. Three of the county’s cities – San Bernardino, Rialto and Barstow – have had five city managers, more than Rancho Cucamonga has had in its entire duration as an incorporated governmental entity, since 2020. Four other cities – Upland, Grand Terrace, Yucaipa and Adelanto – have had as many or more city managers or acting city managers over the last ten years than Rancho Cucamonga did the more than four decades of its existence.
Ironically, with her entanglement in a controversy relating to land use policy and a lack of transparency related to it just as she is moving into the city manager’s post, Cox is repeating an historic pattern that plagued two of her predecessors, resulting in the firing of one of them and a cloud over the reputation of the other.
Lauren Wasserman was hired as Rancho Cucamonga’s first city manager after its incorporation in 1977 in large measure based on his previous success as Montclair’s city manager. Wasserman in 1978 hired Jack Lam, a Berkeley graduate who had experience with the cities of Oakland, El Cerrito, Antioch and Lompoc along with Alameda County, to serve as Rancho Cucamonga’s director of community development. Wasserman, upon getting permission and funding from the city council to do so, moved Lam into the position of deputy city manager, later promoting him to assistant city manager.
In 1988, it was learned that both Wasserman and Lam had investments in Rancon III. Rancon III was involved with Jim Barton and the Barton Development Company in the construction of Barton Plaza, which was to eventually consist of two four-story, 80,000-square-foot office buildings at the southeast corner of Haven and Foothill Boulevard in Rancho Cucamonga, located within the city’s redevelopment area.
A scandal ensued over the conflict-of-interest implications relating to the city’s two senior administrators having a financial interest in a land development project that was subject to city-controlled redevelopment agency subsidization. Wasserman, whose investment in Rancon III was in an amount exceeding $10,000 but less than $100,000 according to financial disclosure documents filed with the State of California, was terminated in 1989 on a 3-to-2 vote of the city council. The council, which ascertained that Lam’s investment in Rancon was less than $10,000 though in excess of $1,000, in a controversial move promoted him to city manager to succeed Wasserman.
Lam remained as Rancho Cucamonga city manager for more than two decades, until 20ll, at which point he retired and was succeeded by Gillison.

There are reliable but controverted reports that it was one of the world’s top woman military pilots who narrowly escaped death on Wednesday when the F-16 she was flying crashed into Searles Valley Dry Lake near Trona.
The Air Force has yet to officially confirm that the airwoman involved was Major Laney “Rogue” Schol. Nevertheless, statements made in the aftermath of the incident and the process of elimination based upon the known circumstances compel the conclusion that it was Schol at the helm of the Thunderbird F-16C Fighting Falcon that was involved in a training exercise with four other aircraft which originated from from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada earlier that morning and was engaged in a training mission over the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake’s controlled airspace when a yet-unknown or undisclosed incident led to the single-engine, General Dynamics-designed, multirole, supersonic-capable fighter to plunge to earth.
The fiery crash occurred around 10:44 a.m., about three miles south of Trona Airport and about 25 miles northeast of the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, and was seen by civilian witnesses who were situated on Trona Road in Trona.
A video shot by an onlooker captured the sound of the impact and the formation of a dark black mushroom/oak tree-shaped cloud of smoke in which a fireball migrates upwards near the ground level while off to the left and higher within the video frame, at a height of approximately 200 feet, the pilot and a secondary object, perhaps the F-16 ejection seat or its cover, are visible dangling beneath an opened parachute as they progress toward the ground.
According to the San Bernardino County Fire Department, known officially as the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District, firefighters and paramedics from its agency resources in Trona as well as safety personnel from the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake responded to the site of the downed aircraft near the San Bernardino County/Inyo County line.
Upon arrival, the firefighters suppressed a fire in the dry lake bed which had ignited as a result of the crash.
The pilot, the sole occupant of the plane, despite having ejected cleanly from the Thunderbird, sustained what were described as “minor injuries,” the nature of which were given no further illustration. The pilot was treated on the ground by paramedics and transported to a hospital for further precautionary treatment of the injuries, which were cataloged as “not life threatening” by fire department personnel.
One of those within visual range of the crash site said he saw the parachute deploy almost simultaneously with the aircraft diving into the ground, which he said created a “terrible” explosion.
At 20:41 Coordinated Universal Time or 12:41 p.m. California time, the Air Force released a statement that the Thunderbirds display team experienced an “incident” at approximately 10:45 a.m. local time in which a pilot of one of the team’s craft had successfully ejected. “[The] Pilot is in stable condition with minor injuries,” according to the statement.
There were conflicting reports as to whether the plane that went down was Thunderbird 5 or Thunderbird 6.
The pilot currently assigned to Thunderbird 5 is Major Jeff Downie, the lead solo pilot on the Thunderbirds team. The pilot assigned to Thunderbird 6 is Schol.
Schol, who was most previously an F-35A Lightning II instructor pilot with the 60th Fighter Squadron, is now a member of the 2025 Thunderbirds Team, the only female in the squadron, assigned to what is referred to as the #6 Opposing Solo slot. Thunderbird 5 and Thunderbird 6 perform an intricate set of aerial maneuvers as part of the Thunderbirds exhibition of the flying capabilities of the F-16 aircraft for air shows throughout the country, meant to promote the U.S. Air Force and serve as a recruitment draw. The Thunderbird Squadron, which has been in existence for 75 years, is the Air Force’s premier aerial demonstration team and performs some of the service’s most demanding precision maneuvers, executed in tightly choreographed formations that involve constant training and extensive flight hours.
As Schol is currently the only female member of the Thunderbird Team, it appears that she was the pilot in the aircraft that was downed by a factor or factors unknown on December 3.
In a monitored communication involving either or both Air Force personnel and the air control towers at Nellis and China Lake and/or the emergency response team, it was reported that “She made it out.” Others on the ground said that the parachuting pilot was a woman.
Major Laney Schol, known by her handle “Rogue,” was born in Denton, Texas and is a fourth-generation military service member. She enlisted in the Air Force while attending the University of North Texas. She was accepted into the service’s pilot training program and upon getting her wings was deployed for four years as a fighter pilot flying the A-10C Thunderbolt II at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia before transitioning to the F-35 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
Fewer than 11 percent of pilots in the United States are women and even fewer – under three percent – of pilots in the Air Force are women. Schol is the seventh woman to be welcomed into the Thunderbirds, that trail having been blazed by Major Lauren Schlichting, Major Michelle Curran, Major Caroline Jensen, Captain Kristin Hubbard, Captain Samantha Weeks and Captain Nicole Malachowski.
Air Force fighter pilots invited into the Thunderbird Squadron are given a two-year tour on the demonstration team, after which they are returned to active fighter assignments.
With luck, grace, providence, skill or some combination thereof, Schol avoided the somewhat sadder, though no less noble fate of a female U.S. Military pilot, Marie Michell Robinson, who met her end in the East Mojave Desert in 1945.
Born on May 23, 1924, in Detroit, Michigan, Marie Michell joined the WASPs in late 1943 when she was 19. She already had her private pilots license when she reported for duty. The WASPs were Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), also known as the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) and the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), pioneering organizations of civilian female pilots first organized in September 1942 employed to fly military aircraft under the direction of the United States Army Air Forces, the predecessor of the U.S. Air Force, during World War II. One of the major contributions of the WASPs was the ferrying of planes – 12,650 aircraft of 78 different types between September 1942 and December 1944 – to Greenland. There, the planes were handed off to American, British, Canadian and Russian pilots who employed them in the fight against the Germans and the Italians.
