Concern about the already-heightened militarization of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department intensified this month with the county board of supervisors’ acquiescence in the department’s acquisition of three pieces of combat equipment worth $1,292,048.
The county board of supervisors on May 9 signed off on spending $356,000 to purchase a 2021 Lenco BEARCAT G3, a reinforced armored counter-response four-wheel-drive truck that possesses multiple specialized offensive capabilities. It is capable of both road/highway and off-road use.
In addition, the county is also paying $505,493 for an Andros Spartan explosive ordnance disposal robot.
The department is acquiring, as well, a $430,555 customized mobile command post, courtesy of the City of Victorville, which contracts with the sheriff’s department for the provision of law enforcement services.
In recent decades, a number of incidents nationwide, including mass shootings and circumstances in which criminals have engaged in the use of heavy firepower such as semiautomatic and fully automatic firearms, has prompted not only calls to arm police agencies with all order of military-level weaponry and equipment but the actual provision of that ordnance to local law enforcement. Over the last 15 years or so, police department after police department throughout the Golden State has outfitted their Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams with semi-automatic guns and magazines and trained its members in their deployment. So routine and casual is the intensive arming of peace officers in California that a little more than ten years ago, when the Fontana Unified School District’s police department, consisting of officers who are assigned to the district’s 30 elementary schools, seven middle schools and five high schools, purchased 14 Colt LE6940 high-powered semiautomatic rifles, no one batted an eye. That was one each for all 14 of the department’s sworn officers. The Fontana Unified School District Police Department does not have a SWAT team. Continue reading →

Two weeks after the Upland City Council backed down from its plan to allow Tesla, Inc. to store 300 of its vehicles intended for eventual sale from its Upland dealership on slightly more than two acres of undeveloped parkland in the city’s Sycamore Hills district, next Monday, May 22, it is scheduled to sign off on letting the electric car company use the city’s corporate yard to lodge the vehicles that would overfill its sales lot.
Tesla, Inc. has leased the large showroom property formerly occupied by CNC Motors at 1018 East 20th Street, just west of the confluence of the 210 Freeway and Campus Avenue along the northern periphery of the Colonies Crossroads commercial subdivision. The building’s south side is proximate to and is visible from the freeway. During the property’s previous incarnation as CNC’s showroom for vintage and high-end modern collector vehicles, all of CNC’s inventory was kept inside, and the paved parking around the facility to east, north and west accommodated the cars driven by CNC’s employees, CNC’s clientele and those simply there to tour the vintage car displays. At present, with Tesla’s inventory running three to four times the volume of CNC’s and a good portion of the building being used as a repair facility, the existing paved parking lots at the site are inadequate for the inventory, the cars driven by Tesla’s corporate, administrative, financing, sales and automotive service staff and the facility’s customers. At present, virtually all of the paved parking lot at 1018 East 20th Street parking is full, with employees and customers parking along 20th Street and in an unimproved field north of the freeway to the west of the dealership. Earlier this year, Tesla began construction on a permanent vehicle storage lot on a 1.3-acre parcel adjacent to the dealership to the east. Early in May, word was that the lot would not be ready for another two to three months. As of this week, however, the lot appears to be nearing completion. Continue reading →

In an effort to stave off what is growingly considered to be an inevitable conviction of at least three members of the Ontario City Council on a Brown Act violation rap, the city has hired top-flight criminal defense attorney Stephen Larson to represent the council.
At stake in the matter is whether the defense to be employed by the city in meeting the charges will leave exposed a closely-held tactic used by hundreds of elected officials throughout the state to evade that element of the government code which requires that elected municipal and other government agency officials openly engage in their deliberations on matters to be decided upon without prior collusion among themselves with regard to the votes they make in their official capacities.
A key factor in whether Mayor Paul Leon, Councilman Alan Wapner and Councilwoman Debra Dorst-Porada will be forever marked as criminals and thereby sustain potential political career-destroying wounds is whether Larson will be able to keep the forum for the investigation and trial on the criminal charges that would most logically be filed against his three clients in San Bernardino County and prevent the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office from surrendering jurisdiction in the prosecution to the California Attorney General’s Office. Continue reading →

The United States Forest Service has rendered a final decision on what the North Big Bear Landscape Restoration Program is to entail.
“Objectives of the project include promoting forest health, returning beneficial fire to the landscape, improving the watershed condition, protecting resource values, and restoring unauthorized roads and trails that have been created within the project area,” according to the United States Forest Service, known by its acronym USFS. “The successful implementation of this project will reduce the risk of catastrophic fire which would serve to protect two adjacent communities – Fawnskin and the Peter Pan Community of Big Bear City – and the greater Big Bear Valley.
Of note is that the USFS will institute controlled burns of certain areas in an effort to reduce and control the fuel load in that portion of the forest. That tactic has not been used in recent years.
The environmental assessment for the program analyzes the approximate 13,000-acre region between the Big Bear Dam and Baldwin Lake. Continue reading →

