Yucaipa authorities are refusing to discuss what is rumored to be Premium Land Development’s decision to walk away from the Serrano Estates project more than 18 months after it was given narrow approval by the city council amid multiple charges of improprieties involving the developer and city officials.
The project was given a 3-to-2 approval by the city council on April 17, 2023 after the planning commission the previous year had rejected the project, which was not provided with a comprehensive environmental impact report despite involving an intensity of land use greater than what was envisioned for the property in the city’s general plan.
A lack of transparency with regard to the current situation has triggered widespread speculation about what is afoot. One unconfirmed report is that the city, after kowtowing to the project proponent, Craig Heaps, on multiple occasions in 2022 and 2023 by suspending several regulations and standards that would have otherwise applied to the property, is now going to impose on him a substantial monetary penalty for nonperformance after he provided assurances the development program for 51 units on 52 acres would have progressed toward substantial or full completion by now.
Other reports had it that Heaps never intended to perform, but was merely seeking an entitlement to develop the property, and that city officials were aware of his agenda all along, having abetted him in it.
Despite repeated efforts by the Sentinel to learn from City Manager Chris Mann, Yucaipa Director of Development Services Fermin Preciado and Yucaipa City Planner Ben Matlock what the actual status of the project is, City Hall is electing, at present, to keep the public in the dark.
The project, located in the city district referred to as the north bench, was set to be constructed on 52 acres along the east side of Yucaipa Ridge Road, north of Ivy Avenue, directly adjacent to Quartz Street and Crystal Street. The project site consists of undeveloped property and was under the city’s general plan slated for single family homes on lot sizes of at least one acre in conjunction with the city’s Rural Living or RL-1 zoning. The property falls within Yucaipa’s Custom Home (CH) Overlay District, in which cookie-cutter subdivisions typical of urban areas are discouraged. The area is likewise surrounded by low density zones.
There was concern on the part of many people that what Heaps and his company, Premium Land Development, were attempting to do was to get the city to okay the project, which was to confine 51 homes to 51 lots compressed on 27 acres, such that the lots to be developed would be more like 23,061.17 square feet or 0.529 of an acre, using questionable standards that were far more favorable to Heaps than the community. An acre consists of 43,560 square feet.
Heaps and Premium Land Development had also included in the project a 52nd lot consisting of 12 acres, on which it was not really clear whether, perhaps, another home would be built, and 13 acres of “open space.”
Instead of requiring that Premium Land Develpment perform an environmental impact report in order to obtain certification for the project, city officials agreed to sign off on the proposal using a far less exacting process known as mitigated negative declaration.
Under the California Environmental Quality Act, the impacts of a development project must be evaluated as part of the approval process for that undertaking before the proponent can be clearance to proceed. Different types of certification can be made, some of which are more intensive than others. Those include, at the most intensive end of the scale, an environmental impact report, followed by an environmental impact study, then an environmental impact assessment, after which is a mitigated negative declaration and at the low end, a negative declaration.
Those differing types of certifications are normally performed by an independent entity and paid for by the proponent, with the expense greatest at the top end of the scale and lowest at the bottom.
An environmental impact report is an involved study of the project site, the project proposal, the potential and actual impacts the project will have on the site and surrounding area in terms of all conceivable issues, including land use, water use, air quality, potential contamination, noise, traffic, and biological and cultural resources. It specifies in detail what measures can, will and must be carried out to offset those impacts. A mitigated negative declaration is a far less exacting size-up of the impacts of a project, by which the panel entrusted with the city’s ultimate land use authority, in this case the city council, issues a declaration that all adverse environmental impacts from the project will be mitigated, or offset, by the conditions of approval of the project imposed upon the developer.
The approach Heaps was taking and which the city was allowing him to proceed with left open the possibility that in the future, when memories have faded and there have been personnel changes on the city council, Premium Land and Heaps or their corporate successor will come in with another proposal to develop the 12-acre Lot 52 or perhaps the combined 25 acres consisting of Lot 52 and the area’s open space.
