Inland Empire Progressive

Councilmember John Valdivia concerns that the SbX Project is a government funded boondoggle are unfounded. Even a website (now defunct) was established. He sites property owners that are affected by construction that will take place and wasted tax payer money to the tune of $200 million. $8 million of  taxpayer money was San Bernardino city Capital Funds to develop those properties to handle the 60 ft. buses that will soon be rolling down the E St. Corridor.  The federal government provided about $150+ million in matching funds for acquisition of buses and Omnitrans upgrades to handle 60 ft. buses. To me, the benefits of this project outweigh the costs. If you look at a zoning map of the properties that are along the corridor, most are zoned commercial. Even on the Loma Linda side this is the case. I would argue for an extension beyond the VA hospital to circle the commercial zones on Redlands Blvd. Development, construction, and materials are cheap. Now is the perfect tim...

San Bernardino needs  a super majority (60%+) police force that actually live in the city. The current police force, like 70% or more live outside the city. The number 70% is arbitrary because I can only estimate how many live outside our city and the City Attorney Jim Penman won’t tell me. It could be more or it could be less. But you can see when a police force is made up of a bunch of outsiders because they only care about the money. The police make up 42% of the budget, which is the biggest portion of the budget. Second is the Fire Department with 24%.  The majority of our tax dollars go to folks who live outside our city. With a budget deficit of $4 Million dollars, we need to ask all of our city employees to sacrifice so that our city can balance its budget. It is harder to do this when many of San Bernardino city employees live outside the city. In addition, our allocations to police are growing (because they have the majority of the city council now) while San Ber...

Colton Sinkhole (Video provided by Inland Newpapers Group) (Link Removed) This is what happens when we continue to cut spending and don't invest in necessary infrastructure projects like roads and bridges. This sinkhole in Colton is one example, but throughout the Inland Empire we can see (and feel!) the degradation of our streets literally before our eyes. Temporary fixes like the one shown in the video are just that: TEMPORARY. Our society cannot continue to repair our infrastructure on patchwork basis. We need dedicated revenue streams if we are going to go foward with any type of long term engineering projects. My concern is that when the Spring showers come our streets and bridges will become to damaged to drive on.