The Baptist congregation in Wrightwood has made what appears to be a complete break with Sunrise Church, Inc., the Baptist offshoot that absorbed it in 1996.
It now appears that the faithful in Wrightwood will need to find a new venue somewhere in Wrightwood at which the assemblage can continue to worship.
By 1995 the Wrightwood Baptist Church had fallen on hard economic times, and was unable to consistently satisfy the financial demands facing it. At that point the Sunrise Church based in Rialto swooped in, offering to be of assistance.
Certainly initially there was a degree of affinity between Sunrise and the Wrightwood Baptist Church.
The Sunrise Church was founded in the Rialto area in 1956 as the Rialto Community Baptist Church, one that was affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. After a small gathering of Baptists discussed the prospect of setting up a church in the area, the church held its first modest service, with 27 in attendance, at the home of founding Pastor Wayne Frase on September 9, 1956, with 27 people attending. The church was organized officially under the name of Rialto Community Baptist Church on January 27, 1957, with 21 charter members. Frase led the flock for thirteen years, whereupon he was replaced by Pastor Raeburn Woodson, who remained in that capacity until his December 1987 retirement. In January 1989, Reverend Jay Pankratz became senior pastor.
In March, 1995, the church, while remaining oriented basically along the lines of the Southern Baptists, reinvented itself as being nondenominational, adopting the name Sunrise Church, taken from Luke 1:78-79: “Because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the sunrise will come to us from Heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
It was the next year that Pankratz and Sunrise, learning of how events were about to overtake the Wrightwood Baptist Church, came in to save the day. Given the Sunrise Church’s Baptist roots, the Wrightwood assembly, gladly accepted the hand up, and the church grounds were retrieved from what seemed to be certain foreclosure.
By coming under the guardianship of the Sunrise Church, the Wrightwood church was able to keep its doors open and its followers intact. Initially, this entailed only a minor loss of autonomy and little in terms of doctrinal compromise. Over the years, the Sunrise Church grew more and more independent of the Southern Baptist Convention. Some, though not all, of the reforms that took place in the Sunrise Church, which came to include another parish in south Rialto, one in Ontario, one in Victorville and another in Banning, were applied to the Wrightwood Baptist Church. There was an understanding, at least initially, that the Wrightwood church would endeavor to get back on its legs financially, and after doing so it would recompense Sunrise for its assistance and then return to being its own entity once more. That took far more time than was initially anticipated, and with the departure of Pankratz, the understanding that had been in place for more than a decade eroded as the institutional memory he represented was lost. In recent years, Sunrise Church, Inc. had become more and more insistent on its doctrine being propounded during worship sessions and services, including the form of the services, the sermons and Sunday school lessons. The leadership of Sunrise had come to assume that the Wrightwood Church was to become, indeed had become, a Sunrise congregation, with virtually all of any differences or disputes between the elements of worship in which there were marked differences distinguishing the Sunrise approach and traditional Baptist observances being resolved in favor of the Sunrise Church. This occurred despite the vast majority of those attending the Wrightwood Church identifying themselves as Baptists.  As Sunrise became increasing rigid, strict, dogmatic and dictatorial in straitjacketing the mountain community into accepting the manner in which the church was to be run, including the music and hymns used during services and even the configuration and arrangement of chairs during worship, the two pastors in Wrightwood, Todd Marcy and Wayne Robbins, importuned Sunrise to allow the services to be held more in accordance with the Baptist tradition. They were met with refusals. When the church members in Wrightwood sought to assert at last independence and initiate the buyback of the church, Sunrise declined.
Things reached a turning point late this summer when Pastor Wayne Robbins sojourned on September 10 to a meeting at Sunrise Church in Rialto. At that point he was given an ultimatum: resign. Without the power of holding title to the Wrightwood Church, Robbins had no other alternative.
On Sunday, September 15, Sunrise Rialto Pastor Jeff Gonzalez was present to conduct that morning’s service at the Wrightwood church, without Robbins or Marcy participating. Things grew tense as the congregants questioned Gonzalez, who informed the multitude that Robbins had tendered his resignation. When church members later asked Robbins if that was accurate, he insisted his resignation had not been voluntarily made. Ultimately Pastor Marcy also left, having been forced out. On September 18 Gonzalez and another Sunrise pastor were at the Wrightwood church, at which point the church members were informed that the house of worship was being shuttered forthwith and that the Bible study group that met there would have to make other arrangements. Three days later, the gates and doors to the church were locked, and new locks were installed throughout. On September 28, church members were given three-and-a-half hours to retrieve food for the food bank, and to take out any personal property.