The overwhelming majority of the public speakers at the April 17 special meeting went on record against the project, including former Planning Commission Chairwoman Denise Work and former Planning Commissioner Dennis Miller. Only two public speakers expressed support of the proposal. There was substantial sentiment among the members of the public present that Premium Land Development and Heaps were not living up to either the spirit or the letter of the one-acre lot minimum inherent in RL-1 zoning with the way the lots were arranged on the Serrano Estates tract map. The meeting had the distinction of being the first major test of what developmental standards the City of Yucaipa will live up to under Chris Mann’s guidance as city manager. Mann had been installed as city manager a little more than three months previously, when the 3-to-2 council majority of Justin Beaver, Bobby Duncan and Matt Garner had forced Mann’s predecessor as city manager, Ray Casey, to resign. Contained in the citizen opposition at the April 17, 2023 meeting was the belief by some that members of the city council were on the take, receiving bribes from the development community in exchange for accommodating construction project proposals. This dovetailed with the outrage over the Casey firing, as Mann, through his company, Mann Communications, served as as representative for multiple companies in the construction industry. Mann at one time was the chief political strategist at O’Reilly Public Relations working upon obtaining land-use entitlements.
Seven days after the meeting at which the Serrano Estates project was being considered, on April 24, recall petitions signed by 193 city residents would be turned over to the city clerk, qualifying an effort to removed Beaver, Duncan and Garner from office.
Despite what appeared to be the overwhelming citizen resistance to the project, the 3-to-2 vote in favor of the project took place. Beaver, perhaps mindful that he was already on thin ice because of the Casey sacking, joined with Councilman Jon Thorp in opposing the project. Duncan and Garner joined with Venable in giving the project a thumbs up.
Some suggested that Beaver was in support of the project as well, but that he voted against it in the knowledge that it had three votes without his support.
After the passage of a year-and-a-half, the project has not come to fruition and work is emanating, from a source apparently close to City Hall but which has not been identified, that Heaps and Premium Land Development are not going to proceed with the project.
The Sentinel sought to confirm that Heaps and Premium Land Development were pulling the plug on the project, but no one in a position to know – Heaps, Mann, Preciado or Matlock – are talking.
Of note is that Heaps is now identified as being the principal in an outfit calling itself West Coast Entitlement, LLC.
Accordingly, the Sentinel sought from Mann whether Premium Land Development’s entitlement to build remains intact, such that it is just going to hand that entitlement off to another entity and, if so, to whom. The Sentinel further sought from Mann if he knew how much Heaps and Premium Land Development were selling that entitlement for.
Mann did not respond to the Sentinel’s inquiry.
The Sentinel also sought to find out if Heaps had perhaps temporized and thereby allowed a deadline by which he was supposed to achieve some milestone elapse and, if so, what it was he was supposed to do that he didn’t do. The Sentinel failed in finding out what that failure consisted of if in fact there was such a failure.
The Sentinel also looked into the report that the city had assessed a monetary penalty against Heaps and/or Premium Land Development and how much that penalty was. Likewise the Sentinel was able to make no definitive determination.
The Sentinel was able to research, however, some of the requirements that Premium Land Development was supposed to live up to, which included paying to the city $1,207,229.73 in development impact fees, consisting of drainage facilities fees of $401,745.42; traffic facilities fees of $532,144.20; public facilities fees of $73,675.62; fire facilities fees of $46,726.71 and park facilities fees of $152,937.78.
In addition, Heaps and Premium Land Development were responsible for fees to be collected by other agencies, such as the Yucaipa Valley Water District and Yucaipa Calimesa School District beyond the $1,207,229.73 to be paid to the city, which the Sentinel was unable to quantify. Moreover, the company was required to make make good on fees imposed by the California Department of Fish & Game.

In a further blow to the prestige of both the City of San Bernardino and San Bernardino County, California Governor Gavin Newsom has arranged to have the California Highway Patrol step in to assist the City of San Bernardino with its burgeoning homicide rate, which is over three times the statewide average, and general level of crime that is raging beyond the control of the police department at nearly double the statewide average.
San Bernardino, which filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2012 and then stiffed its vendors and creditors to the tune of more than $200 million while it lingered in an insolvent state for five years thereafter, has appalling levels of poverty among its 224,000 population and a violent crime level that is twice that of the state average, along with sharply elevated incidences of theft and other property crime.
Governor Newsom on Monday, October 28 declared San Bernardino to be the most recent “hot spot” upon which state officials will concentrate resources in an effort to combat crime and enhance public safety.
