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This is the second half of a package comparing San Bernardino's highest and lowest earning Census tracts.

Andrew Edwards
Staff Writer

SAN BERNARDINO - The city's downtown core includes some of its most challenged streets, though there are many signs hearkening to a better time.

Downtown houses - some Victorians, others with craftsman-style features - burst with personality when compared to the beige stucco boxes of more recent vintage. The old Harris, Woolworth's and Andreson buildings along E Street serve as silent testament to what is now faded glory.

On a map, the city's poorest census tract resembles the state of Utah. The 215 Freeway is the western limit. Second Street is the southern boundary east of E Street, where the line turns south to Rialto Avenue. Arrowhead Avenue and Seventh Street are respectively the eastern and northern limits.

Inside, at least for the time being, live people like Lena Gonzales, a 26-year-old mother of five who is currently living with her sister in a place a stone's throw from the Salvation Army on Fifth Street.

"All I have is $400 left," Gonzales said. "I've been looking for a place to stay and there's nothing; no place that I can afford."

Gonzales said she and her children have been effectively homeless for nearly a year. She said she'll lose her place to stay on Tuesday and admitted that her job prospects are hampered by a lack of schooling and a record that includes "paraphernalia and stuff."

"So I didn't lose my kids, I tried to clean my act and it's hard," Gonzales explained.

Many of the downtown homes northwest of City Hall and other monuments to state and local government have been converted into rental units. Nobody shops at E Street's trio of historic commercial buildings, although California Theatre on Fourth Street provides at least one bright spot.

The decline of downtown and other San Bernardino neighborhoods is often blamed on economic shocks like the closure of Norton Air Force Base and the relocation of Santa Fe Railway's repair shops from the Westside to Kansas.

Another resident, who identified himself only as "Nephew," said that though he didn't have a criminal record, past convictions are a huge obstacle for many of his neighbors looking for work.

"Stop looking at people's criminal background checks and give them a chance at getting a job," he said.

Nephew said he is the father of a 5-year-old girl and has a son on the way. He is currently unemployed and said he wants off public assistance. The man also wants city Code Enforcement officers to step up their presence here.

"Get on the landlords," he said. "We're sitting here cold."

Downtown is also home to Keryss Jones, 19. Jones said she feels safe living on Spruce Street, next to the freeway, but has been looking for work since her 18th birthday.

There's more to life downtown than just economic hardship. The San Bernardino City Unified School District in 2006 opened Juanita Blakely Jones Elementary School in a downtown spot that locals once called "Devil's Playground."

Cassandra Speed, 30, and Joseph Brown, 37, who were at their mother's F Street home across the street from the campus, said the school's presence - and police - have improved the area to the point where their mother can park her car on the street.

"It's a nice community out here," Brown said. "People watch each other's backs."

This is the first half of a package comparing San Bernardino's highest and lowest earning census tracts.

Andrew Edwards
Staff Writer

SAN BERNARDINO - On a crisp Wednesday afternoon, Verdemont Heights provided one of the city's best vantage points to see a snow-capped peak in the San Gabriel Mountains.

"It's always nice looking out of our window and having a picturesque view," Verdemont resident Darryl Duplissis said during a break from putting up Christmas lights while his baby daughter and a four-month old puppy named Chase kept him company.

Duplissis, whose wife is a teacher, works at the Costco wholesale store on Hospitality Lane. The couple have three children and the family moved to Verdemont from Redlands about a year and a half ago. They paid $327,000 for the house.

For much of the decade, Verdemont's new homes attracted middle- and upper middle-class families to San Bernardino.

That trend made the area northeast of Kendall Drive and Palm Avenue the city's wealthiest census tract in 2000. Devore, which is unincorporated, is on the other side of the tract's northern limits and the chaparral country rising toward the San Bernardino Mountains is to the east.

"It was brand new housing," said Thomas Arredondo, an analyst for Electronic Arts, a video game company. "We used to live in Ontario. We heard about the brand new housing, and we moved."

Verdemont, like other Inland Empire neighborhoods, has not been immune to the falling home values of the past few years. But Duplissis expects the area to eventually resume its growth.

"It will be nice as it starts to fill out a little bit," Duplissis said. "We wanted to stay in Redlands, but we wanted to get the most for our money."

The city's second-highest median income - $58,924 - is located next door and includes the neighborhoods on the other side of Palm Avenue.

The overall Verdemont area grew rapidly after the 2000 Census. By March of 2006, Upland-based GFR Enterprises had developed and sold 230 homes there.

