A three-judge panel in the Fourth Appellate District in California’s Court of Appeal has ruled in favor of San Bernardino County in American Medical Response’s contesting of the board of supervisors’ 2023 decision to end what was that ambulance company’s three-decade-long virtual monopoly on emergency transportation in the 20,105-square mile county.
The question has now become whether American Medical Response, known by its acronym and logo AMR, will roll the dice on a further appeal to the California Supreme Court.
Throughout the first six decades and well into the seventh decade of the 20th Century, competition among ambulance companies was wide open, with different providers of emergency medical transport service operating whenever and wherever they could. By the 1940s, ambulance company owners were utilizing their access to police and fire dispatch frequencies to send their vehicles to the scenes of accidents, mayhem or medical emergencies, alerted by the communications between fire stations and firefighters or police and sheriff’s stations and officers patrolling in the field. Generally speaking, those who arrived first gathered the prize of delivering the injured party to the hospital, collecting a fee for doing so.
The owners and operators of the ambulance companies sought to locate their stations and garages or to position their ambulances during the day and night at positions that would give them an advantage at arriving first at those places where they were most needed, beating the competition. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and into the 1970s, there were thousands of incidents where one ambulance crew working of one company or another would be traveling full tilt in one direction to get to an accident or medical emergency and would pass another ambulance owned by another company going in the opposite direction to get to a different person in need of medical assistance. Continue reading →

