San Bernardino’s first candidate forum of the 2022 electoral season, to the disappointment of many residents, did not feature all of the candidates running for mayor. As such, it did not allow for a clear side-by-side comparison of the man who is now mayor and the six others who would replace him.
The unwillingness of the incumbent, John Valdivia, to go toe-to-toe with his challengers, nevertheless, provided an illustration of the contentiousness and intensity of the contest, as well as the poignancy and keen sensitivity around the issues that are at play in the race for political leadership in the county seat.
All seven candidates in this year’s San Bernardino mayoral race, including Valdivia, had been invited to the two-hour-long mostly question-and-answer event put on by the Verdemont Neighborhood Association on Tuesday night, March 22. Valdivia and another candidate in the race many voters in the city suspect is actually Valdivia’s ally did not show up.
Still, mayoral candidates Mohammad Khan, Henry Nickel, Treasure Ortiz, Jim Penman, and Helen Tran gave brief opening and closing overviews of themselves and their goals/vision for the city and fielded questions about current challenges facing the city.
One of those questions pertaining to close to fifty thousand tons of concrete dumped in the same neck of the woods where the candidate forum was taking place went right to the heart of why, most likely, Valdivia, was not present.
The event was held at the Little League Western Region Headquarters in the Verdemont district on the east side of the 215 Freeway near the northernmost extreme of the 59.65 square mile city.
Within easy visual range of the Little League Headquarters is the so-called Oxbow site, where the completion of a 40-unit medium-to-low density single-family home subdivision has been stalled for approaching a decade-and-a-half. Some 12.5 miles east-southeast as the crow flies or variously 15.6 miles or 18.3 miles distant via differing routes using the local freeway system is the 2200 block of West Lugonia Avenue in Redlands, where the Kuehne & Nagel warehouse, a 600,000 square foot structure which had served as a holding/distribution/dispatch facility for large items sold by on-line retail behemoth Amazon, once stood. On June 5, 2020, a fire broke out in the warehouse and that fire gutted the building, which was a total loss.
Eric Cernich is the principal of Newport Beach-based Oxbow Communities, Inc., a development company that for 15 years had a plan to construct 40 single-family residential units on property he had tied up at the far extension of Palm Avenue in the Verdemont district. One of the hold-ups in the development of the 40-home Oxbow project was that the land upon which the project was to be built was uneven and would require either intensive grading and then hillside reinforcement or the introduction of fill into the low-lying side of the property or its crevices to render it level. The emerging availability of the concrete from the Kuehne & Nagel warehouse represented what appeared to be an ideal solution to Cernich. With the approval of Redlands city officials, Cernich arranged to have the warehouse’s concrete walls partially broken up at the Lugonia Avenue property. He then had Huntington Beach-based Greenleaf Engineering truck the concrete to Verdemont. Cernich’s intention was to crush the concrete and mix it into the earth at the subdivision site and compact it to render the property suitable to be built upon.
In August 2020, Verdemont district residents noted that dump trucks were transiting up Palm Avenue and depositing massive loads of large shards and chunks of shattered concrete onto vacant land near the Oxbow project site. When they queried of San Bernardino city officials what was happening, they were told that Oxbow Communities had clearance from the city to utilize the concrete as fill. If they would just be patient, those residents were told, the eyesore would disappear as the concrete was pulverized and ground into manageable-sized pieces and mixed with dirt to be thereafter compacted so it might disappear under the foundations of the homes that were to be built and the yards and lawns that would eventually surround those homes.
Verdemont residents were skeptical, but most were prevailed upon to hang onto their hats and let the situation evolve and play out, assured that Cernich would be making progress soon.
Days became weeks. Weeks turned into a month. Then two months.
Henry Nickel at that time was the councilman in Ward 5, which included the Verdemont area. In the March 2020 primary election, before the onset of the Oxbow site concrete debris issue, he had captured 1,802 votes or 35.45 percent of the 5,083 votes cast in the ward’s 2020 election that featured five other candidates. Because he had failed to capture a majority of the vote – meaning at least one more than 50 percent of the votes cast – Nickel was forced into a run-off against the second leading vote-getter, in this case Ben Reynoso, who polled 1,295 votes or 25.48 percent in that March primary. Nickel, as the incumbent who had been in office for seven years, seemed to be on a trajectory to cruise to a relatively convincing victory over the lesser-known Reynoso, who was at a nearly ten percent disadvantage going into the final race.
To the residents of the Fifth Ward, however, it looked to them as if they were getting a raw deal from City Hall. When the wind kicked up, the people in the neighborhood found themselves, their houses, cars and pets peppered and pelted with dust and concrete fragments anywhere from the consistency of dust to the size of sand to pebbles. There was concern that the concrete itself was not stable physically or chemically and that it represented a safety and health hazard. When City Hall was met with complaints, it downplayed the problem, offering an assurance that the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards contained in its Land Development and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System guidelines rated the concrete as a low-level or nonexistent health threat.
Residents countered that the dozens of heavily-laden diesel trucks carrying the concrete to its destination were spewing exhaust into the air and tearing up the surface of Palm Avenue.
Nearby residents had been given assurances that Cernich would act with alacrity and do the grading incorporating the concrete fill into the ground, so to undertake and complete the project. Cernich and Oxbow Communities, Inc. were, however, beset with a number of other financial, practical and administrative considerations that were preventing the project from moving forward. The rubble remained. Despite the consideration that Nickel was as vociferous as anyone else in advocating that the concrete issue be resolved, the Fifth District’s voters saw him as a representative of the city establishment. In the November 2020 election, he was the one held accountable. The Fifth Ward’s voters tossed him out of office, giving Reynoso a mandate with 5,772 votes or 52.74 percent to Nickel’s 5,172 votes or 47.26 percent.
