Mayor Rigsby Wants Business to Thrive

Overcoming roadblocks to doing business and a brief update on what's going on in the city were the topics of discussion when Loma Linda Mayor Rhodes "Dusty" Rigsby headlined the free public Breakfast with the Mayor event hosted by the Loma Linda Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, March 4. The Chamber of Commerce is the best option for local businesses to utilize for working in the city, said Rigsby, helping business owners navigate some government regulations. "I don't think cities are very good at dealing with businesses, other than getting out of their way," Rigsby said, to applause. "Governments always restrict and they very seldom make things easier, and that's one of the reasons why I say the Chamber is a good clearinghouse for discontent with what the city's doing." Led by Operations Manager Stephanie Mahé and chaired by Scott Stockdale, the Chamber of Commerce is a group of volunteers working to help businesses thrive. "What Dusty has brought up about the chamber being an earpiece for businesses approaching the city, that’s the direction that we’re working on going: to become more valuable to our members and a conduit to be able to solve some of (those problems)," Stockdale said, adding that all Chamber leadership are approachable. Mayor Rigsby also briefly discussed business signage in the city, asking for feedback on whether city signage regulations were too strict. "Our signage rules may be too tough and I’m supportive of modifying them so that businesses can succeed," said Rigsby. He also said he wanted Loma Linda to be a city where residents can easily locate its businesses. "Businesses need people to know that they're there, and signage is inexpensive advertising," Rigsby said, adding that government language in the business licensing process needs to be made more clear and easy to understand. Rigsby also talked about the possibility of water regulations in the wake of the current statewide drought and said if the city is moved from its current Stage II alert to a Stage III alert then water regulation and restrictions could be a reality in the city. Rigsby said improvements to the I-10/Anderson interchange were still ongoing and that the Loma Linda University Medical Center is gearing up to construct a new building by 2020 that is up to earthquake hazard regulations. In the meantime, patient parking, which will be taken up by the new medical center building, will need to be moved to the Emergency Department area. The breakfast meeting was attended by several business owners, Chamber board members and city leaders. [END] Transcript: 1. The city and the state are in what's called a Stage II Water Alert. I don't know exact terminology, but it basically says that there are various behaviors that are considered to be a waste of water, and the city's not doing anything to enforce water restrictions... yet. But the time may come very quickly; if we go two more years with no water, no snow packed in the Sierra, then we're going to be in trouble. People talk about how they don't want restrictions of any sort, and it's going to get to the point where all the lawns are dead and people have smelly armpits. It's going to get really radical if the water doesn't start falling from the sky. Currently what we have is a political environment where a lot of people believe water will never run out. We've got a huge, deep acquifer in SB, we don't know how deep it is. I asked the experts.... Under the east side of San Bernardino, and highland to loma linda and up to Cal State there's this massive underwater lake, and the ground underneath us is very sandy so there's a lot of room for water underneath the sand and that thing has about 200 wells dipping down into it. It's at least 200 wells. Riverside sucks water out of it, bc they have water rights 130-140 years ago, all the cities around here suck water out of it and it's going down, down, down. We just recently, the city of Loma Linda, had to extend the length of our straw that we stuck down into the water because you know, it started making that gurgling sound because we weren't in the water table anymore so it becomes more and more expensive to pump the water, the farther down it goes, because you have to pump the water up. And most of the cost of your water bill goes to Southern California Edison for electricity to pump water. WHat we're doing now is very little. A stage II alert gives us the option to put fines on various behaviors, like: washing your car and leaving the faucet running the whole time; watering your lawn in the daytime instead of at night when there's less evaporation. There's various things that we declare to be a waste of water and I think we're sending it out with the water bill. When it gets to Stage III that's when the problem.... (cut off) ? Have they not drilled any wells to see how deep this is? A: No, nobody has actually tested it and the problem is, where do you drill it? Because the SB valley, the bedrock, is down there somewhere. nobody knows exactly where it is. The entire valley is covered with a soil called San Timeteo formation, and it's a mixture of clay and sand and agregate and it's mostly stuff that's washed down from the mountains. Like the stuff you find in a lakebed... Probably have to dig dozens of wells to get a feel for the typography of the area but there's no point in doing that because it's never been a problem. If you look at the water supply over the years, it goes up and down, and there's actually more of a problem when the water's too high, because, historically, SB was a.... the area where teh 10 and 215 cross over was a swamp, it was a natural spring of water coming up because water would flow off the mountains into the aquifer and it was downsloping and there was this wall of clay at the point of the SJ point that prevents the water from flowing down under and into Los Angeles... 