Pastor Robins has carried on, conducting what are yet well attended services at Swarthout Creek, across from the church. The new worshiping venue is known as Christ’s Church of the Canyon. Meanwhile, the congregation is casting about to find another building into which a shelter from the world can be inlaid.
Luke 12:27 reads: “Consider the lilies of the field: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
Repeated efforts by the Sentinel to reach Gonzalez, including messages left at the church in Rialto, did not elicit a response.

The San Bernardino City Council this week gave the first sign that it is prepared to test whether developer Scott Beard was bluffing when he threatened to initiate  legal action against the city if any effort is made  to obstruct the completion and occupation of a county welfare office at the intersection of Little Mountain Drive and 27th Street.
The county resolved, in December 2017,  to have Beard build that facility, to accommodate an office of its transitional assistance department.  Eleven months later, after former San Bernardino Mayor Carey Davis lost his November 2018 bid for reelection, the city rushed the approval for building the 38,150 -square foot project through by having it considered not by the city’s planning commission in a highly public setting, but rather before the city’s more obscure design and environmental review committee during a hearing held at an hour of the day when members of the public were not likely to participate. The approval came during the last leg of Davis’s tenure in office. Beard had been a major donor to Davis’s campaigns. In considering the project, its nature was misrepresented as a human resources (personnel) office rather than a human services (welfare) office. When residents of the Muscupiabe residential neighborhood that surrounds the site learned, well after the project had been approved, that the building in question would be one that served hundreds of welfare recipient clients per day, they objected to the project as one that was incompatible with their living environment.
Former City Attorney James Penman recommended to the council in August that it slap Beard with a stop work order on the project while legal issues relating to the validity of the project approval were
examined. Current Deputy City Attorney Sonia Carvalho recommended against that, saying instead the city could insist on subjecting Beard’s tenant – the county – to the process of obtaining a conditional use permit for the welfare office before the building could be occupied.  Beard informed the city at that point that if it took any action whatsoever that interfered with the project, he would sue the city.
For nearly two months, city officials have been reluctant to engage with Beard or any of the Muscupiabe neighborhood residents on the matter, or take any action that might trigger the lawsuit Beard had threatened.
Further, City Manager Teri Ledoux is engaged in a host of dealings and negotiations with the county over other issues and projects and proposals, leaving her loathe to challenge the county with regard to the welfare building or to subject the county to a conditional use permit process on a project it is already committed toward seeing completed.
While Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, in whose Ward 2 the project is located, and Councilman Henry Nickel, whose District 5 borders the project property, have been animated about what they and the Muscupiabe neighborhood residents feel was a flawed process in which political favoritism was shown and the city’s regulatory corners were cut, the remaining five members of the council and Mayor John Valdivia have been less sympathetic toward those protesting the project, feeling objecting to development in the city is not advisable.
During the city council’s closed session prior to its public meeting Wednesday night, however, the council took up the issue of the welfare building project. It instructed the city attorney to explore the implications of imposing on the county a requirement that it obtain a conditional use permit to operate the transitional assistance office at that location, and what range of conditions can be imposed on the completed building and its occupants. Valdivia and council members Fred Shorett and Jim Mulvihill, the members of the council most dismissive of the Muscupiabe neighborhood residents’ concerns, were not in attendance at the meeting.
The council did not immediately inform the public of the action it had taken behind closed doors, but had Carvalho do so after Councilman Ted Sanchez suggest that disclosure be made when Muscupiabe residents during the meeting’s public comment period registered criticism of the city’s inaction on the matter.

Following a build up that was widely interpreted as an indication that the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors had agreed on who would serve in the capacity of county fire chief over the next several years, the board took no action in that regard this week.
What was represented as a special meeting of the board was held on Tuesday, not in the county’s normal venue for public meetings, the Robert Covington Chambers  on the ground floor of the county administration building, but rather on the fifth floor in the Magda Lawson Conference Room, beyond the earshot of the public. The advertised purpose of the meeting was the hiring of a fire chief to replace former County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig, who departed on March 15 to become the fire chief of Santa Barbara County.  Since Hartwig’s departure,   Don Trapp  has filled in as the interim chief.
There has been considerable negative publicity relating to the county fire department, stemming from the county’s imposition of never-before-charged $154 annual assessments on the property owners of 94 percent of the county territory, intended to defray the cost of providing fire protection service.  One of Hartwig’s last accomplishments as chief was to put that comprehensive assessment zone in place.
