County officials have expended $192,400 to ascertain what the policy advisor to the board of supervisors’ only Democrat told them two years ago when he was the chief of staff to a Republican supervisor: San Bernardino County will not secede from the State of California.
Ken Hunt, who was then Second District Supervisor Janice Rutherford’s Chief of Staff, in the summer of 2022 made an immediate size-up of a proposal by Jeff Burum to ask San Bernardino County’s voters to weigh in on whether San Bernardino County should withdraw from California. Hunt, who had been Fontana’s city manager for two decades, said the proposal would never fly. After much hoopla, excitement and expense, it appears that everyone, even those who so enthusiastically embraced the idea, have come to the same conclusion.
On July 26, 2022 Jeff Burum came before the board of supervisors, asking them to consider putting what was termed an “advisory” measure in the form of a question on the November 8, 2022 ballot asking whether San Bernardino County should separate from the State of California and venture into the world from here on out as the 51st State of the Union, to be named “Empire.”
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Prosecutors, this time ones from the federal government, are going to take a second run at putting Ari Aki Young behind bars, most likely for a decade or two, more than a year after he was acquitted or otherwise exonerated on eight of nine charges against him stemming from his 2019 confrontation with a deputy in which he severely beat her and took her gun away from her.
The Young case is a highly paradoxical one, with some of the case’s elements having pitted so-called liberals and conservatives against one another while other elements of the case simultaneously touched off even more bitter philosophical fights within and among factions of progressives and factions of law enforcement advocates.
Young languished in county jail for more than four years after he was wounded and arrested in the aftermath of the September 4, 2019 incident. He at last went to trial in March 2023 on charges of attempted murder, assault with a firearm on a peace officer, two counts of discharging a firearm, obstructing or resisting a peace officer, use of a firearm during the commission of a crime, felony battery against a police officer, disarming a police officer and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
Represented by attorney Raj Maline, who convinced the magistrate hearing the case, Judge Miriam Morton, to dismiss the obstruction of a peace officer charge, both charges of discharging a firearm, the battery against a police officer charge, the charge of disarming a police officer and the charge of using a firearm in the commission of a crime, Young was found not guilty by the jury on the assault with a firearm on a peace officer charge and not guilty on the attempted murder charge. He was convicted of discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
Maline had Young, who is schizophrenic, plead not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity on all charges. Continue reading →

For the second election cycle running, Upland city officials are looking to effectuate a tax increase, this time by appealing to voters to allow City Hall to change the business licensing schedule it has had in place for more than three decades.
In 2022, Upland officials qualified the placement of Measure L on that year’s November ballot. Measure L asked for authorization to impose an added one cent per dollar sales tax on all retail transactions within the city involving merchandise upon which sales tax is permitted under California law, that is, excluding groceries and medicine. Ultimately, the city’s voters rejected Measure L, with 10,222 voters or 44.6 percent in favor of it and 12,697 voters or 55.4 percent opposed to it.
In California, any new tax must be approved by a vote of the people to pay that tax.
Members of the Upland citizens group who effectively opposed Measure L expressed hope Upland municipal officials would embrace the concept of Upland as a consumer friendly city which eschewed taxes and would appeal to the region’s shoppers in that fashion, pointing out that relative to the sales tax burden in nearby Ontario at 8.75 percent; Montclair at 9 percent; Chino at 8.75 percent; and Pomona at 10.25 percent, Upland’s 7.75 percent sales tax offers an opportunity for residents of the west end of San Bernardino County and the east end of Los Angeles County patronizing Upland’s merchants to save money, particularly on big ticket items such as cars and major household appliances. Continue reading →

Three of five former employees within then-San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia’s office whose lawsuits filed in 2020 contributed to his once-promising political career coming to an abrupt end in 2022 have come to terms with the city for $1.2 million.
Those settling include the three women – customer service representative Mirna Cisneros, office assistant Karen Cervantes and legislative aide Jackie Aboud – whose narratives about what occurred involved the most arrestingly lurid details pertaining to sexual harassment contained in the five suits against Valdivia and the city.
The first week of January 2000, Aboud, now 27, was fired by the city, less than nine months after she had gone to work as a part-time field representative for Valdivia in April 2019. Cisneros, now 34, and Cervantes, now 28, who anticipated being accorded the same treatment as Aboud, retained one-time Adelanto Mayor Tristan Pelayes to represent them. Continue reading →

Final ratification of the Yucaipa Freeway Corridor month bogged down at the planning commission level last month, placing the controversial growth plan that will citify a substantial swath of the county’s still somewhat countrified 16^th largest geographically and 14^th most populous city in the hands of the city council.