With Mayor John Valdivia’s final days in office moving toward a countdown, the prospect of property in Verdemont that was burdened with several thousand tons of shattered concrete more than two years ago being reclaimed for development any time soon is fading.
Earlier this year, a New York-based development company had swooped in with a plan to obtain the Verdemont property, located in what is the northernmost district within the San Bernardino City Limits along the 215 Freeway south of Devore, at a low enough price to allow it to remove the concrete to a nearby location to crush it and then return it to the site where it would be used as fill to even out the sloping of the property to render it developable.
According to the principal in the company that had those hopes, however, the same entities who had been involved in locating the concrete onto the property in the first place violated an agreement that would have allowed the prospective developer to make a reasonable profit on the venture by alerting other investors who then interloped, making the combined task of securing the property and dealing with the concrete prohibitively expensive.
A chain of events created the current circumstance. Continue reading →

Two years after San Bernardino County’s voters by a two thirds margin passed Measure K, a political reform initiative that reduced the pay of the total annual compensation of the individual members of the county board of supervisors from $260,000 per year to $60,000 per year and limited holders of that position to a single term in office, the supervisors this year are seeking to displace that refinement with a measure to restore their pay level and allow them to remain in office for at least three terms.
Turning out to support the supervisors in that effort have been a collection of developers, business interests and public employee unions, which are sponsoring the alternative initiative on this year’s ballot, Measure D, who have so far put up more than $829,000.
The use of Measure D by San Bernardino County’s political establishment to block the reforms layered into Measure K is the latest effort by the supervisors to prevent the Red Brennan Group from proceeding with structural changes to county government its members believe will safeguard taxpayer funds and reduce what its members consider to be the pernicious influence of special interests on county policy.
Kieran “Red” Brennan was a U.S. Navy submariner during World War II. His brushes with death as a young man in the service of his country while seeking to export democracy around the globe impressed on him the need to refine democracy at home. He pushed efforts to ensure government transparency and accountability, ones he hoped elected officials could be convinced to impose on themselves and, if not, would ultimately be put in place through the citizen initiative process. Continue reading →

This year’s Chino Hills City Council District 1 race points up the moral quandary and practical conflict inherent in the California Voter Rights Act, as it is pitting the community’s longtime leading Hispanic politician against a man touted as Chino Hills’ great Asian political hope.
The California Voting Rights Act of 2001, which was framed with the intent of preventing the political disenfranchisement of minorities in the Golden State, encourages the use of by-district rather than at-large voting in local races for elected office.
The California Legislature in passing the act worked from the assumption that historically the state’s minority population had been underrepresented in elected offices at virtually all levels within California and that minority votes were being diluted in “at-large elections,” that is, in elections whereby representatives elected to represent the whole membership of a governmental body can live anywhere within that jurisdiction’s borders. The theory was that by creating voting wards within such jurisdictions – cities, incorporated towns, school districts, water districts, fire districts, community services districts, etc. – the minority vote would not be diluted in those areas or districts or wards where the minority voters were concentrated, and this would lead to the election of minority candidates to office.
As part of the strategy to overcome this “at-large election minority voter dilution,” the California Voting Rights Act made it easy to force local governments to dispense with at-large elections in favor of by-district voting. Continue reading →

With the fuller implication of the political corruption scandal that consumed Ricardo Pacheco registering across Southern California, Robert Tafoya, who was a key player in the depredations engaged in by the former Baldwin Park Councilman, is now being drummed out of one of his last remaining public agency positions, that of general counsel to the West Valley Water District.
As the details of what was ongoing both behind the scenes and in the full light of day over the last five-and-a-half years are being revealed, questions are being raised about the integrity of governmental processes and some are clamoring for stricter oversight of public processes. Meanwhile, political operatives who had provided essential support to the corrupt political regime in which Pacheco and Tafoya flourished are seeking to use the specter of the scandal to attack two of the newly sprouted public officials who are the ones sweeping the last vestiges of the elements of what Pacheco represented in San Bernardino County from office. Continue reading →

Mike Davis, the kid from Fontana who seemed fated to a blue-collar existence until the vicissitudes of that way of life pushed him into becoming a man of letters and a social critic par excellence, died in San Diego on October 25. He was 76.
When his father was injured and could no longer work, Davis dropped out of high school and took his place driving a truck for Davis’s uncle’s meatpacking company.
For the next dozen years, he was trucker, driving all order of lorries and commercial vehicles, from panel delivery vans, stake beds, 27-foot trucks, cement mixers, 40-foot trailers and 52-foot 18-wheelers.
Fate intervened, and he was laid off, only temporarily, he thought, when the company he worked for downsized.
He found part-time employment in newspaper production, which put him in contact with some UCLA students and two professors who were putting out a Marxist publication called the Picket Line, the charter for which was to support striking workers. Continue reading →

The San Bernardino City Unified School District Board is seeking applicants for superintendent. Applications can be accessed via the district’s application link and will be accepted through November 30, 2022.
The new educational leader, one with the background, skills, and abilities essential for guiding the scholastic mission of California’s seventh-largest school district, is slated to be named by February 2023.
In October, the board hired McPherson & Jacobson, LLC, an executive search firm that specializes in education, to lead a nationwide search for the district’s next superintendent. As part of the new search, the board is seeking input from parents, employees, and the community on desired characteristics through a survey that will help shape the search process. Continue reading →