Supervisors Janice Rutherford and Robert Lovingood are opposed to the assessment regime. Supervisors Josie Gonzales, Curt Hagman and Dawn Rowe favor it.    No decision on finding Hartwig’s replacement was reached on Tuesday, and no announcement relating to the ground covered in the meeting was made, which is perhaps a signal that an increasingly bitter divide on the board over the assessment issue is escalating.

Grant Holcomb, a scion of one of first and foremost families in San Bernardino history, lived up to his familial tradition and passed the torch on to the succeeding generation.
Born October 8, 1888, Grant Holcomb was the only child of William W. Holcomb and a grandson of William F. Holcomb.
Grant Holcomb’s place in San Bernardino can be put into context by a consideration of the feats of his grandfather, whose adventures as a frontiersman, pioneer and explorer are legendary. William F. Holcomb, popularly known as Billy Holcomb, ventured far and wide as a hunter and miner, prospecting at multiple locations between Vancouver, British Columbia and Arizona, culminating in the discovery of the Vulture Mine in Maricopa County, Arizona, from which more than eight million dollars worth of gold was extracted. An original 49er, he crossed the plains to California in the midst of the Gold Rush. He uncovered placer gold deposits in what is now known as Holcomb Valley, in the valley adjacent to Bear Valley, present day Big Bear. Within six months after his discovery there were two thousand men in the valley, working claims there. Billy Holcomb worked successfully at mining in Bear Valley for several years. It is a matter of historical debate as to whether he or the Mormon Church, which dispatched a large contingent of settlers from Salt Lake City to California where they established a colony in San Bernardino in 1851, did more to attract people to what soon became, in 1853,  San Bernardino County.  William F. Holcomb was elected and remained for several terms county clerk, treasurer and assessor, in which capacity he took on, and prevailed over, the California Southern Railroad Company that had refused to pay the local taxes levied upon it.
Billy Holcomb married Nancy Stewart, who had come to San Bernardino from Utah with her father. Their son, William Winfield Holcomb, was born in San Bernardino and attended the local schools, such as they were in those days and then served as a deputy clerk under his father as a young man. Thereafter William Winfield Holcomb became a logger, finding success in the lumber business as San Bernardino grew, later selling both feed and fuel from his lumber yard. He eventually hired on as a deputy sheriff, and later served in the capacity of the bailiff of the Superior Court in San Bernardino. In Santa Maria, California he married San Bernardino native Miss Isabella Grant, the daughter of John and Margaret Grant née Nish, whose family owned a cattle ranch and crop farm near San Bernardino.
Grant Holcomb was William Winfield and Isabella Holcomb’s only child, born at the couple’s house, located at Ninth and G Streets.
Grant Holcomb attended San Bernardino’s high school, during which he participated in the National Guard. He graduated in 1907, and then attended Stanford University, where he was a member of the Delta Chi fraternity. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1911 and then his juris doctorate from Stanford in 1913. He was admitted to the bar in 1913, and set up his practice in San Bernardino, with a suite of offices in the Andreson Building. He worked in the same court where his father was the bailiff. A general practitioner, he had a large clientele, with a considerable caseload handling probates. Additionally, he served as a director of the California State Bank, the Gill Storage Battery Company and the San Bernardino Building & Loan Association. He was also on the advisory board of the Bank of America National Trust & Savings Association.
John Steven McGroarty in the Clarke Publishing Company’s California of the South Volume III, published in 1933, stated, “Closely applying himself to the work of his profession, Grant Holcomb is classed with the most talented and successful lawyers of San Bernardino, his native city.”
On June 15, 1916, at San Francisco, Holcomb married Miss Eleanor Frances Burkham, a native of California and a daughter of S. B. and M. L. Burkham, of Bodie. Earlier in his life, Mr. Burkham owned the stage line and the general store at Bodie, and operated a stage between Bodie and Carson City, Nevada, where the transportation of passengers and mail was constantly beset by the danger of highwaymen. Mrs. Holcomb was graduated from Sanford University as a member of the class of 1914, receiving an A. B. degree. By her marriage she became the mother of four children: Grant, Jr., Kathryn Lee, William Robert and Theodore.  She was a member of the Young Women’s Christian Association and a director of the Woman’s Club of San Bernardino.
Grant Holcomb was a Baptist and served as his church’s treasurer. Gregarious and active, he was a charter member of the San Bernardino Rotary Club, and a director of the Chamber of Commerce, of which he became president. While he was serving in the capacity of the chamber’s civic development committee he secured funds for the erection and outfitting of the Sisters’ Hospital. He was a member of and eventually the president of the Young Men’s Christian Association, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and was a Knight Templar Mason.
