EDITORIAL: CARB surprisingly prefers Riverside

March 25, 2016

PRESS-ENTERPRISE EDITORIAL

Talk about March Madness: Riverside was, by our estimation, a 17-to-1 longshot to be chosen over Pomona as home for the California Air Resource Board’s new offices and vehicle-testing lab. Yet board members on Thursday selected an 18-acre site owned by UC Riverside on Iowa Avenue north of Martin Luther King Boulevard.

We think that quite an upset given that a CARB staff report recommended a site on the Cal Poly Pomona campus – not the least because of a survey in which 85 percent of CARB employees expressed their preference for the Pomona site because it is 50 miles closer to CARB’s current digs in El Monte than is the Riverside site.

That Riverside overcame the odds to be selected the location of the regulatory agency’s new $366 million project – and the 400 or so jobs that come with it – was because of the coordinated efforts of Riverside’s presentation team.

It included state Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, who has made the case for years that Riverside would be an ideal location for CARB’s new facility.

It also included the city of Riverside, the boards of supervisors of both Riverside County and neighboring San Bernardino County, Riverside Public Utilities, UC Riverside and the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce.

Riverside’s presentation had to overcome pushback from at least three CARB board members who ultimately voted against the city’s Iowa Avenue site: John Eisenhut, Phil Serna and Hector De La Torre.

Mr. De La Torre, a former state assemblyman, echoed the staff report’s concern about the longer commutes CARB staff will face driving to Riverside rather than to Pomona.

And that’s not all, the staff report warned. The move to Riverside, when CARB’s new facility is to be completed in 2020, “would likely involve relocation, resignation, or retirement” of CARB employees unwilling to make the commute.

Well, we think it entirely plausible that there will be some turnover in the regulatory agency’s staff with its move to the Inland region’s biggest city. However, we’re willing to wager that turnover won’t be remotely close to the 85 percent of CARB’s employees that would have preferred to work in Pomona.

Yes, the nearly two-hour round trip commute time for driving to Riverside the CARB staff report foresees for many of its employees will be burdensome. But in selecting Riverside for the new facility, the board majority was looking several decades down the road, long after most of the regulatory agency’s current employees have moved on.

We think the passage of time will prove the wisdom of the board majority’s decision.