Riverside County weighs a $60M reserves draw to close out this fiscal year
NBC Palm Springs: Separate from next year's budget, supervisors reviewed a third-quarter report recommending roughly $60M pulled from reserves to patch this year's books before June 30.
Ontario launches "Ask Ontario," a 24/7 service chatbot
City of Ontario: New digital assistant fields common questions and takes service requests online, any hour.
Riverside County floats a $10.3B budget as a first deficit year looms
County of Riverside: The recommended FY26/27 plan tops $10.3B, but departments asked for $700M more in discretionary money than the county has — the gap that makes this a deficit budget.
Riverside voters reject Measure Z fire tax; three council seats head to runoffs
The Raincross Gazette: Voters turned down the fire-funding sales tax 59-41 in early returns — a no on the same revenue the city's own budget says it needs to cover a $27M general-fund gap.
The IE's warehouse-emissions rule is mostly working — and the IE is paying most of the freight
Citrus Belt Review: Four years into the nation's first warehouse-emissions rule, the surprise isn't the $55 million in fees — it's that fees are only 5% of it. Operators are mostly buying electric yard trucks and chargers, not writing checks. And the two IE counties carry most of the bill.
A Colton senator is legislating against AI layoffs while the IE loses warehouse jobs the ordinary way
Citrus Belt Review: State Sen. Eloise Reyes wants 90 days' notice before AI-driven layoffs. The catch worth noticing: the warehouse cuts hitting the IE right now aren't about AI at all — they're the old cyclical kind, in the one sector the region bet its economy on.
A Palm Springs pitmaster eats the cost as beef hits a record $9.64 a pound
NBC Palm Springs: Retail beef hit a record $9.64/lb in April, up about 13% on the year on a historic cattle shortage — and at the Fireside Lounge, Big Earl's is absorbing the hit rather than passing it on.
IE home prices are softening, but buyers haven't pulled back
Citrus Belt Review: The headline number — medians down across both counties — reads like a slump. The number underneath it says otherwise: people are still buying at last year's pace or faster, even as prices dip. That's a balancing market, not a contracting one.
Redlands Mall comes down after 15 years empty — with no new plan for what replaces it
Community Forward Redlands: A new owner is clearing the downtown site under the old environmental review, but hasn't filed its own redevelopment plan — the sixth owner since 2000 to inherit the question of what goes here.
For Fontana's steel firms, the tariff question isn't whether they import metal — it's where they sit in the chain
Citrus Belt Review: Washington just softened a few finished-goods tariffs, but the force that actually moves IE metal companies is the 50% tax on raw steel and aluminum — and it splits local firms into winners and losers depending on whether they make metal or buy it.
Half of Riverside Rents Its Homes. The Foreclosure Decade Did That.
Citrus Belt Review: The city is a coin-flip between owners and renters while the county around it stays two-thirds owned. That gap isn't drift — it's what the 2008 crash left behind, and state law is now locking it in.
San Bernardino's Tran wins a second term outright; Valdivia comeback fails
Community Forward Redlands: Mayor Helen Tran cleared 54.6% against five challengers, avoiding a runoff — and former mayor John Valdivia finished last at 7.1%.
Binks and Vara head to November for San Bernardino County schools chief
Community Forward Redlands: Two educators advanced for county superintendent; Sheriff Dicus and the new auditor-controller won outright, and AD-50's Garcia drew a November challenger.
Nathan Mustafa takes over Riverside Public Works
City of Riverside: Interim for five months; keeps the job after running streets, traffic, trash, parking, and tree trimming.
Travis Smith takes over UC Riverside fundraising and the UCR Foundation
UC Riverside: Comes from Minnesota, where his foundation booked a record $464M in giving last year; starts July 6.
California turns on its first smart freeway on I-15 in Temecula
RCTC: A $33M pilot meters three on-ramps and posts real-time speeds on 8 miles of northbound I-15 — no new lanes, two years to prove it works.
San Bernardino supervisor moves to censure elected auditor Ensen Mason
IE Community News: Rowe wants a censure or removal vote days before Mason faces the ballot — and the board has already denied him county funds to defend himself in an open investigation.
Newsom signs Cervantes ballot-security bill last week
The Riverside Record: SB 73 lands days after Sheriff Chad Bianco seized more than 600,000 Riverside County ballots — and both Newsom and its author say it would have made that harder.
The work rule lands hardest where the work is least steady
Citrus Belt Review: New CalFresh work requirements took effect June 1, and the corridor carries more exposure than anywhere in Southern California — about 723,000 recipients across the two counties, in a region whose signature jobs don't reliably clear the threshold the rule sets.