On October 2, 1944, Michell Robinson reported to replace another WASP pilot on what was in official log books described as a “day transition” training mission in a B-25D Mitchell bomber. With her were First Lieutenant George Danilo Rosado and Staff Sergeant Gordon L. Walker. Rosado was the pilot; Michell Robinson was the copilot; Walker was acting as the crew chief, whose task would be to lower the landing gear in the case of a hydraulic failure.
The plane took to the air in clear weather from Victorville Army Air Force Station, later known as George Air Force Base and today known as the civilian-run Southern California Logistics Airport, at 1:15 p.m. local time with Rosado, who had 1,521.5 flight hours to his credit, at the controls.
Two other aircraft, Bell-P-39s, were in the air during that approximate time. One of the P-39 pilots, Second Lieutenant Lawrence A. Beishel, reported that he saw the B-25D stall and then enter a spin from which there was insufficient altitude to recover. The centrifugal force from the spin would have prevented any of the crew from ejecting. Lieutenant Beishel reported he could see no parachutes emerge from the plane, which crashed into the desert floor roughly 25 miles west of Victorville Army Air Force Station at 1:30 p.m., and burst into flames.
The army board looking into the crash made a finding that the pilot, assumed at that point to have been Rosado, had permitted the B-25D, serial number #41-30114, to stall and enter a spin from which there was insufficient altitude to recover. Who was actually flying the craft at the time of the fatal plunge could not be conclusively determined. The North American Aviation Corporation flight manual for the B-25 gravely warned pilots that the aircraft should not be intentionally entered into a spin under any circumstance.
Things were different then.
Unlike Army Air Corps pilots, WASPs were considered civil service employees and did not receive military benefits. Because they were not considered military under the existing guidelines, a fallen WASP was sent home at family expense without traditional military honors or note of heroism. The army would not allow the U.S. flag to be placed on the coffin of the fallen WASP. Major Robinson, however, was granted leave to accompany his wife’s body home to Flint, Michigan, where her remains were interred.
-Mark Gutglueck

In the Chino Valley’s on-again, off-again battle with the State of California over whether land use strategy should be determined by local officials or by Sacramento, Chino less than three months ago capitulated, agreeing to drop its opposition to allowing the state to dictate development standards and supersede local planning authority. Having unilaterally disarmed in the fight over who can regulate the construction industry in an effort to meet the governor and legislatures demands that they allow builders virtually unfettered license to construct more than 5,000 additional homes within their city limits before the decade is out, Chino municipal officials are now confronted by a recent court ruling indicating that despite their attitude of obsequious accommodation they are still out of compliance with the state’s housing creation mandate.
Traditionally in California, land use decisions have been left to local governments rather than to the state legislature of bureaucrats in the state capital. In this way, city councils or planning commissions, in consultation with city planning staffs determined the character of the development that was to take place in their individual cities and how intensely the properties in their communities were to be developed. Hanging in the balance was the question of density, or how many dwelling units were allowed to be constructed per acre, the height of buildings, the ratio of space occupied by buildings to the space occupied by unpaved ground with grass or plants growing on it, the mix of residential, commercial, industrial development and open space to be permitted in a city, along with whether apartments and condominiums should be allowed to displace single family homes. These decisions historically were left to the people who lived in the places that were to be impacted by the decisions.
Developers, as a consequence of wanting to make a profit, wanted to build as intensely as possible. By building on ever smaller lots, it could put twice or three times or four times or six times or eight times as many houses on an acre as was the case in the 1940s or 1950s or 1960s, so they could sell more houses and make more money. Some elected officials – mayors and city council members – saw no problem with that. They supported the idea of developers being able to maximize their profits. Other elected officials, however, looked at the consequences of stuffing more and more people into houses with ever smaller yards, packing them in like sardines into a can, and saw the social harm that fostered, the rapid deterioration of the property that had been developed, the way in which those who lived in apartment or tenements took less pride in renting or in ownership than did those who lived in, if not an estate, then a semi-estate in which they could enjoy some personal space, not be cramped and create an aesthetic about themselves that was good for them psychologically, socially and financially in terms of owning something of value.
In this way, each community took on, or had an opportunity to take on, a different character, ones that were slightly different or immensely different, depending upon the approach of the politicians running those cities.
There was a more sinister differentiation among cities in that in some, the application of money by those in the development community and building industry would influence the land use process. Through campaign donations or both direct and indirect bribes, project applicants were able to influence the standards enforced by city councils, planning commissions and city officials with regard to the quality of development, its density and the accompanying need to provide adequate infrastructure to moderate the impact of that development. Thus, in some cities, there was a greater emphasis on the quality of life of residents and the quality of neighborhoods than in other cities.
In many places in San Bernardino County, this came into much greater play as the region beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s and then even more rapidly in the 1980s transitioned out of being a semi-agricultural and partially rural environment to a topography that was to be more citified and dominated by urban elements. In rezoning property from agricultural land to other uses, local elected political and hired municipal officials had virtually unlimited autonomy in the choices they made and how aggressively that transition was to be effectuated. For the speculators who purchased former farm acreage with the intent of converting it to other purposes and the development companies they worked hand in glove with, upping the permitted intensity of use on that property was the primary factor in how great of a profit could be achieved in their efforts. Whereas in previous years – the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s and the early 1960s – an unspoken concept and standard of building single family homes on lots of a quarter acre or more predominated locally, as developers took control of the hundreds of acres upon hundreds of acres and square mile upon square mile of orange groves, lemon groves, grapefruit groves, walnut groves, poultry farms, vineyards and grazing land, they requested, importuned and pushed those in political control to allow them to deviate upward from that four houses-to-an-acre standard. The region’s municipal leadership had the option of simply resisting, insisting that the intensity of use in the neighborhoods replacing the trees, rows of grape vines and pastures match what already existed. Only initially and then rarely thereafter did they show that resolve. By the mid-1970s, many development companies, strengthened by the role their owners and corporate executives were playing in becoming major donors to the political war chests of the regions mayors and council members, had established a new standard that commonly allowed them to construct six units to the acre, followed by neighborhoods and subdvisions in which the yards grew progressively smaller and seven or eight homes were typically configured onto an acre. As had previously been the case, apartment complexes were being built, and during the last half of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, condominiums began cropping up. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, the distance between homes diminished to the point where 12 houses were packed into a single acre. Yards in many places no longer existed except in the form of minimalist landscaping in front of a residence. The developers of such residential projects became fabulously wealthy, whereupon they plowed some of the money they were realizing back into political donations and payoffs to the politicians giving their projects go-ahead, clearing the way for ever denser development. By the early 2000s, there were entire neighborhoods in many cities in San Bernardino County that consisted entirely of duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, townhouses and rowhouses adjacent to apartment complexes.