Ultimately, Reynoso was no more effective than Nickel had been in alleviating his constituents’ concerns about the presence of the concrete. Despite the willingness of three other members of the council – Sixth Ward Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin, Second Ward Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra and Seventh Ward Councilman Damon Alexander – to have the concrete removed, that fix has not been applied. Reynoso, Calvin, Ibarra and Alexander in April 2021 voted to authorize the expenditure of $2 million to have Cemex, a Mexican multinational building materials company with its California corporate headquarters in Ontario, remove the concrete. To pay for the abatement, the four council members intended to place a lien on the property, such that the city would be able to recover the $2 million from Oxbow Communities and Greenleaf Engineering, the parties that placed the broken-up concrete there, before the construction on the Oxbow subdivision could proceed. The four prevailed in that vote, in which Councilmen Fred Shorett, Ted Sanchez and Juan Figueroa dissented. Though Valdivia does not have voting power as mayor, he does possess veto authority on votes that end in a 4-to-3 or 3-to-2 outcome. Valdivia vetoed the approval of the abatement plan.
Sanchez, Shorett and Figueroa believe that subjecting the developer to the cost of removing the concrete from the site and carrying out the processing of the material elsewhere before relocating it back to the site where it will be used to form the base beneath the subdivision would be prohibitively expensive and that once the material is removed it will never come back and the project will be abandoned, with the land lying fallow for another 15 years or more.
Shorett prides himself as being pro-development and does not want to see the city surrender the prospect of having upscale homes built at the site.
Sanchez told the Sentinel that the fears expressed by some residents that the concrete represents a health hazard do not comport with actuality. He cited a report from Envirochem Laboratory in Pomona which found that the concrete is not infused with asbestos and as such does not represent an environmental hazard.
Figueroa is a Valdivia ally who can be counted upon to support Valdivia in virtually everything he does.
By last year, it was publicly revealed that Cernich had provided Valdivia’s electioneering fund with $1,500 in two $750 installments, one on July 14, 2020 and another on September 8, 2020. Greenleaf Engineering, owned by Tim Greenleaf, who had the contract for the demolition of the Kuehne & Nagel warehouse and relocating its concrete walls to San Bernardino, had provided Valdivia’s election fund with $2,000 in two $1,000 installments on October 2, 2020 and on October 7, 2020.
The San Bernardino City Council has reached an impasse on the Oxbow concrete issue as Sanchez is determined that what needs to be done is that it should be crushed and mixed with the soil to create a base so the project can start, while Reynoso is adamant that the concrete be removed. Reynoso has made repeated efforts to have the council revote the issue, never achieving more than a 4-to-3 passage of the plan to enter into the arrangement with Cemex, which Valdivia vetoes. In the meantime, Cernich no longer has ownership or control of the property, meaning that the plan to develop the 40 homes on the property has been abandoned.
Valdivia, sensing that a large number of those who would be at the Little League Headquarters would prove hostile to him, simply did not show up. Also a no-show was Gabriel Jaramillo.
Thus, five of the seven candidates attended the forum. After a two-minute opening statement by each candidate present, the event moderator, Ray Blom, peppered the candidates with two sets of questions, the first set provided by the Verdemont Neighborhood Association board and the second set ones that were written out by members of those in attendance.
Blom asked what could be done to cure the city’s malaise, what each candidate’s priorities were, how accountability could be ensured in government, what the city could do to redress its image, how each candidate intended to lessen divisiveness and inspire cooperation on the city council, what should be done about the city’s high murder rate and the candidates’ attitudes toward affordable housing initiatives.
Khan emphasized his youth and experience as a business owner. He called for teamwork and creating an atmosphere where the city’s up-and-coming generations would be able follow in his entrepreneurial footsteps.
“We need to train younger generations because they will take over,” he said. “Our priorities are misplaced. A lot of youth does not believe in San Bernardino.”
Mohammad Khan said the city needed to obtain adequate money to enable itself to pay for the solutions the city needs to apply in redressing its problems, such as hiring more employees and police officers. “Generating funds is the first step,” he said.
Khan said that by having the police department engage in “community policing” it could “create a little better trust” among the city’s residents.
Khan said the city had to do a better job marketing itself to the world.
He said other cities were reacting to challenges more quickly than San Bernardino.
Without saying precisely how he would do so, Khan said he would “get rid of the homeless.”
Henry Nickel said the city had much going for itself, but he decried its “dysfunctional government” and the enmity that has developed between the council and the mayor. He alluded to Valdivia’s overuse of his veto power.
“We have to build trust,” he said. He said that as a member of the council, he had been hamstrung by the division on the council and Valdivia’s opposition to his initiatives. He lamented that getting an item passed on a simple majority vote did not suffice in the effort to accomplish things, since Valdivia would utilize his veto power to thwart many things if they did not pass by an overwhelming margin.
“If I didn’t get five votes, I couldn’t get things done,” Nickel said.
Nickel pointed out that members of the council are too often warring with one another. “What we are lacking is the ability to reach across the aisle and forget grudges,” he said.
Nickel said talk was cheap. He said the council and mayor needed to “shut up and listen” to what their constituents were saying.
Without explaining how he would find the financing to do so, Nickel said the city should restore the police officer-to-population ratio recommended by the FBI, which he said was “18-to-19 per 10,000 people.”
Helen Tran is the City of San Bernardino’s former human resources director who left in the aftermath of a scandal brought on by five city employees who claimed they were mistreated by Valdivia and were unable to get the city’s administration to get Valdivia to desist. Those five, now former employees, are suing the city. Tran is currently the human resources director with the City of West Covina.
Likening San Bernardino to a “sleeping giant,” Tran said she was capable of assisting San Bernardino in achieving its potential. She said the tools are in place to do that. “We have an airport, major rails, freeways, land, mountains,” she said. “Everything is here. We have to make sure our government is set up to have the resources and staffing levels to clean the city, to make it safe.”
Tran said that the city securing those “adequate resources” and funding was key to getting the city back on track.
She said that prior to the city’s 2012 bankruptcy, San Bernardino employed 350 police officers, but had reduced that number to 200. She said the city should restore the police department to its pre-bankruptcy level.
Tran said the mayor should work with the city manager and the administrative team at City Hall to run the city properly.
