Some two dozen San Bernardino County communities sustained power outages during the severe windstorms of earlier this month which resulted in catastrophic fires of historic proportion in the Los Angeles cities and communities of Pacific Palisades, Altadena and Eaton Canyon.
Southern California Edison, the utility company which supplies electricity to those areas of Southern California not serviced by San Diego Gas & Electric, the City of Needles, the City of Colton, the City of Riverside, the City of Anaheim and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, engaged in sporadic, varied and intermittent shut offs as part of what the company refers to as its public safety power shutoff program.
Those deliberate outages are intended to prevent the sparking of fires by damaged or downed power lines in an area where extremely dry vegetation acts as kindling and prevailing meteorologic conditions will push the fire itself or embers in multiple directions, causing immediate and widespread migration of the flames.
In San Bernardino County, the public safety power shutoff program extended into Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Rosena Ranch, Rialto, San Bernardino, Redlands, Grand Terrace, Yucaipa, Oak Glen, Wildwood Canyon, along Mill Creek, Angeles Oaks, Smiley Park, Green Valley Lake, Running Springs, Lake Arrowhead, along Shake Creek, Cedar Glen, Blue Jay, Crestline, Cedar Pines Park, Summit Terrace, Lake Silverwood, north of Baldy Village, in Wrightwood, in Deer Haven between Phelan and Pinon Hills north of Wildhorse Canyon and in Chino Hills.

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A federal judge has entered a ruling that brings into question whether California state law and the efforts by Governor Gavin Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond prohibiting teachers and other school district officials from informing parents when their children are assuming a gender identification at school that is different from their birth or biological gender will pass constitutional muster.
The ruling by Federal District Court Judge for the Southern District of California Roger Benitez that was entered on January 7 in a fundamental way boosts the prospects of the Chino Valley Unified School District in its legal battle with Bonta over a policy the district put in place in the Summer of 2023 mandating that district teachers notify parents when their children are manifesting gender incongruence, i.e., assuming a gender different from the one assigned them at birth.
The board voted 4-to-1 to adopt that policy, doing so over the objections of both Thurmond and Bonta. The state schools superintendent and the state attorney general have both consistently asserted that students have privacy rights which allow them to prevent their parents from knowing the identity they assume in a public school setting. Because some parents are unaccepting of any deviation from heterosexuality on the part of their offspring and some of those might or would engage in physical, psychological or emotional abuse of their children upon learning of their gender incongruence, Bonta and Thurmond maintain that revealing to parents how their children are comporting themselves at school, if that behavior includes a reidentification of gender, would be, in Bonta’s words, “discriminatory and downright dangerous.” Asserting that “nearly half of students who identify as being LBGTQ+ [lesbian, bisexual, gay, transsexual, queer plus other non-heterosexual orientations] are considering suicide,” Thurmond suggested that students alone had the right to determine when and to whom they were to disclose their gender reidentification. Continue reading →

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Dear San Bernardino County Supervisors,
I am writing to bring to your attention a critical issue that my family and neighbors have been facing due to the extended power outages in our community. In January 2025 alone, electrical power has been shut off for a total of 190 hours (so far) as a precautionary measure due to high winds and fire danger. While I understand the importance of these measures to ensure public safety, the prolonged outages have created severe hardships for vulnerable residents in our area.
In my case, my 80-year-old mother, who is handicapped, relies on an electric chair stair lift to move between levels of our home. She also depends on power for showering, cooking, and accessing her medical alert devices. During the outages, I had no choice but to relocate my family to ensure her safety and well-being.
Additionally, one of my neighbors, who is battling stage 4 cancer, relies on an electrical oxygen machine and is without central heating during these outages. The lack of power has exacerbated his already fragile health, and as a result, he has been readmitted to the hospital. Continue reading →

Despite, or perhaps because of, some influencers adamantly militating on her behalf, Rochelle Clayton is on the losing end of a progression of sentiment against her aspiration to move into the long-term city managerial post in the county seat.
The absolute support for Clayton’s that existed four months ago among all eight elected decision-makers with the authority to hire the city’s top tier employees has dwindled to two. Even though both of her supporters – Mayor Helen Tran and newly-installed Councilwoman Treasure Ortiz – remain committed to seeing her shed the qualifiers “acting” and/or “interim” from her current title, past and recent events have transpired which have created what is described to the Sentinel as a “virtually unbridgeable” gap with three of the council members. The basis for mutual accommodation between Clayton and a fourth council member, in the words of an individual, knowledgeable about the interpersonal relationships at the pinnacle of San Bernardino government, has been “severely compromised.” Meanwhile, two of the three newest members of the council whose participation in a coalition that would effectuate Clayton’s elevation had been taken for granted have been exposed to information and experience that have impressed on them that the supposition of comity that was to proceed from cohesion and consensus among no fewer than five of the council and the mayor was not just unrealistic but unworkable, given the conflicting priorities of those involved.
Mayor Tran, whose first two years in office following her 2022 election have been marred by managerial uncertainty and inconsistency, for months has been heavily banking upon getting Clayton installed as the undisputed city manager so that she can choreograph municipal policy and action to create a record of accomplishment that can be attributed to her mayoral administration.
Clayton, who was hired by former City Manager Charles Montoya to serve as deputy city manager in April 2024, the following month was propelled into the role of acting city manager when the council precipitously fired Montoya on May 22. Continue reading →

A Sentinel reader, a decent, if somewhat gullible chap, was recently in need of some new wheels. He surveyed the offerings at a handful of local car dealerships, at last settling upon a modern vintage used vehicle that had hardly been driven, one with fewer than 8,000 miles on its odometer. To ensure that he was not being taken advantage of, he took the car out on a test spin, driving to a garage run by a good friend of his. His friend, employing his own expertise and the diagnostic tools that in this day and age are at the ready in the arsenal of any true mechanic, pronounced the car fit in every way.
Back at the dealership, the Sentinel reader, having settled upon a purchase price of $22,000, made a down payment of $3,000. It was established that he owed a balance of $19,000, and he was handed a four-page contract, the first page-and-a-half of which he had skimmed over. He had satisfied himself with language that he found in the body of the details and fine print that the contract laid out that he would pay the specified $19,000 remainder over the course of 36 months, which comported with the representation made by the salesman. Satisfied and looking forward to driving about in what was to him a very nice, and almost new, car, he signed the document and drove off the lot. Continue reading →

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The Barstow City Council on Tuesday night voted to place Police Chief Albert Espinoza on paid administrative leave.