An executive with the firm said sales of the homes were extremely brisk and the company once touted plans to build $1 million homes in Verdemont. Thus far, those homes have not been built.

Home values in Verdemont and other northern San Bernardino neighborhoods in the 92407 ZIP Code dropped 13.3-percent in October when compared to the same month in 2008.

The median home price within the ZIP Code, according to DataQuick Information Systems, was $148,000.

But even in the midst of the slowdown, there is still interest in building new homes in the Verdemont area.

Santa Monica-based developer Eric Borstein is seeking approval for a 43-home development there, but those plans are stuck in the midst of a controversy over a retaining wall.

Several current Verdemont residents are opposed to the wall, which could be as high as 22 feet, and the City Council on Dec. 21 is set to resume consideration of a resident's attempt to stop the wall's construction.

Whatever the council's decision, the issue shows that not only is there someone still willing to build in Verdemont, residents remain invested enough in their neighborhood to fight over it.

If you like videos of large machines breaking stuff, this will clip may be more entertaining than the new "Transformers" movie.

Video:

The City Council has signed off on a San Bernardino Economic Development Agency plan to redevelop the area, which could one day be rebuilt with senior housing and single-family homes.

Here's an article about a letter that 1st Ward Councilwoman Esther Estrada wrote to assist an Inland Empire teen accused of several felonies for his alleged role in an April 2008 robbery spree.

Estrada maintains in her letter that the youth was not a hardcore case, just a young man who happened to get mixed up with the wrong guys and had no intention to commit the alleged crimes, which include attempted murder. Estrada did not ask for the charges to be dropped but did request that the teen be tried in juvenile court instead of adult court.

The letter did not sway prosecutors, and the teen faces trial as an adult in West Valley Superior Court.

If one assumes that the teen was indeed caught up in the crimes of others, the case raises an interesting question. Should prosecutors use the full power of the law to punish those who are not hardcore gangsters - but noneetheless become involved in gang-related offenses - or temper their prosecutions to favor rehabilitation. At first glance, the answer seems to hinge on whether deterrence or mercy is a better guide for crime prevention.

I waited to post this until 5 p.m. in order to give Estrada more time to comment on her letter. I've left multiple phone messages since the past week but have so far not been able to speak directly with the councilwoman.

The story, longer than the version headed for the print edition, follows the jump.

Here's some additional thoughts from City Attorney James F. Penman in relation to "Turning Point," a retrospective on the Mynisha Crenshaw murder that was published in Sunday's edition of The Sun.

Penman and Mayor Pat Morris were competing against each other in the 200-06 mayoral campaign. When Mynisha, 11, was killed in a gang shooting. The crime highlighted the issue of crime in that campaign.

Here is a follow-up on Penman's thoughts concerning how the shooting affected San Bernardino politics and policy:

City Attorney James F. Penman says the Nov. 2005 murder of 11-year-old Mynisha Crenshaw highlighted San Bernardino's crime problem, but only for a while.

"It had a short-term effect. It resulted in, first of all, there was a real spotlight on policing in San Bernardino by the press," he said.

Aside from affecting the mayoral campaign between himself and eventual winner Pat Morris, Penman said the short-term impacts of the shooting were a change in leadership in the Police Department and an influx of San Bernardino County Sheriff's deputies and California Highway Patrol officers who were assigned to assist patrol efforts in San Bernardino.

"That concentration of officers drove the crime rate back down," Penman said.

But Penman - who said San Bernardino needs 100 more cops - believes that city officials are now not doing enough to fight crime. He is concerned that City Hall has not been aggressive enough to eliminate illegal parolee housing.

Although the Measure Z sales tax has given city officials a tool to promise 40 new police officers over the 2006 force strength by June 30, 2009, Penman is not satisfied. He points to a recent ranking of San Bernardino as the 36th most dangerous city in the U.S. - actually an improvement over 2005, when the city was in 18th place - as evidence that San Bernardino has not done enough to improve safety.

"It's great to laud and say the chief is trying and really working hard, I think he is. We have some of the best police officers in the country, there are just not enough of them," Penman said.

Sunday's edition of The Sun featured an extensive retrospective of the events that followed the Nov. 2005 shooting death of 11-year-old Mynisha Crenshaw. This posting is a reprint of the small companion piece that focused on Mayor Pat Morris' thoughts on how the shooting affected San Bernardino.

Here is Morris' perspective:

A subsequent blog-only posting will provide a similar treatment to City Attorney James F. Penman's views. Penman was Morris' opponent in the 2005-06 mayoral campaign.

