After 23 years with the school district, 11 of them as superintendent, Jeff Mulford will leave the district in January of 2003. His successor will be Karen Jobe.
His retirement was announced at Tuesday night’s school board meeting.
Under Mulford, the district more than doubled in enrollment, and transitioned from an elementary district to a unified district with its own high school.
Mulford has served as a teacher, assistant principal, middle school principal and assistant superintendent in Valley Center before taking over from Supt. Harry Weinberg a decade ago.
During this time Mulford has, in the opinion of many, become the most influential leader in the community.
Dr. Mulford’s departure next autumn will set off a musical chair effect among the various administrative positions of the school district.
Karen Jobe, who will take up actual control of the district in November, is the current Director of Curriculum. Her job will be taken over by Ken Clark, the current Valley Center High School principal.
With Clark’s departure from VCHS, current middle school principal Lucy Haines will move up to the high school.
Her place will be taken by Chris Sommer, principal of Pauma /Palomar Mountain School.
Mary Gorsuch, assistant principal at the upper elementary school, will take Sommers’ spot.
The assistant superintendent, Sarah Clayton decided not to be a candidate for the superintendency. She will remain in the number two post.
The superintendent to be, Karen Jobe, has been with the district since 1972. During that time she served as an elementary teacher, middle school teacher, director of categorical programs, assistant principal at the middle school, principal of the upper and lower schools and director of curriculum.
During the phase in of unification Mrs. Jobe oversaw all aspects of the merger. She has also been at the forefront of the creation of the ROP/adult education program at the district.
Dr. Mulford, who has taken very few sick days during his 30 years in education, will take those accumulated sick days beginning in November.
Mulford made the decision to leave the district in 2002 several years ago, announced his intention to the board and has been planning in that direction.
In his message to the staff, Mulford wrote, “This new reality is still six months away and I don't want to give it much thought until the day I leave.”
In his message to staff, Mulford offered some elaboration on the rationale for the various new assignments: “The district offered Mel Schuler the principalship of the middle school. Mel felt he could better serve the district and community in his role as assistant principal of the high school. He has worked at the high school for only a year and would like to continue. . . Jim Bachman, assistant principal at the middle school, was offered the Pauma/Palomar principalship. Jim also stated he had worked only one year at the middle school and would like to continue in that position.
Lydia Vogt, current principal at the primary school, will be the new principal at Lilac Elementary School when it opens in September of 2003.
By DAVID ROSS
Reacting to a County GP2020 map that calls for expanding the northern part of VC’s commercial district while allowing the southern part to die on the vine, merchants in that part of town have organized to oppose the move.
The Roadrunner learned of the formation of the Valley Center Country Town Property Owners Assn. this week, five days after its initial meeting of 15-18 merchants in town. It consists of business and property owners along the VC Road corridor between Woods Valley and Lilac.
The County has not yet shown its draft map to the community, but you can see it if you are willing to travel to the County Dept. of Planning & Land Use.
A group of business owners asked to the see the map and what they saw shocked them.
Asked to justify allowing the southern node of the Country Town to wither, County staffers allegedly told merchants, “This is the result of our analysis.”
“It really set off some bells. We said to ourselves, ‘My goodness, we’re really being cut out,’ ” Wayne Hilbig, secretary of the new group, told The Roadrunner on Monday. “We think we have been abandoned by the current GP 2020.”
Other officers of the group are Steve Flynn, chairman, general manager of Bell Enterprises and Irwin Jones, owner of Wallace Hardware, vice chairman.
Since the last General Plan update a decade ago, Valley Center’s “Country Town,” a term that defines the center of the town and includes the possibility of sewer and higher density, has been divided into two “nodes. “One node is south of Lilac and the other north of that line.
The southern “node” includes such businesses as Valley Center Market, Coldwell Banker and Wallace Hardware. The northern “node” includes the bank, the post office and Old Town Center.
Larry Glavinic, chairman of the VC planning group, confirmed the association’s reading of the map.
“It appears as though the commercial existing business at the southern node will exist, but there won’t be any more,” Glavinic said. “The north node has been enlarged going to the east and not to the north. By and large it will be the same Country Town, but the emphasis will be on the north.”
So, if a property is zoned commercial in that area, it will continue to be zoned commercial.