The largest employer in the northwesternmost tip of San Bernardino County is cutting the number of its employees by more than half.
In recent months and years, Trona-based Searles Valley Minerals has been beset on all sides by financial challenges, including steeply rising operational costs including water prices, government regulation, competition in the form of foreign-government subsidized underpricing of one of its primary products by its major international competitors and California’s rising energy prices.
Searles Valley Minerals Inc. is a raw materials mining and production operating out of three distinct locations in and around Trona within Searles Valley and overseen by a corporate office in Overland Park, Kansas. Since 2008, it has been owned by the Indian company Nirma. The operations at Trona pertain at this time almost entirely to the mining of natural soda ash and extraction of boric acid, salt cake, sodium carbonate, sodium carbonate and specialty forms of borax and salt from Searles Dry Lake. The mining/extraction process consists of utilizing purified water to soak the earth in the lake to create brine, thereafter liberating the minerals from the solution.
Gold and silver prospector John Wemple Searles came across the borax in the dry lake later named for him in the 1860s and by the 1870s was mining borax under the name of the San Bernardino Borax Mining Company, conveying the product to San Pedro by mule team-pulled wagons. Searles sold his operation to Francis Smith, who owned the Pacific Coast Borax Company.
The dry lake and its surrounding area are rich in trona and a host of minerals.
In 1914, a joint British/South African company, Consolidated Gold Fields, anticipating the need for potash during what was then called the Great War and now referred to as World War I completed the Trona Railway line from Searles Station to a junction with the Southern Pacific Railroad. Simultaneously, the American Trona Corporation established the company-owned town of Trona adjacent to Searles Dry Lake, and the production of potash began in 1915. In 1926, after becoming the Trona Corporation became the American Potash & Chemical Corporation, it began producing borax, soda ash, and sodium sulfate.
The town of Trona during the 1940s during peak production as part of the U.S. war effort, at one point had a population of nearly 7,000, making it the 11th largest city/town in San Bernardino County. Most of its residents were employees of the mining company and those employees were paid in company scrip rather than US currency, which was used to purchase goods at company-owned stores, meals at company-run restaurants or secure entertainment or diversion at company-owned movie theaters, bowling alleys or pool halls.
In the post World War II-era to the present, there were several innovations in the mining and refining operations with regard to liberating the differing minerals from the dry lake brine including the use of a lime kiln and massive industrial boilers, some of which were fired by coal, gas or cleaner-burning coal fired up on a fluid bed. A steam-carrying pipeline was installed. At various times, emphases on the final product or products being derived shifted among potash, borax and sodium sulfate.
In 1956, the Stauffer Chemical Company acquired the West End Chemical Company plant, located on the south side of Searles Lake in Trona.
In 1974 American Potash and Chemical was acquired by Kerr-McGee. In October of that year, Stauffer sold its West End facility in Trona to the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corporation in October 1974. In 1982, Kerr-McGee reduced production drastically and instituted massive layoffs.
In 1990, Kerr-McGee sold the Searles Valley production facilities to capital investors D. George Harris and Associates, which formed the North American Chemical Company. In 1996 the production of potash in Trona was discontinued.
Ownership changed hands in 1998 when IMC Global Corporation acquired North American Chemical Company. In 2004, Sun Capital, LLC purchased IMC Global Corporation and the North American Chemical Company facilities at Trona and Westend were renamed Searles Valley Minerals, Inc. In November 2007, Karnavati Holdings, a subsidiary of the Ahmedabad-India-based Indian corporation Nirma Limited purchased Searles Valley Minerals from Sun Capital Partners for $200 million.
At present, Nirma’s operation in Trona specializes in chemical excavation catering to industrial, agricultural, automobile and other sectors, entailing the extraction and processing of boric acid, soda ash, salt cake, sodium carbonate, sodium sulfate and several specialty forms of borax and salt from Searles Lake.
In 2015, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority, a joint powers authority involving the counties of San Bernardino, Kern and Inyo, the City of Ridgecrest, The Indian Wells Valley Water District was formed, taking as its charter a commitment to ensure a sustainable water supply for the region by overcoming the depletion of the groundwater basin and its aquifer which underlies 597 square miles and includes the northwest tip of San Bernardino County, the southwest tip of Inyo County and the northeast corner of Kern County. It undertook to put water use limitations on well owners and the major water users throughout the region. Those included imposing water use charges on entities throughout Indian Wells Valley that went beyond the amount allotted to them by the authority.
In September 2020, Searles Valley Minerals, represented by Eric Garner, Jeffrey Dunn and Maya Mouawad with the law firm of Best Best & Krieger, filed a lawsuit in Kern County Superior Court against the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority in an effort to protect what Garner, Dunn and Mouwad asserted are the company’s groundwater rights within the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin, and to stop the collection of what they characterized as an illegal and unfair groundwater replenishment fee and a tax disguised, they assert, as an “extraction fee.”
According to Garner, Dunn and Mouwad, “The authority’s ‘sustainable’ groundwater management plan is anything but sustainable – it’s a significant new burden on a select few groundwater users that will push many entirely out of operation without any regard to existing water rights.” The lawyers said the groundwater replenishment fee was unprecedented and exorbitant, and was increasing the company’s water costs by 7,000 percent or $6 million per year – pushing Searles Valley Minerals out of business.
Over the five years between 2020 and 2025, in large measure because of the increase in water costs, the number of employees at Searles Valley Minerals dropped from 700 to 545 employees.
According to the company, it is now letting another 300 go.
The company’s president and chief executive officer, Dennis Cruise, said, “This is a painful and deeply personal moment for our employees, their families and our community. We do not want to make these reductions, but we must take responsible action to ensure the long-term viability of the company.”
Equally challenging for the company is collusion between three of its major worldwide competitors – Shandong Haihua Company, Limited, Berun Group, and Tangshan Sanyou Chemical Company Limited – and the communist Chinese government. Shandong, Berun and Tangshan engage in so-called dumping. Dumping is a trading practice which takes place in the context of an international marketplace used to give a company a leg up or several legs up on its competitors that involves a company or country exporting products to a foreign market at a price lower than their domestic price or below the cost of production, with the intention of gaining market share. While dumping itself is a company-level action, it is frequently supported by government-backed subsidies—such as direct cash payments, tax credits, or low-interest loans—which allow the exporting firm to sustain losses while underpricing competitors in the target market. That is what is taking place with regard to Shandong’s, Berun’s and Tangshan’s sale of soda ash and boric acid.
Nirma is being battered to a pulp by the Chinese companies’ strategy of undercutting Searles Valley Minerals’ prices, the company said in a February 4 press release announcing the layoffs. The Chinese companies are selling their product, Nirma said, “at prices that California-based producers cannot reasonably match.”
Moreover the company is being eaten alive by California’s operating restrictions as pertain to the environment and energy purchases, such that energy purchases at present account for nearly half of the facility’s expenses, putting the company at a disadvantage to producers outside of California.
“Ongoing regulatory compliance costs, fees and taxes have further increased the cost of doing business, making it increasingly difficult for soda ash operations in California to remain economically viable,” according to the press release.
The company intends to up its borax mining efforts, it indicated. The U.S. Geological Survey in 2025 added borax to the nation’s list of critical minerals.
The company’s most valuable asset is one it has yet to tap into and which is being held in reserve. An element that is plentiful in Searles Dry Lake is lithium. Lithium is not currently being produced on a commercial scale from Searles Dry Lake for strategic reasons.
Searles Valley Minerals is continuing its mining of borax, soda ash, and salt cake from the dry lake but has at present deprioritized the extraction of lithium and potash due to a combination of economic, logistical, and technical factors.
The company is focusing waiting on harvesting borax, soda ash, and sodium sulfate, using a complex solution mining and evaporation process involving ponds which is optimized for those products. The extraction of lithium, which is present in lesser quantities than borax, soda ash and sodium sulfate, requires a separate, specialized chemical process. Lithium was identified as being present in the dry lake in the 19th century, but extracting it has not historically been economically viable. With the recent, rapid rise in lithium demand and prices, the company is yet waiting from a further escalation in its value before beginning a lithium extraction effort in earnest.
-Mark Gutglueck