A committed Republican, he was active in the party as a member of the Republican Central Committee, of which he was at one point elected vice chairman.
He was a member of the San Bernardino County Bar Association and the American Bar Association, as well as the state bar committee that served in an advisory capacity to the judicial council.
In 1925, San Bernardino Mayor S.W. McNabb resigned to accept an appointment to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. Grant Holcomb was appointed to replace him and he was sworn in on February 9, 1925. Two months later,  Holcomb ran in the municipal election and was retained in office.  He served an elected term that ran from May 11, 1925 until May 9, 1927, when he was succeeded by Ira Gilbert.
In 1928, Grant Holcomb’s wife, Eleanor, passed away. In 1931, he remarried, to Miss Beulah Hartman.
Two of Grant Holcomb’s sons were personages of note. His son William Robert “Bob” Holcomb was a newspaper publisher and mayor of San Bernardino from 1971 to 1985 and again from 1989 to 1993.  His son Grant Holcomb, Jr.  was an actor, best remembered for his role as a reporter on the 1950s television series You Are There hosted by Walter Cronkite. He began his career as a performer on radio drama programs,  after which he was offered a position on CBS television, acting in the early television drama series Studio One in Hollywood in 1948, appearing on Channel 2 Action News, and the TV documentary series Eyewitness to History.  He also appeared in the 1961 film, X-15  and on  CBS News Extra: Project Mercury flight of Friendship in 1962.
Grant Holcomb, Sr. died on February 5, 1943 at the age of 54.
-Mark Gutglueck

We’re between summer and winter and it’s time to revamp with sweaters. The sweater weather is all about being comfortable and. of course, warm. Sweaters match with anything –  jeans, skirts, over dresses and they’re easy to wear.  The sweater is a basic staple and its what makes it strong. This is the season for a great knit and they come in all forms. You can try a basic bold black knit with a pair of boots. There are fringes on sweaters that can augment your appearance, according to your taste or if you just want to make that kind of edgy statement. And, let’s not forget the cardigan, that is a multi-usage piece with denim, pencil skirts, tights, dresses and regular skirts. The chance to wear a sweater is here and ‘Oh, what fun!’ There are so many styles to wear that you won’t get tired of wearing different knits.

“A long sweater, good boots, and stretchy jeans are my fall fashion must-haves.” -Sofia Richie

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the October 11 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 10-11-19

Altering the basis of what for more than a decade has existed as a key component of the regional transportation strategy envisioned for implementation in the last three-fourths of the 21st Century, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority’s Transit Committee yesterday dispensed with its resolve to build a second commuter rail line linking Los Angeles and the Inland Empire.
The move, supported by eight of the eleven members on the transit committee, signaled a rare and very serious break in the cooperative’s approach in forming a physical solution to reducing the gridlock that grips Southern California’s transportation system on weekdays, bringing westbound traffic on the 210, 10 and 60 freeways to a crawl during the critical three-hour duration in the morning from roughly 6 a.m. until 9 a.m. and then replicates itself with eastbound traffic each late weekday afternoon into the early evening as approaching three million motorists engage in their workday commutes.
Already in place is the MetroLink rail system that runs between Union Station in Los Angeles and the City of San Bernardino on a long existing track originally designed for heavy engines pulling freight cars. MetrolLink utilizes diesel engines to pull its passenger cars and features departures every half hour. Los Angles Metro has completed more than a dozen links of a secondary rail system with its western terminus in Los Angeles, the Gold Line, which reaches northward before reaching the San Gabriel Foothill communities and then heads eastward. The Gold Line at present stretches to Glendora, and work on its extension to Pomona is ongoing. Previously, cooperation between Los Angeles County’s Metro transit system and the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority had created a commitment that work on the Gold Line would continue immediately toward the goal of reaching first Claremont, as the furthest east-lying Los Angeles County community and then continue across the Los Angeles County/San Bernardino County Line to the already existing Montclair Transcenter, a multi-modal transit hub roughly two blocks north of the 10 Freeway where a multiplicity of bus lines converge with Montclair’s MetroLink station. The Gold Line, which is defined as a light rail system, runs with significantly greater frequency than does MetroLink, with departures and arrivals every five to seven minutes during peak commuting hours and every 12 to 15 minutes during off-peak hours.