Later in the month the County will present its draft map, which, in addition to downsizing the Country Town, will also downzone the residential properties along Lilac, along the west side of town and the extreme east.
Ivan Holler, the man in charge of GP2020 for the County, may make an unscheduled appearance at next Monday’s planning group meeting, 7 p.m., at VC Hall, said Glavinic.
So far he’s seen nothing that positively excites him.
“There’re probably twenty or thirty different plans that would work for VC but they don’t have any implementing facilities and until they get some I can’t support any of them.” You can’t just say you’re going to do this or that and downzone people arbitrarily,” Glavinic said.
Sounding, in his way, as rhapsodic about a well laid out business district as some others are about trees, Hilbig commented, “The Country Town is more than a commercial strip. It’s an ambience, a collection of country living. It includes business, housing, services and open space. . .We’re dismayed by the new 2020 proposal because “if it is adopted that would mean that all the current focus would be in the north, thereby abandoning us in the south. Our concern is that this will place the dominant emphasis on the north.
“We have nothing against the north. We feel everyone should be treated fairly.”
In a statement attributed to Flynn, the group added, “The southern node country town is an entrance to Valley Center. Our vision is for it to be vibrant and inviting but in sync with the community. We care about Valley Center.”
“The latest GP 2020 proposal places all Country Town focus on the northern area at Valley Center Road and Cole Grade while eliminating core support areas in our southern node between Woods Valley Road and Lilac,” said group member Allen Olson. “We have no objection to the northern node, but our businesses need to be fairly treated as well. The latest GP 2020 plan abandons us.”
“We are local business people working to make a living. The current proposal is unfair and needs correction,” said Tammy Morrill of Valley Center Fence Company.
Hilbig owns 54 acres along Valley Center Road. Along with the Bell property, adjacent to it, his land has been known locally as Bell Alti. Hilbig and Bell have been involved in several attempts to bring a small local sewer to that part of town, or to connect to the sewer plant that will be built to service Woods Valley Ranch.
The current iteration of GP2020 won’t kill the quest to sewer that area, said Hilbig. “But I think it will really threaten family businesses in that area.”
The southern merchants, who had pretty much sat out the GP 2020 process so far, achieved, “great unity and energy,” at their two first meetings, said Hilbig.
He invites any interested person to participate.
Hilbig added, “We think nearly everyone wants to do what’s best for Valley Center. It’s not too late for us to help in that process and to end up with a thoughtful and fair solution to the inequity of the latest GP 2020 proposal.
“Divergent views may never coincide. I understand and respect differences of opinion. What’s important is to be fair and not to exclude one segment.”
His group will propose alternatives, said Hilbig.
“The purpose of Friday’s meeting was to list what we’d like to recommend for VC and what we don’t want. We are shaping a vision. I have to say, it was a great discussion and I think community planners will like it.
“We’re not going to approach it in an adversarial way. We’re going to be a positive influence and come up with some ideas, not just grumble, but all within the concept of the country town designation. . . I think it’s largely our fault that we didn’t speak up earlier. But I don’t think it’s too late,” said Hilbig.
Flynn concluded: “We care about Valley Center. If we build, the project will respect the community. Out of town developers have asked to buy our property – and I do not see them as being concerned about aesthetics, Country Town ambiance, or local needs—especially compared to us.”
Vendors, Food Booths, Exhibits, Live Entertainment, and much more await you at Western Days.
The most widely attended festival in Valley Center is 17 days away.
Here’s a list of events for the three day festival.
Friday, May 24th - Admission: FREE
• Honorary Mayor’s Race Showdown (5-9pm)
• Live Entertainment & Dancing (5 p.m.-midnight) - performing are: The Saltlickers (5-7:30) - a San Diego based rockin’ country blues band; also performing The Killin’ Time Band (7:45-midnight) - a Los Angeles based new mix country western band
Saturday, May 25-Admission $3 (ages 11/up) or FREE if wearing a 2002 Western Days T-Shirt
• Rotary Club Pancake Breakfast (7-10 a.m.) - $6.50 Adults / $5 Kids.