Of note is that the politicians in the Chino Valley had resisted the development frenzy to a greater degree than did their counterparts in the vast majority of the rest of San Bernardino County. One factor contributing to this was that the Chino Valley has been since the 1800s a heavy agricultural area in which a rural aesthetic predominated over an urban one. Chino incorporated in 1910, the fifth of San Bernardino County’s current 24 municipalities to do so. Chino Hills is the last of San Bernardino County’s municpalities to incorporate, having done so in December 1991, a month after the Town of Yucca Valley did so. Despite their positioning at the west end of San Bernardino County, giving them closer proximity to the Greater Los Angeles urban and suburban center than much of the rest of the region’s cities, their longstanding and persistent status as agricultural communities to some degree isolated both Chino and Chino Hills from the developmental frenzy that subsumed other local jurisdictions and the politicians who headed them. The degree to which this is the case can be glimpsed in an examination of the current population densities of San Bernardino County cities.
In San Bernardino, the first of San Bernardino County’s cities to incorporate and thereby the most mature municipality in the region where the vast majority of its development took place prior to the middle of the 20th Century, prior to the mad rush toward ever more intensive and denser development, the average density of reidential neighborhoods is approximately 3, 312.12 people per square mile. This reflects the population distribution across both long established and more recently built neighborhoods within the 62.5-square mile city.
In 42.4-square mile Fontana, where the most explosive population growth in the county over the last three decades has taken place making that municipality the second most populous in the county behind San Bernardino, the average population density for the entire city of Fontana is approximately 4,838 to 4,920 people per square mile.
46.5-square mile Rancho Cucamonga, which in 1970 was unincorporated with a population well under 30,000 and a reported population of 44,600 at the time of its 1977 incorporation, underwent tremendous growth in the years after it became a city by combining the communities of Alta Loma, Cucamonga and Etiwanda. Having now reached a population of 177,825, Rancho Cucamonga has an average residential neighborhood density of 3,939.5 people per square mile.
In 29.7-square mile Chino, the average residential density of its neighborhoods is approximately 3,099.97 people per square mile, slightly more than three-fourths that of Rancho Cucamonga.
The average denisty of residential neighborhoods in 44.8-square mile Chino Hills is approximately 1,744.9 people per square mile, well under half of what it is in Rancho Ccuamonga.
Simultaneous to, and partially consequent of, the unprecedented population growth in San Bernardino County and Southern California, the entire State of California was experiencing a massive expansion in the number of people within its confines. Paralleling this was a housing crisis and a jump in homelessness. Among the reactions to this by the state’s leaders in Sacramento were strategies to increase the state’s housing stock and its affordability. This took multiple forms.
One part of governors Jerry Brown’s and Gavin Newsom’s approach was to reduce the ability of local officials to limit development, such that developers would have not only an even freer hand to build homes than they did before but an incentive for doing so. Even though many local governmental officials had already practically suspended or surrendered their land use authority to the point that they were allowing land owners, real estate speculators and developers to build high density residential projects at will, the state through legislation and executive action undercut any local jurisdictions that had hung onto the land use authority that had traditionally been their perogative to exercise.
One such manifestation of Sacramento dictating land use policy throughout the 163,696-square mile state consisted of transforming the the Regional Housing Needs Survey first created as an assessment and suggestive tool in 1969 into a cudgel by which cities were forced by mandate to clear the way for massive numbers of residential units to be allowed into their cities if, in fact, developers were prepared to build them. Another was the drafting a passage of the State Housing Crisis Act of 2019, which sought to overcome the imbalance of available housing to the need for more homes by streamlining housing development processes and enhancing tenant  protections. A third measure was Governor Newsom’s signing in September 2024 of three legislative bills into law – Assembly Bill 2533, Senate Bill 1211 and Senate Bill 1077 – which took effect on January 1, 2025, which in one swoop gave homeowners the power to double the density of their residential property by constructing on it another home or “granny flat.”
Using the housing and homeless crises as pretexts and California Government Code §65580 as a legal basis, the California Department of Housing and Community Development began using the Regional Housing Needs Allocation process, originally intended to reveal how the state’s population was most logically to be distributed into the thousands of cities and unincorporated communities throughout the state proportionally, imposed on all jurisdictions in the state, meaning counties and cities, a mandate that those entities include in their general plans and zoning codes an accommodation of the number of dwelling units specified in the assessment, meaning each city must allow the construction of at least the number of homes the state says is its share of the burden to meet housing demand statewide.
By this daring social experiment, the State of California required each municipality in the state to assist in alleviating the homelessness crisis by complying with what the California Department of Housing and Community Development deems to be each city’s housing responsibility.
Under this so-called Regional Housing Needs Allocation process, the Department of Housing and Community Development came up with the number of people projected to be in need of housing within California by certain specified dates and then entrusted to a regional planning agency in the state’s several regions the assignment of determing where within those regions that influx of population was to be housed. In this way, the Southern California Association of Governments – a joint powers authority consisting of Imperial, Riverside, San Bernardino County, Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties – was responsible for crunching the Regional Housing Needs Allocation effort numbers in all of Southern California except San Diego County. The Southern California Association of Governments, also know by its acronym SCAG, determined that San Bernardino County must accommodate the construction of 138,110 new homes between October 2021 and October 2028, including 35,667 intended for very-low-income homebuyers; 21,903 for low-income homebuyers; 24,140 for moderate-income homebuyers and 56,400 for above moderate-income homebuyers.
Though the vast majority of municipal officials in California accept the state’s asserted authority in this area, up and down the state there has been protest of, and in some cases resistance to, these mandates.
The City of Huntington Beach, in the case of City of Huntington Beach v. Newsom, challenged California’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation law on constitutional grounds. Another 51 cities in the state joined in, filing amicus briefs in support of Huntington Beach or otherwise giving indication that they considered the state’s usurpation of local land use authority to be an overreach.
In San Bernardino County, 20 of the 24 municipalities docilely adhered to to the state mandate. Four county cities, most vociferously Chino Hills, gave indication that their officials believed the state was making demands that went beyond what was appropriate, not lonely intruding into the arena of land use authority more properly reserved for local authorities but mandating that their cities accommodate a number of homes that would be damaging to their communities.
In the case of Chino Hills, the state’s expectation was that the city welcome 3,720 more dwelling units from October 2021 to October 2029. Almost immediately, Chino Hills stood up to Sacramento, counter-proposing that instead of the 3,720 homes, it allow 1,797 units, a 52 percent reduction.
Three other city councils in San Bernardino County – those in Fontana Chino and Barstow – were brave enough to challenge the state. Barstow asked the state to cut its 1,516 house-building mandate by 58 percent to 635; Chino wanted a 49 percent cut from 6,961 to 3,564; and Fontana insisted that the 17,477 units it was being asked to accommodate was 30 percent too optimistic, requesting that its mandate be reduced to 10,563.
The state refused to talk turkey with any of those entities, and the California Department of Housing and Community Development did not budge in its demands, conveying that the government does not negotiate with scofflaws, renegades, terrorists or any entity or anybody that does not respect the rule of law. Lest anyone forget, California Government Code §65580 is the law, those city officials were warned.
In January 2022, a still-determined Chino Hills City Council, bolstered by an outpouring of resident sentiment, ventured even further down the path of resisting having to surrender land use authority within that city’s confines by adopting a local housing initiative referred to as “Neighborhood Voices” that asserted local land use and zoning laws trumped any conflicting state laws.