While MetroLink has alleviated to a very limited degree the number of commuters traveling at peak hours on the freeway system, it has not proven wildly popular, two reasons being the long waits between departures and its expense, entailing at present a $14 price for a round trip ticket. With its more frequent departures and $1.50 one-way fare, the Gold Line has proven far more popular, as the ridership level has exceeded projections at each eastward extension of the line so far.
Formerly known as San Bernardino Association of Governments or SANBAG, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority functions as the steward of Measure I funds. Measure I was a San Bernardino County funding initiative that imposed a half-cent sales tax collected throughout San Bernardino County for transportation improvements. Measure I was first approved by San Bernardino County voters in 1989 and was extended by a second vote in 2004 to remain in place through 2040. The San Bernardino County Transportation Authority has a governing board consisting of a council member or mayor from each of the county’s 24 incorporated cities as well as all five of the members of the county board of supervisors.
Previously, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority dedicated $39 million in Measure I dollars toward the Gold Line project and did a joint application with the Los Angles Metro Transit Agency for a State of California Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program grant. That application was successful and it brought in $250 million on the Los Angeles County side, which made a significant but not complete inroad on the $850 funding deficit that jurisdiction had, and provided another $41 million of the then-projected $80 million cost for the San Bernardino County portion of the projected expense on the eastern side of the Los Angeles County/San Bernardino County border in terms of getting the line to Montclair.
Subsequently, however, when the project went out to bid, it turned out the cost of building the line from Claremont to Montclair would not contain itself to an earlier $73 million projection or the later $80 million estimate, but had escalated to $96 million.
In reaction to that projected cost overrun, San Bernardino County Transportation Authority Executive Director Ray Wolfe said toward the close of the September 4, 2019 meeting of the authority’s board. “I’m going to come back to you through committee next month and hopefully to the board in November with a recommendation that we throw in the towel.”
Wolfe made good on that at yesterday’s transit committee meeting, which is composed of representatives from the cities of Big Bear Lake, Chino Hills, Colton  Fontana, Highland, Montclair, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Rialto, Yucaipa and the Third Supervisorial District.
Wolfe’s proposal is to dispense with constructing the new Gold Line Track into San Bernardino County altogether and to instead have Gold Line passengers heading eastward from Los Angeles or the San Gabriel Valley load onto another train at the Claremont Station which will run on the existing MetroLink track. That system will use so-called diesel multiple unit trains in a what he said was a “hybrid” plan which he dubbed the “Gold Link.” Wolfe said San Bernardino County would return the $41 million State of California Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program grant that had been freed up to allow the county to overcome the gap between the $39 million in Measure I money put up to complete the Gold Line extension from Claremont to Montclair and the earlier projected cost of 1.2-mile extension
According to Wolfe, the hybrid Gold Link concept combined the advantage of not entailing the cost of building another track and could be extended with relative ease eastward from Montclair to Upland, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana and beyond. The converse holds true, Wolfe suggested, as westbound  commuters could use the Gold Link all the way to Claremont, disembark there and then board MetroLink to Los Angeles or the Gold Line to the San Gabriel Foothill communities.
For advocates of the Gold Line and its extension, however, Wolfe’s formula is lacking with regard to several crucial considerations.
On an immediate level, the low cost of the Gold Line fare and its continuity offers the best draw of commuters, its advocates maintain. Moreover, the frequency of arrivals and departures on the existing track now used by MetroLink cannot match that which the Gold Line will provide. Thus, in the relative short term traffic will be diverted in greater numbers away from the freeway system if the Gold Line is extended than if the only option given to commuters is using a passenger service on the existing track used for MetroLink and freight hauling.
From a longer term perspective, according to the Gold Line’s promoters, Wolfe’s solution lacks a wider regional perspective. Inevitably, over the next several decades, they say, greater and greater gridlock will force commuters, whether they are favorably inclined to using rail service or not, to use passenger trains to get to and from Los Angeles. At that point, the ridership volume will outrun the capacity of the existing rail line used by MetroLink. Despite whatever cost inflation there has been on building the Gold Line extension so far, it is better to commit to making that extension now than postponing it, as the cost will continue to escalate, those recommending that San Bernardino County stand by its earlier commitment to the Gold Line say. In this way, they assert, Wolfe’s move to cut costs now will entail far greater future cost.
Ultimately, the transit committee backed Wolfe, with Third District Supervisor Dawn Rowe and the representatives of the cities of Yucaipa, Highland, Rialto, Big Bear Lake Colton, Fontana and Rancho Cucamonga supporting him. Only Montclair, Ontario and Chino Hills opposed his plan to scrub the county’s support of the Gold Line.
