HomeMy WebLinkAboutMcEntire-2026-10-07_Redacted
October 7, 2026
Mayor Helen Tran and Members of the San Bernardino City Council City of San
Bernardino
290 North D Street
San Bernardino, California 92401
Re: San Bernardino is broken - and its residents and animals deserve accountable leadership
Dear Mayor Tran and Members of the City Council:
We purchased our home in San Bernardino in November 1988. I, Modell, was born and raised in El Segundo,
and my wife, Margarita, came to this country from Nicaragua. As a young interracial couple beginning our life
together, we chose San Bernardino because it was affordable, diverse, and seemed to offer a real future for a
working family. Downtown was active. Neighborhood standards mattered. We felt that the City was watching,
maintaining, and investing in the community.
I went on to serve as a school psychologist for four decades. Although I worked in Chino, I made the daily
commute and took all three of our children with me so they could receive the education we believed San
Bernardino's struggling schools could not consistently provide. We did everything a city asks of a family: we
worked, paid taxes, maintained our home, educated our children, helped others, and remained committed to
our community.
Our children became professionals. Our daughter is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.
One of our sons is an aerospace engineer who is completing his master's degree, yet he has been unable to
find suitable work in San Bernardino or even elsewhere in the Inland Empire. Our other son works in
construction and is the only one of our children whose employment is connected to the city. Our story
exposes a painful contradiction: San Bernardino families raise educated, skilled children, but too often those
children must leave the community to build a career.
The loss of Norton Air Force Base helps explain part of that history. Norton was selected for closure in 1988
and closed in 1994, taking approximately 10,000 direct jobs with it. The former base has since been
redeveloped into San Bernardino
International Airport and an aviation, cargo, and logistics center. That redevelopment matters, and the jobs it
created matter. But replacing a job count is not the same as rebuilding a balanced local economy with enough
stable, professional pathways for the children raised here. Too many residents still commute elsewhere
because opportunity at home remains too narrow.
This is not simply a story about the past. It is about what residents see today: worsening homelessness,
neglected properties, inconsistent code enforcement, animals wandering injured through traffic, and
public systems that seem to respond only after a resident reaches an elected official's office. The
cumulative message is that families who follow the rules must keep paying while government accepts
deterioration as normal.
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We will say this plainly: San Bernardino is broken. It is not broken because its residents lack worth or because
its neighborhoods cannot be restored. It is broken because year after year, leadership announces programs,
accepts outside support, makes promises, and then fails to provide the consistent follow-through,
transparency, and enforcement residents are entitled to expect.
The animal crisis makes that failure impossible to ignore.
On September 28, 2026, our daughter found an injured stray dog outside our home after he was nearly struck
by a car. She spent hours trying to reach Animal Services and learned that only one officer was reportedly
being dispatched for the entire city. The San Bernardino shelter was closed and would not accept the dog.
Devore initially refused him as well. Only after she contacted the office of Supervisor Joe Baca Jr. was she able
to secure help. No resident should need political intervention to bring an injured animal to safety.
Lydia of Pooch Match helped our daughter when the public system did not. She and other rescuers have
spent years filling gaps they did not create, using their own time, money, homes, and emotional energy.
They deserve more than praise after a crisis.
They deserve formal partnership, reliable funding, supplies, data access, and a genuine role in policy
decisions.
San Manuel has repeatedly invested in this region. Its support has included millions for housing, health, parks,
public safety, and a City mobile veterinary clinic intended to bring spay and neuter procedures, vaccinations,
and microchipping into the
community. That generosity should produce visible, measurable public benefit. Residents deserve to know:
Where is the mobile veterinary clinic being deployed? How many days each month is it operating? How many
animals has it sterilized, vaccinated, and microchipped? Which neighborhoods are being served? If a
community partner funds a tool designed to prevent shelter overcrowding, the City must show that the tool is
being used fully and effectively.
The same principle applies to homelessness. The construction of new housing and wellness programs, including
projects supported by San Manuel, is important. But San Bernardino cannot depend indefinitely on tribal
generosity, nonprofit sacrifice, or county intervention while City systems remain weak. Partnership is not a
substitute for municipal responsibility.
