By Mark Gutglueck
(ONTARIO–August 11) An attorney for Carol Plowman, a senior vice president and founding principal of Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services in Ontario, this week characterized as “categorically false” reports linking her to an effort by Alan Wapner, the president of the Ontario International Airport Authority Board of Directors, to force airport staff to undertake the sale of 198 acres of airport property to a consortium consisting of Lee & Associates and Sares Regis at a price far below the actual market price of that land.
“Ms. Plowman did not participate in the proposed acquisition of the airport property, provide campaign funds in exchange for governmental action or any business benefit, or enter into any bribe, payoff, or quid pro quo with Wapner or any other public official,” Theodore Stream, of the law firm Stream Kim Hicks Wrage & Alfaro, which represents Plowman told the Sentinel in a letter dated August 11.
The letter was precipitated by the Sentinel’s July 28 coverage of developments in the FBI’s nine-year ongoing investigation into activity involving the Ontario International Airport Authority that had taken place that day in the form of FBI and other federal agents serving search warrants at the homes and offices of Wapner, who in addition to being the president of the airport authority is also an Ontario city councilman; San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman, who is also a board member with the airport authority; Frank Lizarraga, a one-time Ontario planning commissioner who is Wapner’s personal attorney; James Su, the owner of EDI Media; the business office of Andy Sehrmelis, a major campaign donor to Wapner, Hagman and other local elected officeholders; and at a mansion in the 600 block of North Canon Drive of Beverly Hills. The day of those raids, the FBI also served subpoenas for the production of documents at Ontario City Hall and the administrative offices of the Ontario International Airport and the Ontario International Airport authority.
Stream’s registering of objections with the July 28 article, which ran in the July 31 edition of the Sentinel, extended to a passage within it that chronicled the experiences of Kelly Fredericks, who served as the first executive director of the airport authority and manager of the airport following the transference of ownership and management of the airport to the City of Ontario/the Ontario International Airport Authority from the City of Los Angeles in 2016, and Mark Thorpe, who succeeded Fredericks as the airport authority’s executive director in 2017. The Sentinel article cataloged how Wapner, shortly after the local takeover of the airport, began pressuring Fredericks to inventory airport property to ascertain what parcels might be classified as “surplus,” and be sold off to interested buyers. The article related how Fredericks was reluctant to have the airport/airport authority divest itself of property, even it was not at that time being put to aviation-related use, in that it might be later needed for operational expansion, and described how Fredericks’ resistance to Wapner’s demands ultimately resulted in his being pushed out of the executive director/airport managerial role by the board, essentially at Wapner’s insistence. Continue reading →

Next Tuesday, it is anticipated that the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors will come through with a final $11 million installment to allow the City of San Bernardino to proceed with the San Bernardino Hope Campus.
The navigation center is intended to serve as an effective remedy to the unending proliferation of homelessness in and around the county seat.
Considerable effort and tens of millions of governmental dollars have gone into continuous but most uncoordinated homeless relief efforts locally. While a few of those have proven effective, there has been extensive criticism of those efforts overall, which their critics have blasted as vehicles for the diversion of funds into the pockets of individuals exploiting an unregulated system.
San Bernardino municipal officials say they are committed to finding a real solution to the challenge of homelessness in their city, which is more acute than it is anywhere else in the county. They say that if entrusted with funding, they will not squander it and the programs they will put in place will consist of tangible buildings in which people will be able to reside and not have to be on the streets.
In February 2023 the San Bernardino mayor and city council declared homelessness a local emergency and three months later announced plans to create the 200-bed San Bernardino Hope Campus on the site of the former School of Hope, formerly an educations center for special needs students located at 796 East 6th Street in San Bernardino that had closed down in 2022 and had been purchased by the city.
The city forthrightly pursued tapping into various forms of revenue to complete the project and fund its operations, including seeking state and federal grants, some which entailed matching funds to be put up by the city. This activity was carried out, despite substantial chaos in the city at the administrative level because of the November 2022 resignation of former City Manager Robert Field in the aftermath of Mayor Helen Tran’s election earlier that month and the city’s seeming inability to land a permanent city manager replacement. Continue reading →