Over the next six months, however, developmental interests looking to construct housing subdivisions in Chino Hills, chaffing at the limitations on density, i.e., the number of units per acre to be permitted on property they had purchased or had tied up within the city, made it known that they were considering legal action against the city in which they were prepared to allege the city was denying them the right to develop that land to an intensity they were entitled to under the newfangled state law.
Guided by the advice of Planning Manager Michael Hofflinger, the city council relented and adopted the Chino Hills Sixth Cycle Housing Element and sent it to the California Department of Housing and Community Development. In that plan, the city essentially accepted, at least conceptually, the call for the construction of the 3,720 units within the city by 2029. That April, officials with the California Department of Housing and Community Development, conscious that Chino was among the 52 cities in the state who were not showing enthusiasm about the Regional Housing Needs Assessment program, let the city know that while the housing element addressed most of the state’s housing requirement, it was deficient in certain respects, those being that it fell down with regard to “affirmatively furthering fair housing,” specifically lacking detail on segregation/integration, concentrated areas of affluence, access to opportunity, disproportionate housing needs, and displacement risk; demonstrating how the Regional Housing Needs Allocation supports fair housing; and identifying and prioritizing factors that significantly contribute to segregation, racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, disparities in access to opportunity, and disproportionate housing needs. According to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, revisions were needed to respond to the requested fair housing analyses. State officials were rubbing it in, it seemed, not only dictating to the city how many homes to build, it was seeking to control the character and placement of those homes, as well.
In so many ways, cities are dependent on the state for pass-through funding, including taxes, subventions and other forms of revenue. Chino Hills officials were faced with the reality that they could stand on principle and, like Huntington Beach, roll the dice and see if they could prove that they could defy the state by trying to retain their land use authority by legal or procedural challenges. Yet, even if Chino Hill managed to win, it could lose, the state seemed to be telling its decision-makers. There were plenty of other ways Sacramento could outright deny or withhold funding from Chino Hills, or drag its feet in providing it, creating financial crises the city was ill-equipped to deal with.
Indeed, in May of this year, in adopting its new general plan, Chino Hills officials baked into that document, which it had been working on for nearly five years, hard indication it was going to comply with the state housing allocation process, and accommodate 3,729 housing units throughout the eight-year period that began was to elapse in 2029. In the same document, Chino Hills, which has the highest median income of any municipality in San Bernardino County at $127,000 annually, acknowledged that of those 3,729 housing units, 59 percent or 2,209 of them, must be “affordable housing” in which the density could reach a saturation of 30 housing units per acre.
One of the few other jurisdictions in San Bernardino County that had shown any level of resistance to the State of California and the California Department of Housing and Community Development with regard to the housing and housing density issue was Chino.
In addition to going on record in 2021 that its officials considered the mandate that their city accommodate 6,961 new dwelling units by October 2028 to be unrealistic, Chino has proven forthright on several occasions since then in expressing the view that Sacramento is being much too authoritarian and inflexible in its demands that cities in general – and Chino in particular – suspend their officials’ judgment about what type of and how much development will be of benefit to their communities.
Nevertheless, like Chino Hills, Chino abandoned protesting or resisting the state’s mandate that it be prepared to accept another 6,978 housing units within its city limits by October 2029, recognizing that the state government possessed too many apples to reward the city if it simply fell in line with what it was being told to do and that the state government also possessed a whip with which it could lash the city unmercifully if it did not do what it was ordered to do.
Earlier this year, Chino officials began once more to feel their oats. In April, in a letter signed by Mayor Eunice Ulloa, city fathers expressed to Governor Newsom the view that state government was becoming too bossy in its approach toward the housing and development issues.
“On behalf of the residents, businesses, and stakeholders of the City of Chino, I write to firmly oppose the relentless proliferation of state housing laws that have overridden local control without regard for State-certified housing plans, effectively sidelining the voices of our community and undermining years of responsible local planning,” Ulloa wrote. Noting that the city has reached a population of 95,000, Ulloa wrote, “Our progress has been shaped by our philosophy of “smart growth,” which has allowed us to retain the small-town feel that has defined our community for generations. It’s the reason why more young families are choosing our community to grow and thrive, and the decades of dutiful planning that has crafted our community into one of the most desirable cities in the Inland Empire. Since the elimination of redevelopment agencies in 2012, our City’s ability to retain local control over development has been chipped away year after year by a litany of housing bills designed to increase ministerial or by-right housing approval processes. While the City of Chino respects the pursuit of housing production amid a statewide crisis, the way forward is to work with cities to allow for growth in ways that make sense for their communities. Instead, cities have been virtually shut out of the process, and these new laws have diminished general plans, stripped away authority over local development, and left community members demanding answers from their local elected officials.”
Ulloa’s letter continued, “The Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), a distribution of housing units assigned to every California city, is an impossible number to attain that will not lead to the level of increased housing growth that it intends. The rigorous process of getting a housing element approved by the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) has left cities vulnerable to draconian penalties. Most importantly, the laws are not providing affordable housing as intended.”
Ulloa told Newsom, “Local control continues to be undermined by a slew of new bills each year. These bills override general plans, ignore local zoning and land use plans, and steadily erode the ability of residents and their local representatives to shape the future of their communities. Despite Chino’s opposition—as well as that of the League of California Cities and other municipalities statewide—we have been inundated with legislation that further limits our ability to plan for growth responsibly.”
In the letter, Ulloa referenced by inference a complex of bills passed in 2020 which allowed homeowners to build on their residential land an accessory dwelling unit and she referenced explicitly 2021’s Senate Bill 9, which allows homeowners to subdivide their lots and add up to two duplexes in most single-family neighborhoods. Accessory dwelling units, traditionally referred to as granny flats, were secondary residential units in which a family member or family members of the house on the property – usually a parent or the parents of the homeowner – would live. One of the 2020 bills – Senate Bill 13 – prohibited a local agency from imposing an owner-occupant requirement on the granny flats, meaning they could be occupied by non-family members, renters or a purchaser. This has the potential, essentially, of doubling the density in every city in California.
“This year, many onerous bills have been introduced that will impose additional state housing dictates on issues of critical local significance,” Ulloa’s letter stated. “And yet, housing prices are still spiraling out of control. It is imperative that we raise the question of how the state plans to evaluate these housing policies when the intended outcomes are currently not being achieved. As Mayor of Chino, I have heard from my constituents, as well as local officials in neighboring cities, about the effects of these new housing laws. Our communities are suffering, and Sacramento has regrettably turned a blind eye to the effects these laws have had on cities across California.”
Ulloa requested a meeting with Newsom, “so we can work together on a sustainable, reasonable process that addresses this decades-in-the-making housing crisis while keeping cities in the conversation and allowing us to grow in ways that include local discretion and public engagement.”
It does not appear that Newsom made any sort of substantive response to Ulloa’s request for engagement.
By September, Chino officials, or a majority of them on the city council, grew hyperconscious once more that the state held all, or at least most, of the cards in the high stakes game both were engaged in across the table from one another. City officials, anxious to avoid a showdown with the state, signaled Sacramento that they supported the state’s strategy of allowing the energetic construction of secondary dwelling units as a means of curing the housing crisis.
At a Chino City Council study session on September 9, municipal officials and the city council gave indication that the city was dropping any pretense of resisting the state government’s effort to straitjacket cities into accepting more intensive and denser development within residential zones.
