07 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
The highly anticipated Youth Talent Showcase for the Students of Rialto Unified School District is upon us once again. This event is not only a showcase of Rialtos awesome young talent but a fundraiser for Fine Arts in the District. It also serves as one of the largest collections of the Who’s Who of Rialto. One of this years talent is Sarah Urbieta the Current Youth Chair of the Rialto Community Coalition and an all around awesome young lady. See her preform last year at the Positive Images Conference held at Bob Murphy High School.
12th Annual Puttin’ on the Ritz Fine Arts Gala are now open! This year’s impressive lineup of talented student performers is sure to leave attendees in awe:
2016 Ritz Talent
Owen Knapper, Jr., 6th Grade – Kucera Middle School
Aimee Monge, 5th Grade – Simpson Elementary School
Aubrey Stevenson, 3rd Grade – Fitzgerald Elementary School
Angelica Gonzales, 6th Grade – Rialto Middle School
Jalen Adams, 7th Grade – Kucera Middle School
Chiana Hedgeman, 12th Grade – Eisenhower High School
Kiarissa Ortega, 11th Grade – Eisenhower High School
Luis Vidana, 5th Grade – Casey Elementary School
Alyssa Edwards, 8th Grade – Kolb Middle School
Jocelyn Vega, 10th Grade – Carter High School
Sarah Urbieta, 6th Grade – Kucera Middle School
Casey Ballet Folklorico, 3rd and 4th Grade – Casey Elementary School
Rialto Royalz (Dance Team), 8th Grade – Rialto Middle School
Noted as the largest fine arts, student based Gala in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, the Ritz has raised over $420,000, benefiting RUSD classroom students and teachers. Since the Ritz’ inception, over 300 students have shared their incredible talents on stage with more than 7,000 audience members throughout the event’s lifetime.
This year, we are proud to welcome esteemed guest emcee, Frank Pine, Executive Editor of the Los Angeles News Group (LANG), which encompasses The San Bernardino Sun and Daily Bulletin. We are also excited to welcome back, as co-emcee, the talented and entertaining 96.7 KCAL Rocks Radio Personality, Jimbo.
Tickets can be purchased by contacting Lana Kosh at (909) 820-7700 ext. 2140 or online by clicking the link HERE
26 Mar 2016 1 Comment
The photo above is from the Rialto Knights Twitter account. The picture shows the waiting moments of waiting for the results on their first place finish at Nationals In Anahiem on Sunday. Well a picture is worth a thousand words and this picture tells it all.
Well if the 1st place finish at the USA Spirit State Championships wasn’t enough your Rialto High School Cheer Team has now finished 1st at the USA Spirit Nationals. The Rialto Cheer team division had nine teams for preliminaries on March 19th and three teams for finals on March 20th. Thousand Oaks placed third and Temple City placed second behind your Rialto Knights!!!!!! See the video of the winning cheer Below:
The AWESOME team of girls took over the stage at the Anaheim Convention Center and owned their performance. The Inland Empire was well represented with teams from Fontana, Rialto, Chino Hills and Beaumont all competing for a win on the National Stage. Were super excited to see this team representing not only the Inland Empire but Rialto in a big way. It’s awesome to see that they were sent off by their classmates in the best way possible to get they big win.
22 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
Well after a month between meetings we are back from Washington and ready to get back to the business of spending your money. This agenda is super top heavy with lots of Proclamations and Awards for all types of things. One that stands out to us is:
5 16-180 Proclamation-National Public Safety Telecommunications Week Mayor Deborah Robertson
What are we Proclaiming here? With wait times on the phone being as much as 30 minutes and residents reporting that they have called dispatch only to get a recorded message. Yes we know their job isn’t easy but when do we get off that excuse and ask the Police Department to get dispatch under control?
Vice President Gonzalez said something about the West Valley Water Board agendas that makes sense all over especially in Rialto. Millions of dollars is hidden and spent in the Consent Calendar. As you can see below the three we highlighted below are all things that should be examined individually not all at once hidden is a blanket motion. Here is how we break each one down:
E.6 – Request City Council to Approve Amendment No. 1 to the Exclusive Right to Negotiate Agreement with Fernando Acosta for the Development of Approximately 8 Acres of Property Located at the Northeast Corner of Ayala Drive and Renaissance Parkway.
Fernando Acosta is being given exclusive right to negotiate on the cities behalf on a portion of land that has 3 major owners and one that fell under our scrutiny when Cal Trans was using it as a construction storage facility and was full of blight and graffiti. Why is Fernando being given Exclusive Right to Negotiate? Is it because Ed Scott has majority power on the council right now and he is a donor to Ed Scott’s Campaign? Fernando live in the Flores Park Community but is never seen participating in the community efforts and his businesses only help organizations that are close to the Baca Foundation. Even local schools that are struggling to provide for low income kids cant get Fernando’s support. But were giving him access to what would be a multi million dollar deal?
E.10 – Request City Council to Approve an Increase to the Purchase Orders for Fritz Ford for Vehicle Parts in the Amount of $5,000, for a Total Not to Exceed Amount of $20,000.