“We are sending additional CHP support to help local law enforcement aggressively suppress criminal activity and provide this community with a new level of safety and accountability,” Newsom said.
The California Highway Patrol’s operation will add special law enforcement units on the ground and in the air — targeting sideshow activities and stolen vehicles, according to the governor’s office. The Highway Patrol is also providing San Bernardino Police Department with additional investigative support to disrupt organized criminal activity and violent street gangs, get illegal guns off the street and help prevent gun violence.
“Our partnership with the city of San Bernardino strengthens our efforts to enhance public safety,” said California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee. “This collaboration allows us to share resources, intelligence, and expertise, enhancing our ability to reduce crime and create a safer environment for all members of the community.”

Car theft in San Bernardino continues as a nearly unprecedented pace. In addition, San Bernardino has been plagued with street takeovers and sideshows.
Sideshows and/or street takeovers involve impromptu illegal gatherings of motorists, in most cases teenagers and ones in their twenties, who engage in automotive stunts such as skidding, doing donuts and ghostriding, often in vacant lots, parking lots and street intersections. Donuts consist of a maneuver which involves rotating the rear or front of the vehicle around the opposite set of wheels in a continuous motion to effectuate a circular skid-mark pattern. Ghostriding takes place when a driver opens the passenger side door, climbs out, sometimes onto the hood or onto the frame of the open door, while the car continues in motion. Sideshows often devolve into fights among the participants, and occasionally devolve into shootings.
The most recently available crime statistics extrapolated from figures provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and the San Bernardino Police Department, within the 62.45-square mile confines of San Bernardino, there were 1,059 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2023, almost double the California state average of 511 crimes per 100,000 residents. Over the same 12-month period in 2023, residents ran one of the highest risks among all of California’s residents of being murdered. For the year, there were 16.2 homicides per 100,000 residents. Overall in California, the risk of being killed by another person wa less than a third of that, at 4.8 homicides per 100,000 residents.
And although those numbers are dire, they mark a notable improvement from 2022.
If there is a silver lining to those statistics, it is that last year they were not as bad as they had been the year before that, 2022.
While there were 36 murders in 2023, there were twice that, 72, in 2022. There were 675 robberies in 2022 and 667 in 2023; 1781aggravated assaults in 2022 and 667 in 2023; 678 assaults with a firearm in in 2022 and 491 in 2023; and 2,640 vilent crimes overall in San Bernardino compared to 2,352 in 2023. The only area in which violent crime was up in 2023 over 2022 was the slight rise in rapes from 112 in 2022 to 116 in 2023.
Despite that improvement, if it can be cataloged as such, San Bernardino remains a dangerous place.
San Bernardino has also had a serious problem with ghost guns, illegal firearms from which the serial numbers have been removed. In 2023, a record 4,700 ghost guns were seized by authorities in San Bernardino County, more than any other county in California per capita.
Though officials talked about a “surge” in the number of Highway Patrol officers that will be deployed to San Bernardino, they were not willing to give precise numbers or say into which zones they weill be inserted.
San Bernardino has struggled with crime for quite some time. In 2022, it lured then-Upland Police Chief Darren Goodman to take on the police chief position.
It did so by offering him the position and then getting in a bidding war with Upland for his services. Upland had been paying him a salary of $231,771.97 in addition to to $159,332.90 in perks and benefits for a total annual compensation of $391,104.87. San Bernardino is now paying him $337,513.49 in salary and $192,085.52 in perks and benefits for a total annual compensation of $529,599.01.
The department under Goodman aggressified its enforcement, almost immediately upon Goodman taking the helm. That approach was less than fully successful and has entailed expense and difficulty for the city. On July 16, 2022, 31 days after Goodman officially began as police chief, during a confrontation with two of the department’s officers, Rob Marquise Adams, who was apparently on the prowl in the back parking lot shared by several commercial establishments, including an illegal online gambling business located in the 400 block of West Highland Street where illegal activity proliferates, was shot and killed. A lawsuit ensued, which the city settled for $4 million less than two years later.