Deputy Development Services Director Chris Corbin.
According to Corbin, the city is already supporting the construction of granny flats by waiving some development fees has and facilitating such projects that confine themselves to less than 1,000 square feet under roof and fewer than three bedrooms. The city has three sets of pre-approved design/construction plans that can be utilized by property owners or developers at no cost. at no cost to builders.
City officials gave indication that they now accept that there are growing numbers of existing homeowners who are contemplating constructing accessory dwelling units on their property.
One of the council members, Marc Lucio, went so far as to suggest that the city should sign on to a program to assist homeowners in financing the construction of granny flats if they were willing to adopt the city’s higher development standards for accessory dwelling units than those that now exist under state standards. The incentives to do this, under the plan Lucio proposed, are to consist of financial assistance with such construction efforts to be provided by the city. A further requirement, under the program, would be that the units be leased or rented at an affordable to tenants with very low, low or moderate income.
The incentives would come in the form of zero-interest or no-interest loans.
While Lucio was enthusiastic about the approach, and Mayor Ulloa was skeptical about the financing incentive idea, it appeared at that time that the city was going to accede to letting residents, if they so wished, construct secondary dwelling units on their property.
Recent developments with regard to the creative gyrations by cities, including Chino, to satisfy the State of California with regard to the Regional Housing Needs Assessment mandates, have now complicated even further than was the case previously the entire issue relating to permitting residential projects city officials are at heart against but which they are accommodating in an effort to stay on the state’s good side.
One of the workarounds that Chino officials had engaged in to satisfy the California Department of Housing and Community Development with regard to it meeting the Regional Housing Needs Assessment requirement imposed on their city was to use a so-called overlay strategy.
Since the state’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment law does not require that the number of houses specified in the assessment be built but merely that the city’s be prepared, through its zoning and land use policies to let those home be built if a developer undertakes such projects, cities hit upon the use of overlay zones to meet the mandate. In this way, cities would approve a residential overlay zone that would be applicable to land zoned for nonresidential use – such as property zoned commercially or industrially – if the property owner and/or developer or applicant applied to develop the property residentially. The property could yet be developed into stores or warehouses or factories, but the city being prepared for the conversion of the land use to residential made it so that it was credited with having met the requirement to allow the development of however many residential units demarked in the overlay district.
That is what the City of Chino did in the planning commission’s approval of the subdivision of 10.3 acres at the northwest corner of Euclid and Schaefer avenues into a 267-apartment residential complex on 5.1 acres, a 1.4-acre fast food restaurant site, a 1.5-acre fast food restaurant site, a 1.5-acre storage facility and a 0.7-acre 18,600-square foot retail complex with an accompanying parking lot. In processing Newport Beach-based Orbis Schaefer’s application for the project, the city cited the “mixed-use overlay” zoning that had been bestowed on the property. Consequent to the approval of the Orbis Schaefer project, Chino was credited with 267 of the 6,978 housing units it is mandated to permit to be constructed within its city limits.
The approval of the Orbis Schaefer project was an unpopular one that was roundly criticized by dozens of residents living in proximity to Euclid Avenue and Schaefer Avenue. Some of those residents charged that the city was pandering to the state at the expense of their quality of life and the livability of their neighborhood.
In the case of New Commune v. City of Redondo Beach, New Commune, a Beverly Hills-based development company, alleged Redondo Beach’s specifications for housing in its general plan violated California law by improperly using “residential overlay zones” superimposed on commercial/industrial land to meet housing goals. New Commune maintained that the underlying zoning prevented housing units in sufficient quantity to be built to meet housing needs, thus violating mandatory density and residential-use requirements the California Department of Housing and Community Development was calling for. This means, according to New Commune, that Redondo Beach was failing to provide an adequate number of realistic sites for lower-income housing.
The Second District Court of Appeal on October 10 sided with New Commune, holding that a residential overlay zone cannot be used by a city, as was the case in Redondo Beach, to meet its Regional Housing Needs Assessment requirement when the underlying zoning does not include residential development.
The Chino City Council, having accrued the enmity and hostility of the existing residents of the Euclid/Schaefer neighborhood by approving the Orbis Schaefer project by virtue of its fitting within the city’s mixed use overlay and now in danger of seeing a substantial number of the arrangements made to meet the state’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment mandate rendered invalid, at its Tuesday December 2 meeting voted to have the city file an amicus curiae brief in support of the City of Redondo Beach in its appeal to the California Supreme Court seeking to reverse Second District Court of Appeal decision pertaining to residential zoning overlays.
The amicus curiae or “friend of the court” brief is to be made in conjunction with the California League of Cities, the cities of Carson, Glendora, and Rancho Palos Verdes and any of the other 261 jurisdictions in California that made use of overlays in trying to meet the California Department of Housing and Community Development mandates imposed on them when they prepared the housing elements of their general plans that join in. The amicus curiae brief is to ask that the Supreme Court hear Redondo Beach’s appeal and decide the matter in a way that allows cities the option and flexibility of using overlays to plan toward meeting the requirement to build more housing.
Chino City Attorney Gred Galante, who previously was in the position of representing Chino when it was in the now-forsaken position of opposing the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s land use dictates, noted in passing that in the decision rendered in in favor of New Commune “is very much a hit to HCD [the California Department of Housing and Community Development because it basically discredits their ability, their authority in approving all of these housing elements.”
Insofar as the City of Chino has come to an accommodation with the state and the California Department of Housing and Community Development, he did not map out or even mention any strategy to use the ruling to renew the resistance to the state’s usurpation of local land use authority.
“The request before you today is to join that amicus curiae brief,” Galante said. “To that end, the California League of Cities has decided to take the lead in authoring the brief.” Galante said the city would not accrue significant costs in having his law firm review the brief before the city joins in the brief.
Accordingly, the city council voted unanimously to become a cosignatory to the brief.

The identities of both the victim and the man believed to have killed her at homeless encampment in Victorville last month have been identified by San Bernardino County authorities.
On Saturday, November 15, a 38-year-old man went to the Victor Valley Global Medical Center, located at 15248 Eleventh Street in Victorville at around 3:40 p.m., telling one of the personnel there, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department that “there was an injured female on the ground near the hospital.”
Sheriff’s deputies were summoned, and the man, identified as Taureen Alden Sims, led them to an encampment south of Verde Road and east of Hesperia Road, according to the sheriff’s department. There, just before 4 p.m., the responding deputies found a 52-year-old woman who had sustained, according to the department, massive injuries.
“The female victim was alive but unresponsive and had trauma to her face,” according to a statement provided by the sheriff’s department at the time of the incident.
The woman was transferred to a hospital for treatment, but succumbed to her her injuries.
Detectives from the sheriff’s department’s specialized investigations division/homicide detail were dispatched to Victorville. According to the department, investigators identified Sims, who is six foot five inches tall and weighs 195 pounds, as a suspect in the killing.
The woman was identified as Karen Marie Beatty, but here name was wothheld in the immediate aftermath of her death as attempts to locate her family and notify them were being made.
Despite the arrest of Smith on murder charges, the cause of Beatty’s death, beyond the notation that she had suffered consderable physical trauma, was not immediately cataloged. The coroner’s office, a division of the sheriff’s department was assigned to come to a determination of the cause of death.