Pay close attention to how staff spelled FRITTS FORD. We pay these people a lot of money and they can’t even spell the name of a business right especially a business that is Outside of the city of Rialto and is getting $20,000 of our tax money.
E.12 – Request City Council to Authorize an Increase to the Purchase Order with the Daily Journal for Advertising Services in the amount of $15,000 for a total amount of $30,000 in the 2015-2016 Fiscal Year
This one steams me how much are we paying for a subscription to a legal paper? This paper is just a news site for the legal world. Isn’t this something our well paid city attorney should be signing up for? The city claims it has no money for youth development and enrichment and the mayor is attacking groups like the Rotary and Chamber of Commerce all while wasting $30,000 a year on a digital newspaper subscription?
TAB 5 – Request City Council/Rialto Utility Authority to Approve a Third Amendment to the Agreement with West Valley Water District for Operation and Maintenance of Groundwater Contamination Treatment Systems for the 2015/16 Fiscal Year in the Amount of $68,381.69.
This final item is an TAB item (what the items above should be on) and what makes it stand out is the fact that the current President and Vice President of West Valley Water Board spent months telling us that their Groundwater Contamination Treatment Systems are not functioning properly in an effort to damage former General Manager Butch Ariza’s reputation. So the question is are we paying over $68,000 for treatment systems that are not functioning?
14 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
As you saw in our un-boxing video there are a number of things you can do inside of your home to save water and most of those things came in this water saver kit. In the video below Joel Greene host of Curiosity Quest shows you how to use the things inside this box and why they work.
Now Rialto Water Services claims to have increased customer service and is working to make your experience with them as painless as possible. What is funny is if you spell the name Rialto Water Services right in google you get this:
Rialto Water Services has not registered their new address with Google. Well who cares right its not like were living in a digital age where use google to locate places. Rialto Water Services spends money where it counts, on the pet projects of our elected officials. Go ahead try and get them to donate money to keep kids off drugs or help people without jobs get training that will help them find work. Unless your connected to one of the elected officials you will find ZERO help here.
Now if your having a bad day you might just stumble over the correct search as long as you don’t click Googles correction of your spelling of the name RialtoWaterServices.
So if your looking for Rialto Water its not as easy as they make it seem………..
29 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
Check out the hottest voice to hit the vocal scene this year Jessica Avila introduces the IE to her new song on the Let’s Talk Community radio show.
To see the entire interview click here
22 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
Questions over the Mayors use of public funds for her State of the Woman started with a request from City Treasurer Ed Carrillo to the state and county organizations that are responsible for keeping elected officials from overstepping their authority and keeping them honest. Ed Carrillo (as seen in our prior story) reported Mayor Deborah Robertson for her use of public funds, city resources and staff to put the event together, repair bathrooms and other misuse of funds (Here it from the City Treasurer Below):
As you can see from the City Treasurer he has many concerns. Two years ago when the city succeeded in selling the community on Measure “U” a measure that imposed hire fees on the Gasoline Tank Storage farm in the south end of the freeway. When the city went on their PR push for this measure the city promised these things:
None of these things are happening and we doubt they ever will. What is happening and what was happening as these promises were being made was a raid of Rialto’s general fund and city resources. When was the last time the city came by and covered the cost of repairing your roof? Fixing your plumbing? Redoing your bathrooms? When was the last time the city ever covered the cost of turning on your utilities or even paying the bill?
Mayor Robertson worked very hard to insulate herself from these bad choices by having City Administrator Mike Story say he was the one who authorized the city staff to make repairs on a privately owned building, turn on utilities, pay utility bills and use staff time and resources to set up this event. Special sound and camera equipment were also purchased for this event. City Administrator Mike Story said that the use of the building was donated so the additional costs were appropriate. Normally when you rent a facility the costs are not $20 thousand and your not required to make improvements to the rental property.
To make matters worse is there is a private trust attached to this event and the GENERAL FUND!!!!!! This private trust cost the city of Rialto’s General Fund an additional $10,500 due to improper reporting practices!!!!! So lets do the math…….
10,500 + 20,000 + 9,000= $39,500
As you see from the image above the Mayor Deborah Robertson’s event is only supposed to cost $9,000 not $39,500. You see the Mayor Robertson thinks she is above being questioned. She thinks she is better than the rest of Rialto. So over the last few years we watched our former airport and beautiful fields that used to be filled with wildflowers of all different colors being filled with big ugly warehouses right in the communities back yard. Can you guess where Mayor Robertson is holding her self promotion events now? Inside the very warehouses she pushed on our small community. Mayor Robertson complains that there is nowhere BIG ENOUGH to hold her event. Yet it is unclear if the Mayor has ever looked to use one of the three gyms that at any of the Rialto High Schools or even asked to rent space from Calvary Chapel Rialto, Sunrise Church or Lighthouse for the Blind all who have large newer buildings that would accommodate the Mayors event.
Councilman explains his issues with the money being spent on this event.
Below is a complete record of the tab item where Ed Scott uses his sons death and the Mayor cries to try and cloud the issue with emotion and taking your eyes off of all the money being spent on the mayors private event.