San Bernardino is the seat of San Bernardino County, which has undergone substantial embarrassment in recent months and weeks over is dysfunctionality and inability to fend for itself. In 2022, one of the county’s leading citizens and a primary financial baker of the county’s politicians, prompted public officials to sponsor a voter initiative to have San Bernardino County secede from California, largely on Burum’s assertion that Democratic politicians in Sacramento were withholding funding from the county government and the county’s cities because San Bernardino County is one of the last bastions of Republicanism in the state. That initiative proved successful, and the county’s voters authorized the county’s political leadership to initiate the county’s withdrawal from California.
Before doing so, however, county officials, at a cost of $192,000 hired a consulting firm to analyze the political prospect and actual financial considerations relating to San Bernardino County becoming the 51st state of the union. That study revealed that San Bernardino County and its residents and businesses, rather than pulling more than their own weight financially within the context of California’s taxation regime, actually contributes less toward the funding of state, county and local governance than to the remainder of the state’s counties, cities and citizens as a whole and on average. According to those analysts, San Bernardino County is not fiscally independent and is actually freeloading on a handful of far more financially successful counties and areas throughout California.
The City of San Bernardino is, within the context of San Bernardino County, one of the, or actually the, most dysfunctional jurisdiction within it.
San Bernardino Mayor Helen Chan tried to make the best of being singled out by the governor for special assistance with redressing its intractable problems with its criminal element.
San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran said she was grateful for the support of the CHP to help the city continue decreasing crime rates and apprehending criminal enterprises targeting neighborhoods and businesses. She sought to put the best face she could on the consideration that the government she heads is not strong enough to stand on its own and deal with the issues that face it.
“We are grateful to Governor Newsom for providing additional support from the California Highway Patrol to the City of San Bernardino,” Tran said. “This year, our City Police Department’s efforts have led to a 13% reduction in violent crime, and the extra support will strengthen public safety in our community. With this new state and local collaboration in San Bernardino, we can continue to impact criminal enterprises targeting our neighborhoods and businesses.”

With or without Elon Musk’s participation, local transportation officials are purposed to proceed with the underground shuttle system that would carry passengers between a Rancho Cucamonga train station and Ontario airport that the quirky billionaire proposed to construct more than four years years ago.
In May 2020, through one of his corporate holdings, the Boring Company, Musk proposed excavating a 2.8-mile underground tunnel linking Rancho Cucamonga to Ontario International Airport, and then using modified Tesla Model X electric vehicles to convey passengers through the tunnel at speeds reaching more than 100 miles per hour.
Musk, who initially earned his fortune as a cofounder of the on-line money exchange system PayPal, is the founder of the Tesla automobile company and the founder of the private sector space exploration company SpaceX.
As originally conceived, Musk’s brainchild was to serve as the final span in the transportation system that is intended to link Los Angeles with Ontario Airport. A significant portion of that yet-to-fully-achieved transportation mode – composed of a light rail system known as the Metro Gold Line – already stretched at that point 24 miles eastward across Los Angeles County from Union Station to Azusa. The Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority Board in Los Angeles County is committed committed to extending it to Pomona and ultimately Claremont. Before reachin Claremont it is to be extended to a station now under preparation in Glendora. There was an understanding at one time that the Gold Line, now sometimes referred to as the A-Line, would cross into San Bernardino County, with the first extension to be completed terminating at the Montclair Transit Center. Thereafter, it was to eventually reach Ontario International Airport and then, by mid-century or beyond, extend out to San Bernardino, Redlands and Yucaipa and by the late 21st Century, all the way to Palm Springs. In 2019, however, at the prompting of San Bernardino County Transportation Executive Director Raymond Wolfe, San Bernardino County transportation officials abandoned the construction plans on the east side of the San Bernardino County/Los Angeles County line at the Claremont/Montclair border.
While there is the potential that at some point San Bernardino County transportation officials will renew their joint efforts with Los Angeles County transportation officials to undertake a continuation of the Gold Line/A-Line from its eventual terminus at the county boundary and take it to Ontario Airport and beyond, at this point those plans are on indefinite hold. Over $1 billion has been expended extending the Gold Line, consisting of a light rail train on two separate tracks running generally east west, currently to Azusa.