Jim Penman, who had been San Bernardino’s city attorney from 1987 until he was recalled from office in 2013, ran unsuccessfully for San Bernardino County District Attorney in 1994 and San Bernardino Mayor in 2005 and 2009. He was one of Valdivia’s key backers, and was instrumental in launching the younger man’s political career in 2011, when Valdivia was first elected to the city council in the Third Ward. Penman remained a Valdivia supporter, helping him defeat then-incumbent Mayor Carey Davis in 2018. Since that time, however, Penman acknowledges having “misjudged” Valdivia, and is pursuing his own revived mayoral ambitions to blast Valdivia out of office.
While crediting the other candidates with being sincere and well-intentioned, Penman said they did not have his experience or understanding of how a city is run, and that the residents of San Bernardino could not afford to have them learning on the job. For that reason, he said, he was the superior candidate for mayor.
According to Penman, beefing up the police department is a panacea to most of what ails the city. The way to undo the social havoc in San Bernardino, Penman said, consists of “hiring more police officers. We have to stop the nonsense of not getting a policeman to your house for hours or days or weeks.” Penman said the City of San Bernardino had places for 289 police officers in its budget but was currently employing only 270. He contrasted that with the City of Riverside, which has over 400 police officers. He said the city should employ “area detectives,” meaning ones devoted to specific neighborhoods as part of a community policing formula.
With regard to the Oxbow concrete dilemma, he said the problem was exacerbated by the city having “a city manager who does not know what to do.” Penman did not mention City Manager Robert Field by name, but came across as harshly critical of him, nonetheless. He intimated that there was a revolving door at City Hall by which the current city manager is making deals and hiring nonproductive consultants in exchange for those consultants in the future hiring the city manager as a consultant when he is no longer city manager. Part of the city’s problem, Penman said, was that the current city council is not sophisticated enough to know how to find and employ a decent city manager. He said the city had gone through a series of failed city managers. “The council did not know who[m] to hire,” he said.
He, more than any of his rivals, Penman insisted, “know[s] what to do. I know how to handle it. Tell them to clean it up or you go to trial. It’s very simple. It’s a violation. It’s a nuisance. Take them to court. Tell them to move it [the concrete] or go to jail.”
Penman said that developers doing business in the city “have to pay their fair share.”
Penman sounded a harsh note with regard to the challenge the city faces in dealing with its burgeoning homeless population. He said the city needed to “get the homeless out of the parks,” and seemed to suggest the city could just force the people living on the streets to leave the city.
Penman, Nickel and Ortiz were the three participants Tuesday night who were most sharply critical of Valdivia. They repeatedly and directly called for seeing him out of office, stating directly and indirectly that his holding of the mayoral gavel represents the city’s foremost problem.
Treasure Ortiz has been Valdivia’s most vocal critic, having denounced him while questioning his commitment to his constituents and basic honesty practically from the time he was sworn in as mayor. She said she would with the support of the city’s voters reclaim the mayoralty for the residents Valdivia has betrayed.
She called upon the city’s residents to stop being “placated.” She characterized the Valdivia regime as one during which the mayor and his council allies “have been paid not to care about our city by people outside our city.” She said she was on a “mission” to restore integrity to the city’s political leadership. “We must get John Valdivia out of the way of this city,” she said.
The city’s past and current leaders are not aggressive enough in going to the heart of the issues that are challenging the city, she said. She would end that complacency, she said.
“You need a fighter,” she said. “You don’t need people who just show up.”
Ortiz appealed to the city’s voters to elect “someone to the dais you trust,” as opposed to Valdivia, who sells his votes and decisions to the highest bidder. She said that with her as mayor, the city’s residents would know that “I don’t get paid to make them [decisions and determinations as a city leader].”
She said she would prove compassionate in dealing with homelessness.
Obliquely, Ortiz disputed Penman’s philosophy calling for hiring more police officers.
She acknowledged the city had social problems and was beset with crime but said it would be a “mistake to think we are going to keep throwing money, money, money” at problems and fix them that way. She likened the city’s response to the serious issues facing it to “putting band-aids on bullet holes.” She said the city was failing its children, who are confronted with “prostitutes, drug dealers and dead bodies” as they walk to and from school.
She said that the city’s murder rate could at least partially be redressed by trying to “work on ceasefires” and sponsoring or encouraging “mentorships to keep kids from getting into gangs.”
She said the city can reclaim its parks at less expense than by utilizing police officers to patrol there, instead hiring “park rangers” to assist in managing the influx of homeless people into the city’s parks.
Valdivia was not present to defend himself from the slings and arrows that were sent his way during the forum.
Neither was another candidate in the race, Gabriel Jaramillo, present.
Jaramillo is widely seen as a stalking horse for Valdivia, as he has assiduously avoided any criticism of the mayor while attacking the other candidates. Indications are that Valdivia is bankrolling Jaramillo’s electoral effort. Jaramillo’s addition to the field of mayoral candidates, by the calculation of at least some political prognosticators and San Bernardino mayoral race handicappers, is a benefit to Valdivia, who has substantial name recognition, the power of incumbency and $318,426.56 in his campaign war chest, which at present is far ahead of the $132,859.53 Tran has committed toward her electoral challenge of the mayor and the $47,146.72 Penman has in his electioneering fund. The other candidates are well under those totals. Most election analysts concur that the more opponents who run against Valdivia in the June primary race, the better it is for him. They believe that based on his current name recognition and incumbent status, he will need to spend only about one-fifth to one fourth of the amount of money he has in his campaign fund to ensure first or second place in the June race, and thus a berth in the November run-off. Some believe Jaramillo’s purpose is to engage in a running battle with Ortiz, who has distinguished herself as Valdivia’s most committed antagonist, as a strategy to divert Ortiz’s firepower away from the mayor.
-Mark Gutglueck

Two dozen communities in San Bernardino County continue to struggle with problems relating to the proliferation of short-term rentals.
In recent years, local and county authorities have made an effort to regulate those making homes, cabins, rooms, units and even trailers available for people to live in for relatively short and in some cases longer periods in those places in the county that city slickers deem exotic, such as in the mountains or deserts and on the shores of lakes or the Colorado River. At such venues on getaways of that sort, most people are simply after a relaxing and good time, and few problems ensue. Still, with others, especially when alcohol or recreational drugs are involved, the behavior of some is not as civil as their temporary neighbors would prefer them to be. In some cases, quarters that are intended for a few people or a family or two is called upon to accommodate several dozen. That brings with it issues such as noise, overburdened parking space and compliance with rudimentary laws. On rare occasions, with no warning a rave-like event manifests in a place ill-suited for it, and things can quickly rage out of hand.
