ELECTION 2024: County Board of Supervisors
Candidates make the case for leadership
Three of the four candidates for San Bernardino County’s Third District supervisor came together at the Joshua Tree Community Center (JTCC) last Friday, February 9, for a constituent Q&A. The event was organized by the candidates. The JTCC stepped up as host for the forum after the previous host, Landers Homestead Valley Association, canceled due to a leadership shakeup, leaving organizers scrambling to make the forum happen.
Dawn Rowe, the incumbent, joined challengers Graham Smith and Chris Carrillo on the stage. Robert Block could not attend this panel due to a work-related emergency.
Smith and Carrillo both mentioned the county’s response to last year’s brutal winter snowstorm that trapped residents in mountain areas such as Big Bear with little or no assistance as part of their reason for challenging incumbent Rowe.
During a previous candidate panel in Redlands, Block, a resident of Crestline, said he also felt pushed to run due to what he considered the lack of leadership in the storm’s aftermath.
When the voters go to the polls in the March 5 primary election, if none of the four candidates hits the 50% + 1 mark, the top two candidates with the most votes will advance to the November election.
All twenty or so attendees were invited to write their questions anonymously on cards handed out to the audience. The moderators read the questions and kept time for the candidates’ answers at two minutes each.
Things kicked off with each candidate giving a short intro before getting to pitch their positions on everything from housing, homelessness, the distribution of tourist occupancy tax funds, the difficulty of creating small businesses in San Bernardino, regulation of short-term rentals (STRs), and the FP-5 fire tax proposition (reported by The Desert Trumpet here).
Graham Smith opened by touting his experience working in corporate finance and running small businesses, saying his financial skills and the ability to negotiate gave him experience that would be invaluable as a San Bernardino Supervisor with the County’s $10 billion budget.
A Crestline resident, Smith said his community felt abandoned during last winter’s massive snowstorm, but his main focus is the frustration small businesses face when dealing with the county’s bureaucracy.
“All of the friends, neighbors, community members we’ve talked to (and found) doing things that should be easy are really difficult, and sometimes preventing the things no one wants is difficult… It’s very disturbing to me that creating small businesses is so hard in San Bernardino County…. I talk a lot about our friends trying to open a (small) tavern…it’s taken them three years to get permits for a very small business, and they’re still not open.
It’s important to get input from the community about what they actually want, and a big part of my platform is expanding the network of municipal advisory committees to make sure we’re getting feedback from residents. Acknowledging that the rural character is why we live here, we like dark skies. We like quiet neighborhoods; we want to preserve that charm as much as possible. But we also need more coffee shops, we need more little restaurants, that’s also a big part of our community.”
On the question of STR regulation, Smith responded: “I talked to Palm Springs City Council member Lisa Middleton about the regulations they put in place in Palm Springs. We don’t need to copy them, but we can take the best parts that make sense for San Bernardino County and talk to residents to figure out what they want in their particular neighborhoods.”
Smith’s campaign website lists a number of potential solutions he’d like to implement: Limiting the number of permits issued to a single owner to prevent large corporate buys, reinvesting STR revenue back into communities, and implementing sensible caps on the number of permits in a given area.
Dawn Rowe, the incumbent, has been supervisor since 2018. Rowe talked about coming to the Morongo Basin as the wife of a Marine and getting involved with local politics after discovering how expensive and cumbersome the process of subdividing her land in Yucca Valley would be. She was first appointed to the Yucca Valley Planning Commission before going to work for Assembly member Paul Cook. Rowe was appointed to Supervisor James Ramos’s seat when Ramos won a seat in the state assembly, and then Rowe went on to be elected to the seat the following term. Rowe said she does not intend to run again for supervisor after this election.
“Now I’m five years in, I feel like I’ve hit my stride. We’ve done great things. I’m the first Supervisor to come from the desert. I was the swing vote to prohibit large renewable energy projects from taking place in rural living zones….Illegal cannabis didn’t impact [the rest of the county], but I took the passion I have from living in the desert for 20 years and communicated how important it was to the rest of the Board.
“It’s my project, my stated goal, to look at our development code. We don’t have compatible uses within rural living (zones), and that takes an awful lot to undo. We’re going to have to get together and decide where do we want commercial zones? Where do you want industrial zones, if any, and where do you want residential zones?”
Chris Carrillo talked about his years working as an aid for Senator Dianne Feinstein before working as deputy chief of staff for Supervisor Ramos. Ramos, currently a California State Assembly member for District 45, endorsed Carrillo in this election. Carrillo has been on the Board of Directors for the East Valley Water District since 2014.
Carrillo said he wants to bring a new inclusive bipartisan approach to governing, pointing to the recent failures of local government in San Bernardino. Recounting a story that Carrillo called a “defining moment of the campaign,” he said Crestline residents were sighted by a news helicopter writing “Help Us” in huge letters in the snow during the massive storm that cut off several mountain communities for weeks. Carrillo blames their plight on poor response planning by the Board.
Carrillo also took aim at the county for having to hand back $4.4 million in federal funds meant to assist people experiencing homelessness, a lawsuit targeting the county’s foster care system, and the resignation of San Bernardino’s CEO Leonard X. Hernandez after allegations of an inappropriate relationship and multiple staff resignations.
In response to questions about recent battles over development in rural areas of the county, Carrillo said,
“Both the community and developers want the same thing; they want certainty….We all saw a few weeks back (Flamingo 640) get voted down by the county Board. I think the community and the developer would have like to have had the project figured out much earlier. One of the things I’d like to do is take a look at zoning throughout the county. We don’t want those camps at odds with each other going all the way up to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. That doesn’t serve anybody.”
Voting Information
The last day to register to vote is February 20, 2024. The election is March 5, 2024. Register to vote here.
If you are an active registered voter, you should have already received your vote-by-mail ballot.
Check your ballot for poll location if you prefer not to vote by mail.
Vote-by-mail ballots must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by March 12, 2024.
More voter information from the California Secretary of State here.
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