The San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, as its name implies, is San Bernardino County’s regional transportation agency. With a board composed of representatives from all 24 of the county’s cities as well as its five county supervisors, the agency, known by its acronym SBCTA, is charged with managing the expenditure of Measure I money. Measure I was first passed by San Bernardino County’s voters in 1989, providing for a half-cent sales tax override countywide, with the proceeds dedicated to paying for road improvements.
Another commuter rail system running from Los Angeles County into San Bernardino County – MetroLink – already exists and that there is an existing freight-carrying rail line linking the two counties as well. MetroLink commuter trains, however, run at a rate no more rapidly than one every 72 minutes, considerably less frequency than the Gold Line, which has with departures and arrivals every five to seven minutes during peak commuting hours and every 12 to 15 minutes during off-peak hours. Because of that, ridership on the MetroLink is relatively poor and Gold Line use is approaching capacity on its current schedule. If the goal of transitioning commuters from their automobiles to trains is to be effectuated, these advocates say, the Gold Line needs to be completed.
In the meantime, Assemblyman Chris Holden (D-41st District) and State Senator Anthony J. Portantino (D-25th District), whose districts straddle east Los Angeles County and west San Bernardino County, introduced legislation aimed at providing financial mechanisms to complete the faster rail travel methodologies in the region, most notably the Gold Line. With the Gold Line project have stalled out, however, Elon Musk, without actually having been asked to, in 2020 leapt into the breach and acting entirely on his own initiative had one of his corporate entities, the Boring Company, provide the San Bernardino County Transportation Agency with a proposal to undertake the underground tunnel project, one that would either use, partially use or parallel the existing flood control channelization constructed decades ago by the Army Corps of Engineers, and run from a station near Foothill Boulevard and the Day Creek flood control channel in Rancho Cucamonga to Terminal 2 at Ontario International Airport. That would have in some fashion dovetailed with the efforts to extend the Southern California region’s west-east commuting options that had at one time centered on the Gold Line extension, ultimately to Palm Springs.
Musk calculated the Rancho Cucamonga to Ontario Airport project could be completed for $60 million, largely because the purchase and monopolization of above-ground real estate would be bypassed and no construction of a rail system or purchase of trains would be necessary. Off-the-shelf or adapted Tesla Model X vehicles were to be used to provide transportation.
He proposed that a Musk-owned company operate the system.
In 2022, for reasons that are not altogether clear, Musk and Boring abandoned the project. Still, San Bernardino County Transportation Authority decision-makers remain convinced that Musk’s approach represents a far less-costly means of creating a usable public transportation system between Rancho Cuamonga and Ontario Airport than a rail system. One estimate is that extending the Gold Line to the airport would cost at least $1.1 billion and more likely closer to $1.5 billion.
On Wednesday, November 13, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority will conduct an online public hearing that is to begin at 6 p.m. in which a proposal to .,as it evaluates the project’s
. Residents can share their opinions next month on a construct a 4.2-mile underground shuttle system running from the Rancho Cucamonga rail plaza to Ontario Airport, one that will cost in the neighborhood of $538.5 million to complete, will be previewed. Thereafter, input from any who are logged in with regard to the project, extending to potential environmental impacts, including those on the general ambiance, ground stability, air quality, flora and fauna and any random or specific consideration, will be invited. What is known at present about the plan is it will use what are termed “fuel-free-autonomous, zero-emission shuttles” to carry passengers, luggage and baggage through a tunnel 65 to 70 feet beneath or below and paralleling Milliken Avenue and East Airport Drive that is to stretch between Rancho Cucamonga’s Metrolink Station, which is ultimately to become a station for the high-speed train linking Southern California with Las Vegas, and Ontario International Airport.
Unless Musk agrees to return to the fold and have his company become involved again, Omnitrans, San Bernardino County’s public transportation agency which runs the area’s busses, would operate the system.
An 18,000 square-foot station and an adjacent maintenance facility are set to be built at the Rancho Cucamonga Metrolink Station in Rancho Cucamonga. Additionally, two 10,000 square-foot stations would be constructed at ONT, located across from terminals 2 and 4 in the city of Ontario.
Under the California Environmental Quality Act, a draft environmental impact report has been prepared for the project. In addition, in compliance with the the National Environmental Policy Act, an environmental assessment has also been prepared. Both the California and the federal documents are available for public review and comment between October 18 and December 2, 2024. All input must be received by December. 2, for consideration during the environmental phase. To Visit  goSBCTA.com/ONTConnector  To view the draft environmental impact report and the environmental assessment or to find a list of locations with printed copies publicly available, visit goSBCTA.com/ONTConnector.