Mayor Pat Morris was still a candidate and a Superior Court judge when Mynisha Crenshaw was slain.

"That tragedy really did document or highlight the tragedy of juvenile violence in our city," Morris said.

"She was the epitome of innocence," he went on. "She wasn't a gang member. She wasn't involved in any of the gang sets in our city."

The child's death led to Morris and his opponent, City Attorney James F. Penman, to focus on crime during the last months of the 2005-06 mayoral campaign.

Crime remains a central issue in San Bernardino politics.

Voices like Morris' contend that a reinforced Police Department assigned to patrolling streets and solving crimes also needs a robust offering of youth services that can help steer young people away from drugs and gangs before they wind up as a suspect or a victim.

Penman and others reply that although social services may reap long-term benefits, San Bernardino still faces an immediate need to invest more resources into fighting crime.

Policy debates aside, Morris said San Bernardino still has a lot of work to do before the city can escape its reputation as a place of violence.

"We still have a long ways to go before we can brag about the day when we have no children gunned down," the mayor said.

Terri Williams, an official for the San Bernardino County Department of Environmental Health Services, said county officials are working on the bedbug problem at The Meridians.

The Meridians are a cluster of apartments in Westside San Bernardino near the crossing of Foothill Boulevard and Meridian Avenue. Many of the apartments have been foreclosed upon and are boarded up, but tenants at the buildings that are still in operation have complained of a recent infestation of bedbugs.

"Our role in this doesn't go away until we're 100 percent free of bedbugs," said Williams, who oversees her department's vector control operations.

County staffers investigated the apartments Monday, she said.

Williams said the blood-sucking insects are not a threat to spread disease ("We don't want to create a panic," she said) but she also doesn't want tenants to immediately move to new apartments. There's also concern that someone moving could carry the bugs to another location.

The county has sent notices of violation to landlords. She could not immediately recall those landlords' named during a telephone interview today.

Tuesday, landlord Gilbert Badillo Sr. said he was aware of the problem and was working to exterminate the bedbugs, but expressed frustration that some tenants refused to allow exterminators into their apartments. He maintained that such recalcitrant tenants effectively gave the bugs a safe haven to breed and return to units that have been visited by exterminators.

Tuesday, several residents told me that they had serious problems with bedbugs. Tenants pointed to scars showing where they have been bitten by the insects.

San Bernardino Economic Development Agency officials want to purchase the Meridians. EDA staffers want to demolish the buildings to make way for new construction. City officials have said the apartments are a focal point for crime.

By Andrew Edwards
Staff Writer
SAN BERNARDINO -- At a time when economic development officials are trying take a more assertive approach to housing issues in the city, tenants at a cluster of Westside apartments are anxiously waiting to find out what's in store for their futures.

The Meridians -- a set of 18 distressed four-plexes near the San Bernardino-Rialto boundary - are but part of the San Bernardino Economic Development Agency's housing-related work. EDA officials want to have the apartments razed to make room for new development, and those who live there have yet to learn when they will have to leave.

California law requires the EDA to compensate tenants who are displaced by redevelopment work. Meridians residents who were willing to be interviewed Tuesday say they're not averse to leaving apartments that they say have become infested with blood-sucking insects.

"Who wants to live around this?" resident Carl Williams said while standing in an alley littered with garbage. "Take a look at this trash. This filth."

Williams and others said they want to move out. But they're waiting for EDA officials to do the necessary work to purchase their apartments and provide relocation dollars.

"I'd consider it a great thing," Williams said.

Many people at the Meridians -- colloquially named for the apartments' location on Meridian Avenue north of Foothill Boulevard -- didn't want to speak for the record Tuesday. However, several said that are dealing with substandard maintenance and an infestation of fierce bedbugs.

"If you smash them, you would not believe how much blood is in them," resident Tasha Bailey said. She and others at the complex pointed out irritations on their bodies that they said were inflicted by ravenous bugs.

Landlord Gilbert Badillo Sr. of Anaheim said by telephone Tuesday that he's aware of the bedbug problem and has hired an exterminator to spray for the insects. He said the infestation hasn't stopped because some tenants have not opened their doors to the exterminator, thus allowing bedbugs to survive in some units if killed in others.

Badillo said he owns one of the four-plexes himself and two others with a partner. He said he has difficulty keeping up with repairs because unruly tenants break windows and deface walls while others fail to pay their rents, which range from $750 to $800.

