Last Updated on March 25, 2025 by BVN
Overview: The City of San Bernardino faces significant challenges, including high rates of poverty, increasing homelessness, poor air quality, persistent food deserts and a growing aging population. In response, the city needs cohesive and professional leadership to adequately face socio-economic Tradewinds in the future. Instead, the city’s mayor, and some of the other elected and appointed officials, are engaged in political posturing, conflicts, and unprofessional conduct, which has left residents concerned about the city’s resiliency as it looks to the future.
S.E. Williams
In 2020, something historic happened in the City of San Bernardino. Residents of the City of San Bernardino elected an unprecedented total of three Black councilmembers, Damon Alexander, Kimberly Calvin and Ben Reynoso. This was the first time three Blacks served on the council at the same time.
Although Calvin had successfully secured her position to represent the city’s 6th Ward during the primaries in March 2020, subsequent to the elections of Alexander and Reynoso that November, she told one reporter, “Honestly, I believe that people may see themselves on the council more at this point in time.” Many in the community did. But Calvin was also clear-eyed about the challenges facing them as elected officials. “[W]hen Blacks obtain or reap certain positions, we also have more responsibility on us, which means you have to work two to three times harder.”
Those of us in the Black community understand what she meant. It’s always the same whether one is seeking to climb a corporate ladder, leave their mark in the arts and sciences or serve their community as an elected official. The headwinds they often face, including both micro and macro aggressions, are all too often rooted in political sabotage, racist stereotypes, institutional and systemic racism.
Meanwhile, the City of San Bernardino continues to face long-term problems primed to be exacerbated by changes currently underway at the national level. Now, more than ever, the city needs council leadership that is cohesive, focused and professional. Although some on the council are focused on their constituents and doing their best, others are intent on wreaking havoc, lying about their peers, and wasting energy spinning in circles like the whirling dervish (not to insult the dervish who spin for spiritual reasons).
“Things will only improve when the people—all of us— say to authorities, ‘I will hold you responsible.’ We should all be showing up at city council meetings, lighting up every community with activism and mobilization.”
Erin Brockovich
Those spinning among the city’s elected and appointed officials appear more focused on attempting to maliciously malign the credibility of a fellow councilmember on false allegations. They are spinning in circles rather than focusing on proactive solutions to what may lie ahead of for this city and this nation. People across the country are looking to their local officials to prepare for the socio-economic Tradewinds already blowing in our direction.
San Bernardino is extremely vulnerable. Due to high poverty rates, increasing homelessness, the worst air quality as it relates to hazardous particulate matter than anywhere else in the nation, a warehouse industry that continues to explode, lingering food deserts and a burgeoning aging population projected to be the highest in the nation, the city is at risk. All of these vulnerabilities puts the city in the crosshairs for debilitating impacts as more and more programs funded all or in part by the federal government are at risk of being dangerously minimized or eliminated altogether. The city needs leadership that can help guide constituents through these difficult days.
Instead, what voters are getting in this city is useless political dysfunction of the highest order including political posturing and conflicts between and among council members, staff and I must include Mayor Helen Tran. Her hands are less than clean in this ongoing debacle.
In recent months, there’s been continuing allegations of ethical breaches, mis- and disinformation, accusations of corruption, misuse of public funds, censorship, shouting matches in closed door sessions and the list goes on. These actions have produced an endless nightmare of unprofessional conduct.
The residents of this city have endured so much in recent decades, the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, the humbling bankruptcy of 2012, the terrorist attack of 2015, the deadly COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. All of this has left the city vulnerable to the potentially devastating impacts of actions now being considered and/or deployed by reinstalled U.S. President, Donald J. Trump.
The antics of some city leaders, both elected and appointed, have left many residents concerned about the city’s resiliency and ability to weather whatever political storms lie ahead.
As a former resident of the unincorporated community of Hinkley in San Bernardino County, Erin Brockovich once stated as she rallied the unincorporated community of Hinkley to fight back against Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). Collectively, the community fought and ultimately held PG&E accountable for its poisoning of the environment that led to high rates of cancer in their community, “We should all be showing up at city council meetings, lighting up every community with activism and mobilization,” Brockovich declared at the time.
Today, there continues to be a slow growing, metaphorical cancer disrupting leadership and impeding progress in the City of San Bernardino. Residents no longer have the luxury of only showing up to council meetings once an issue has spiraled out of control. Local citizens must be constantly vigilant and demand the council always be transparent. One way to help ensure this happens is to demand the mayor and council be accountable to residents at every meeting. This is more important now than ever before.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I’m keeping it real.
