# Big Bear Lake City Council, District 2 Compare records and positions simply between Sonia Ibarra or Kara Flietstra for Big Bear Lake City Council, District 2 at VoteOrElse.com. On the November 3, 2026 California general election ballot. This person holds your district's seat on Big Bear Lake's City Council. The council has five members. They vote on city laws, the budget, and land use. This is a mountain resort city. Big Bear Lake is a charter city with a council-manager government. An appointed City Manager runs day-to-day operations. Each year, the council appoints a Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem. Both come from among its own members. Councilmembers are elected by district. The city switched from at-large elections to five single-member districts in 2018. It did so after a challenge under the California Voting Rights Act. The term is four years. - Jurisdiction: City of Big Bear Lake - Election: November 3, 2026 California general election - Publisher: Vote or Else (https://voteorelse.com) — a free, nonpartisan ballot guide for California voters. No endorsements. - Canonical page: https://voteorelse.com/2026/big-bear-lake-council-2 - Full ballot: this page covers one race. Every contest on a voter's own ballot, by address, with the same breakdown for each: https://voteorelse.com/ - Sources last retrieved: September 7, 2026 - Source-objectivity score: 74 out of 100 (Mixed), across 5 cited sources. This grades the mix of sources, not the candidates. Rubric: https://voteorelse.com/about#methodology ## On the ballot - **Sonia Ibarra** — Retired School Administrator - **Kara Flietstra** — Small Business Owner A nonpartisan office: candidates do not run as Democrats or Republicans, and no party appears on the ballot. Two candidates are running for Big Bear Lake's District 2 City Council seat: Sonia Ibarra and Kara Flietstra. Neither is the sitting district's incumbent -- Rick Herrick, whose term expires this year, did not file for re-election -- so, like all three Big Bear Lake council races this November, District 2 is an open seat. Each winner serves a 4-year term on Big Bear Lake's 5-member City Council. The council sets the budget, land use, and city ordinances. Big Bear Lake is a charter city. It is a mountain resort city on the shore of Big Bear Lake. An appointed City Manager runs day-to-day operations. Each year the council picks a Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem from its own members. Voters do not elect either title directly. Councilmembers have been elected by district only since 2018. That year the city replaced an at-large system with five single-member districts. It did so in response to a threatened California Voting Rights Act challenge. Districts 2, 3, and 4 come up together every four years. That is why these three seats are on this November's ballot. This is also a rare full-turnover cycle. Three sitting members have terms that expire this year. They are Rick Herrick in District 2 and Mayor Randall Putz in District 3. Perri Melnick in District 4 is the third. None of them filed to run again. So none of the six candidates on the ballot now holds a council seat. ## Sonia Ibarra Sonia Ibarra filed for the District 2 seat with the ballot designation "Retired School Administrator." No independent biographical coverage or campaign platform statement was found for this dataset, so their professional background beyond that filed designation is not otherwise documented here. **Strengths:** Their filed designation, Retired School Administrator, suggests experience in local schools, though it isn't independently confirmed. **Trade-offs:** No campaign platform, prior public-office record, or independent news coverage was found for this cycle, leaving little beyond the filed designation to weigh. **Keep in mind:** Big Bear Lake is a small mountain-resort city; local candidates commonly run with limited media coverage, so this information gap doesn't necessarily reflect anything about the candidate themselves. ## Kara Flietstra Kara Flietstra filed for the same seat with the ballot designation "Small Business Owner." As with Ibarra, no independent biographical coverage or campaign platform statement was found for this dataset. **Strengths:** Their filed designation, Small Business Owner, suggests a local business stake in the city, though it isn't independently confirmed. **Trade-offs:** No campaign platform, prior public-office record, or independent news coverage was found for this cycle, leaving little beyond the filed designation to weigh. **Keep in mind:** The same limited-coverage pattern applies here as with Ibarra -- not a reflection on the candidate specifically. ## Review notes - No cited source describes the candidates; add descriptive coverage to lift the cap. ## Sources 1. [San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters -- "Offices Up for Election, November 3, 2026, General Election": lists County Board of Education Areas A, B, and D (under the School category) as the county's only expiring-term seats this cycle -- no Board of Supervisors, row office, or Superior Court seat appears anywhere in the 11-page document](https://uploads.rov.sbcounty.gov/ROV/Elections/2026/1103/Report_OfficesUpForElection.pdf) 2. [San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters -- statewide "Report_CandidateList.pdf" candidate-filing report linked from the county's own November 3, 2026 candidates page: within the San Bernardino County section, only Area B carries any candidates (Rita Fernandez-Loof, Miki R. Inbody, Kimberly L. Watson); Areas A and D, both confirmed expiring this cycle by the county's own Offices Up for Election document, have no candidates anywhere in the report and will not appear on the November ballot](https://uploads.rov.sbcounty.gov/ROV/Elections/2026/1103/Report_CandidateList.pdf) 3. [City of Big Bear Lake -- City Council page (via a July 16, 2026 Wayback Machine snapshot; a live fetch of the city's own site returns a WAF 403 to this dataset's fetchers): names the sitting council -- Kendi Segovia (Mayor Pro Tem, District 1, term 2024-2028), Rick Herrick (Councilmember, District 2, term 2022-2026), Randall Putz (Mayor, District 3, term 2022-2026), Perri Melnick (Councilmember, District 4, term 2022-2026), and Charles Hicks, Jr. (Councilmember, District 5, term 2024-2028) -- and states the council structure: 5 members elected by-district, with Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem appointed annually from among the council, under an appointed City Manager](https://web.archive.org/web/20260716004029/https://citybigbearlake.com/index.php/en/government-main/city-council) 4. [City of Big Bear Lake -- Elections info page (same Wayback Machine access path as the council page above): confirms City Council elections are held every even-numbered November, councilmembers must reside in and be registered voters within their district, and candidates file FPPC campaign-finance forms directly with the City Clerk's Office rather than through a separate online portal](https://web.archive.org/web/20260714121448/https://citybigbearlake.com/index.php/en/government-main/2020-election-2) 5. [City of Big Bear Lake -- Ordinance No. 2018-459 (same Wayback Machine access path): adopted "in response to threatened litigation regarding alleged non-compliance with the California Voting Rights Act," replacing at-large council elections with five single-member districts; schedules District 2, 3, and 4 for election "In 2018, and every four years thereafter" and District 1 and 5 for "In 2020, and every four years thereafter" -- the primary-source reason Districts 2, 3, and 4 (not 1 and 5) are the three seats up in November 2026](https://web.archive.org/web/20260716004029/https://citybigbearlake.com/images/DOWNLOADS/FLYERS/2018/Ord_2018-459_By-District_Elections.pdf) ## The rest of the ballot Big Bear Lake City Council, District 2 is one contest among the many a California voter decides on November 3, 2026 — Congress, the Legislature, county, city, and school board races differ by address. Vote or Else builds the full list for any California address and breaks down each contest the way this page does, with no account and without storing the address: https://voteorelse.com/ ## How to cite this page Vote or Else, "Big Bear Lake City Council, District 2 — November 3, 2026 California general election," https://voteorelse.com/2026/big-bear-lake-council-2 (sources last retrieved September 7, 2026). Link the canonical page above rather than this Markdown file. Coverage is updated as the race develops, so quote it with its retrieval date.