17 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
in and the unincorporated communities of Bloomington and Muscoy, Bad Commerce, Ca, Colton, Crime, Fontana, Grand Terrace, Inland Empire, Public Safety, Rialto, San Bernardino, San Bernardino PD, San Bernardino Police
Photo Credit from http://whatsupic.com/science-tech-usa/1426280017.html
The debate over cyber security has kicked into high gear with the FBI’s lack of access to the I Phone 5 of the San Bernardino Terrorists. I Phone Technology will deleate all the info on a device once the wrong password is entered incorrectly 10 times. So to avoid lossing information that the FBI thinks is vital to understanding the minds of the two terrorists in San Bernardino.
Apple has refused to assist the FBI with accessing the information and the Terrorists turned off the Automatic Updates to the Cloud storage system making the phone even more valuable. Now 2 months later the Federal Goverment has finally obtained a court order that should force Apple to assist in unlocking the phone.
Some seem to think that Apple will refuse to abide by the order citing customer information is private even if it is the phone of two terrorists. So were are you on this issue should Apple open the phone or not?
17 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
in and the unincorporated communities of Bloomington and Muscoy, Assemblymember-Elect Cheryl Brown, Ca, Colton, Crime, Edgar Montes, Fontana, Grand Terrace, Inland Empire, joseph williams, Rialto, San Bernardino, youth
Local schools in the Inland Empire are adopting some dangerous new rules when it comes to students meeting appropriate consequences for actions that dangerous in nature.
All over the Inland Empire schools seem to be rolling over and removing the consequences that help our students develop a sense of right and wrong that is vital to being a healthy adult. If it wasn’t for the chance of a speeding ticket many more people would speed and drive reckless.
Steven Chapman of Highland told us “consequences now help our young people weigh the cost bad choices, learn the lesson now when your young rather than when your older and the consquences are much worse”.
Check back next week when we will cover some of the local school districts implementing these very dangerous new rules.
07 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
Newly elected Rialto mayor Deborah Robertson sits down for an interview at her home in Rialto on Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. Robertson made history this November election with becoming Rialto’s first black mayor. (Rachel Luna / Staff Photographer)
What is the given tag line when T.V. cops are looking to find a criminal act? Follow the money. Well the publicly elected person that oversees the cities finances has called a foul on Mayor Deborah Robertson & City Clerk Barbara McGee. Accusations of gifts of public funds and misuse of city employee’s duties has led Edward Carrillo to file a complaint with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Public Integrity Unit on the actions of the Mayor and City Clerk when it comes to private events that get thousands of public tax dollars to fund them.
If the mayor had your neighbors roof repaired and repaired their bathrooms would that be a proper use of tax dollars? Below is a snap shot of one of many pages to Edward Carrillo’s complaints to the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Public Integrity Unit asking for an investigation into these tactics.
Edward Carrillo says that the money spent over the years on events like those below were a misuse of public resources for their personal gain or benefit. So in a scramble to make these charges null and void the Mayor is trying to get the city council to call her events city events and not just into the future but PRIOR events as well. Mayor Robertson believes that if she can get two of her colleagues to go along she can skirt the investigation by the public integrity unit. What this has done is force the Mayor, City Clerk and other Council Members to try and cover their tracks.
The sad part is Mayor Robertson is lumping these events geared to promote her in a positive light in the community with real city events that are of a community interest.
State of Women Conference – ($9,000)
Run Around the Rocks – ($1,500) **Now we know why the Mayor skipped the Rialto Police Fallen Officer Memorial 5K
Below are a few of the many REAL public events that Mayor Robertson is using as leverage to get her private events approved. What is sad is in the two events above that shows another $10,500 that could be used to highlight Rialto Athletes or Really make a summer series that people want to attend.
Sports Hall of Fame – is a dynamic recognition ceremony that honors athletes that have brought honor and fame to the City of Rialto. The Athletes recognized range from individuals to championship teams.($3,800)
Summer Series – this event is designed to keep children entertained in a safe, affordable, productive environment during the summer months while school is out. There are combo movies/concert series, as well as other events in the parks with a variety of activities, like “Bark in the Park”, “Sounds of Rialto” and Pool Activities covering May through August.($9,000)
The answer is simple:
Roberto told us “its not fair that the people we elect spend more time trying to hurt us rather than help us.
Cindy said in a quote “I voted for Mayor Robertson as did my family and she not only helped put her opponent back on council but she is doing the same things we expected from him (ed scott)”
Speaking of the election when looking for a photo for this story we stumbled on a story that Josh Dulaney did on the win over Ed Scott.
Robertson didn’t hesitate in saying she will bring a different kind of leadership than Vargas, who had a reputation for being swayed by other council members when it came time to vote.
“There’s a difference between Grace and I,” she said. “Grace was there and Grace was led. I’m there and I’m very comfortable with leading.”
Robertson pledges to bring transparency to City Hall, and says the top priorities are jobs, economic development, a healthy community and open space issues.
How is spending public money on non city events transparency? How are you leading if you are not listening to your colleagues?
Email Drobertson@rialtoca.gov and let the mayor know what you expect out of her as Rialto’s Mayor
"The Circle Vison Quest" by Eugene Panis
rialtonow 