(ONTARIO–August 12) Electing to jump rather than being shoved, Ontario City Councilman is resigning all of his appointive assignments growing out of his status as a city councilman. That will include his beloved position[s] as both a member of the Ontario International Airport Authority Board of Directors and that panel’s president. He will also walk away from his membership, as the City of Ontario’s representative, on the board of directors of Omnitrans, which oversees local rapid transit operations consisting essentially of bus lines and of which he is the current president; the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, of which he was formerly the president; the San Bernardino County Council of Governments, of which he was formerly the president; the Southern California Association of Governments, of which he was a past president; the National Association of Regional Councils; the California Association of Councils of Government.
He dropped his letter of resignation off at the Ontario City Clerk’s Office unsigned on Tuesday, saying he would return on Friday, August 14, to sign it and make it official and binding. Thus, at present, he retains his status as a member of all of the boards, commissions, committees and governmental adjunct positions conferred upon him, most of which came as the result of a voted by the city council, of which he remains a member.
The crisis which has forced the resignations materialized on July 28, when the FBI served search warrants at Wapner’s home, the home and office of San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman, who is also a board member with the airport authority; Frank Lizarraga, a one-time Ontario planning commissioner who is Wapner’s personal attorney; James Su, the owner of EDI Media; the business office of Andy Sehrmelis, a major campaign donor to Wapner, Hagman and other local elected officeholders; and at a mansion in the 600 block of North Canon Drive of Beverly Hills. The day of those raids, the FBI also served subpoenas for the production of documents at Ontario City Hall and the administrative offices of the Ontario International Airport and the Ontario International Airport Authority. Continue reading →

Upland’s most successful businesses would see the cost of their city business licenses jump by a whopping 3,240 percent, from the current $864 to $28,000, if a majority of the city’s voters support a measure the Upland City Council on August 3 placed on the upcoming November ballot.
All five of the council’s members – Mayor Bill Velto, First District Councilwoman Shannon Maust, Second District Councilman James Breitling, Third District Councilman Carlos Garcia and Fourth District Councilman Rudy Zuniga – voted to place a measure revamping the city’s business licensing regulations, including the pricing schedule on yearly registrations on the November 3 ballot.
Two years ago, the Upland council initiated a similar move, only to lose its nerve in the face of questions about what it was trying to accomplish. On July 22, 2024, the council voted to send to the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters a measure revising the city’s business license schedule for inclusion on the November 5, 2024 ballot. While that plan called for making a modest $4 reduction in the cost of a business license for 2,930 of the city’s 3,083 business grossing under $100,000 per year, it entailed a somewhat complicated formula for calculating any particular business’s licensing fee, such that 618 of the city’s 2,049 businesses making over $100,000 but less than $1 million per year and 18 of the 596 business in the city making over $1 million per year were also to see their annual licensing fees reduced, while, 153 businesses making under $100,000, 1,422 businesses making $100,000 to $1 million and 578 businesses making over $1 million per year would have their taxes increased. The measure, if passed, would have meant that those operations in the top earning brackets would have seen their permits to conduct business in the city jump from $864 to $29,500, subject to an annual consumer price index increase of up to 5 percent per year. Continue reading →

A 78-year-old Mentone man was fatally wounded this afternoon by gunfire directed at him from several San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies while he was barricaded in his home.
The fatal shooting took place after a man, identified by reliable individuals knowledgeable about the incident as Paul Ronald Selby, had himself used a firearm to shoot at Southern California Edison contract employees who were trimming trees and ground vegetation in the 300 block of King Street in Mentone as part of an effort to reduce the summer fire hazard and had come onto his property, located at 325 King Street.
None of those workers was hit, and all of them retreated and took cover. A 9-1-1 call went out immediately.
Deputies were dispatched to the location from the Yucaipa Sheriff’s Station. The first of those arrived at the scene at 10:49 a.m., followed by other units. It was at that point that Selby retreated into his house where he and his wife, 74-year-old Linda Selby, barricaded themselves.
As the law enforcement presence on King Street mounted, the sheriff’s department dispatched an armored vehicle and a special weapons and tactics team to the area. Two crisis negotiators, one known to utilize an aggressive, high-pressure confrontational strategy and another more accustomed to an empathetic approach toward possible deescalation, were sent to the command post for the control perimeter around the incident. Continue reading →

