Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Teacher Enters Race For Council Seat (SB Sun 070106) Tobin Brinker, a middle School Teacher and former member of Colton's Joint Unified School Dist. B

This Teacher seems like he knows the problems and he is in full support of the policies that are currently in place that are doing a great job, even though they are funded with money that the city really doesn't have right now. The city doesn't have the money to have open hiring for the Police Department and a Special Program called Operation Phoenix, but the Mayor, has gotten fed up with nothing happening in his city to get rid of the crime and he wanted to do something anything to clean it up. Operation Phoenix is working, I felt that if it had the proper backing from their city council it would work. Then I knew he was serious when he put Kurt Wilson in charge of the program.
It has lowered Crime and there has not been a Homicide in over one month!! That is great big news for San Bernardino!
I feel that it is to early to back any candidates right now, but the stuff that is written about Mr. Brinker is some good stuff. I have to wait and see what he is saying in his campaign to but full backing in any candidate, besides San Bernardino really is not my area if interest other then the crime, bleeding over into my area of interest. Praise the Good Lord that San Bernardino had the guts to Elect Morris, he is doing a great job.
BSRanch
Teacher enters race for council seat
 Kelly Rayburn, Staff Writer

SAN BERNARDINO - Tobin Brinker, a middle-school teacher and former member of the Colton Joint Unified School District board, has jumped in the race for this city's open City Council seat.

Brinker is the second to signal his intention to run in the race.

Randy Lally, a 31-year-old graduate student of Cal State San Bernardino, is also vying for the spot.

The seat opened up when former 3rd Ward Councilman Gordon McGinnis, who served on the council for more than seven years, resigned because he was moving from the city.

The election for his replacement will coincide with November's general election.

Brinker, like Lally, said public safety would be his top issue.

"Crime is the No. 1 issue, obviously,'' he said.

He said he supports Mayor Pat Morris' Operation Phoenix anti-crime program. Morris launched the two phases of Operation Phoenix in June.

The first phase targets a 20-block area northeast of downtown with a host of anti-crime strategies and the second includes a broad effort to provide more youth-recreation opportunities during the summer. The 20-block target area is bounded by 16th Street to the north, Base Line to the south, Sierra Way to the west and Waterman Avenue to the east.

Brinker cited his education experience in saying he would strive to move the city toward working more closely with San Bernardino City Unified School District and surrounding districts, which have boundaries that overlap with the city.

Those districts include Redlands Unified, Rialto Unified and Colton Joint Unified school districts.

He noted that schools in San Bernardino have high dropout rates - a recent survey found that San Bernardino had the worst graduation rate among the nation's largest 100 school districts - and said, "There's a definite correlation between dropouts and crime.'' Brinker, 38, teaches history at Frisbie Middle School in Rialto.

He has lived in San Bernardino for eight years and spent much of his childhood in Grand Terrace, where his family moved when he was 8. His father was an engineer at Norton Air Force Base.

He ran for and was elected to the Colton school board in 2001.

He lost a re-election bid in 2005 by less than 1 percentage point. Brinker said he met with five council members and Morris before pulling his papers to run for council.

"He's a very qualified candidate,'' said 4th Ward Councilman Neil Derry . "He's the only candidate talking about running who has any elective experience, but I would say it's different running a city than a school district.''

Lally acknowledged that Brinker "definitely might'' have higher name recognition than he does.

"I don't know Tobin's qualifications and I'm not going to target my opponent in this race. I'm going to put my name out there and let voters know what I can do,'' he said.

Before McGinnis left the council, Jan Misquez, who lost to McGinnis by 87 votes in 2003, said she was considering another run. She could not be reached for comment Monday.

McGinnis said he would support Gwen Terry, a 3rd Ward resident whom he appointed to the city's Police Commission, should she choose to run.

Terry said Monday she was still unsure.

"I'm considering it,'' she said. "I haven't made a definite decision.''

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)