2. SB always had this little oasis there and that's why it drew people to it before there was much European habitation. Economy starting to pick up and more $ coming into LL. Do you have a ? set up to help with that, to help the businesses to be more prosperous? A: We do have a team that deals with businesses, it's called the chamber. I don't think cities are very good at dealing with businesses, other than getting out of their way. Governments always restrict and they very seldom make things easier, and that's one of the reasons why I say the Chamber is a good clearinghouse for discontent with what the city's doing. You know, we don't have a city government that's full of people who believe government should step on you. We believe government should leave you alone where it needs to. We need to have a nice town, we need to have some standards, but businesses need to exist. There are lots of towns where... like sacramento. I want to get some gas. YOu can't tell where the gas stations are, they bury the freeway under the ground... you can't tell what's going on.... and I think that's pathetic. Businesses need people to know that they're there, and signage is inexpensive advertising and there are lots of cities that don't do the signs and we have sign ordinance and I'd like to know: does the business community think it's too strict? Resident: I haven’t heard of anything we could do. I’ve heard, we can’t do this, we can’t do that. Mayor: That’s the point of this, that’s why government shouldn’t be in that position. That’s why we need changes in Congress because the Chamber is their… few chambers get the reputation for blocking businesses because it’s the old businesses that team up against the new ones. Our chamber is very helpful with what they do. Re: permits and starting businesses: This is the part where cities and governments can be unhelpful and you’re exactly right, that’s the kind of stuff that needs to be…. There needs to be some kind of a pathway spelled out because government has weird language. Remember, every profession is a conspiracy against the ordinary population, and they do that by coming up with an obscure language that nobody understands except the members of the club, right? And gvnt does the same thing and we need to stop doing that because, you know, what’s the purpose of government other than to provide a service to the people? *CC and LL – fire departments, coalescing our FDs and bringing everything together. 3. I-10/Anderson: Any plans, discussion for 1-10 and Mt. View? Answer: Yes, but it’s probably out of 100 different projects that SANBAG has prioritized, it’s about 96 so it’s not going to happen in our lifetime. Measure I passed: ½ cent sales tax (booster) all that money goes to transportation projects but projects are only 20, 30, 40% funded by Measure I. The rest has to be matching funds from locals and from the Feds and the state. That one at Tippecanoe, total project is over $70 mil. Our local match is $4 mil. And SB pays $4 mil. And SB airport pays $4 and the rest is federal and state funding. So what they do is they figure all the projects that need to happen and then they do a Nexxus survey: what’s the service it needs to provide and what’s the service it does provide? And they prioritize that way. Anderson interchange: trying to avoid conflict. Traffic flows better if you don’t have a conflict going in opposite directions, so one of those conflicts is turning left in front of opposing traffic. That project eliminates those left turns in front of traffic except for the one on our side. We were unfortunate enough to have Eisenhower’s freeway just a short distance from Redlands Blvd. If it were a little bit farther north, and we had room for those clover leaves, we could get our side of the intersection fixed better. You can’t get clover leaf in that space and we’re stuck with those conflicting left turns in front of us. (Anderson street – lights aren’t green long enough, because half of our green is sucked up by Costco people going to Redlands). The only way it helps us is it creates 2 left-turn lanes instead of one, so theoretically, they would clear that cube of cars 2x as fast, but you know, that’s modeling by traffic engineers… Rain, where do we go to get sand bags? Mayor: If you need sand bags they’re available at the city yard (post office). City provides materials for sand bags. Special places in LL so people know where to go? The big plans: The University has proposed putting up some big signs, big posts and signs with banners across the top. I don’t know what the current stage of that, I think they were just floating the idea, I don’t think they came up with any concrete plans. LL: long waits in emergency room. FED don’t help that. Anti dumping law, you can’t dump uninsured patients on county hospitals, you have to take them as they come, so they passed all of these laws that say if your ER is full and you have 26 hour wait, you’re not legally allowed to tell anybody that they have options. 