He's open to selling his properties -- many other four-plexes in the Meridians have been foreclosed upon and are boarded up -- but said he has yet to hear from the EDA.
"I'd like to see the city purchase the property and develop it into something that's a little better for the community," he said.

On Oct. 6, the City Council -- acting as the Community Development Commission -- approved a contract with Santa Ana-based Community Property Specialists Inc. to work on the acquisition of the Meridians and follow-up work to help tenants move and to demolish the stucco-covered four-plexes.

EDA officials expect the Meridians to be torn down within the 2009-10 budget year. Redeveloping the apartments is expected to cost more than $6.4 million.

The EDA's interest in San Bernardino housing issues extends beyond the Meridians. On Oct. 20, the council adopted an "Integrated Housing Strategy" intended to address broader issues.
The strategy includes plans for annual notices of funding for housing projects. The EDA has up to $6 million allocated for the current budget year to finance construction of 40 to 80 senior housing units and the purchase and rehabilitation more than 40 rental units.

Other aspects of the strategy include assistance to homeowners and homebuyers, using the judicial process to place properties that have persistent code violations into receivership and using $8.4 million in federal dollars to buy and rehab foreclosed homes.

We promised you we'd follow up what we've dubbed "ClubGate" here at SBNOW, the widening circle of political officials who appear to have unlawfully accepted and used gifted "honorary" memberships to the Arrowhead Country Club.

The number of familiar names submitted in complaints to the FPPC now stands at 10, and the number of local offiicials admitting to accepting and using the free memberships is currently three.

City Attorney Jim Penman, former mayor Judith Valles and City Manager Fred Wilson all admit they accepted free memberships to the golf and country club beginning in the late 1990s. The law is that they can't accept gifts at a value of greater than $390, a number that was lower in the late 1990s. The membership costs appear to begin at more than $2,000 annually.

Click below for the full story:

On Tuesday, this reporter attended plaintive funeral services for 22-year-old Deivon McGee, a local man who became the city's 49th homicide when he was gunned down outside a taco stand on Oct. 20.

The service was in many ways similar to others I've attended over the last two years marking the end of the lives of young men and boys killed in senseless street violence. Kids wore shirts with McGee's visage printed on them. Pastors abhorred the scourge of gun violence. Loved ones wept, sometimes while swaying to religious hymns.

Below, loved ones gripped in anguish/photo by Gabriel Acosta

Political figures also turned out, in this case 6th Ward councilman Rikke Van Johnson and 5th Ward candidate Carolyn Tillman, to pay their respects to a slain resident.

One theme Tuesday was choice. Clergy urged those in the audience, many the young men and boys whose lives disproportionately wind up wasted by violence and prison, to take Jesus Christ into their lives and make the right decisions.

But while they did, the material reality was evident just beyond the church walls: The disinvested community, the under-performing schools, the paucity of job opportunities, even the decades-long infrastructural legacy of freeways that steer traffic away.

A sad story, for everyone.

Read the full story, with more pics, by clicking below ...

Here is another little pearl that didn't make Wednesday's paper. Read a brief vignette on Linda Johnson, a local mother whose religious faith and personal compassion drive her to volunteer to help those victimized by the fires.

SAN BERNARDINO - Amidst the hazy chaos of major wildfires, Linda Johnson was a study in grace.

Whether smoothing mustard and mayonnaise on slices of white bread or speaking calm directions to other volunteers, the mother of three was unflappable under pressure.

Here is Johnson, center, helping prepare sandwiches for National Orange Show evacuees/photo by Jeff Malet:

“Helping people in need is just a lifelong thing for me,” said Johnson, hands clad in plastic gloves, while taking a brief respite from helping prep lunch for 2,000 ...

This story, about a remarkable woman and her plight, didn't make the cut in today's paper. But you can read here about Scarlett Heston, a NOS center fire evacuee.

SAN BERNARDINO - She’s read all the media reports and made her rounds of calls.

“There’s fire on all points all around our place,” said Scarlett Heston, a 37-year-old mother of two.

Below is a picture of Heston, center, with her two teenaged children at the NOS center on Wednesday/photo by Jeff Malet:

Heston knows the perils of fire, because she’s felt it before. This is the second time she’s had to flee the flames with her young ones and land at the National Orange Show for assistance. Heston went through the harrowing drill during the Old Fire of 2003, which ended with the relief that her house was spared.

The Red Cross evacuation center at the National Orange Show is a vital resource for thousands of people diplaced by fire. They get shelter, food, and sundry other types of assistance there.

