In the face of the overwhelming epidemic of fentanyl overdose deaths, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department has instituted a policy of outfitting all of its patrol units with Narcan.
Narcan is the brand name of an opioid counteractant known as Naloxone.
Taken in time, Nalaxone/Narcan will effectively reverse or reduce the effects of opioids. Most notably, the medication is used to counter decreased breathing that comes with opioid overdose. When given intravenously, the substance can go into effect within two minutes. Narcan also be injected into a muscle, but the effect in such cases can be delayed up to five minutes. The medicine can also be administered by aerosol spray, predominantly into an overdose victim’s nose.
Fentanyl was first synthesized in 1960 and made available for medical use in the United States in 1968. It is on the order of 50 times more potent than heroin by weight and 100 times more potent than morphine by weight. So powerful are its effect that Fentanyl can prove deadly in very minute quantities. The strict standardization applied by pharmaceutical companies in its processing into usable forms and protocols relating to its prescription by physicians was intended to prevent the substance from proving fatal. Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
Using the pretext that Barstow will become host to a modernized rail yard as the consequence of a $1.5 billion commitment to make it the logical location of an intermodal facility to warehouse and transload freight brought by train coming into the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach onto trucks for distribution to the rest of the country, the Victorville City Council on Tuesday pulled the plug on its 16-year-long commitment to develop the Southern California Logistics Rail Authority’s Victorville Intermodal Facility.
In 2007, the City of Victorville entered into an agreement with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Company to carry out the eventual development of an intermodal logistics facility at Southern California Logistics Airport.
While Victorville officials justify the termination of the agreement with Burlington Northern Santa Fe as one that is driven by market conditions and currently prevailing economic trends, those with a more in-depth understanding of the city’s and region’s history recognize that the Southern California Logistics Rail Authority was from its inception a dispensable element in the strategy formulated by Victorville city officials more than three decades ago to outmaneuver San Bernardino County and other High Desert municipalities to take over control of what was then George Air Force Base and is today Southern California Logistics Airport.
The base, originally named the Victorville Army Air Station when it was crash built in the summer and fall of 1941 as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ direct involvement in World War II fast approached, was located on the outskirts of Victorville and closer to Adelanto. In 1988, it was announced that George was to be shuttered by the Department of Defense in 1992.
Victorville city officials, led by Mayor Terry Caldwell and City Manager Jim Cox, were intent upon excluding other political and governmental entities in the region from controlling the facility following its civilian use reconversion. Correctly assessing that Adelanto likewise would be intent on asserting exclusive control of the aerodrome and understanding that the federal government would prioritize dealing and cooperating, during the base decommissioning process, with a regional governmental collective rather than a multitude of individual municipal entities, Caldwell and Cox formulated an approach by which they essentially feigned making a cooperative effort involving San Bernardino County, the City of Hesperia and the Town of Apple Valley under the aegis of the Victor Valley Economic Development Authority, known by its acronym VVEDA. Using VVEDA, Victorville put together a competing proposal for the inheritance of the Air Force Base property and its conversion into a civilian airport and logistics hub. Continue reading →

NOTICE OF INTENTION TO CIRCULATE INITIATIVE PETITION
Notice is hereby given of the intention of the persons whose names appear hereon of their intention to circulate the petition within the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District for the purpose of repealing the special tax associated with Service Zone FP-5. A statement of the reasons for the proposed action as contemplated in the petition is as follows:
The purpose of this measure is to repeal the special tax on parcels located in the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District Service Zone FP-5.
See www.redbrennan.org for details.
/s/ Robert A Cable
/s/ David Jarvi
/s/ Ruth Musser-Lopez
/s/ Albert H Vogler
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on May 5, 2023

NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF MICHAEL NEWELL aka MICHAEL SCOTT NEWELL
Case No. PROSB2300465
To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of MICHAEL NEWELL aka MICHAEL SCOTT NEWELL
A PETITION FOR PROBATE has been filed by Mina Gallardo Newell in the Superior Court of California, County of SAN BERNARDINO.
THE PETITION FOR PROBATE requests that Mina Gallardo Newell be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent.
THE PETITION requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority.
A HEARING on the petition will be held on May 24, 2023 at 9:00 AM in Dept. No. S36 located at 247 W. Third St., San Bernardino, CA 92415.
IF YOU OBJECT to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney.
IF YOU ARE A CREDITOR or a contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the later of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined in section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code.
Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law.
YOU MAY EXAMINE the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk.
Attorney for petitioner:
PAUL HORN ESQ
SBN 243227
PAUL HORN LAW GROUP PC
11404 SOUTH STREET
CERRITOS CA 90703
CN995572 NEWELL Apr 21,28, May 5, 2023

Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
For the first time in Yucaipa’s 33-year history, discontent with its political leadership has reached a point where there is sufficient motivation among residents for them to mount an effort to remove members of the city council from office.
While recall efforts often confine themselves to a single member, the action under way in 55,496-population Yucaipa is targeting three of its current leaders, including the mayor, its longest-serving current member and one of its most recently elected councilors.
Despite the unmistakable discontent an activated segment of the city’s residents have toward the troika of Mayor Justin Beaver and councilmen Bobby Duncan and Matt Garner, as well as the relative advantage recall proponents picked up with the city’s division into five voting districts in 2016, those looking to remove the three from office still face an uphill battle in first qualifying recall questions against the officeholders and then in convincing a majority of an often-apathetic and disengaged electorate to make a radical change in the city’s governance.
Primary factors in the recall movement consist of the long-established status of former City Manager Ray Casey, the inconsistency in Beaver and Duncan’s attitude toward Casey, the sudden turnaround Beaver and Duncan evinced with regard to Casey earlier this year, the swiftness and secretiveness with which Beaver, Duncan and Garner acted in forcing Casey’s departure and the continuing secrecy the city has sought to maintain about what motivated the council majority to bring about Casey’s exit due to the standard confidentiality that is maintained with regard to governmental personnel matters and decisions. The situation was exacerbated by what appears to have been miscalculations on the three council members’ parts as to the hold Casey had on a good portion of the Yucaipa establishment. Continue reading →

The number of homeless in San Bernardino County has eclipsed 4,000, according to figures released this week by county officials taken from the so-called point-in-time count completed on January 26.
With in 4,195 of the county’s 2,225,586 inhabitants identified as having no home, 0.018848968316659 percent of the population is fully destitute, that is, one out of every 530.53 people subsisting in the county at present is doing so without a roof over his or her head.
Key findings extrapolated from this year’s count and an analysis of past counts were that:
* The number of adults and children counted as homeless increased by 25.9 percent when the 2023 point-in-time homeless count of 4,195 is compared to the 2022 point-in-time homeless count of 3,333.
* The number of adults and children counted as unsheltered increased by 24.6% when the 2023 unsheltered count of 2,976 is compared to the 2022 unsheltered count of 2,389.
* The number of homeless adults and children counted as sheltered increased by 29.1 percent when the 2023 sheltered count of 1,219 is compared to the 2022 sheltered count of 944. Continue reading →

In the struggle for the position of primary influence among local legislators and an inside track on the eventual leadership of the legislature itself through placement within the Democratic hierarchy in Sacramento, it appears that Assemblyman James Ramos (Democrat-Highland) is maneuvering and accelerating past Assemblywoman Eloise Gómez Reyes (Democrat-San Bernardino).
To be sure, Gómez Reyes, who is senior to Ramos in California’s lower legislative house by two years and who has acceded to an official leadership position within the party and the Assembly above Ramos, that of Assembly majority leader, on paper appears more powerful and influential than her colleague. Nevertheless, in the arena where it counts in terms of moving bills out of committee and to the floor for a vote or other action, it appears that 56-year-old Ramos is outhustling the 67-year-old Gómez Reyes.
A case in point is the contrast between two bills – one written, introduced and sponsored by Gómez Reyes and another authored, brought forth and supported by Ramos – both of which are ostensibly aimed at the same goal.
Gómez Reyes’ Assembly Bill 1000 would have required 1,000 feet be maintained between new warehouses of 100,000 square feet or more and homes, apartments and other places where people congregate and spend a lot of time, such as day care centers and schools. It would have been applicable statewide.
Ramos’s AB 1748 deals with the same topic as AB 1000, that being the proximity of warehouses to living quarters, educational facilities and the like. Ramos’s version would impose a substantially less exacting limitation, however, specifically a 300-foot buffer between dwelling units or quarters or sites where large numbers of people spend hours on a daily or semi-daily basis and warehouses of 400,000 square feet or more in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Continue reading →