• Parade (10 a.m.) - Grand Marshall / Marilyn “Joy” Shepard - 9/11 WTC Survivor
• Homesteaders 4-H Club BBQ (11:30 a.m. - 10 p.m.) - $7 Adults / $5 Kids
• Ribbon & Trophy Ceremony - Parade (1:30pm)
• Live Entertainment & Dancing (2:30 p.m. - midnight) - performing are: The Big River Band (2:30-6:30 p.m.) - a San Diego based modern country western Band); also performing The Working Cowboy Band/Buckshots (7 p.m. - midnight) - a San Diego based traditional country western band joined by guests from the Western Swing Hall of Fame
Sunday, May 26 - Admission: FREE
• Lion’s Club (All You Can Eat) Pancake Breakfast (8-11am) - $4 Adults / $3 Kids
• Live Entertainment (11 a.m. - 3 p.m.) - Star Performance Karaoke - One of the largest karaoke systems and music assortments to sing to in San Diego County
Special Attraction this year: Bulls & Barrel Rodeo
Friday, May 24, (7-9:30 p.m. / gates open at 5)
Saturday, May 25, (4-6:30 p.m. / gates open at 2)
Tickets: $8 / presale & $10 / gate - Kids 5 and under FREE.
Tickets are available at: (in Valley Center) Gina’s Hair Salon, Bear Valley Farm Supply, The Trailer Center & Snappy’s; (in Escondido) “R” Hay & Grain *& Western Warehouse; (in Ramona) The Livery.
All Live Entertainment is sponsored by Valley View Casino. Bulls & Barrels Rodeo co-sponsored by VC Chamber of Commerce & Rincon Casino
For more information, see website at: www.vcwesterndays.org or call Kym Peters at 749-7518.
By DAVID ROSS
Part II of II parts
Last week’s magical history tour of Valley Center, a fund-raiser for the museum, was almost a once in a lifetime experience (certainly so if you’re a dog or a parakeet), but well worth the wait.
* * *
At Rancho Lilac we climbed back aboard the cute little buses provided by Valley View Casino and continued up Lilac, away from the estate of the late Irving Salomon.
Our guide, Bob Lerner, continued to amuse and inform us with his encyclopedic knowledge of VC’s past.
Next stop was the home of 1920s movie idol Ramon Navarro, who was the original film Ben-Hur. Republic Pictures made several cowboy movies on this property, which is 15 acres of citrus and trails. No one has inhabited this house since 1968.
Jack Haley (the Tin Woodsman of Wizard of Oz fame) also had a house along this road.
Moosa Canyon was the site of the famous “massacre,” a gunfight that kept the newspapers of the late 1800s humming for weeks.
Lerner estimates there are some 200 homes of historical significance. “Unfortunately most of these houses will probably disappear in the next few years. Valley Center has been discovered,” he said.
On the site of what is now Hideaway Lakes Mobile Home park was once the largest turkey facility in the world, the Mizpah Ranch, which operated during the 1930s.
“Imagine hundred of thousands of turkeys where these mobile homes now stand,” he said.
The bus drove through the parking lot of VC Community Hall, which was built with all volunteer labor and money in 1921 as a school that would never burn down.
The tour also passed by the Gang Ranch, the current elementary school ag farm. Once the old Reed homestead, the house on this property was once home to the justice of the peace. The Civilian Conservation Corps of the Great Depression also had a camp at this location.
Cool Valley Road was the site of some of the earliest airplane flights west of the Mississippi, conducted by aeronautic pioneer and recluse Donald Gordon. The field is still intact.
Gordon’s aeronautic activities actually form an evolutionary dead end since he never talked about them, and historians only found out about them in the 1950s.
During the filming of Paradise Found, the Valley Center Story, Lerner was able to identify the very field in VC where Gordon flew, using old photos and an old U.S. Geological Survey map from the 1920s with the legend “private airfield,” identifying the spot.
Lerner has obtained fragments of Gordon’s aircraft from Brad Bailey of Palomar Mountain to be on permanent loan at the history museum.
The VC Cemetery is the final resting place of Jennie Wimmer, who tested the first gold nugget found on the American River in California, and which triggered the largest Gold Rush in history.
It was a poignant moment when the bus stopped at Corral Liquor, once VC’s post office, and now the oldest commercial building in town. It will not be there when the tour is held again in ten years. The building is set to be demolished by the widening of VC Road.
Off North Lake Wolhford Road is the huge Guejito Ranch, the last remaining untouched Spanish land grant in California. The owners refused transit for the tour, which is, one supposes, why the ranch is untouched.