Evinced in the vote was an east/west split, with the cities nearest Los Angeles in favor of the Gold Line extension and the others more distant from the megalopolis opting out. There was some question, however, as to whether the attitudes of the voting members of the transit committee fully match those in the communities they represent. Rancho Cucamonga Mayor LLoyd Dennis Michael, for example, voted in support of Wolfe’s plan. Some elements of the Rancho Cucamonga community, nonetheless, are passionately in favor of the Gold Line.
It has been pointed out that 65 percent of the county’s Measure I revenue is generated within the seven cities at the west end of San Bernardino County, and that the Gold Line is a major component of the strategy for alleviating traffic gridlock in that region. With the extension of the Gold Line into western San Bernardino County on the drawing boards for over a decade with vaguer plans for it to extend as far east as San Bernardino, Redlands or Yucaipa by the middle of the current century, the cities on the west side of San Bernardino County have in part shaped their planning to provide for transit districts – consisting of higher density residential units surrounding the rail corridor – in their jurisdictions. This is particularly true in Montclair and Upland. There are urban planners in Western San Bernardino County who consider the Gold Line to be an intrinsic element of the character of their respective cities’ futures, and they were miffed with what they considered to be Wolfe’s cavalier reversal with regard to a planning process that has been years in the making and refining.
Thus, Wolfe’s proposal to back out of the Gold Line extension has the potential for an even wider, indeed deeply significant, regional political impact. Talk has already begun about an historic jurisdictional realignment by which Montclair would secede from San Bernardino County and annex to Los Angeles County, with which it is contiguous. While such jurisdictional shifts are highly uncommon, there has been precedent for such in California history. Though at a mere 5.52 square miles, making it the second smallest city in San Bernardino County geographically, Montclair packs a relatively potent commercial punch, as it is home to Montclair Place, formerly known as the Montclair Plaza, which from its opening in 1968 was one of the county’s premier mercantile venues. While it has since slipped to being the fourth most popular shopping mall in the county, it is still a major generator of sales tax revenue, and thus of Measure I transportation funding for the county. Were Montclair to withdraw from beneath the San Bernardino County umbrella and append to Los Angeles County, Ontario would find itself with a common border with Los Angeles County. Ontario, which likewise has an interest in seeing the Gold Line extended to its major transportation venue, Ontario International Airport, at that point could likewise merge with Los Angeles County. Such a change would be far more significant than the loss of Montclair. Ontario is, hands down, the most prolific of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities in terms of the size of its economic engine. A reflection of that is the consideration that Ontario’s municipal budget dwarfs that of every other city in the county, as the more than $500 million – half of a billion dollars – which course through all of the city’s funds exceed the combined revenue/expenditure ledgers of the next two most generously financially endowed cities in the county. The loss of Ontario and its contribution to the county’s transportation improvement efforts in terms of Measure I money would be devastating to the county.
The transit committee’s vote yesterday is not binding, but represents a recommendation that is likely to be followed by the full San Bernardino County Transportation Agency Board when Wolfe agendizes the issue at a future meeting, perhaps as early as next month.
-Mark Gutglueck

The California Department of Transportation rather quietly last month pulled the plug on the long-in-the-works plans for the 63-mile Desert Corridor Freeway that was to link California State Route 14 in Palmdale and State Route 18 in Apple Valley.
Once touted as an energetic multimodal transportation initiative which was to involve a planned train line built into the freeway design as well as a bike route and renewable energy transmission lines, the $8 billion project was nixed as the consequence of a court settlement brought by environmental groups against the State of California and the California Department of Transportation.
As early as the 1930s, there was serous discussion of building a major highway linking northern Los Angeles County to the Victor Valley, running through the vast virtually undeveloped expanse of the west Mojave Desert. But available capital, resources and energy during that and the subsequent era was devoted, indeed monopolized, by crucial transportation needs in the much more heavily populated and more rapidly growing areas south of the San Gabriel Mountains, resulting in the construction of the 10, 60 and 210 freeways as the Southland’s primary east-west connections between Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.
By the 1970s, the concept of having an east-west freeway north of the San Gabriel Mountains was revived in earnest, though no realistic funding source for it was available. The idea grew increasingly attractive as population growth in the Antelope Valley on the far west side of the Mojave and in the communities of Oak Hills, Hesperia, Apple Valley, Victorville and Adelanto began to accelerate in 1980s, 1990s and into the Third Millennium.