Code enforcement without follow-through is not enforcement.
Approximately five or six months ago, code enforcement responded in our
neighborhood regarding a property where residents had allowed filthy conditions and a large accumulation of
trash in the backyard. Notices were posted and significant daily penalties were discussed, yet there appeared
to be no sustained follow-up. This is the pattern that destroys public confidence: a visit, a warning, strong
language, and then silence. Residents learn that the consequences may never come. The sanitation and safety
concerns remain unresolved, while neighboring families continue living with the effects.
If the City says it lacks funds, it must first demonstrate that it is consistently using the lawful enforcement and
cost-recovery tools already available. That does not mean
Modell and Margarita McEntire Page 2
exploiting residents or punishing poverty. It means distinguishing hardship from chronic neglect; providing
a fair opportunity to correct violations; documenting compliance; and taking escalating action when
repeat offenders refuse to comply. Collected penalties should be transparently tracked and, where legally
permissible, directed toward prevention, animal services, neighborhood cleanup, and shelter capacity.
The Muscupiabe Neighborhood Association is also no longer as active or visible as it once was. That
decline should concern the City. Healthy neighborhood associations give residents a direct way to report
patterns, organize solutions, and hold
departments accountable. The City should not wait for residents to rebuild these structures alone.
We are asking the Council to take the following actions:
1. Order a public accounting of animal-services resources. Report staffing by shift, unanswered-call
volume, response times, shelter capacity, euthanasia, rescue transfers, and the complete operating
history and schedule of the San
Manuel-funded mobile veterinary clinic.
2. Establish reliable emergency access. Provide a live response or prompt callback for injured-animal calls and
a safe after-hours intake process that does not force residents to drive from shelter to shelter.
3. Create a real code-enforcement follow-up system. Track every notice through correction, hearing,
collection, or court action; publish aggregate outcomes; and require supervisory review when cases
stall.
4. Invest in prevention. Provide recurring low-cost sterilization, vaccination, microchipping, licensing
assistance, pet-retention support, and multilingual outreach in the neighborhoods generating
the highest intake.
5. Fund and formally include local rescuers. Establish transparent grants or service agreements and give
organizations such as Pooch Match a seat at the table when the City develops its animal-welfare plan.
6. Rebuild neighborhood accountability. Assign City liaisons to help revive neighborhood associations,
publish department contacts and case-escalation procedures, and hold recurring community
meetings outside City Hall.
7. Connect development to residents. Report how major projects translate into local hiring, professional
careers, apprenticeships, and pathways for San Bernardino graduates - not merely total job counts or
ribbon-cutting announcements.
8. Provide timelines, not assurances. Place these matters on a public agenda and require responsible
departments to return with named deliverables, funding sources, deadlines, and quarterly progress
reports.
Residents are tired of being told that there is no money while preventable problems grow more expensive.
They are tired of outside partners contributing millions without a clear public accounting of results. They are
tired of calling departments that do not answer, reporting violations that are not followed through, and
watching volunteers shoulder work that government is funded to perform.
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San Bernardino is not disposable. Its animals are not disposable. Its working families are not a revenue source
to be acknowledged only when taxes, fees, or votes are needed. We have invested nearly four decades of our
lives here. We raised three children to become educated, productive adults. Families like ours should be able
to look at this city and see a place worth staying in, working in, and serving - not a place they must leave in
order to find opportunity and basic government competence.
We are asking each of you to stop treating decline as inevitable. Protect the animals who cannot speak.
Support the residents who continue to report problems. Respect the community partners who keep giving. And
prove, through measurable action rather than another promise, that San Bernardino's government is capable
of serving the people who have never stopped believing this city could be better.
Respectfully,
/s/ Modell McEntire
/s/ Margarita McEntire
San Bernardino residents since November 1988
San Bernardino, California 92405
Sources consulted for factual background: City of San Bernardino meeting calendar; U.S. Air Force and San Bernardino County histories of Norton Air
Force Base; San Bernardino International Airport redevelopment reports; City and Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation announcements concerning
the mobile veterinary clinic; and San Bernardino County project reports concerning housing and wellness investments. Personal and family
statements are the author's account.
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