The tour ended up on the eastern part of town and produced two very interesting things.
One was Melrose Ranch, once the home of British Lord Summerville, now owned by dairyman Arie DeJong.
This ranch was once the dallying place of the Prince of Wales and Wallace Simpson, his amour, before the future Edward VIII, “gave up his throne for the woman he loved.”
The last stop was at the Haskell property, where the 2,200 pound grizzly bear that gives Bear Valley its name met its match. The Indian who the bear ran up a tree killed it with a shotgun. The tree still stands. The bear doesn’t.
Bear Valley almost became Valley Center’s official name, but some other community had got there first. Whatever the merits of its claims, it certainly didn’t have a bear to match.
Lerner concluded by noting, “The population has mushroomed over the years but there’s still a lot of yesterday left—Not very many communities in San Diego county can say that.”
This article is too short to describe every point of interest, such as Valley Center’s old rubber plantation, or the orange grove owned by actor George Segal, or Randolph Scott’s house or a dozen other things.
But that, as they say, is another story.
* * *
NOTE: In last week’s article we incorrectly spelled the name of the chairman of the history museum committee. His name is actually Norm Syler.
By DAVID ROSS
Part I of II parts
Sometimes you take the best things in life for granted. For many farmers and other ag minded people that might be true of Grangetto’s Farm & Garden Supply, which is celebrating 50 years in business this year.
During those years Grangetto’s has always been an integral part of the community, supported local high school ag programs, 4-H projects, master gardeners, local youth sports and civic organizations all over North County.
From humble beginnings in Escondido, at 122 E. Washington Ave., site today of an auto parts store, the store moved in 1956 to its present location at 1105 W. Mission, next to the city’s historic ice plant known as The Orange House (and today, sadly no more, replaced by main post office), Grangetto’s became something of a landmark itself in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when Escondido was considerably smaller and considerably more devoted to growing.
It started with three employees. Today there are 55 employees, and in addition to the main warehouse in Escondido, satellite stores in Valley Center, Fallbrook and Rancho Santa Fe. Those stores carry over 5,000 items.
The store’s mission has changed subtly over the years, from a purely agricultural supply store to a retailer that sells fertilizers, pesticides, landscape and gardening supplies, nursery supplies, as well as catering to its old standby customers, the avocado and citrus growers whose groves still dominate the landscape of much of North County.
The founder, Edward Grangetto Sr., while not involved in the day to day running of the business, is still a familiar figure, pitching pesos against the wall to decide who buys coffee for the day. Last year he was honored by the SD County Farm Bureau as Farmer of the Year.
Kevin Grangetto, who runs the family-owned business, looks at his own two children, a boy and a girl, as possibly taking over in their turn. “They’re a little young to know that just yet,” he says.
Perhaps one reason that Grangetto’s has always been so farmer friendly is that the family owned (and still owns 80 acres) a citrus and avocado grove south of town.
The family patriarch was born in Duncan, Arizona in 1915, moved to Escondido, where he attended high school.
He started off working for Bennett Investment Co. in 1931 as a laborer, making about $2 a day, trapping gophers, planting and harvesting vegetables, maintaining the orchard, and driving a tractor.
Bennett managed hundreds of acres of farm land in North County.
Ed Grangetto attended UC Davis 1934-38 and earned a degree in horticulture. He returned to Escondido and to Bennett for one year before deciding to go off on his own with a grove management business. He started with $600.
These plans were sidetracked slightly by his marriage in 1940 to Josie Ann Dunn, and derailed for the duration by WWII, where he served in the Army Air Force until November of 1945. During the war his brother-in-law helped run the grove management business.
In 1948 Grangetto added pest control to the business, and in 1952 he bought out an oil business that sold weed and tree oils.
The business grew until a retail store opened in 1976.
The store has worked hard to create customer loyalty and Kevin Grangetto points proudly to many customers who return year after year.
Fifteen years ago it became somewhat evident that agriculture in North County was shifting. Grangetto’s followed this trend and introduced a line of home and nursery products which enabled the business not only to maintain its customer base, but to grow a new and larger one.
TO BE CONTINUED
The Valley Roadrunner
P.O.B. 1529, Valley Center, CA 92082
Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
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