On Tuesday, the Redlands City Council voted unanimously to extend the moratorium on warehouse development it has in place for another year.
Two factors played a part in the decision: The tendency among some San Bernardino County cities to eschew further warehouse development while many of their neighboring cities are in a warehouse development frenzy and the efforts being made by the State of California to promote residential rather than industrial and commercial development.
There is more than 930 million square feet of warehousing in San Bernardino and Riverside counties at present, with more being built. That includes 3,034 warehouses in San Bernardino County. In Ontario alone, there are 289 warehouses larger than 100,000 square feet. Reportedly, there are 142 warehouses in Fontana larger than 100,000 square feet. In Chino there are 118 warehouses larger than 100,000 square feet, 109 larger than 100,000 square feet in Rancho Cucamonga and 75 larger than 100,000 square feet in San Bernardino. Since 2015, 26 warehouse project applications have been processed and approved by the City of San Bernardino, entailing acreage under roof of 9,598,255 square feet, or more than one-third of a square mile, translating into 220.34 acres. Continue reading →

Previous reports that the era in San Bernardino County governance in which the Granlund Family’s involvement in local politics was drawing to an end turns out to have been premature and wrong.
While Lonnie Granlund, the ex-wife of former Assemblyman Brett Granlund has left as a board member with the Yucaipa Valley Water District, the remaining members of the board, after interviewing Brett Granlund, Sheldon Jones, Matt LeVesque and Torin Setlich as her potential replacements on May 2, appointed Brett Granlund to the board.
Based upon the statements, résumés and responses each of the applicants provided during the interview, the board settled upon Brett Granlund.
In his statement, Brett Granlund made open allusion to his familial connection with the governance of the district.
“I intend to try to do as good a job in the position as director as my predecessors, directors Lonni Granlund and Bruce Granlund, providing support of policies that ensure a modern district supplying reliable and safe water and sewer service to our ratepayers.” Continue reading →

A Final Decision has been made for the North Big Bear Landscape Restoration
Project. Objectives of the project include promoting forest health, returning beneficial fire to the
landscape, improving the watershed condition, protecting resource values, and restoring unauthorized
roads and trails that have been created within the project area. The successful implementation of this
project will reduce the risk of catastrophic fire which would serve to protect two adjacent communities
(Fawnskin, Peter Pan Community of Big Bear City) and the greater Big Bear Valley.
The environmental assessment analyzes the approximate 13,000-acre region between the Big Bear Dam
and Baldwin Lake.
Over the past hundred years or more, fire suppression within the San Bernardino National Forest has excluded fire from much of the landscape. Fire is a natural ecosystem process, and the absence of periodic fire has led to unnaturally high tree density and fuel-load conditions throughout the project area. The area includes a variety of habitats that support highly diverse plant and wildlife populations, including bald eagles. A high-intensity wildfire is likely in this area if left untreated and would potentially destroy their little remaining habitat.
The anticipated effects of high-intensity wildfires in untreated areas can be observed West of the project
area as fire scars, resulting in vegetative type-conversion from a forested landscape into brush and grass
with low to no tree cover or signs of natural tree regeneration.
“I am excited to share this final decision and begin implementing this very important project that took
over 12 years to develop. Improving forest health and community protection has been a major part of my career and I am very enthusiastic at the outlook of improving the environment within this project area
so it can be enjoyed by future generations, while protecting complex natural systems, and the greater
community” said Mountaintop District Ranger Freddie Duncan. “The level of interest and public
engagement on this project has clearly demonstrated how much we all value this landscape and do not
want to see it lost to a catastrophic wildfire”.
The original analysis also considered up to 41 miles of new mountain bike trail construction and the
introduction of e-Bikes as a new form of recreational opportunity. This part of the proposed action was
removed from the decision with the opportunity to re-evaluate the purpose and need for new trails and
e-Bikes in the future.
“We understand the desire and value of sustainable recreation in Big Bear and will be taking another
look at how mountain bike trails and e-Bikes fit into the recreational spectrum on the North Shore”,
said Mountaintop District Ranger Freddie Duncan.
The project record, final Environmental Assessment, Decision Notice and Finding of No Significant
Impact are available online for public view.