By Mark Gutglueck
In a last-ditch effort, San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran stemmed yet further erosion in the erosion of the power and prestige she holds as the 34th municipal leader of the county seat.
Tran, the city’s one-time human resources director who left the city when she had a run-in with her predecessor as mayor and then gave up a lucrative career as a municipal administrator to return as a vanquishing heroine and occupy a position that many thought might prove a major step on her way to eventual occupancy of the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento, has learned just as literally a dozen of what were seemingly upward bound politicians before her came to know: the gavel she wields seems to be cursed.
The power that was once vested in the San Bernardino mayor and what remains of it is of a highly nuanced nature, requiring deliberate, delicate and carefully calibrated maneuvering.
For 111 years, the mayor’s influence was more, or was potentially more, administrative than it was political. Nevertheless, during that era, the post was, if held by a skillful political operator, a powerful political position. Eleven years ago, the mayor’s administrative authority was taken away, necessitating that the mayor’s political instincts and skills needed to be honed to perfection if he or she was to be an effective leader.
The City of San Bernardino came into being, more or less, in 1853 with the Mormon migration to California and the establishment of a settlement – at that time a fort – in San Bernardino. It had two mayors in the early days but when Brigham Young called the Mormon faithful back to Salt Lake City in the winter of 1857/58, civic organization was put on hold until the city officially incorporated in 1869.
San Bernardino had no mayor from 1869 to 1905 because it was incorporated as a town rather than a city during that period, governed by a board of trustees rather than a mayor. The municipality fluctuated between being unincorporated and incorporated as a town or city, formally becoming a city again in 1886 and later, with the adoption of a new charter 1905, returned to a mayoral system. Continue reading →

A controversy has developed over what officials with the Apple Valley Unified School District and the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools’ division of business advisory services has acknowledged was the repeated transfer of substantial amounts of money in what are otherwise the Apple Valley district’s sequestered accounts for funds earmarked for specific purposes.
In a recent opinion piece by a member of the Apple Valley Unified School District’s Board of Trustees, Renee Longshore, published by the Victorville-based Victor Valley Daily Press, note was made that the district in some of its financial documentation provided to her, other members of the board and the public, there was a discrepancy between what shown as deficit spending and decreases in the district’s reserves.
Additionally, in the opinion piece, which appeared in the paper on January 22, Longshore noted that district revenue had grown by 57 percent between fiscal year 2018/19 and 2024/25 but that the district had also seen a 39 percent increase in teacher and pupil support staff salaries and a 45 percent increase in what the district pays for books and supplies. She expressed concern that over the same six year period, the district had sustained a 90 percent increase in the cost of employing supervisors and administrators. Continue reading →

With the February 9 deadline to make a final decision approaching, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for California to use the gerrymandered congressional map Governor Gavin Newsom and his Democrat cohorts were able to get the state’s voters to approve in November which was drafted to result in five of the 12 California Congressional seats now held by Republicans being filled by Democrats following the November 2026 election.
The only change in the state’s electoral map that is likely to impact San Bernardino County consists of the possibility that Republican Congressman Ken Calvert, whose current 41st District in Riverside County was eliminated in a bid by the Democrats to end his political viability entirely, will now challenge 40th District Congresswoman Young Kim, who represents the southwesternmost portion of San Bernardino County.
At present, forty of California’s 52 Congressional seats are held by Democrats. From the outset of the gerrymander effort which began last summer, the Democrats’ intent was to thin the ranks of California’s Republican Congressional delegation even further.
That move required voter approval, which Newsom and the Democratic state legislature obtained by placing an initiative on the ballot in a specially-called election, at a cost of $282.6 million, in November.
A coalition of Republicans challenged the unusual maneuver and the elections outcome, but in a terse, one-sentence order, the justices turned down that request to have the state utilized the electoral map that was drawn in 2021 by a nonpartisan commission using data from the 2020 U.S. Census and which which was used in the last two federal election in California.
The court’s order came two months to the day after the justices, over a dissent by the court’s three Democratic appointees, granted a request from Texas to allow it to use a new map intended to allow Republicans to pick up five additional House seats in that state. Continue reading →

The musicians of the Ontario Chaffey Community Show Band and the Keith Family are proud to present a program entitled “Love Is In The Air” on Monday, February 23, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.
The concert will be held in Gardiner W. Spring Auditorium, located on the campus of Chaffey High School at 1245 N. Euclid Avenue in Ontario.
The Woodwind Celebration Ensemble will present a pre-concert recital in the auditorium lobby at 7:00 p.m. Complimentary coffee and cookies will be served in the lobby prior to the concert. The performance is free to the public.
The February concert will feature many selections related to Valentine’s Day and the spirit of love. The show will be highlighted by special guest artists vocalist Skip Cain and jazz saxophonist and vocalist Jeff Waldon. Show Band soloists will include trumpeters Steve Collins and David Grasmick and a vocal by Show Band Director Pat Arnold.
Skip Cain a becoming a regular with the Chaffey Community Show Band. His vocal repertoire includes songs of joy, romance, and love from yesteryear and today. Skip’s repertoire ranges from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Tom Jones, Lionel Richie, Tony Bennett, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, and Teddy Pendergrass. Skip will perform “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” and the Tom Jones megahit “It’s Not Unusual.” Continue reading →