Most of these issues exist in unincorporated areas of the county, such as Mt. Baldy, Joshua Tree, Wrightwood, Crestline, Cedarpines Park, Lake Gregory, Lake Arrowhead, Blue Jay, Valley of Enchantment, Cedar Glen, Sky Forest, Twin Peaks, Arrow Bear, Big Bear City, Angeles Oaks, Running Springs, Green Valley Lake, Cienega Creek, Sugarloaf, Seven Oaks, Barton Flats, Zzyzx, Amboy or Trona. Three incorporated municipalities, however – Big Bear Lake, Yucca Valley, and Twentynine Palms – deal with transitory influxes of visitors on a regular basis.
In 2017, the county government made a concerted effort to deal with the matter in the mountain communities. In 2019, the county moved to take up the issue directly and generally, not just in the mountains, but in desert communities, in particular ones along the Colorado River as well as those near, in and around Joshua Tree National Park, which includes Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, and Twentynine Palms. By November of that year, the county had approved a set of rules that were to apply to residential units rented for 30 or fewer days. Those included a permitting process for homes to be used as short-term rentals, ones that had to be renewed every two years. Owners were further required to provide onsite parking to accommodate all visitors to the rentals, maintain the rental units’ exteriors and interiors, document who the renters were and post evacuation maps on all doors within each unit.
The regulations imposed a fine of $100 on the rental unit’s owner for a first offense, a $200 fine for a second offense and a $500 fine for a third.
Recurrent complaints by residents living near short term rental units persisted even in the aftermath of the county ordinance. With the COVID-19 crisis, which resulted in stay-at-home mandates, a trend by which people decided to head out into remote areas where they could cut lose took hold. There was a rash of unpleasant and unfortunate incidents in traditional getaway locations. Last year, the county considered making punishment for not keeping within the regulations in resort locations more draconian.
At the board of supervisors’ June 22, 2021 meeting, County Chief Executive Officer Leonard Hernandez and the county’s director of land use services, Terri Rahhal, delivered a report and recommendation that the supervisors pass an urgency ordinance and companion regular ordinance that increased the penalties for short-term rental code violations.
Noting the $100, $200 and $500 maximum fines that were then in place, Hernandez and Rahhal said those were insufficient to deter the proliferation of nuisances and dangerous activity at the short-term rental sites. They called for the passage of an urgency ordinance they had prepared and then the passage of a permanent ordinance they had in the works which would drastically increase the county’s ability to fine violators.
“Operating short-term residential rental units is a lucrative business that can absorb the current fines with no impetus to change,” according to the Hernandez/Rahhal report. “The proposed urgency ordinance would increase these penalties.” They laid out criminal and administrative penalties of $1,000 for the first offense, $2,000 for the second offense and $5,000 for the third offense falling within a 12-month period. The report added, “Subsequent offenses would be subject to suspension or revocation of the short-term residential rental unit permit.”
Operating a short-term rental unit without a permit, Hernandez and Rahhall proposed, would be prosecuted as a misdemeanor and would be subject to the same $1,000, $2,000 and $5,000 fines per violation per day.
Nine months hence, the intensification of fines has had some impact, though county officials have not claimed the ten-fold increase in fines has resolved the short term rental nuisance issue.
In the county’s incorporated resort cities and towns, where tourism is a significant element in the economy, imposing regulations on short term rentals is a problematic one, and it is filled with tension between residents who are not involved in the tourism industry and have no or little financial stake in it, and those whose bread is buttered by it.
Yucca Valley is more blue collar than white collar, and while some locals do make money by renting their property, most do not. After years of Yucca Valley residents enduring problems brought on by insensitive short term visitors, the town government in 2017 approved an ordinance that imposes on the owners of residences rented out as vacation homes a requirement that they apply for a $270 permit every two years and pay the same taxes imposed on hotels.
The fee, town officials said, was intended to defray the cost of the town hiring a private company to monitor the properties, enforce codes and deal with complaints relating to the properties emanating from neighbors.
Simultaneously, the city entered into a contract with San Francisco-based Host Compliance LLC to monitor vacation rentals.
Host Compliance LLC carries out that assignment remotely from San Francisco, using computer software and Internet data to keep tabs on all known vacation rentals in the town, monitoring them for compliance with the town’s codes, and informing rental unit owners of any noted violations with a notice to bring the properties into compliance.
Of all the cites in San Bernardino County, Big Bear Lake is the one where the controversy over short term rental regulation is most intense and, like unincorporated Lake Arrowhead, it is a place where the divide and disagreement over the proliferation of tourism is sharp. As a recreational and vacation mecca, Big Bear Lake attracts thousands of short term occupants annually, with arrivals coming in during all four seasons of the year. Consequently, a substantial number of property owners in Big Bear Lake derive considerable income from catering to these short term residents. They are less in favor of the city government imposing regulations on the transient population than are the homeowners in the city who must live with a constant influx of highly unpredictable temporary neighbors of variable levels of gentility. The Big Bear Lake City Council has thus found itself caught between  on one side the full-time residents who want tough restrictions imposed on rental units, those who own them and those who occupy them on a temporary basis and on the side the often-absentee landlords who are making a substantial amount of money by renting their properties on a temporary basis and want nothing in place that will discourage renters from coming to Big Bear Lake.
The council has responded by initiating a regulatory regime that involves licensing and fines on cabin owners on whose properties problems manifest. If nuisances persist on a given property, the city will revoke the owner’s license. For a contingent of the city’s residents, City Hall has not gone far enough. They have called for a cap on vacation rentals and they are pushing the city to increase the transitory occupancy tax – i.e. the city’s bed tax or hotel tax – to be upped from 8 percent to 12 percent, based on their argument that 35 percent of the calls for service from the fire department or sheriff’s department involve short term rental properties and/or visitors to the city.