Sims was charged with murder by the district attorney’s office on November 17. His prosecution is being handled by Deputy District Attorney John Richardson. Deputy Public Defender Michael Matthias is representing him.
With Deputy District Attorney Sherman Curi standing in for Richardson, Sim was arraigned before Judge Miriam Morton on November 18. Sims, with Matthias present, was unresponsive and Judge Morton entered a not guilty plea for him.
Overseeing the case against Sims is Judge Elizabeth Ulsh, who was appointed to the bench in September by Governor Gavin Newsom. Yesterday, December 4, during Sim’s pre-preliminary hearing before Judge Ulsh in Victorville Superior Court’s Department 12, the proccedings against Sims were suspended after the court declared there to be doubt about the defendant’s mental health The hearing was continued to January 22, at which time a report on Sims’ fitness to stand trial to be completed by court appointed Orange County-based Doctor of Psychiatry John Kinsman is to be provided to the court.
Neither the sheriff’s Department nor the district attorney’s office has been forthcoming with information relating to the evidence implicating Sims in the murder. It is not known how familiar Sims and Beatty were with one another prior to the murder. Both were denizens of the homeless encampment near Verde Road.
Sims was charged with nine misdemeansors in San Bernardino County over the last 18 years, in 2007, 2016, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2020 and 2025, on charges such as driving withut a license, driving while intoxicated, trespassing, stalking, public intoxication, possession of a controlled substance and relieving himself in public. He was also charged with two felonies stemming from the same incident in 2010, raping a drugged victim and raping a person unconscious of the act,. Both of those charges were dismissed.
This week, the coroner’s office had yet to reach a conclusion as to why Beatty had died. The department released her name.

The first two actuations of the Redlands Unified School District’s policy allowing the removal of books from school libraries and classroom shelves is to take place next week.
On Tuesday, December 9, the same school board which on August 19 by a bare 3-to-2 majority voted to allow virtually anyone to challenge a book on the basis of its “explicit” content and have it temporarily removed while an evaluation of whether it should be permanently banned will consider the first two such challenges lodged.
The 3-to-2 school board majority in August approved both the library book policy and a similar one potentially banning explicit material from the district schools’ curriculum.
Under the library book policy, anyone who has knowledge about the presence of a particular book in any district school library can object to or challenge its “explicit” content, have the book in question within three days consequently temporarily taken out of circulation and then have it provided to a “district review committee” comprised of the superintendent, assistant superintendent of educational services and either the director of elementary or the director of secondary education. The district review committee then has two months to read and review the book using a numerical system ranking the book in question as to its sexual content, violence, social and educational context, suitability for the varying ages of students who have access to the library where it is available and the book’s potential for negative impacts on those reading it.
The district uses a somewhat idiosyncratic or subjective grading system in which the committee members rank 1 to 5 the intensity or unacceptability of the sexual content, violence; 1 to 5 the inverse value of the social and educational value of the content; 1 through 5 the age suitability of the content and 1 through 5 the potential for negative psychological harm, trauma or disruption to someone reading the book. Those books garnering a score of 1 to 10 are returned to the libraries shelves. Those which compile a score of 11 to 19 are moved to a library that furnishes books to students of a higher grade level or into a category of restrict access if they were already in a high school library. Those books achieving a score of 20 to 25, inclusive, are removed.
Two books in the school district’s libraries that came to the attention of members of the public who found them objectionable were The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Push by Sapphire.
Those books were removed from high school library shelves and have now been read by Superintendent Juan Cabral, Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Patti Buchmuller and Director of Secondary Education Jean Joye.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, published in 1970, has as its protagonist Pecola Breedlove, a young African-American girl living in Loraine, Ohio in the 1940s Ohio who has developed an inferiority complex as a result of both the trauma of being raped by her father who was himself the victim of sexual abuse in his youth and the beauty standards celebrated by the members of the predominantly white race that inhabit Loraine. She has grown mentally ill to the point that she has convinced herself that having blue eyes will make her beautiful and loved. The novel deals with the topics of racism, poverty, identity, and self-hatred, through the prism of Pecola’s delusional quest for blue eyes, and her hidden psychological desire to escape being black. Her experience pushes her into believing the world considers her ugly, and her means of escaping that overwhelming perception is to achieve a self-induced illusionary state in which she believes her brown eyes are blue.
Push is by Sapphire, published in 1996, recounting the experience of Claireece Precious Jones starting in 1987, when she is 16 years old and living in Harlem. Obese and illiterate, Claireece has already had one child, born with Down syndrome, fathered by her her father, Carl. That child has been placed into the care of her grandmother, though her parents are receiving welfare benefits for the child. The book has graphic passages which depict rape and incest as well as oral and vaginal sex with children. One passage in the book explicitly details Carl raping his daughter while his wife sleeps in the same bed. Claireece is again impregnated by her father, and when officials at the school she attends discover the pregnancy, she is sent to an alternative school. This is against her parents wishes, who prefer that she apply for welfare to take care of the baby instead of returning to school. At the alternative school, Claireece and some of the other students there develop a passion for literature, in particular that of African American writers such as Alice Walker, Langston Hughes and Audre Lord. At the hospital where she is giving birth to her second child, she tells a social worker that she had another child who is living with her grandmother. When this results in the welfare her mother and father are receiving being discontinued, she is kicked out of their house. She is accepted into a halfway house where she is free to return to school, and she does. She starts writing poetry and gets an award from the mayor for her literary accomplishments. Just as her life is going well, she learns her father has died from AIDs. She gets a test and learns she too is HIV positive but that her children are not. She joins a support group for those who are HIV-positive. In those meetings, she learns that many people, not just those who are black have had bad experiences like hers. The book ends with no indication of how Claireece is to do in life going forward.
The district released the reviews that Cabral, Buchmuller and Joye made of The Bluest Eye and filed on October 23. Without identifying them beyond their scorer identification code numbers of 1, 28 and 29, which is intended, apparently, to maintain some degree of confidentiality, those scores were 14 according to Scorer #1, 9 according to Scorer #28 and 14 according to Scorer #29. According to the summary given, the average score fell between 11 and 19 and any copies of The Bluest Eye previously at grade school or junior high libraries will be moved to high school libraries or be placed into the category of restricted access, presumably requiring parent permission to access it, at high school libraries.
Two of the reviewers of Push were given the same scorer identification code numbers of 28 and 29, while the other was given the code number of 2. Scorer #2, who completed the ranking of Push on October 16, rated it at 16. Scorer #29, who file the completed rating on October 17, put it at 14 on the scale and Scorer #29, on a scorecard dated October 17, ranked it at 19. Thus, copies of Push previously available from grade school or junior high libraries will be moved to high school libraries or be placed into the category of restricted access at high school libraries.
It appears that the school board next Tuesday will take action in accordance with the rankings Cabral, Buchmuller and Joye made, such that both The Bluest Eye and Push will be placed into the restricted materials collections at Redlands High, East Valley High and Citrus Valley High libraries and the library at the district’s continuation high school campus, Orangewood High.