Four years after Ontario’s voters passed a one-cent-per dollar sales tax override, the city council this week moved to put another half-cent sales tax increase on the November 3 ballot.
That action came despite Ontario’s existing ranking as the most economically well-situated municipality in San Bernardino County.
The move raised ire among a contingent of the city’s residents, who took note of multiple considerations, which they said the four members of the city council who supported raising taxes on their constituents had disregarded.
The city council considered the item calling upon the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office to place the measure on the ballot at a specially-called meeting held on Friday, August 7 just ahead of the registrar’s deadline to finalize the ballot that will be considered by the county’s voters in November. The August 7 meeting was attended by Mayor Paul Leon and councilwomen Debra Dorst-Porada and Daisy Macias and Councilman Jim Bowman. Councilman Alan Wapner was absent from the meeting, which was held on the last day the county registrar of voters would accept a ballot measure request from a city.
Voters will decide if they want to increase the sales tax within the city just four years after approving Measure Q, a previous sales tax increase of 1 percent in 2022, which raised the sales tax from 7.75 percent to 8.75 percent.
If approved by voters, the measure will increase the sales tax paid by customers at Ontario’s retail establishments from the current 8.75 percent to 9.25 percent. At present, Ontario, along with Chino, Fort Irwin, Landers, Mentone, Yucca Valley, Adelanto, Bloomington Barstow, Apple Valley, Rialto, Redlands, San Bernardino and Fontana among cities, incorporated towns and unincorporated towns in San Bernardino County impose an 8.75 percent sales tax within their boundaries. Only neighboring Montclair, with its 9 percent sales tax, and Wrightwood, with its 9.75 percent sales tax which has come about as a result of being located in two counties – Los Angeles and San Bernardino – simultaneously, have higher sales tax than Ontario. If the voters pass the measure the council approved for the ballot in November, Ontario’s 9.25 percent sales tax will exceed that of Montclair, making it the city in San Bernardino County with the highest sales tax. Continue reading →

Upland’s most successful businesses would see the cost of their city business licenses jump by a whopping 3,240 percent, from the current $864 to $28,000, if a majority of the city’s voters support a measure the Upland City Council on August 3 placed on the upcoming November ballot.
All five of the council’s members – Mayor Bill Velto, First District Councilwoman Shannon Maust, Second District Councilman James Breitling, Third District Councilman Carlos Garcia and Fourth District Councilman Rudy Zuniga – voted to place a measure revamping the city’s business licensing regulations, including the pricing schedule on yearly registrations on the November 3 ballot.
Two years ago, the Upland council initiated a similar move, only to lose its nerve in the face of questions about what it was trying to accomplish. On July 22, 2024, the council voted to send to the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters a measure revising the city’s business license schedule for inclusion on the November 5, 2024 ballot. While that plan called for making a modest $4 reduction in the cost of a business license for 2,930 of the city’s 3,083 business grossing under $100,000 per year, it entailed a somewhat complicated formula for calculating any particular business’s licensing fee, such that 618 of the city’s 2,049 businesses making over $100,000 but less than $1 million per year and 18 of the 596 business in the city making over $1 million per year were also to see their annual licensing fees reduced, while, 153 businesses making under $100,000, 1,422 businesses making $100,000 to $1 million and 578 businesses making over $1 million per year would have their taxes increased. The measure, if passed, would have meant that those operations in the top earning brackets would have seen their permits to conduct business in the city jump from $864 to $29,500, subject to an annual consumer price index increase of up to 5 percent per year. Continue reading →

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME CASE
NUMBER CIV SB 2609610,
TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS: Petitioner: Lori Christine Beard, filed with this court for a decree changing names as follows: Lori Christine Beard to Lori Christine Chronis, THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing.
Notice of Hearing:
Date: 08/31/2026, Time: 08:30 AM, Department: Civil The address of the court is Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino, San Bernardino District-Civil Division, 247 West Third Street, San Bernardino, CA 92415, IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that a copy of this order be published in the SBCS ? Upland in San Bernardino County California, once a week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing of the petition.
Dated: 04/14/2026
Judge of the Superior Court: Joseph Ortiz
Published in the SBCS Upland on 7/24/2026, 7/31/2026, 8/7/2026, 8/14/2026