Almost two decades ago, traffic jams down the 15 Freeway from the Victor Valley in the morning and back up the 15 to 4,190-foot elevation Cajon Summit in the late afternoon/early evening became a weekday reality. For the more intrepid of those impatient with taking that route to and from the Inland Empire or beyond to Orange County and the Los Angeles megalopolis, there was the back route, State Highway 138, the Pearblossom Highway, that generally traces the northern foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains lying to the south and the western Mojave Desert, which lies off to the north. Though scenic, the mostly two-lane highway is treacherous, and is commonly referred to as “Blood Alley” or “Death’s Highway.” Over the years, hundreds of motorists have lost their lives as the rolling contour of the land and resultant dips in the road create blind spots, which have contributed to legions of head-on accidents that occur when a speeding vehicle running in one direction or the other moves into the oncoming lane of traffic to pass a slower traveler.
In November 2006, the County of Los Angeles and the County of San Bernardino created the High Desert Corridor Joint Powers Authority, which took as its charter the creation of the High Desert Corridor, what was then envisioned as a 66-mile stretch of freeway connecting the Los Angeles County communities of Palmdale/Lancaster with the San Bernardino County communities of Victorville, Apple Valley, and Adelanto.
By earlier this decade, with much of the developable land south of the San Gabriel Mountains consumed in the Los Angeles Basin and the price of available undeveloped property in the Inland Empire skyrocketing, both the Antelope Valley and the Victor Valley had transformed into two of the fastest growing regions in the state, prioritizing the means of alleviating the gridlock on the 15, 210, 10 and 60 freeways even further. A study for the High Desert Corridor was initiated in 2010, as conceptually the plan intensified, with discussions centering on what was to initially be an eight-lane freeway, with room for a rail line, referred to as a high speed rail feeder service, along with facilities to convey solar power produced out in the desert to the San Fernando Valley or Los Angeles, along with a bicycling route.
A multi-county, multi-jurisdictional project, it was catalogued as a joint effort between the State of California, Los Angeles County, and San Bernardino County and other involved agencies, with plans of applying local transportation funds toward the project over the course of more than 30 years to achieve it, along with state augmentation funding and the use of federal transportation dollars. Considered to just be at the planning stage, the funding that had been put up by both counties and Caltrans extended only to undertaking the review process.
In 2014, the California Department of Transportation, known as  Caltrans, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and San Bernardino County’s transportation agency, then known as San Bernardino Associated Governments, completed a draft environmental impact statement/report for the High Desert Corridor looking at five functional alternatives and four physical variations in the completion of the corridor, extending to alignments relating to avoiding or involving residential displacements in the Lake Los Angeles area and existing agricultural uses, as well as avoiding or involving impacts to several water wells supplying water to local communities in the environs of Adelanto.
At the same time, militation against the reliance on individual vehicles and fossil fuel-based transportation has been intensifying at all levels in the United States, and most especially in California, where mandates toward the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions thought to be responsible for global warming have been codified. It was posited that the addition of freeways ran counter to the goal of seeking to convince people to drive less. Simultaneously, Los Angeles County Metro officials are working to usher commuters in the Southland toward using rail travel alternatives, including MetroLInk, light rail options such as the Gold Line and a subway system. In this way, some planners, including transportation officials whose support of the High Desert Corridor was deemed crucial to the advance of the project, appeared to be leaning against proceeding with it.
Nevertheless, the forces working toward finding some way to reduce the worsening traffic situation in Southern California appeared poised to overcome whatever opposition might be manifesting based upon the prospect of some projected and unproven future technologies.
L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich pushed to have some $170 million in Los Angeles County  Metro’s Measure M sales tax intended to pay for transportation projects earmarked for right-of-way acquisition for the pathway of the corridor, and another $1.8 billion set aside to be used for construction.
In 2016, the environmentalist organization Climate Resolve, the Endangered Habitats League, Dr. Tom Williams and Bryan Baker, represented by attorneys Mitchell Tsai and James Birkelund, filed a lawsuit challenging the High Desert Corridor under the California Environmental Quality Act and the National Environmental Quality Act.