Of some relevance and both real and academic interest will be whether, on this coming Tuesday, the two members of the school board who opposed the policy when it was first considered in June and then voted upon in July and August, Melissa Ayala-Quintero and Patty Holohan, vote to accept the recommendations from Cabral, Buchmuller and Joye that The Bluest Eye and Push be removed from general circulation at the district’s school libraries.
Earlier this year there was sharp disagreement between Ayala-Quintero and Holohan and their supporters on one side and the board coalition of Jeannette Wilson, Candy Olson and current Board President Michelle Rendler and the element of the community that sides with them on the other with regard to the library book policy.
Ayala-Quintero and Holohan, identify as Democrats and are considered progressives or liberals. Wilson and Olson, Republicans, meet the classic definition of conservatives. Rendler, who to casual observers seemed to be apolitical and pretty much middle-of-the-road in terms of her general approach prior to the 2024 election, was thrust into what became a swing vote position when Olson and Wilson were elected to the school board that November. Rendler did not prove as resistant to the direction that Olson and Wilson were seeking to move the district as those in the progressive camp would have liked and link up with Ayala-Quintero and Holohan to form a voting block to oppose actions Olson and Wilson championed such as banning the display of gay pride flags on campus and informing parents if their children assumed a different gender identity at school than that assigned them at birth. This resulted in Ayala-Quintero’s and Holohan’s supporters engaging in personal attacks on her, which did not have the desired effect of bringing her into union with the progressives but rather shoved her further into the conservative camp and thus created an alliance that included her, Olson and Wilson.
Olson, Wilson and their supporters that imposing limits on explicitly sexual references in the district’s schools curriculum was one that would prevent possible exploitation and grooming and that restrictions on the books available in the school’s libraries would protect students from sexually explicit books. Olson, in particular, said her survey of books in Redlands school libraries were disturbing and should not be available to impressionable kids, in particular without their parents’ consent. Olson’s and Wislon’s supporters have asserted that it is appropriate to have concerns about the potential impact sexually explicit and graphically violent reading material can have on young minds. They say that exposing some students to such material prematurely can be harmful, leading to desensitization, negative behavioral influence and violence. Some have argued that there are those who are actively militating to push what in years past were referred to as alternative forms of sexuality on unsuspecting students and that having certain materials in support of their objectives available in school libraries represents an unwanted intrusion into those students lives and ultimately a danger to their mental health. In addition, those to the right politically maintain, parents should have ample opportunity to be aware of and have control over what their children are being exposed to.
Those celebrating themselves as progressives argued that removing books from public school libraries goes against the grain of American values and comes close to violating or actually violates students’ First Amendment rights to access information and ideas. They say that restricting access to books will stifle intellectual growth and critical thinking and simultaneously prevent students from being exposed to to diverse perspectives. They have argued that there is already a sensible, sensitive and intellectually enriching monitoring of the materials that are available in school libraries carried out by highly-educated and trained librarians and educators who curate collections based on educational suitability and the school’s mission, who have the the professional expertise to know what kind of material will be of benefit to students. The progressives argue that the tendency of conservatives to ban books about marginalized populations such as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, queers and transsexuals can further stigmatize those groups, leading to negative mental health effects for those who just two generations ago were cataloged as mentally ill for merely being homosexuals or of any non-mainstream sexuality.
Liberals have turned the conservative argument about parental rights around, arguing that while some parents assert the right to decide what their own children read, no single parent or set of parents should have the right to restrict what books are available to the other students who attend school with their children.
In Redlands since before the policy was changed in August and even more so since it has been put in place, there are those who take issue with the mechanics, fairness and fuller implication of the system of book review that is now in place. The review process involves an unacceptable degree of subjectivity, they say. This is illustrated, they say, with the rating cards for The Bluest Eyes and Push, which call for rating “the severity and/or frequency of pornography, erotica, or detailed sexual acts” and “the severity and or frequency of sexual assault, coercion, or graphic violence tied to sexuality” and asks the scorer “Is the content gratuitous, or is it presented in a literary, historical, scientific or educational context?” Many American works of literature which have long been part of educational curricula in American schools, such as The Red Badge of Courage, A Farewell to Arms and The Great Gatsby depict what could be described as gratuitous violence and, at least in the case of The Great Gatsby, “graphic violence tied to sexuality.”
Moreover, if every parent of students attending schools in the Redlands Unified School District or one of every ten parents of students attending schools in the Redlands Unified School District or if one of every hundred parents of students attending schools in the Redlands Unified School District lodged a single complain about a book in the district’s libraries, the district superintendent, the district’s assistant superintendent of educational services, the director of elementary education and the director of secondary education would have time do nothing more but read books all day, most likely ones they would never otherwise so much as consider picking up, let alone reading.
-Mark Gutglueck

The third managerial transition in Rancho Cucamonga’s 48-year history this week was marred by deep controversy over a secretive move by City Hall to reverse course on a key element of its land use policy, raising the specter of graft and influence peddling impacting governmental operations within San Bernardino County’s fourth most populous city.
The abrupt shift city officials are seeking to implement with regard to the intensity of development that is to be permitted to take place within the expanse of land most recently annexed the city while those officials were withholding from the public information relating to that alteration in policy is taking place just as Elisa Cox is officially succeeding John Gillison, who as of Monday officially departed as city manager after a tenure in that capacity which began in 2011.
Among Gillison’s most significant accomplishments was the city’s 2020 annexation of 6.38-square mile Etiwanda Heights, which was then situated above the northeastern quadrant of the city. That acquisition boosted the 40.12 square miles that were then within Rancho Cucamonga city limits to 46.5 square miles. That expansion was not effectuated casually, but had come after more than two decades of contemplation and informal discussion, followed by focused and intense preparation and action toward the annexation of the 4,085 acres in question in the 2017-to-2020 timeframe. This entailed, throughout all of 2018 and most of 2019, multiple public hearings, community workshops, scoping sessions, virtual workshops, surveys, and pop-up meetings in which the community, most particularly those then-current residents living in close proximity to the 4,085 acres under consideration for annexation, were encouraged to and did weigh in with regard to their perception of the advisability of expanding the city’s jurisdiction to include the land and the standards under which the property was to be developed once it became part of the city. The predominate, indeed nearly universal sentiment, expressed throughout this process was that the rustic and virtually undeveloped land should not be aggressively or intensely developed. Those present at the meetings, workshops and scoping sessions voiced, and the city staff summaries of that input documents consistently strong opposition to “apartments,” “condos,” “high-density,” and “multi-family housing.” Staff reports show residents explicitly added “No Apartments” and “No Condos” to priority boards during workshops. That input was utilized to inform what ultimately became the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, a binding planning document which was was ultimately given approval by the city council in November 2019.
As drawn up and ratified, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan permits a relatively narrow swath of property that was previously within the city limits, featuring chaparral, grasslands and oak woodlands alongside a natural alluvial creekbed, to be developed with something on the order of 90 to 100 homes. Further, under the plan, another 790 acres in the annexed property is to be designated as eligible for a variety of residential uses, including senior living cottages, some relatively small single family units as well as a number of half-acre sized lots to be zoned to allow equestrian use. Overall, the lion’s share of the land to be annexed, 88.2 percent or 3,603 of its 4,085 acres, is zoned for “rural/conservation” land use where no development is to occur.