San Bernardino County transportation officials invited members of the public to attend the on-line hearing on November 13 or peruse the environmental documents as “an opportunity to learn more about the project and the environmental studies, and to provide feedback.”

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME
CIV SB 2428772
TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS:
Petitioner JUDITH LEE HOFMANN filed with this court for a decree changing names as follows:
JUDITH LEE HOFMANN to JUDITH LEE HOFMANN WADE
THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing.
Notice of Hearing:
Date: NOVEMBER 18, 2024
Time: 8:30 a.m.
Department: S32
The address of the court is Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino, 247 West Third Street, San Bernardino, CA 92415
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that a copy of this order be published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel in San Bernardino County California, once a week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing of the petition.
Gilbert G. Ochoa
Judge of the Superior Court.
Filed: August 29, 2024 by
Alyssa Leber, Deputy Court Clerk
Attorney for Judith Lee Hofmann
Jennifer M. Daniel
220 Nordina St.
Redlands, CA 92373
Telephone No: (909) 792-9244 Fax No: (909) 235-4733
Email address: team@lawofficeofjenniferdaniel.com
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on October 11, 18 & 25 and November 1, 2024.

FBN 20240008979
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
C S M WATERWORK 12323 MEADOWLARK AVE OAK HILLS, CA 92344: ELAINA Y LEYVA
Business Mailing Address: 12323 MEADOWLARK AVE OAK HILLS, CA 92344
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL.
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: N/A.
By signing, I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime (B&P Code 179130). I am also aware that all information on this statement becomes Public Record upon filing.
/s/ ELAINA Y LEYVA, Owner
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: OCTOBER 4, 2024
I hereby certify that this copy is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office San Bernardino County Clerk By:/Deputy J6638 Hesperia
Notice-This fictitious name statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the office of the county clerk. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before that time. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see Section 14400 et seq., Business and Professions Code).
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on October 11, 18, 25 and November 1, 2024.

Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
BlueTrition Brands’ lawsuit challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s order that the company discontinue the diversion of water out of Strawberry Canyon in the San Bernardino Mountains, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in August, must be heard in Riverside Federal Court, a federal judge ruled this week.
For more than 90 years, BlueTriton and its corporate predecessors, including Nestlé Waters of North America, Inc., Nestlé, Perrier, BCI-Arrowhead Drinking Water Company, Beatrice Foods, Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles, Rheem, Arrowhead® Mountain Spring Water Company, California Consolidated Water, Arrowhead Water Corporation, Arrowhead Springs Corporation and Arrowhead Hot Springs Company, diverted water from Strawberry Creek and one of its tributaries located between the 5,200-foot and 5,600-foot elevation in the San Bernardino National Forest, using the water for their bottling operations. That diversion began in August 1930, originally involving water taken from a single “bedrock crevice” spring along Strawberry Creek at an elevation of 5,600 feet. Subsequently, in 1933 and 1934, California Consolidated Waters developed three springs using adits – horizontal borings – and then added 10 further horizontal borehole wells to tap spring water aquifers in the mountainside, thereupon transporting the forest spring water through a pipeline down the mountain, giving twenty percent to half of the water thus obtained to the Arrowhead Springs Hotel and then bottling and selling the rest, marketing it under various names, including Arrowhead, Puritas, Arrowhead and Puritas, Arrowhead Puritas, Arrowhead® Spring Water and Arrowhead® Mountain Spring Water among them.
Because a private entity cannot claim water rights on federal forest land that did not exist prior to the dedication of the forest as a national asset, the companies in question had to apply on a continuous basis for a water drafting permit to take the water, renewing it on an annual basis for a $524 fee.
While the Arrowhead Puritas Water Bottling operation was yet under BCI’s control in the mid-1980s, Arrowhead Puritas’s U.S. Forest Service-issued water drafting permit in Strawberry Canyon expired, and the BCI-Arrowhead® Drinking Water Company applied to extend the permit. In 1987, while that application was yet being processed, Perrier purchased the BCI-Arrowhead® Drinking Water Company.