Here is a hazy scene of some kids at the evac center, photo taken by Jeff Malet:

But the center is not perfect, and for a harrowing few hours Wednesday, it looked like there may have been serious problems.

For a day and a half leading up to mid-day Wednesday, the Red Cross organizers of the event were helpful enough in providing access to media to the facilities. They strictly imposed a no camera rule on the inside of the Dumas and Dome buildings, where evacuees were bunking, on grounds that the center had become their de facto "residence."

Understandable. Weary, homeless people should have a respite from cameras in their face.

But they always allowed reporters in to look around, although they also imposed a strict "no comment" policy to all questions, referring queries to an off-site spokesperson.

That abruptly halted Wednesday, with questions swirling about a 36-year-old man collapsing at the center Tuesday night and later dying (cause is still unknown). At the same time, emergency personnel had moments before rushed at least three people away, witnesses said due to respiratory attacks.

At that point, when there were serious questions as to what was going on in the evacuation center from which people had just been rushed by emergency personnel, the place went on media lockdown.

Staff at the door suddently barred entry to this reporter (and others), imposing a total no media policy inside. I argued vehemently that I should be allowed in for the sake of public transparency, to objectively see just what the conditions inside were like for these men, women and children.

I was rebuffed, angrily, by two separate Red Cross officials guarding the entryway.

More than one hour later I was able to track down center manager Micki Hall, who kindly answered some questions and took me on a guided tour of the facility, which had clearly calmed after what witnesses said was growing restiveness triggered by hot temperatures and poor air quality inside.

A Red Cross spokeswoman told me later, by telephone, that denying reporters access to evacuation areas is not typically condoned and suggested a misunderstanding may have occurred on the grounds.

Below is the story in today's Sun.

We at The Sun have provided extensive coverage of the deadly Saturday night drive-by in the Westside that killed 22-year-old Deivon McGee and wounded three children.

The brazen drive-by - surveillance video footage from a nearby liquor store recorded nine rapid-fire gunshots - was just the latest burst of violence in a Westside community riven by gang violence.

At least three children have been killed by gunfire in this area since last year.

But what should be underscored here is more than the ugly numbers. This reporter can say unequivocally - for I have walked all over these streets and written a slew of dispatches from them - that this is a community under siege.

By that we mean that violence, poverty, fear and disillusionment are so pervasive here that all conceptions of normalcy - of freedom from this savage urban confluence - is nearly inescapable.

This is an especially grave circumstance for the youths growing up in this environment. When violence and death is an external fact of life, a destructive cycle of thought and perception is often internalized at a young age.

Better off letting the people speak for themselves. Below is a video clip I shot on Monday with a group of neighborhood kids milling around the sidewalk bloodstains marking where McGee was slain two nights before.

Listen to this child, who can't be more than 13 years old, talk with cool cynicism about life in his world:

Ok, it's a break from the bruising politics we all swarm to here at SBNOW, but it's just as fast-paced and rough.

Classic, 1970's-style Roller Derby, with those unforgiving banked oval tracks and snarling skate-warriors, is returning to the National Orange Show Events Center after a 12-year hiatus.

This reporter took a timid walk into the Citrus Arena Thursday night to peek in on a mixed Los Angeles Firebirds practice session and public skate practice. Anybody can come skate on this track seven days a week and get pointers.

The first Roller Derby game since 1995 is slated to roll at 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 20. Another game will be played same time, Saturday, Oct. 27, both in the Citrus building at the NOS Center.

We'll have a story about this return of Jimmy Carter-era culture in Saturday's Sun.

For now, Click below for some more info, pics and video clips of the scary fun.

The bank-track, an oval, masonite track that clacks with energy when the skates scream around it. Watch for yourself:

In today's Sun, we report the interesting - and inspiring - tale of five local teachers who are striving for a dream that historically has proved nearly impossible: Acquiring a charter from the city of San Bernardino School District.

What makes it doubly interesting is that they've partnered with Operation Phoenix, Mayor Pat Morris and a local church in an effort to make the dream reality. The SOAR Charter Academy, as the prospective school is called, has a proposal set for review by the school board on Nov. 20. The roughly 40 page document touts the school as a progressive learning environment with emphases on reading, writing, community service learning and character development.

Below is a picture of the bold teachers. Below that is the full story.
Clockwise from bottom left: Renee Nunez, Susie Dryden, Tammi Fort, Trisha Lancaster and Kristin Kraus.