RIALTO, Calif. — Despite the sweltering, triple-digit heat, some residents in Rialto are walking door to door, informing community members about a recent vote from their City Council, that will allow a developer to build a 470,000 square foot warehouse in the north end of the city.
Leading the group is Brenda Parker, who has lived in Rialto since 1996 and says her city has become more industrialized over the years.
“When they started bringing in a lot of warehouses in Rialto, a lot of the community members started moving out, and so our community started changing,” she said.
Parker and her team are collecting signatures for a petition against the City Council’s decision to put the issue of the warehouse up for a vote on the March 2024 primary election ballot. She said if they don’t fight to preserve their neighborhood from commercial interests, “Who will?”
Rialto City Council was able to greenlight the project by making a last-minute zoning change for one part of the area — where the warehouse would be built. Their vote was controversial because it goes against the Rialto City Planning Commission’s recommendations to only zone the area for a mixed-use project, including retail stores, housing and a pedestrian pathway that would connect to a nearby park.
Parker said the warehouse will increase big-rig traffic, harmful pollution and turn their residential neighborhood into an industrial zone.
Three City Council members voted in favor of the warehouse, including Andy Carrizales, Ed Scott and Rafael Trujillo. But Council member Joe Baca voted against it, saying his decision was influenced by the long-term environmental impacts the warehouse would have on his community.
“I’m thinking about our students. I’m thinking about our seniors with asthma,” he said. Baca went on to say, “we could’ve created a lot more jobs that would’ve benefited the whole city by having retail, commercial and housing in the immediate area.”
Baca is also the only City Council member who didn’t accept a $4,900 contribution from the developer, Howard Industrial Partners. Public records show his colleagues did — three and yet, still voted on the project.
Council member Trujillo said they did nothing wrong.
“They were made before the deadline, and it’s part of their freedom to be able to contribute,” Trujillo said. “All of those contributions, at least in my case, are following recent state law.”
Residents have alerted California Attorney General Rob Bonta about the developer’s contributions and the City Council members’ failure to recuse themselves from the vote on this project. Bonta’s office has not yet responded.
Meantime, Trujillo is disputing claims from residents that this project will impact a residential area, saying there’s a significant buffer between homes and the future warehouse site — and that plans to build a retail space are still there.
“In Rialto, we have a 1,000-foot space in between industrial projects and residential, and other sensitive spots. It’s something that we set in place at the last warehouse moratorium that we set in the city,” Trujillo said.
More importantly, Trujillo said, are the construction and labor jobs this project will offer to hard-working residents in Rialto.
“When the carpenters and members of the LiUNA came to our Council meeting, they explained they have to drive three hours to work into Los Angeles to be able to put food on the table. And these are good jobs, these are escalators for minority workers into the middle class,” Trujillo said.
As for Parker, she said she understands both sides of the argument, but in the end, feels that the people of Rialto should decide what goes up on Pepper Avenue.
“As I’ve been saying all the time, the people’s voice is what matters,” she said. “We, the people, hold the power of Rialto, not three Council members.”