Inland Empire Progressive

I pay attention to local government issues alot. If video was available for city commission meetings or neighborhood associations (which we should), I would probably watch them. As it happens, I was watching the March 5th school board meeting and stumbled upon this tidbit. The impact of Congressional Conservatives sequestration on the San Bernardino Unified School District (SBUSD) is estimated to impact low income students heavily.  To the tune of $4 Million Dollar cuts will happen to  Title I (Low achieveing students in high poverty areas), Title II (Teacher Quality), Special Ed., and Tech Ed. The shortfall will attempted to be covered by Unrestricted General Funds to support this project.  However, SBUSD is trying to balance its budget and had to issue layoff notices to 166 teachers so using Unrestricted General Funds might be limited.  This shows you the priorities of Congressman Gary Miller who has proven himself to be the defender of the elit...

Measure N has passed by an overwhelming majority. I voted no on the measure because I think that the San Bernardino Unified School District is taking on too much bond debt that will push total outstanding bond to about $1 Billion Dollars of principle and interest payments. However, the voters have spoken and the school board has a mandate to disburse this bond money on capital projects that will upgrade schools with saftey improvements, equipment replacement, and other materials and projects. It must be restated and the school board held to account that NONE of this bond money is to be used for salary or other operational costs. But this is just one area where voters have to keep an eye out for. The following are other areas in which I will be keeping an eye on in the coming months. OVERSIGHT BOARD A citizens oversight committee is to be established in accordance with Education Code Section 15272. The board consists of a bonafide taxpayer association, a business organi...

With both houses in the state legislature at a 2/3rd majority, my hope is that state Dems can get their priorities straight to govern California effectively and over the long term. State polling giving the legisature all time low approval ratings, this hold on power is tenuous at best. If the Dems can't effectively govern, then I wouldn't be surprised that this mandate will be short lived. Most of the prioritzation comes in balancing the state budget. Californian's deserve a state budget that is both stable and prioritized effectively. A balanced approach would be to cut underperforming policies while increasing revenue for most income brackets. Hopefully, Prop. 13 reforms will be included in the policy discussion. Another issue is our school system which performs inadequately for the needs of low income and minority students. Education equality is the next civil rights movement of our time. Our poor performing schools will not be able to...

Source: San Bernardino Unified School District Annual Financial Report This was a very hard decision for me to make. But as I dug through the documents, it became more apprent to me that $230M dollars and the interest service payments required was just too step a price a pay for San Bernardino residents. A $140M+ bond measure was approved by in 2004 and the voters are still servicing that debt. The 2004 bond was used to build schools and remove asbestos. That is the very same thing that Measure N would do in addition to providing additional security measures and equipment upgrades. This is why it was hard for me to vote no on Measure N. SBUSD kids need help: Our Math Skill Proficiency is at 60% 37%, our API is dropping, and more cuts are coming if Prop. 30 doesn't pass. This is trifecta of trouble! However,  I point to the chart above which is pulled from SBUSD financial statements. The total debt owed is $403,803,838 dollars! If...

I despise ballot box budgeting, however since I will be personally affected (Cal State Student) if this prop fails I am compelled to vote for it. I was 49% in favor of not voting for it. The primary reason is becasue they cut funding for the Ralph M. Brown Act. I am afraid local governments will use the cut as an excuse to reduce transparency even though we live in the digital age and costs for posting agendas, budgets, etc. online are minimal. However, this gives them some political cover. The bulk of the reductions will be from schools, which would make sense on its face education make up the majority of the General Fund budget. But Prop. 30 still feels like a hostage negotiation that if doesn't pass we will cut funding to children and young adults. If Prop. 30 does pass, Democrats in the legislature need to seriously gather the intestinal fortitude necessary to bring about a stablized and ...

Just looking at government budgets in San Bernardino here are the numbers: Department Budget San Bernardino Unified $437 Million Cal State San Bernardino $169 Million City of San Bernardino $120 Million San Bernardino Community College District $110 Million Omnitrans $89 Million San Bernardino Municipal Water District $40 Million Total $965 Million People costs (Operating and Maintenance) account for about 60-80% of the budget, which is around $579-772 Million dollars. This is not even including our share of the $4 Billion dollars of County budget! It is a staggering amount of money, but why is our city of San Bernardino still impoverished? We should have the most economic growth in the region just on government spending alone. While I will discuss these points in future posts, I want to point out that it is not crime, or business atmosphere, or housing that are explicit in our problems. They are symptoms of a larger failure: Our school system. The ranking ...