Alan Lee, who was elected to the Big Bear Lake City Council in 2020, has championed the cause of the city’s full-time residents, and he has emphasized cases where locals have been victimized by visitors, including incidents of vandalism, theft and violence. This has antagonized many of those absentee landlords, who see in such talk a danger that it will ward off customers who will avoid Big Bear Lake if it develops a reputation of allowing those who are there to be roughed up or hurt or victimized. Since the absentee landlords are generally wealthier than the permanent residents and can apply money in the form of political grease more readily than the permanent residents, the city and the majority of the city council have not been willing to put in place nor enforce regulations that go beyond the city’s current ordinances, and they have resisted the call to put a cap on the number of short-term rental licenses they issue. The controlling council majority members have said they want to allow the regulations that exist an opportunity to work. If those do not achieve the desired results, they say they might then put more restrictive measures into place. In the meantime, an enmity between Lee and the other members of the council has evolved, one which reflects the tension between Big Bear Lake’s full-time residents and its absentee landlords.
In the meantime, a contingent of full-time residents is flirting with the concept of a ballot measure to bring about a cap on the number of short-term rental units together with an increase in the transitory occupancy tax. Into the bargain, they want that ballot measure to limit the number of rental units an absentee landlord can have to one, the goal being to prevent or substantially limit ownership of short-term rental units by investors and encouraging local ownership of such rentals.
Remarkably, within the last month, in the City of Twentynine Palms, discussion and debate with regard to the regulation of short term rental units has mirrored much of what is going on in Big Bear Lake.
The planning commission there has been tasked with evolving a policy for regulating vacation rental units. There is a seeming consensus that capping the number of units used for that purpose is a workable solution, or at least part of the formula for alleviating some of the social ills that come with having a large transitory population at any given time. Tentatively, the commissioners collectively came up with limiting the number of vacation rentals to 12 percent of the single-family homes in the city, although commissioners Greg Mendoza and Jim Krushat opposed the 12 percent limitation. With a population of 28,065 in the 2020 Census and 5,797 single family homes, that would mean the city could host 695 short term rentals. Krushat said he believed a cap in the 19 percent to 20 percent range, or around 1,101 to 1,159 was preferable. At the opposite end of the debate, Chairwoman Leslie Paahana said she could live with a cap of 10 percent, which meant roughly 580 vacation rental units.
The Twentynine Palms Planning Commission also took up the idea floated in Big Bear Lake of limiting the number of vacation rentals that one person could own, though that discussion did not delineate a cap of one per resident. Ultimately, the commission rejected imposing a limit in that fashion. Krushat was out of step with his colleagues on that issue. He decried the trend of developers building homes that were not being sold to buyers but were built to be rented to short-term occupants. He said such homes were being used as motels and that the proponents of those projects should have represented them as hotels during the application, planning and approval process.
In Twentynine Palms, the issue of regulating short term rentals is complicated by the consideration that the city is proximate to the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base. Military personnel stationed there and their families who live off-base compose a significant portion of the city’s “transitory” residents, in some cases staying a few weeks, a few months or several years. Rules that would restrict rentals available to military members could have unintended consequences. In drawing up the regulations, city officials are seeking to avoid blurring the distinction between vacationers and Marines.
The planning commission discussed but did not finalize its position on multiple issues, including what regulations should be imposed on sound levels or noise emanating from rental units.

A controversy erupted in Fontana this week with the mayor’s and city council’s consideration and selection of what has become universally recognized as a gerrymandered electoral map to be used in the 208,393-population city for the next decade.
After considering a number of potential voting district configurations based upon the city’s population numbers in the 2020 Census, the city council came to Tuesday night’s meeting with its options limited to three potential maps, all of which had been manipulated to protect Mayor Acquanetta Warren’s primary ally on the city council from being challenged by a former local office holder considered by political handicappers to be his strongest competitor.
Acquanetta Warren has been an officeholder in Fontana since 2002, when she was appointed to fill out the last two years of Mark Nuami’s council term after he was elected mayor that year. Two years later, Warren ran for election to the council in her own right and won. That was followed by her council reelection in 2008 and her election as mayor in 2010. From that time forward, Mayor Warren has been the dominant political personage in the former steel town, which has grown to the point that at present it is in a not-too-distant second place position behind the county seat of San Bernardino for the title of the county’s most populous city.
Warren, a Republican, has assembled around herself a ruling coalition consisting of three other Republicans – Phil Cothran Jr, Pete Garcia and John Roberts.
The Republican primacy in Fontana is a remarkable phenomenon. Though in California municipal, county and local agency races are considered nonpartisan ones, in far-flung San Bernardino County, party politics plays a substantial role in every contest for public office. That the Republicans hold any elective offices in Fontana at all is remarkable from a statistical standpoint. Looking at the party registration numbers in Fontana shows that Democrats have not just a lead but a commanding one in that regard. As of this week, of the 107,806 voters in the city, 53,606 of them or 49.7 percent are registered Democrats, while 21,681 or 20.1 percent are registered as Republicans. Not only are there just shy of two-and-a-half Democrats for every Republican in the city, the number of voters in Fontana who have chosen to align themselves with no party is 25,021 or 23.2 percent, outrunning the number of Republicans in the city. The remaining 8 percent identify as Libertarians, Greens, American Independents or as members of the Peace & Freedom or other obscure parties. In the last thirty years, the Republicans in Fontana have maintained their edge by spirited and cohesive campaigning, coordinating, communicating and achieving high voter turnout percentages and simply outhustling their Democratic rivals, all of which have hinged on aggressive fundraising.
Over the last generation, Phil Cothran Sr, a successful insurance salesman and landowner in the city, has been active in those fundraising drives for Republican causes and candidates in Fontana, including for Warren, and he has been a major contributor himself. The father of Phil Cothran Jr, he and Warren have mentored and groomed his son to take on a political role in the city.
In 2018, Cothran Jr ran successfully in the first by-district election held in Fontana history, competing against three others, including former Fontana Unified School District Board Member Shannon O’Brien, in the city’s newly formed District 1. Young Cothran, like his father a Republican, defeated O’Brien, a Democrat.