The then-pending water extraction permit renewal required a U.S. Forest Service review of the water drafting arrangement and its environmental/ecological impact, which the U.S. Forest Service then did not have the immediately available resources to carry out. In a gesture of compromise, Perrier was allowed, pending the eventual Forest Service review, to continue to operate in Strawberry Canyon by simply continuing to pay the $524-per year fee to perpetuate the water extraction under the terms of the expired permit. In 1992, Nestlé acquired the Arrowhead brand from Perrier. Nestlé continued to pay the $524 annual fee without renewing the Strawberry Canyon operation permit, which at that time existed under the name of the “Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water Co,” one that was never listed legally in corporate filings, but which operated under Nestlé and then what became Nestlé Waters of North America, Inc. Continue reading →

Gigi Hanna is venturing into Yucaipa politics, she said, to spur the interest of the city’s residents in civic affairs and ensure that their opinions and perspectives are taken into consideration by the city’s leaders.
“I am committed to public participation in the government, and I have spent more than 30 years working to help link people to their elected leadership,” Hanna said. She did this, she told the Sentinel, “first, as a newspaper reporter, then in public agency communications, and as a city clerk – the citizens’ main connection to their government.”
Part of her involvement in government evolved from her roots. Her father was a firefighter whose specialized skills in fire science were in demand with different agencies, including ones inside and outside California and inside and outside the United States.
“I come from a public service-oriented family,” Hanna said. “The youngest of four children, I was born in Illinois, spent part of my childhood in Samoa and graduated from high school in Pasadena. I have an undergraduate degree in journalism and completed my master’s studies in communications from Cal State Fullerton. I spent the first 16 years of my professional life as a journalist, then transitioned into public agency publicity and government relations, working for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. I was appointed associate director of the Water Resources Institute at Cal State University San Bernardino, where I earned a master’s degree in public administration.”
At that point, she entered into the arena of elective office.
“I was the elected city clerk for the City of San Bernardino, taking office in 2012, just three months before the city entered into what was to become the longest municipal bankruptcy in the nation’s history,” she said. “It was a challenging time, one that saw budget cuts that took my office staff from 17 to 3, at the same time there was a ten-fold increase in public records requests. Despite that, our on-time fulfillment rate was better than both my predecessor and successor.” Continue reading →

A major factor in Yucaipa’s current political/governmental climate stems from what was unanticipated action by the city council majority barely two months after the last election.
On November 8, 2022 two newcomers were elected to the council. Matt Garner managed a narrow victory with 35.59 percent of the vote over Sherilyn Long and her 33.96 percent of the vote in the four-person District 1 council race which also involved third-place finisher Mark Taylor and Erik Sahakian, who came in fourth. In the District 2 contest, Chris Venable, with 62.11 percent, convincingly outdistanced Nena Dragoo, with 37.89 percent of the vote, to capture a seat at the council dais.
Both Garner’s and Venable’s victories had been set up by the decision of two longtime council members – David Avila in District 1 and Greg Bogh in District 2 – not to seek reelection that year.
Garner and Venable were sworn in during a largely ceremonial council meeting held on December 12, 2022. In Yucaipa, the mayor is not directly elected by the city’s voters. One of the handful of matters taken up by the newly installed council at that December 12 meeting was the council’s selection of which member would serve as mayor and which would be given the secondary honorific of mayor pro tem, what is essentially the vice mayor.
Justin Beaver, who had been in office only since 2020, was selected mayor. Councilman Bobby Duncan, who had been mayor in the past, was made mayor pro tem. With the December holiday season coming thereafter, the second council meeting for December 2022, which would have been held on December 26, was canceled.
On January 9, 2023, at what was the second public meeting of the newly composed city council and the first council meeting of the year, the vast majority of the Yucaipa community was blindsided when Garner joined with Mayor Beaver and Duncan in confronting City Manager Ray Casey during the closed session that precedes the open public session of council meetings. Beaver and Duncan informed Casey, who had originally been hired as Yucaipa’s city engineer in 2003 and was promoted to its top administrator in 2008, that if he did not tender his resignation immediately, he would be fired on the spot, as they had Garner’s vote to hand him a pink slip. With no better option available, Casey, reluctantly, resigned. Continue reading →