4. … leaving in ignorant state is better than possibility that you might selectively tell the uninsured ones that they have to go somewhere else. So what you have to do is put a sign up more than 300 ft away from ER that says ER is really full, so I’d like to see those signs say: wait at LLUMC is ___ hours and wait at… is ___ hours. Tertiary Medical Centers have every capability… LL some things we don’t do (lung transplants), so there’s always something a place doesn’t do and that’s why health care has… triage. So whenever you go to any health care facility they triage you first to find out what they can do to help you. … Worth a chance to go to UC if you have something that’s not terribly life threatening. If you’re not a physician or a nurse you don’t know if it’s life-threatening or not and you have to count on the people at UC to triage you. When will parking structure begin on Anderson/Barton: supposed start next month. $1.2 billion complex –LLUMC, current structure is not rated high enough for really severe earthquakes. They’ve tried to fix it by bolstering the columns and things like that, wrapping extra things around the columns but it didn’t meet the standards and by 2020 the hospital has to meet the standards or shut down, so the medical center is planning to spend $1.2 billion upgrading the campus and the old part will become a nursing home or an urgent care. What they have to do in prep for that, new hospital is going into the patient parking lot, they have to build parking structures on the other part of the hospital next to the Emergency Dept. to accommodate patient parking so that they can shut down the parking lot and start building the new hospital, but in addition to that one, they’re planning, very shortly, probably this summer, if we approve it… to build a huge parking structure in the parking lot at the back of the medical office and they’re planning to have a walk-bridge over Barton Rd. so you can connect the two. Within the next couple years both of those will be up. Provide funding for Chamber assistant? The chamber is special to the city and we intend to work with them to allow them to exist and thrive. The chamber serves and important function and we’d hate to do without it. All of you can help that by patronizing the farmer’s market on Tuesday nights and help out with event volunteerism and come to the signature events. 5. It helps the citizens to speak to their elected but the chamber needs some support to. Marketing for businesses? HR Block seasonal business. City rigid for business. Try to get signs out. There are rules about temporary signs and that’s the kind of thing where I encourage the chamber to talk to the citizens and the business community about our signage rules. Our signage rules may be too tough and I’m supportive of modifying them so that businesses can succeed. Now we’ve loosened the restrictions or let people know of the looser restrictions on real estate signs on weekends. Open houses and things like that… but I don’t know about seasonal businesses. I know weekend businesses we have some allowances so talk to the chamber and I encourage the chamber to lobby in the city. We’re easy to lobby… With the chamber: where do you start, where do you go? Come into the office. Chamber office. (someone else) Scott Stockdale: I want to say that what Dusty has brought up about the chamber being an earpiece for businesses approaching the city, that’s the direction that we’re working on going to become more valuable to our members and a conduit to be able to solve some of the problems that we have with the businesses. Everybody’s approachable, you can come and talk to any of us and Stephanie can certainly help steer you in the right direction so we’re open to this and we’re wanting to create a little bit more energy in the chamber and for the chamber to be able to solve a few of the problems of its members. Tim Evans: The community has a responsibility, too, to help train, mentor, accept, view, feedback, all of that, because you’ve got someone here who is starting at the ground level trying to learn to be an exceptional CEO. She’s right now the operations manager, but to give you an example how the city can help: Last month’s 1x month meeting at the Mission Inn… charge $25 for a far less delicious breakfast than you have here. They had the presidents of all 3 colleges in a chair in that room (Kim, UCR; Ron Ellis, Cal Baptist, Randy… La Sierra)… if you can get those people to believe in the chamber that much, if you can get the whales in the room…. Having Dusty here as VP of LLUMC, he’s here today. This is a great start for this reinvigoration of this chamber, but the leaders of businesses need to be in the room for the once a month meeting. Great turnout.