Slowly, indeed at a glacial pace, the Democrats in Fontana are developing the sophistication and tools to seize a political position more in keeping with their numerical superiority, including waking up to the need to engage in both fundraising and then learning and mastering the mechanics of political campaigning to drive voters to the polls or cast mail ballots, actions which in tandem with the local Democratic Party registration advantage raise the significant possibility that Warren and her Republican cohorts could lose their hold on City Hall.
Shannon O’Brien and her husband, Jason, are at the forefront of the Democratic vanguard seeking to flip Red Fontana Blue. Jason, a Los Angeles Police Department detective, succeeded his wife on the Fontana Unified School District Board of Education from 2016 until 2020. During each of the times when the O’Briens were on the school board, they served as a bulwark against the bloc of officeholders on that panel who had been placed into office with Warren’s assistance, as the mayor’s political machine had and continues to spread itself to all elements of the community.
This year, Shannon has thrown her hat in the ring as a candidate for mayor. Also this year, in January, Jason filed a form 501 candidate intention document with the City of Fontana through the city clerk’s office, signaling he was going to run for councilman in the First District. The O’Briens live on the north side of Fontana, well within the city’s original First District, basically located within Fontana’s northwest quadrant. Their home was safely within the First District boundaries and it was a logical assumption that with the completion of the voting district map for the City of Fontana, the O’Brien household would remain within the First District.
For reasons that have not been publicly specified, however, Fontana’s effort to establish the electoral map that is to apply in the 2022, 2024, 2026, 2028 and 2030 election cycles has been drawn out, making Fontana one of the last jurisdictions in San Bernardino County to set its district map. The boundaries for the council districts were not set until this week, at a point well after candidates, potential candidates and contemplated candidates have begun their analyses of the political winds to ascertain if they are going to seek office and what offices – agency or municipal, local, state or federal – they would vie for. Indeed, Fontana did not set its council district boundaries until after the filing period had opened and then closed for county, state and federal offices in this year’s primary election.
When the Fontana City Council at last this week got around to making its final call as to how the city’s electoral map is to shape up, it considered only three of the nine maps and map variations that had been drawn up during the reapportionment process carried out this year in Fontana. The city’s consultant, the National Demographics Corporation, had drafted four primary maps, those being 101, 102, 103 and 104. Additionally, the public submitted least four maps for consideration. Three of those – 401, 402 and 403 – like the National Demographics Corporation maps, called for the city to remain being divided into four districts, each represented by one council member, with all residents voting to elect an at-large mayor. A fourth map submitted by the public, Map 604, would have created six council positions, entailing six council districts, in addition to the at-large mayoral position. Prior to this week, the National Demographics Corporation had tweaked some of the basic maps, giving them nomenclature which retained the original number from which the map deviated augmented with a letter. Ultimately as of Tuesday night, the maps submitted overall had been reduced to three finalists, two of which originated with the National Demographics Corporation and one which had been submitted by the public. The council’s final options were the map designated 103, another designated 402 and a third designated 104B.
Remarkably, all three removed the O’Briens from District 1. Both maps 402 and 104B displayed a radical use of gerrymandering. Map 402 featured a jetty that jutted out westward from the main body of District 3 to include the neighborhood in which the O’Brien residence is located. In the case of Map 104B, a similar jetty or peninsula extended west from District 2. Map 103 was less obviously gerrymandered, with district lines that were more uniform and linear. Nevertheless, it too, moved the immediate neighborhood in which the O’Briens live out of District 1 and into District 3. Meanwhile, all three maps left Phil Cothran Jr. in District 1. Those maps which left O’Brien and Cothran in District 1, thus creating a scenario in which they would run against one another this year, were eliminated from consideration before the council met on Tuesday.
A not unreasonable interpretation of what had occurred was that the council majority – that being the four-member ruling coalition headed by Warren – had given itself options that were designed to lock in its existing electoral/political advantages and which compromised the ability of the political opposition to mount any sort of effective challenge.
Ultimately, on Tuesday evening, the council, by a vote of 4-to-1 with the council’s lone Democrat and nonmember of the Warren coalition, Jesse Sandoval, dissenting, Map 104B was selected.
During a significant amount of the discussion and public debate leading up to the vote, the focus was not so much on the north end of the city where the O’Briens live but on the south end of Fontana.
All three maps the city council seriously considered Tuesday night – 103, 402 and 104B – divided the southernmost area of Fontana into two districts, representing a change from the map that was put in place in 2017 and has been in effect until now. A roiling issue in Fontana is what many consider to be the overbuilding of warehouses, in particular at the city’s south end, and activists intent on limiting or ending further warehouse development in the city wanted the city to maintain a single district in south Fontana to prevent the anti-warehouse popular vote that exists there from being diluted. The city council Tuesday night was confronted by members of both the South Fontana Concerned Citizens Coalitions and the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, who pushed for the council to resurrect a map that had been previously rejected and was not being considered Tuesday night, Map 401. They touted Map 401 as one which would, in the words of several, “keep communities of interest together.”
Members of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice questioned why the city seemed so committed to maps 103, 402 and 104B, all of which created not only the possibility but the likelihood that a city resident living in central Fontana perhaps as far north as Arrow Boulevard will represent those at the south end of the city who are confronted by far different living and quality of life issues.
Some of those opposed to the city’s limitation of its districting options to maps 103, 402 and 104B suggested that what was ongoing was the council majority’s effort to “gain a political advantage.”
Jason O’Brien brought that charge full circle when, in a remark to the Sentinel this week he connected the observations of what was happening at the south end of the city with regard to the city’s political mapping there with what was happening toward the north end of the city.
“Acquanetta has always tried to stop me from running,” Jason O’Brien said.
In her action this time around, he suggested, Warren is looking to keep him from loosening the vice grip she has on the city’s governmental machinery by challenging, and potentially defeating, Cothran Jr, who is up for reelection in the city’s First District this year.
“She was able to remove me from District 1,” O’Brien said. “You will notice District 1 and District 4 are up for election in November 2022, forcing me to wait until 2024 to run.”
This is not the first time Warren used underhanded tactics to try and undercut him politically, Jason O’Brien said.
“In my 2020 school board race, Acquanetta financed and endorsed black candidates to unseat me by dividing up the black votes,” he said. “One of those candidates was Shelly Bradford. I also suspect Oliver Christian, but we have no paperwork linking him to the mayor. Christian didn’t campaign. We suspect he was placed in the race to further split my vote.”
