Linda Reich, who has most recently been serving in the role of community services director, has been chosen to replace Matt Ballantyne as Chino’s city manager.
Reich is to begin in the position on August 1.
Chino, which at 103,416 residents is San Bernardino County’s seventh largest city populationwise and at 29.7 square miles the 15th largest in terms of area, never previously, since its 1910 incorporation, employed a woman as city manager.
Reich possesses a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and exercise science from Michigan State University, a master’s degree in public administration from California State University, Northridge and a doctorate in public administration from the University of La Verne. Continue reading →

Reportedly, El Monte Police Corporal Michael Paredes and El Monte Police Officer Joseph Santana, who were killed in the line of duty on Tuesday, June 14, 2022, both resided in Upland.
Paredes and Santana were gunned down by 35-year-old Justin Flores after El Monte police were summoned at around 4:30 p.m. to the Siesta Inn, a motel on Garvey Avenue, in response to a report of a possible stabbing.
Flores’ widow, Diana Flores, with whom Justin Flores had a child, in a statement to reporters indicated that the 911 call relating to the stabbing emanated from a threat Justin Flores made, which she implied was to her. She had not actually been stabbed, however, and there was no indication from the El Monte Police in the aftermath of the incident that anyone was stabbed.
Paredes and Santana arrived at the motel at roughly the same time. They, along with a sergeant from the Continue reading →

Wayne Gray, who like most of us led a life of mixed joy and sorrow, has at last found peace.
He passed away at 1:34 a.m. on April 13, 2022, from complications that ensued during his recovery from open heart surgery.
He was born in Pomona on June 8, 1955 to his mother Dorothy June Gray and his father Ira C. Gray.
As a child, he lived with his family, which included his older brother Gary and his three sisters Nancy, Sandy and Wanda, in the West End district of San Bernardino County. He attended Howard Elementary School and played baseball as a kid at West End Little League. Continue reading →

In front of man, God and everyone else, the San Bernardino City Council this week gave everyone a clear demonstration of the degree to which the city’s marijuana-related business permitting process has been tainted by graft, corruption, favoritism, misrepresentation, bribery and every unsavory influence imaginable.
Like virtually the rest of San Bernardino County’s reactionary civic leaders of the late 1990s, throughout the first decade of the Third Millennium and well past 2010, San Bernardino’s mayor and members of the San Bernardino City Council refused to yield to the liberalization of California law pertaining to cannabis when California’s voters passed Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act, in 1996. Proposition 215 allowed marijuana to be used for medicinal purposes in the Gold State, conditional upon a user obtaining a prescription from a licensed physician. Continue reading →

The official conclusion of this year’s election that resulted in the reelection of five countywide incumbents was not in compliance with the county’s charter, two lawsuits filed last week contend.

According to a lawsuit filed by Robert Conaway on his own behalf and another Conaway filed on behalf of Sheriff candidate Cliff Harris, San Bernardino County’s charter, as adjusted ten years ago in 2012, requires that the five countywide positions elected in the years corresponding with California’s gubernatorial elections – Sheriff, district attorney, Treasure/tax collector/auditor controller, assessor/county clerk and county superintendent of schools – are to be held in the November general election. According to Conaway’s and Harris’s suits, the county’s practice of declaring a candidate any of those five offices to be the winner if he or she collects a fifty percent of the vote plus at least one in the June primary election and then certifying that candidate’s election is inconsistent with the charter change that was made in 2012.

According to the language in the charter, “All county offices in this county, now or hereafter existing, other than the office of supervisor, that would under the general laws of the state be filled by election, if no county charter had been adopted, are hereby declared to be and are made county elective officers, and all such elective county officers shall be elected at the general election at which the governor is elected, and shall take office at twelve o’clock meridian on the first Monday after the first day of January next succeeding their election and shall hold office until their successors are elected or appointed and qualified, and all such elected county officers shall be nominated and elected in the manner provided by general laws for the nomination and election of such officers.”

NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF: RICHARD JOHN SCHUERGER CASE NO. PROSB2200742
To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both of RICHARD JOHN SCHUERGER has been filed by JOHN H. TAYLOR III in the Superior Court of California, County of SAN BERNARDINO.
THE PETITION FOR PROBATE requests that JOHN H. TAYLOR III be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent.
THE PETITION FOR PROBATE requests that the decedent’s wills and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court.
THE PETITION requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person Continue reading →

By Clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the June 10 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

By Mark Gutglueck
As what is arguably the most dynamic independent public interest group in San Bernardino County, the Red Brennan Group this week scored what was by some counts its sixth major victory for the hearts and minds of the 2.2 million people that live in the county.
Nevertheless, and despite strides other entities involved in public policy advocacy can only marvel at, the coalition once again finds itself on the verge of being outmaneuvered by the political and legal establishment it is up against, such that all of the group’s efforts involving the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars and the investment of thousands of man-hours and woman-hours toward achieving its goal of reform are likely to come to naught.
On Tuesday, the county’s voters by a comfortable margin gave approval to Measure Z, which called for the rescission of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors’ 2018 move to expand the applicability of Fire Protection District Service Zone Five. Continue reading →

A little more than a decade after the initiation of John Valdivia’s political hold on the City of San Bernardino, the city’s voters have brought the curtain down on the career of one of the most brazenly corrupt public officials in county history.
Despite an overwhelming financial advantage by which he had virtually twice as much money in his campaign war chest than all six of his opponents combined, Valdivia found himself far behind the front runner and outdistanced by the second-place finisher with whom he was once politically aligned, relegated to third place and out of the competition to remain as the kingfish of a dilapidated paradise whose citizens are no longer willing to tolerate his outsized ego and depredations.
Early handicapping of the race projected that he would capture approaching or more than 30 percent in the seven-candidate primary contest, leaving him in first place with less than half of the vote but qualifying him for a November run-off against the second-place finisher. But more than two years of unremittingly negative Continue reading →

The race to represent the Second Ward on the San Bernardino City Council over the next four years is a dead heat, one so close that there is a chance it will not be decided this summer but will require a run-off in November.
The issue of who will occupy the Second Ward position carries with it significance as to the makeup and complexion of government in the county seat going forward. It has further poignancy with regard to whether the city’s police department and its officers will remain as a potent, respected and feared political force in the city of 222,101.
A consequence of the race as it was carried out this year may be that whatever moral authority the police department once possessed has been squandered, a development which some of the department’s members have acknowledged and most others at this juncture do not want to address. Continue reading →