The adopted plan reflected a prohibition on multifamily units by providing only single-family housing types in the designated “neighborhood area” within Etiwanda Heights. Overall, documents show, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan was to allow “2,700–3,000 single-family homes” to be built while ensuring that there were to be “no multi-family units across the 790 acres” zoned to be developed residentially. The adopted plan reflected this by providing only single-family housing types in the so-called neighborhood area.
Thereafter, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan was presented as the land use document cited in support of the city’s application with the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission to annex the 4,085 acres. That effort concluded successfully on November 9, 2020, when the Local Agency Formation commission, known by its acronym LAFCO, gave approval to the annexation. Throughout LAFCO’s processing and ultimate granting of that request, Rancho Cucamonga officials gave repeated assurances that the city was committed to abiding by the development standards and limitations contained in the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, including assurances that upon the 6.38 square miles transitioning from unincorporated San Bernardino County land to property lying within Rancho Cucamonga municipal boundaries, that portion of it deemed suitable for residential development would consist of unattached single-family homes, each with its surrounding and separate yard. There were multiple attestations of this commitment, made by city officials in both verbal and written form, including the 2020 LAFCO annexation approval summary, dated November 9, 2020; city website announcements and at public presentations surrounding the annexation.
Ultimately, in making its annexation application and throughout LAFCO’s processing and ultimate granting of that request, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan formed the basis of how the city was proceeding toward the eventuality of expanding its boundaries. In this way, the city and its officials were doubly committed, and the city’s residents doubly assured, that there were to be no multifamily residences constructed in Etiwanda Heights and there was to be no high-density development of the property, and what development was to occur there would be within a subdivision or subdivisions of a density between 3.3 units to the acre and 3.67 units to the acre, an intensity below that which had occurred in the city’s residential tracts in the 1980s and 1990s. City officials’ repeated commitments to adhere to these standards were manifest in the 2020 LAFCO annexation approval summary, dated November 9, 2020; announcements on the city’s website; and city officials’ verbal statements during public presentations surrounding the annexation.
Throughout the remainder of Gilllison’s official tenure as city manager – a period of slightly more than five years running through November 30, 2025 – the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan had remained operative.
Contained within Etiwanda Heights was 1,252.21 acres of land owned by the San Bernardino County Flood Control District. Following the Army Corps of Engineers construction of a regional flood control system that included concrete channelization some two decades ago, the use of the acreage for damming, diversion purposes and containment basins ceased, although those basins remained operative, following normal precipitation or deluges, for percolation purposes. The county declared the property as surplus during the fist decade of the 21st Century and for a time entertained purchase and development proposals from various entities entities, including a competition in 2009 that was never resolved. Unbeknownst to the public, last year the county entered into confidential and exclusive negotiations with developer James “Jimmy” Previti and representatives of his company, Frontier Enterprises. On the day prior to Thanksgiving 2024, November 27, 2024, in a closed-door session from which the public was excluded, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors worked out the final details and then ratified the sale of the 1,252.21 acres – slightly less than 1.96 square miles – for the agreed-upon price of $93 million, or $74,275.21 per acre. Though ownership of the property changed hands, it remained within the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan Area, and subject to the land use standards and restrictions contained in the document in its finalized form when ratified by the city council in 2019 and memorialized for a second time during LAFCO’s 2020 processing and ratification of the annexation of the 4,085 acres within which the 1,252.21-acres flood zone purchased by Previti lies.
In August 2025, it was announced that Gillison was to depart as manager as of December 1, at which time he was to be succeeded by Elisa Cox, who had been serving as the city’s second-in-command as assistant city manager since May 2002, had deputy city manager between August 2016 and April 2022 and prior to that had been assistant city manager in Sierra Madre for 22 months after having served in the capacity of that city’s human resources director and, previously, its head of community and personnel services.
The slightly-more-than-three-month duration of Cox’s transition into the position of city manager ensued. On November 18, 2025, as the countdown toward Cox’s inheritance of full oversight of City Hall was proceeding apace, public notice was given on that on December 10, 2025, the planning commission is to discuss and consider an alteration of the city’s planning standards as pertains to Etiwanda Heights in the form of a specific plan amendment – meaning most apparently the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan – which would add nine new building types, including duplexes, quadplexes, 12-plexes, walkups, so-called cottage courts, several higher-density small-lot product types, new block configurations, a density transfer mechanism and objective standard changes along expanded regulating zones permitting those products. The proposed amendment clearly presages the introduction of multi-family housing types that were excluded in the adopted 2019 Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan and referenced in the city’s 2020 public commitment.
On the same day that the notice went out a handful of people, followed a few days later by even more local residents, grew alarmed at what they perceived to be in the offing. A number of these initiated inquiries with City Hall to ascertain, precisely, what was happening, why it was happening, who was driving the proposed land use and policy change, whether this had been triggered by a proposal at odds with the previous development standards that originated with a landowner/developer or whether the change was being pushed by either elected city officials or city staff. According to several of those city residents who made those inquiries, city officials – from those at the level of the planning division up to that of city administration and the city council – stonewalled them.
While it is abundantly clear that there has been a reversal of attitude on the part of the city’s public officials with regard to Etiwanda Heights, most notably with regard to the prohibition on residential development of an intensity/density greater than single family units or cottages intended for senior citizens, who or what is driving the shift is not clear. Sources deep within City Hall have told the Sentinel that the change was played very close to the vest, and that information relating to the liberalization of land use standards on the property was not shared generally within the city’s planning division but rather on a strict need-to-know basis, meaning only among the city manager, i.e., Cox; the deputy city manager/director of community development, the city planner and no more than two of the city’s associate planners.
When residents asked specifically how the duplexes, quadplexes, 12-plexes, walkups, cottage courts, and the high-density small-lot units squared with the city’s commitment to construct single-family homes on the residentially-zoned property in Etiwanda Heights, they were met with silence. Similarly, inquiries with regard to who was making the request and whether it originated externally with Previti or other landowners within the district or if the proposal was generated internally by the mayor or members of the council, the planning commission or city staff went unanswered. In at least one case, a resident who pushed to obtain a greater explication of what the amendment was to entail and how many single-family units were to be converted to duplexes, quadplexes and 12-plexes as well as whether the term walk-up was a euphemism for an apartment building, he encountered hostility from city staff.
Redfin defines walk-up as “a type of apartment that doesn’t have elevators [in which] stairs are the primary way to navigate throughout the building.”
After being told that the action to be taken at the December 10 planning commission meeting had been personally planned by Cox as the “signature” kick-off to her era as city manager, the Sentinel initiated, or attempted to initiate, its own inquiries with Cox. Those included seven attempts to reach her by phone and a 2,748-word email delving into the particulars of the evolution of the terms memorialized in the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, the city’s representations with regard to it during its 2019 adoption, the city’s commitment to its terms in the successful 2020 annexation drive and what had transpired since that necessitated the rescission of those terms.
Prior to the Sentinel’s attempted communication via email, Cox’s diverted the inquiry to the city’s planning division, where an associate planner said a senior department member knowledgeable about the proposal would reach back with an explanation of what the proposed changes entail, why they are being proposed and what the city’s motivation in pursuing the is, who requested and who formulated them and their timing. No one from the city’s planning division has followed through with that promised contact as of press time.
In the meantime…

The completed article appears in the December 5 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.