Warren dismissed assertions that the city’s electoral map was being drawn with immediate political considerations in mind.
“This is for ten years,” she said, “So we have to look at not just today, but what’s happening down in those areas,” meaning the city’s southlying districts.
-Mark Gutglueck

Chino Hills, which a little less than five years ago earned distinction and praise for not creating electoral districts that across the board benefited the city’s incumbent council members, this week erased its reputation as one of the few cities in San Bernardino County not headed by a slew of politicians whose first priority extends to ensuring their political primacy.
In setting the boundaries for the city council districts that will be in place in the county’s southwesternmost municipality during the 2022, 2024, 2026, 2028 and 2030 election cycles, the council’s five members locked in for themselves advantages in the next several races they will need to run in to remain on the council.
Historically in San Bernardino County, only the cities of San Bernardino and Colton had city councils in which the members were elected by ward or district. Beginning in 2014, a group of lawyers based outside of San Bernardino County – Lancaster-based R. Rex Parris, Milton C. Grimes of Los Angeles, Malibu-based Kevin Shenkman and Matthew Barragan of Los Angeles – began assailing the lion’s share of San Bernardino County’s other cities and incorporated towns with demands that they move to by-district or by-ward voting. Parris, Grimes, Shenkman and Barragan based those demands on allegations that there was a pattern of racially-polarized or ethnically-polarized voting in those cities and towns which had resulted in fewer members of certain ethnic or racial minorities – essentially Hispanics – being elected to those municipalities’ councils percentagewise than the percentage of Hispanics within their various and respective populations.
Since the terms of the California Voting Rights Act made it both expensive and difficult for cities to contest such claims of ethnically-polarized or racially-polarized voting even in circumstances in which the claims were invalid, most cities simply chose to convert their electoral processes to ones in which members of their councils were elected to represent the district in which they lived through elections in which voters were restricted to voting only with regard to the district in which they reside. The California Voting Rights Act contained a provision by which an attorney making such a by-district voting demand of a city would then be eligible to receive a $30,000 to $45,000 fee from the city for having written such a demand letter that was complied with. Consequently, in virtually every case where a city made a transition to by-district or by-ward voting, the attorney would collect that fee, and discontinue any further involvement in or monitoring of the election system transition.
This left the cities making those transitions free to carry out the election process conversions in any way in which they saw fit. Often this meant that the conversion of a given city’s elections into ones in which minority members were more likely to be elected in the past did not take place. Even more often – indeed in well in excess of 90 percent of the cases – what happened was the cities set up districts in which the incumbents serving at the time the transitions were made were provided with an advantage against any of their emerging competitors for office.
One of the ways in which this manifested was the gerrymandering of the districts such that the district maps that were created put district boundaries between those who were in office, making it so incumbents did not need to run against incumbents. Moreover, the cities would engage in sequencing of the elections such that the terms for those seeking to be elected to represent the newly created districts were timed to begin just as the terms of the at-large council positions the council members who were eligible to run in the new districts ended. This was a baldly political and self-serving manipulation of the electoral process, and in city after city after city after city after city after city after city after city after city after city in San Bernardino County where the transition to district elections had occurred, those in office took advantage of the power and authority that had been entrusted to them to further advance their political careers.
Incumbents already possess an advantage over non-incumbents in terms of name recognition with the general public, which makes voters more likely to vote for them. In addition, incumbency makes it easier to convince political donors to provide those running for office with contributions to their political war chests. That money can be used to conduct polling, run radio ads, buy billboard space, secure local television ads, purchase endorsements on slate mailers sent to voters in the weeks prior to an election, print and send mailers touting the incumbent and the job he or she has done while in office along with his or her accomplishments, print and send attack mailers dwelling on the shortcomings of opponents, pay for handbills that can be distributed door-to-door or defray the cost of phone banks to call voters and importune them for their votes. Placing themselves into districts where they need not run against other incumbents with the same advantages they possess confers on those incumbents an even further leg up, as is demonstrated by the substantially superior win-loss percentage incumbents have over non-incumbents nationally, throughout California, regionally, at the county level and locally.
Just like the towns of Apple Valley and Yucca Valley and the cities of Chino, Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Redlands, Twentynine Palms, Big Bear, Hesperia, Barstow, Fontana, Highland and later Ontario, Chino Hills in 2018 was forced to embrace district elections. Unlike virtually all of those cities and towns, however, Chino Hills had resisted the temptation to put into place a map in which the districts had been drawn to benefit those who were then in office. While the city did hire outside consultants and demographers to assist in the electoral map drawing effort, the map ultimately selected for Chino Hills in June 2017 for use beginning with the 2018 election was one that was drawn up by two citizens, those being Brian Johsz and Richard Austin. The city’s consultant, the National Demographics Corporation, provided the city with four maps which divided the city into five districts, one of which included districts that kept all five council members in separated districts. That map was presented in keeping with National Demographics Corporation principal Douglas Johnson’s recognition that most politicians want to remain in office and they have both the power and reach to provide themselves with an advantage in terms of how electoral districts get drawn. Accordingly the National Demographics Corporation gave the Chino Hills City Council the option of conferring just such an advantage on itself.
Worth noting is that the council as it was then composed, consisting of Ray Marquez, Art Bennett, Cynthia Moran, Peter Rogers and Ed Graham, rejected the option of adopting the map that put all five of them in different districts. Instead, they adopted the Johsz/Austin map. That map created districts in which three of the council members were placed in a district by themselves, two of the incumbents resided in the same district and one district had no incumbent. Specifically, the map put Ray Marquez in District 1, Peter Rogers in District 2, Art Bennett in District 3 and Ed Graham and Cynthia Moran in District 5.
As it turned out, not too long after the map was adopted, Graham, one of the original members of the city council when Chino Hills incorporated in 1991, resigned. He was replaced, notefully, by Johsz, a resident of District 4, who was appointed to fill in for Graham until his term expired in 2018.
Marquez and Rogers were elected without opposition in 2018; Johsz was retained in office in 2018 with three opponents running against him; Bennett and Moran were elected in 2020, with Bennett defeating three challengers and Moran unopposed.
