IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
We here at IE Business Daily want to congratulate the newly elected Mayor of San Bernardino on his victory on Tuesday, as well as re-elected Councilman Fred Shorett and newly elected Councilman Henry Nickel.
This was not an uneventful election. Many barbs were thrown on all sides. We hope those wounds can heal quickly and that San Bernardino can move in a positive direction.
Let us face facts, San Bernardino County residents of the East Valley; the failure of the City of San Bernardino is NOT allowable. San Bernardino remains the County seat. It is home to more than 200 thousand people and covers 60 square miles. Communities including Redlands, Highland, Yucaipa, Loma Linda, and Colton are directly linked to San Bernardino’s success or failure. Communities on the West End, Mountains, and the High Desert also have significant, while more distant, interests in the city.
Disincorporation is not an option. Talk of it is fantasy. So let us focus on the real future.
The failure or success of San Bernardino will affect all of us. We can be assured that our employment, poverty and crime rates will all be driven by what happens there. Let us pray that San Bernardino gains some sanity once again, with fresh leadership, sanity that has been lacking for some time.
Here is some advice for the newly elected and re-elected Mayor and Councilmembers:
1) Do not listen to the old guard of San Bernardino: The folks that brought us San Bernardino International Runway, SBX, Arts on 5th, Lakes and Streams, Art Balls, the San Manuel Casino, and all the other failed redevelopment projects in our city are not role models for San Bernardino’s future.
2) Seek advice from people OUTSIDE of San Bernardino and even San Bernardino County: Look to successful areas like Henderson, Nevada and Ontario, CA for advice (not the politicians, the investors and builders.) If you bring in outside consultants, do not allow their efforts to be tainted or hijacked by insiders as was the Urban Land Institute study and the reuse of Norton Air Force Base.
3) Seek outside investment: San Bernardino, for all its troubles, is ripe for private investment and development. It has been San Bernardino’s myopic leadership that has eschewed outside investment and development on behalf of local interests that has held the city back, not the lack of opportunity.
4) Use the Bankruptcy proceedings as a fresh start: The road map that is forthcoming, however it turns out, will provide the city and people of San Bernardino with an opportunity to heal, if it is allowed too. Don’t waste it. It is an opportunity to pull the city together.
5) Embrace your employee’s: Whether they supported you or not, they aren’t going anywhere and they are the people that make the city work. Realize that the useless effort to contract Police and Fire services isn’t going to happen. None of the contracting agencies that could provide the service are interested anyway. It is both a battle that cannot be won and a divisive effort that will cost you all the political capital that you currently have that is better utilized toward economic recovery.
These are just some words of advice. But unless you want to continue down the course that San Bernardino has been on, they had better be heeded.
May God bless your work on behalf of the people and businesses of San Bernardino. You are definitely going to need His intervention.