In the midst of that legal challenge, the San Bernardino Board of Supervisors in September 2017, at the instigation of First District Supervisor Robert Lovingood, through whose First District the High Desert Corridor was supposed to run, hired Ryan MacEachron, who had formerly been mayor and city councilman in Victorville, to serve as the coordinator of the High Desert Corridor Project. McEachron had been voted out of office by Victorville’s voters some ten months previously. As the High Desert Corridor project coordinator, MacEachron was provided with $98,363 in total compensation over the next nine months until the end of fiscal year 2017-18 on June 30, 2018, consisting of $60,378 in salary and $37,985 in benefits. San Bernardino County officials justified his hiring by stating that MacEachron had proven credentials in terms of dealing with traffic issues in general and an understanding of the High Desert’s road system. Previously, in June 2015, McEachron had been elected president of San Bernardino Associated Governments (SANBAG), the county’s transportation agency, which has since been reformed and renamed the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority. Known by its new acronym, SBCTA, it is overseen by a board consisting of one representative from each of the county’s 24 cities, either a mayor or council member, as well as each of the county’s five supervisors. The agency provides financial support toward and coordinates freeway construction projects, regional and local road improvements, train and bus transportation, railroad crossings, call boxes, ridesharing, congestion management efforts and long-term planning studies in conjunction with the California Department of Transportation, the county government, local municipalities and the regional public transportation agencies that offer bus and shuttle services, Omnitrans, Mountain Transit, Victor Valley Transit Authority and the Morongo Basin Transit Authority. The San Bernardino County Transportation Authority administers Measure I funds, revenue from San Bernardino County’s half-cent transportation sales tax first passed in 1989 and extended by voters in 2004 to run through 2040. Despite his position as the political head of the county transportation agency, MacEachron had no nuts-and-bolts experience in transporation issues and no real technical expertise with regard to such matters, having professionally been engaged as an insurance agent for most of his life.
Of note was that the two county officials who at that time would have normally played crucial roles in the hiring of county employees, Mark DeBoer in the human resources division and deputy county counsel Cynthia O’Neill, were essentially bypassed with regard to MacEachron’s hiring while the county’s de facto top in-house political operative, county governmental and legislative affairs director Josh Candelaria, who is directly answerable to the board of supervisors, made the evaluation of McEachron at Lovingood’s behest. Candelaria made the recommendation to hire him.
A large cross section of the public and many individuals involved in government throughout Southern California perceived MacEachron’s hiring to be a gross act of political patronage. Indeed, MacEachron’s placement in the position disturbed many Los Angeles County officials, who saw in San Bernardino County’s willingness to install what they considered a political hack into a position requiring extensive technical expertise and knowledge a demonstration that San Bernardino County was willing to misuse Los Angeles County’s larger financial resources.
Last month, at its September 4 meeting, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority’s executive director, Ray Wolfe, citing a $16 million cost overrun, pushing from $80 million to $96 million the price on a collective effort to extend the Gold Line light rail system from Claremont to Montclair, indicated San Bernardino County will discontinue its participation in the project. The Gold Line, with an overall $2.1 billion budget, is a rail system running through the foothill communities along the southern side of the San Gabriel Mountains.
For Los Angeles County transportation officials, while projects such as the Gold Line and the High Desert Corridor represent a benefit to them and their constituents, they perceive those projects to be of relatively greater benefit to east-lying San Bernardino County and its residents. Out of a spirit of cooperation, Los Angeles County officials were willing to shoulder a greater degree of the cost of both of those projects. Now, however, with San Bernardino County balking at participating in the Gold Line extension and signals that the High Desert Corridor is being used to provide sinecures for top ranking San Bernardino County officials’ cronies and political associates, Los Angeles County officials have come to see their San Bernardino County counterparts as unreliable partners in the effort to mitigate regional transportation challenges, and are dismayed and disenchanted at the degree to which San Bernardino County’s politicians are willing to presume upon the western county’s goodwill and generosity.
With the Climate Resolve/the Endangered Habitats League/Williams and Baker lawsuit having survived efforts to have it dismissed, with the court finding that that the 2014 environmental impact report was insufficient with regards to biological and greenhouse gas impacts, Los Angeles County signaled to Caltrans that it was not willing, at this time, to go to the mat to keep the project on track. Caltrans, as the lead defendant in the case, simply gave up the ghost as opposed to appealing that ruling or engaging in what in the scheme of things would have been a relatively inexpensive revisiting of the environmental study, and taking on and completing a supplemental environmental impact report. Rather, the agency agreed to a settlement agreement to bring to a stop any further efforts toward pursuing the freeway component of the project, including not acquiring land for the freeway right-of-way until and unless a supplemental environmental impact report is completed at some subsequent point. Under the agreement, the light rail and bike aspects of the planning process, and even acquisition process, can proceed.
-Mark Gutglueck