In accordance with the 2020 Census, all jurisdictions throughout the country and California were due last year to redraw their electoral maps and the boundaries therein, a process known as reapportionment, to ensure numerical uniformity, or uniformity within a range of 10 percent presumptively considered to be in accordance with U.S. and California constitutional provisions. Because of delays brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, there were delays which postponed many cities’ adoptions of the new maps. Chino Hills was among the last of the county’s cities to conclude the process. It did so this week at its March 22 meeting.
In at least some respects, Chino Hills complied, or ostensibly complied, with the intent spelled out in the California Voting Rights Act in terms of enabling minority groups to express themselves through the electoral process. The city made some relatively minor shifts of boundaries to accommodate some slightly uneven geographical population growth within the 44.7-square mile city over the last decade. With a city population in the 2020 Census of 85,695, each district was supposed to have, ideally, 17,139 residents within its confines. The map the council ultimately chose was drafted by Chino Hills resident Jeff Vaka, with some minor tweaking here and small adjustments there.
While in most of the rest of San Bernardino County, it is Latinos considered to be historically unrepresented on the various town and city councils, Chino Hills is heavily populated with those of Asian extraction, and there are no Asians on the council.
According to the city, the districts that were put into place Tuesday match the goal of providing the city’s residents with a fair shot at electing Asian-American representatives.
According to the National Demographics Corporation, which remains as the city’s consultant in determining how its districts are to be drawn, District 1 has a 53 percent concentration of Asian-Americans and District 2 boasts a 52 percent concentration of Asian-Americans.
The highest concentration in the number of Latinos in any one district is in District 4, where 41 percent of the population is Hispanic.
The white population in Chino Hills is uniformly a minority throughout Chino Hills, as District 1 is 21 percent Caucasian, District 2 is 20 percent white; District 3 stands at 36 percent of primarily European ancestry, District 4 is 17 percent Caucasoid and 23 percent in District 5 register as predominantly Aryan.
Similarly, the black population is static throughout the city at 4 percent in all districts except District 5, which is 6 percent African-American.
The map managed to confer advantages on all five current officeholders in the city. Marquez remains in District 1 at the north and western end of the city, abutting Los Angeles County. Rogers is within the Second District on the eastern side of the city primarily to the north, the densely populated section that is contiguous with the City of Chino to the east. Bennett’s resident falls within the even more densely populated Third District just south of the Second District, and it is also snuggled up against the city limits with Chino. Johsz’s Fourth District stretches all the way across the city from the Orange County line on the middle southwest side to Fairfield Ranch along the eastern border with Chino. Moran’s District 5 is the southernmost, largest and most sparsely populated portion of Chino Hills, contiguous with Chino to the east, Riverside County to the southeast and south, and Orange County and Chino Hills State Park on the southwest.
Marquez, Rogers and Johsz are due to stand for election this year if they are to remain in office after December. Bennett and Moran must stand for election in November 2024 or leave office the following month.
-Mark Gutglueck

On Tuesday, the steady generational makeover of the downtown area of Redlands advanced, with the planning commission giving approval to two new buildings.
A limited liability company known as Redlands Railway District, LLC formed with the specific goal of developing property in close proximity to the Santa Fe Depot. Redlands Railway District proposed the Packing House East project to be located at 333 Orange Street, at the southwest corner of Orange Street and Al Harris Lane. The site falls within Redlands’ Town Center-Historic District, which is delineated in the city’s Downtown Specific Plan.
The surrounding land uses consist of the Santa Fe Depot, which the city has designated as Historic Landmark 38, and the Redlands Chamber of Commerce Building, designated as Redlands Historic Landmark 40, both to the north; Denny’s restaurant and a law office which was previously Home Savings and Loan to the south; the Romano’s Pizzeria, Aroi Mak Mak and the Flamingo restaurants to the east; and the historic MOD Packinghouse, which is currently under renovation to become a multi-tenant food hall, to the west
The general plan designation on the property is commercial.
The northeast portion of the 1.67-acre property has one existing retail building, a FedEx/Kinko’s shop, which is to remain along with a parking lot. The westerly side of the subject properties is vacant and unimproved, and that is the portion of the site proposed for new development, which is to consist of one 7,973-square foot restaurant building and one 3,839-square foot retail building. In addition, the applicant will complete an associated new parking lot and further site improvements. Those site improvements include upgrading to the exterior façade as well as improving the ADA-access ramps and other accessibility features at the FedEx/Kinkos retail operation.
The 7,973-square foot restaurant/food service building will feature an approximate 1,598-square foot outdoor dining patio, which will be located between the existing FedEx/Kinkos operation to the east and the existing historic MOD Packinghouse to the west. The 3,839-square foot retail building will be located on the south side of the FedEx/Kinko’s building.
The total combined proposed new floor area for the buildings to be constructed is 11,812 square feet.
Redlands Railway District does not have tenants under contract for the new buildings at this time, but anticipates the restaurant building would be occupied by a single tenant.
Redlands Railway District requested and was granted a lot line adjustment to modify the interior lot lines of four parcels for development purposes, such that there will be one building on each lot after the development is complete.
Previous construction at the project site occurred in 1987 when the site was developed with an approximately 8,000 square-foot bank building, with office uses located upstairs. Currently that building is occupied by FedEx/Kinko’s as the sole tenant. Much of the project site was developed with an existing parking lot, while the remainder on the west side was left vacant and unimproved.
In 2018, an application was made by a previous owner and applicant for the planning commission to review and approve the construction of a 10,000 square-foot building adjacent to Al Harris Lane and a 5,200 square foot building adjacent to Orange Street. The entitlement granted to that application has since expired and the property changed ownership. Redlands Railway District, as the new owner and current applicant, filed the new application for a similar, but revised, proposal for two new retail buildings.
Glen Feron represented the developer before the commission on Tuesday.
Feron and city staff said the building design theme will match that of earlier additions to the Packing House District, utilizing brick veneer, shed-style roofs and metal awnings.
With commissioners Steven Frasher and Matt Endsley absent, the commission voted 5-to-0 to approve the project.