City of Rialto: An Insider’s Perspective

As residents in the city of Rialto prepare for November elections, 2UrbanGirls spoke with trusted news site, RialtoNow.com, about their perspective of the city and whether new members should be elected to serve on city council.

2UG:  How long has RialtoNow been covering the city?

We have been officially covering Rialto since 2011 but even before then I have been working with larger news agencies to bring a light to our smaller town. I quickly learned that the problem was money was stopping reporters from covering us, not our size.

2UG: What are your thoughts on the current state of the city?

Rialto is like a poorly built new car, it looks all shinny and great from the outside but once you get in and start driving it you start to feel the life of this thing isn’t very stable. Even before Covid-19 the city was burdened by 150 million dollars of unfunded liability in pers obligations that they had no way of paying back. The constant answer was more taxes. Then even though they were told doing so would bankrupt the city in two years they began to hand out massive raises to Public Safety employees and handing out massive cash bonuses to new hires. They also went out and paid $250k a year to a failed Laguna Beach city administrator.

2UG: In your opinion, what are some areas that need improvement?

We have spent a lot of time improving the north and south ends of the city but have ignored our heavily traveled east and west corridors (including route 66) and our Historic Downtown. Spending is getting out of control the money that was recently spent on the New Frisbee park was pulled from a park that the city is contractually obligated to build in the new Renaissance Marketplace development. Every project steals money from another project and now Rialto can’t even maintain the parks it already has but is dumping money they don’t have into parks they won’t be able to clean or maintain. Nobody on the council right now speaks for the people regardless of their skin color, nationality or area of the city they live in.

Every council member has their group and nobody else.

All of Rialto‘s Councilmembers are at large and yet Ed scott only speaks for white people in south Rialto, Joe Baca Jr. is the Parks Guy (but only if he like you), Rafeal Trujillo is a Socailist Democrat that speaks only for illegal aliens, and Andy Carrizales does whatever the Mayor and Ed Scott say regardless of who it hurts.

2UG: Do you think the current leadership is capable of revitalizing the city’s financial outlook post COVID-19?  Why or why not?

No because they are more tied to doing something for their group that they fail to see the city as a whole. If the solution is unpopular or volatile they won’t move a muscle because they are all more worried about the next election than doing their job.

2UG: How do you see the city moving forward?

Under the weight of unfunded liabilities and the fact the businesses have been brought to their knees, if new leadership is not brought in the city will find themselves bankrupt like San Bernardino next year.