Inadvertently, a Malibu-based lawyer has thrown the 52-year-long historical peculiarity of Loma Linda never electing a member of the city council who was not a Seventh Day Adventist into stark relief.

By Mark Gutglueck
The City of Loma Linda will become the 17th municipality in San Bernardino County in the last eight years to transition, under the threat of legal action, to by-district elections to select the members of its city council.
As a consequence of the way in which the Malibu-based attorney who forced Loma Linda to make that change utilized the California Voting Rights Act to bring the city’s political selection process into question, Loma Linda has become the focus of not only the entirety of the State of California but the nation as well over the way in which it has historically engaged in religiously-polarized voting.
Since 2014, Lancaster-based attorney R. Rex Parris, Los Angeles-based lawyer Milton Grimes, Malibu-based barrister Kevin Shenkman and more recently Los Angeles-based solicitor Matthew Barragan and Northern California-based legal practitioner Scott Rafferty have collectively generated for themselves over $7 million in legal fees by exploiting a provision in the California Voting Rights Act that entitles a lawyer seeking to promote so-called protected minority voter empowerment to bill the cities they engage with in that effort. Continue reading →

The San Bernardino City Unified School District should give serious consideration to canceling ten of the 26 contracts it has with outside entities for the provision of extended learning programs and educational augmentation services, according to a recommendation contained in an audit of those contracts requested by the district’s now departing superintendent.
According to the audit, the district is currently spending $12,824,798.20 on those contracts and would see that outlay reduced by $5,048,201.35, such that the total in contracted-for services would stand at $7,776,596.85.
Different and more reliable vendors would need to be found to provide some of the services, the auditors said.
Shortly after he took on the position of San Bernardino City Unified School District superintendent in June 2021, Harry “Doc” Ervin carried out what he acknowledges was a quick and superficial survey of the Continue reading →

For the second election cycle in a row, voters in Redlands will be voting in a referendum on whether they consider the city’s current crop of elected officials to be out of step with them in terms of the intensity of development they want to see in their community.
Redlands, which was incorporated as San Bernardino County’s third city in 1888, was long considered its grandest and most visually resplendent municipality, located within the heart of the Inland Empire’s citrus producing region. With the urbanization of Southern California that began creeping eastward from Los Angeles in the 1950s and which intensified in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and then into the Third Millennium, Redlands residents more than any others in the region resisted the destruction of the idyllic living ambiance that had typified life in their city in the early 20th Century.
Over the decades, a multi-generational contingent of Redlands residents demonstrated themselves to be more committed than any other citizens within San Bernardino County’s 24 municipalities to the concept of attenuating the tenor of development within their locality, as was demonstrated by the city’s Continue reading →

Mounting concern over the impact that short term rentals throughout the county are having on nearby properties and property owners prompted the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors last month to tweak its ordinance pertaining to vacation rental units and simultaneously impose a 45-day moratorium on the approval of new permits allowing residential properties to be rented out for brief periods of time.
At its June 14 meeting, the board of supervisors agreed to temporary suspend the approval of short-term rental unit permit applications so the county’s land use services division can consider how it is to approach zone change applications to allow more short-term rentals to operate and how the county can up its code enforcement capability to keep pace with the conversion of what were previously residential units to ones now accommodating vacationers. Staff further needs time to figure out how it will go about applying the now approved new ordinance provisions.
The county’s Department of Land Use Services – what in other parlance might be referred to as the county’s planning division – is continuing to accept and process short term rental unit applications, but Continue reading →

With only her performance in office and determination to rely upon, Second Ward San Bernardino Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, it now appears certain, has overcome long odds to achieve a comeback reelection victory.
A community activist first elected to the council in 2018, Ibarra was initially embraced by what passed as San Bernardino’s political establishment. By the end of Summer 2019, however, she had broken ranks with San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia and his political machine, which had been counting upon her to back his agenda advancing the interests of his political donors who endowed his political war chest with over $600,000.
Ibarra’s resistance to the pay-to-play ethos that surrounded the mayor earned for her not only Valdivia’s enmity, but that of scores of wealthy interests, including developers Jeff Burum, Scott Beard, Jim Previti and David Wiener. Continue reading →

At the regular Upland City Council meeting on Monday, June 27, 2022, City
Manager Michael Blay announced Police Chief Police Captain Marcelo Blanco has been appointed Upland’s chief of police, effective Sunday, July 10, 2022.
Blanco, who has been serving as acting police chief since April, will succeed Police Chief Darren Goodman, who officially left Upland last month to become police chief in San Bernardino.
Blanco, a 30-year veteran of the Upland Police Department, was born in Argentina. At the age of 5, he moved to Madrid, Spain, where he lived for two years before emigrating with his parents to Los Angeles. He grew up in the L.A. area, and during his junior year in high school, he moved to Upland and eventually graduated Continue reading →

NOTICE OF SALE OF VESSEL
Notice is hereby given the undersigned will sell the following vessel and trailer at lien sale at said address below on:
07/15/2022 9:00 am
VESSEL 96 BOMB 0455NU ZZND1714K596 CA
DATE OF SALE- 07/15/2022
TIME OF SALE-09:00 AM
LOCATION OF SALE-14038 SEA SHELL ST FONTANA CA 92335
To be sold by JV MOTORSPORTS1744 S WILLOW AVE RIALTO CA 92376
Said sale is for the purpose of satisfying lien for together with costs of advertising and expenses of sale.

NOTICE OF SALE OF AUTOMOBILE
Notice is hereby given pursuant to Sections 3071 of the Civil Code of the State of California the undersigned will sell the following vehicle(s) at lien sale at said address below on: 07/15/2022 09:00 AM
Year of Car / Make of Car / Vehicle ID No. / License No. (State)
18 CHEV / 1G1ZF5SU2JF224705 8FNS967 CA
To be sold by AIR EXPESSWAY TOWING 2521 MAIN ST BARSTOW CA 92311
Said sale is for the purpose of satisfying lien for together with costs of advertising and expenses of sale.

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME
CASE NUMBER CIV BA 2200218
TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS: Petitioner: PAULA ISHAK BEKHEET DAWOOD filed with this court for a decree changing names as follows:
PAULA ISHAK BEKHEET DAWOOD to MASRI ISHAK DAWOOD Continue reading →