SUMMONS – (CITACION JUDICIAL)
CASE NUMBER (NUMERO DEL CASO) CIVRS2602139
NOTICE TO ANIL ANIL aka ANIL KUMAR, JEEVAN DASS and DOES 1 to 10
(AVISO DEMANDADO):
YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF:
(LO ESTA DEMANDANDO EL DEMANDANTE):
SAMANTHA MARQUEZ and ADDISON SAENZ
NOTICE! You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below.
You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons is served on you to file a written response at this court and have a copy served on the plaintiff. A letter or phone call will not protect you. Your written response must be in proper legal form if you want the court to hear your case. There may be a court form that you can use for your response. You can find these court forms and more information at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), your county law library, or the courthouse nearest you. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the court clerk for a fee waiver form. If you do not file your response on time, you may lose the case by default, and your wages, money, and property may be taken without further warning from the court.
There are other legal requirements. You may want to call an attorney right away. If you do not know an attorney, you may want to call an attorney referral service. If you cannot afford an attorney, you may be eligible for free legal services from a nonprofit legal services program. You can locate these nonprofit groups at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association. NOTE: The court has a statutory lien for waived fees and costs on any settlement or arbitration award of $10,000 or more in a civil case. The court’s lien must be paid before the court will dismiss the case.
¡AVISO! Lo han demandado. Si no responde dentro de 30 dias, la corte puede decidir en su contra sin escuchar su version. Lea la informacion a continuacion
Tiene 30 DIAS DE CALENDARIO después de que le entreguen esta citación y papeles legales para presentar una repuesta por escrito en esta corte y hacer que se entreque una copia al demandante. Una carta o una llamada telefonica no le protegen. Su respuesta por escrito tiene que estar on formato legal correcto si desea que procesen su caso en la corte. Es posible que haya un formulano que usted puede usar para su respuesta. Puede encontrar estos formularios de la corte y mas información en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California (www.sucorte.ca.gov), en la biblioteca de leyes de su condado o en la corte que le quede mas cerca. Si no puede pagar la cuota de presentación, pida si secretario de la corta que le de un formulario de exencion de pago de cuotas. Si no presenta su respuesta a tiempo, puede perder el caso por incumplimiento y la corta le podrá quitar su sueldo, dinero y bienes sin mas advertencia.
Hay otros requisitos legales. Es recomendable que llame a un abogado inmediatamente. Si no conace a un abogado, puede llamar a un servicio de referencia a abogados. Si no peude pagar a un a un abogado, es posible que cumpia con los requisitos para obtener servicios legales gratu de un programa de servicios legales sin fines de lucro. Puede encontrar estos grupos sin fines de lucro en el sitio web de California Legal Services, (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California, (www.sucorte.ca.gov), o poniendoso en contacto con la corte o el colegio de abogados locales. AVISO: Por ley, la corte tiene derecho a reclamar las cuotas y los costos exentos gravamen sobre cualquier recuperación da $10,000 o mas de vaior recibida mediante un aceurdo o una concesión de arbitraje en un caso de derecho civil. Tiene que pagar el gravamen de la corta antes de que la corta pueda desechar el caso.
The name and address of the court is: (El nombre y la direccion de la corte es):
San Bernardino Superior Court
8303 Haven Ave., Rancho Cucamonga California 91730 Rancho Cucamonga Courthouse
The name, address and telephone number of plaintiff’s attorney, or plaintiff without an attorney, is: (El nombre, la direccion y el numero de telefono del abogado del demandante, o del demendante que no tiene abogado, es):
Robert A. Zermeno
500 N. State College Bl., Ste. 1100
Orange CA 92868
Telephone: 855-952-9477
DATE (Fecha): 03/05/2026
Clerk (Secretario), by Sabrina Jamison, Deputy
Published in the SBCS Rancho Cucamonga on: 07/24/2026, 07/31/2026, 08/07/2026, 08/14/2026

Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
Electing to jump rather than being shoved, Ontario City Councilman is resigning all of his appointive assignments growing out of his status as a city councilman. That will include his beloved position[s] as both a member of the Ontario International Airport Authority Board of Directors and that panel’s president. He will also walk away from his membership, as the City of Ontario’s representative, on the board of directors of Omnitrans, which oversees local rapid transit operations consisting essentially of bus lines and of which he is the current president; the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, of which he was formerly the president; the San Bernardino County Council of Governments, of which he was formerly the president; the Southern California Association of Governments, of which he was a past president; the National Association of Regional Councils; the California Association of Councils of Government.
He dropped his letter of resignation off at the Ontario City Clerk’s Office unsigned on Tuesday, saying he would return on Friday, August 14, to sign it and make it official and binding. Thus, at present, he retains his status as a member of all of the boards, commissions, committees and governmental adjunct positions conferred upon him, most of which came as the result of a voted by the city council, of which he remains a member.
The crisis which has forced the resignations materialized on July 28, when the FBI served search warrants at Wapner’s home, the home and office of San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman, who is also a board member with the airport authority; Frank Lizarraga, a one-time Ontario planning commissioner who is Wapner’s personal attorney; James Su, the owner of EDI Media; the business office of Andy Sehrmelis, a major campaign donor to Wapner, Hagman and other local elected officeholders; and at a mansion in the 600 block of North Canon Drive of Beverly Hills. The day of those raids, the FBI also served subpoenas for the production of documents at Ontario City Hall and the administrative offices of the Ontario International Airport and the Ontario International Airport Authority.
Word emanating from informed sources in government and the Ontario/West San Bernardino County community is that the pay-to-play culture that both Wapner and Hagman were steeped in was brought to the attention of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office too many times and with concrete examples of graft, quid pro quos, payoffs, kickbacks and bribes which could not be ignored. Wapner, who has been on the city council since 1994, has in that time collected at least $3.8 million in campaign contributions, making him the most prolific political fundraiser among municipal and county elective officeholders in county history. Wapner’s technique in raising funds is legendary, one feature of which is his buttonholing anyone and everyone with business before the City of Ontario or the various commissions or governmental entities of which he is a board member and then asking for support, without making any overt threat but implying that for the prospective donor’s pending project, franchise application or contract that has or is coming before the governmental entity in question to be met with approval, a donation to his political war chest is in order.
A shockingly high percentage of those businesses and entities which have obtained project approval and secured franchises and contracts with the City of Ontario and the Ontario International Airport Authority are identified as donors on the campaign financing disclosure documents Wapner, like all elected officials in California, is required by law to fill out twice annually during non-election years and more often in election years.
According to some of those who approached the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in regard to Wapner over the past several years, Wapner was able to sidestep being brought to account by local and state authorities, most notably the Ontario Police Department and the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, primarily, in the case of the police department, because he was formerly a police officer, detective and lieutenant with that agency and now has tremendous influence over the department as a council member, and, in the case of the district attorney, because District Attorney Jason Anderson was formerly one of Wapner’s city council colleagues, formerly served as a lawyer representing Wapner when Anderson was in private practice and Anderson has tapped into the same political support network within the Ontario and San Bernardino County establishment that has backed Wapner in his run as a public official for more than thee decades. It was for that reason that those disturbed by the manner in which Wapner was prioritizing government action to favor his personal and political associates turned to federal authorities.
Wapner on Tuesday deferred his resignations on the multiple committees and boards he is on until Friday so that he could attend two critical meetings involving a subcommittee and another delegation of the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority on Thursday, August 13. On that day, tomorrow, the SBCTA Transit Committee is to meet and selected members of the authority are also scheduled to participate in the Metro Valley Study Session. The authority’s transit committee often sets the parameters for what the discussions and votes of the entire 29-member authority board, which consists of a representative in the form of a mayor or council member from the county’s 22 cities, two incorporated towns and the county’s five supervisors. In this way, the transit committee in the past has controlled what projects were to be considered and which were to be taken off the table, whether freeway commuting options were to be prioritized over rail transit options and whether certain proposals would be previewed to the entire board or rejected without further discussion.
The Ontario City Council at its August 18 meeting is set to consider a vote to remove Wapner from all of his committee, commission, board and adjunct assignments. Indications were that as recently as last weekend, Saturday and Sunday, August 8 and 9, Wapner was intent on engaging in some very serious arm-twisting of Councilman Jim Bowman, his longstanding ally on the council, in seeking to exploit Bowman’s various vulnerabilities, including his alcoholism, financial constraints and some questionable political trade-offs involving past votes on the city council and the Ontario International Airport Authority Board of Directors. Wapner’s belief was that with his own vote, that of Bowman and that of Councilwoman Daisy Macias, he could prevent the council from achieving the three votes to remove him from his appointed assignments.
By Monday, however, Wapner had discarded that approach.
The Sentinel is informed that someone who was not identified convinced Wapner that he should do as Hagman did in the days after the July 28 FBI raids, in which Hagman stepped down from all of the committee and other assignments he had taken on as adjuncts to his position as Fourth District County supervisor.
Wapner’s resignation will have historic implication, as he has been the only president of the Ontario International Airport Board of Commissioners since its inception in 2012. It is anticipated that Councilwoman Debra Dorst-Porada will be appointed to replace him on August 18.