City Dreams (Press Enterpise 08132006) Bloomington Resident Won't Accpet No

I support what Eric is trying to get done. Now I am no political Mountain and I cannot help him in any way, but I can just say this. If you don't have a dream what do you have. Rialto and Fontana, and the people that run those huge Developer companies Like LAFCO, or that Rep. Miller's Business, maybe LAFCO is Miller's Business huh? I had not thought of that, Rep. Miller pushing the little man out on his ear and building these small little lots when the people around him had 2.5 acres and some might still even have a 5 acre parcel of land, well in the building World that is not the kind of dreams that people want any more. No People want to have a place that they can just lay their head down and sleep, No yard work and they just run and run and have no yards, for no animals of any kind. So by the Golf Coarse they are going to build 1/16th acre lots with houses that are the size of 700 to 1100 sq feet and they are going to have enough room for three bedrooms and they expect to sell them for over $500,000.00. in fact the range was $500,000.00-$900,000.00 thousand dollars. isn't that a great big price for not much home. That is what I thought when I first that about it. that means when people might want the luxury of having a real home they might want to say that they can have a Stone wall on .25 of an acre they might want to spend a mere 1,500,000.00 for the property with the room that you get to clear your head away from the neighbors. well think if you lived on two acres.

Then think about how happy the people in Bloomington are and how hey don't want the closed in lifestyle pushed onto them.

BSRanch

City Dreams

Tenacious Bloomington resident won't accept 'no'

10:00 PM PDT on Sunday, August 13, 2006

By IMRAN GHORI
The Press-Enterprise

Inland Profile Eric Davenport Residence: Bloomington Hobbies: A fan of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Monkees, Davenport writes and produces his own songs in a 60s pop-rock vein

Bloomington residents have been told many times that incorporation is a pipe dream, that it can't be done.

Eric Davenport isn't fazed by such sentiments as he leads efforts to turn the rural community into a city, a campaign that will be nearing a vital stage in the next month.

" 'No' doesn't mean anything to me until I say it's 'no,' " said Davenport, president of the Bloomington Incorporation Committee.

The group already has gotten further than some naysayers predicted, completing a feasibility study for the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission, the body that rules on boundary changes, and launching a signature-gathering effort that is underway.

Heading the group wasn't a position to which Davenport aspired, but he agreed to take it on at the request of his fellow members.

"They pulled me in because of my tenacity, I suppose, or my gullibility, depending on whose side you listen to," he joked.

Jason Fritz / The Press-Enterprise Eric Davenport, pictured at a friend's ranch, leads an effort to incorporate Bloomington, though experts say cityhood is unlikely. Davenport says people supporting incorporation aren't anti-development; they just want a say in the community's future.

Davenport, who has his own music- and video-production company, said his experience with putting together a prospectus or budget for projects he's worked on was another factor.

The group has until late September to collect about 2,000 signatures from registered voters in the six-and-a-half-square-mile area that would form the city.

LAFCO officials have cast doubt on the financial viability of a potential city but gave incorporation backers the go-ahead in February to collect signatures for an incorporation application.

The effort has gone further than other attempts to turn Bloomington into a city, Davenport said, citing the formal LAFCO application and the signature-gathering effort.

Davenport says he has no interest in politics and wouldn't want to serve as Bloomington's mayor if the incorporation is successful. But he says he had no choice but to get involved during the last several years.

He and other incorporation backers became frustrated by what they see as county approval of big housing developments despite Bloomington zoning codes that call for larger parcel sizes. The community also has become vulnerable to annexations from neighboring Fontana and Rialto, efforts that Davenport describes as eating away at Bloomington.

Incorporation is a matter of survival, he said.

"The crux of the matter is trying to have a city that harkens back to the day where people actually had a say in what went on around them, and the people that represented you represented your best interests," he said.

Alexia King Rishell, a member of the incorporation group, describes Davenport as a pit bull in taking the incorporation effort forward and mustering up support. "I would have quit a long time ago but he wouldn't let me," she said.

Davenport, who is single, declines to reveal his age but said he's lived in Bloomington for 40 years, moving to the community when he was a child.

His grandparents, who moved there from Tennessee in 1926, owned a three-acre ranch where they grew melons and raised pigs, cows and chickens.

"Bloomington at that time was 29 square miles," Davenport said. "My grandmother says it was nothing but jackrabbits, sage brush and mule deer."

Davenport said incorporation backers aren't trying to turn the community to the past and they aren't anti-development. They just want a say in what goes on, he said. "What we're doing is giving the community a chance to take the reins of a runaway stagecoach," he said.

Reach Imran Ghori at 909-806-3061 or ighori@PE.com