Twenty one New York City (FDNY) Firefighters from the Harlem Station will arrive in VC at 8 p.m.Thursday night to have pizza at Pepperoni’s as guests of the VC & Escondido Firefighters’ associations.
There will be a greeting line of local and state agency law enforcement and fire apparatus welcoming the guests to town arriving in a caravan of antique fire vehicles. Everyone is invited to join in honoring these guests from New York.
Saturday the visitors will form up as teams playing in an all day softball tournament from 8 a.m.-7 p.m. at Kit Carson Park against other county fire agency teams organized by Escondido Fire Engineer, Mike O'Conner, who is also a VC resident. Proceeds will benefit St. Claire’s Home in Escondido for battered women. A (40) year old “one of a kind” Mack Super Tender with a 8000 GPM Stang Monitor retired from FDNY will put on pumping display charged by six antique fire engines at Kit Carson Park starting at noon, and a lot of other family activities.
American Airlines and a local resident donated 21 round trip tickets to fly the FDNY firefighters out for the tournament.
The bond between the Escondido firefighters and FDNY was created after the World Trade Center attack on 9/11 when five Escondido firefighters including O’Conner, who is also a New York native, traveled cross country in a motor home collecting over $200,000 on the way directly for the families of the firefighters that had died in the tragedy.
During that trip the Escondido firefighters stayed at the Harlem Station that has made many new relationships with firefighters all across America in the last two years.
By DAVID ROSS
The VC Municipal and Yuima Municipal water districts have joined three other rural water districts in suing the San Diego Water Authority over the cost of transporting water.
New water rates were adopted by the Water Authority earlier this year.
The lawsuit was filed Oct. 17 by the five North County Water Agencies who banded together a couple of years ago as the Economic Study Group.
They are: Valley Center Municipal Water District, Rincon del Diablo Municipal Water District, Vallecitos Water District, Vista Irrigation District and Yuima Municipal Water District in Pauma.
The group studied water rates charged to agencies for transporting water and concluded that agencies at the beginning of the long line of pipeline threading from the Riverside County line south, were on the short end of the stick economically as well as physically.
According to Dr. Greg Quist, chairman of the Economic Study Group, “State law (Govt. Code Sect. 66013 (a) is clear. Local water agencies cannot impose a charge that exceeds the cost of providing the service for which the charge is imposed.”
VC and Yuima buy their water from SDCWA, which in turns buys it from the big Southern California agency, the Metropolitan Water District.
The lawsuit contends that the SDCWA’s transportation rates are unfair because it makes districts like Valley Center pay more than their fair share for transporting water.
According to VCMWD General Mgr. Gary Arant, “Our water district and the rest of the Economic Study Group’s view was that the cost of transporting the water should be related to the amount of the water authority’s system that you use.
“The Water Authority system is a linear, a north to south system as opposed to our system, which is looped and has the ability to move water back and forth.
“In the Water Authority system the water moves from north to south. Once it passes your delivery point it can’t deliver water back north to you. Our study said that there should be a relationship between the amount of system that we use and the transportation price charged by SDCWA. In adopting the new rate structure the water authority recognized this relationship but only applied it to two member agencies: Fallbrook and Rainbow,” said Arant.
These two agencies, the farthest north members of the SDCWA, have connections on the MWD system and for water going to them there is no transportation charge.
“Our position,” said Arant, “is that the recognition of the relationship of the transportation should be applied to all agencies. While most of Rainbow and Fallbrook’s water comes off the MWD system, Valley Center is only using a small portion, less than 2 percent, of the Water Authority System, but under the new rate structure, our transportation charge is the same as Otay, which is 45 miles south of VC.”
According to Arant, farmers in Valley Center, across the freeway and just south of Rainbow and Fallbrook, will pay as much as $55 per acre foot more for the same water from the Water Authority. For our farmers who compete in the same markets as farmers in Fallbrook and Rainbow, they will be at a significant economic disadvantage.”
Transportation costs are also passed on to all residential and commercial consumers, as well.
The study that VC participated in estimated that VCMWD was being overcharged $1.9 million/year. An analysis done by the CWA concluded that VC was being overcharged $800,000 - $1 million/ year.
Under the new rate structure, there is no difference in transportation costs, however, because Fallbrook and Rainbow will no longer pay transportation rates, those costs will be spread out among the remaining agencies.
“The irony is that the new rate recognizes agencies that use zero amount of the transportation system, but doesn’t transfer that to the other customers,” said Arant.
Where once you went to check out books you can now go to check out movies.
Video Playhouse is opening at the former VC Library on Oct. 29. The last day at the other location over Terry’s Hay & Grain is Oct. 27.
Tom William and company took possession on the 15th. Fixtures came in on Oct. 17.
Video Playhouse was the first video store in Valley Center. It opened in 1983 in the little building next to Fat Ivor’s, when it was called Valley Video Center. Then it moved to the corner of Woods Valley and VC Road and the name was changed to Movieland. It was part of a small chain of about six movie rentals in North County.
Tom William bought it from Jeannie & Steve Root in May of 1990.
Recently William found the original movie rental applications and some of the names of the original members.
Last November Video Playhouse flipped over to where most of its rentals are DVDs, although they still have 11,000 VHS tapes compared to 4,000 DVDs.
“The transition was really, really, fast!” says William.
Video Playhouse now has what William regards as “the best location in town. Now we can do things like host Chamber mixers and our parking situation is great.”
In November or December they will have a grand opening.
Why is William still in the video business after 13 years?
“With all the complexities of life, this is light. It’s not life. It’s not intense. it’s entertainment. A movie is something you come in and get to get away from it all.”
William, who owned a furniture refinishing company before he got into retail, says he has learned that like any business, you have to be a buyer.
“ You have to know what your customers like and what they don’t like. One reason we’ve been successful is because I’ve been able to buy movies for all kinds of tastes.
“Everybody says they would like to have more family fare, but the movies that rent are, for the most part, R rated.
“I guess it’s like politics. People say they hate those politicians, but they love theirs.”
When he buys movies, he doesn’t pay any attention to the ratings. “My job is not to be a censor, that’s the parents’ job. There’s number of factors. Box office is a fairly good indicator. But the movies that rent best are the ones that made $30-$60 million, not the blockbusters. Unless it’s a movie like Spiderman, which had complexity to it, so people are likely to rent it even though they saw it in the theater.”
William is a movie buff. “I try to go to see as many movies in the theater as I can to see how it will play in our market.”
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Hours at the new location will remain 10 a.m.-10 p.m. every day but Christmas, with the store staying open a little later on game nights.
The phone number will remain what it has been since 1983: 749-0515
A VC mom who was delayed 40 minutes getting her daughter to the hospital thinks so
A week and a half ago, during a weekend of heavy traffic caused by several concurrent community events, a Valley Center mother got caught in traffic gridlock on “the luge” as she attempted to rush her injured daughter to the hospital.
Lela Killion, resident of VC for nine years with her husband, Dean, and their 4 year old daughter, Sarah, were leaving Bell Gardens with Lela’s other daughter, Ashley and her sister-in-law, Dyan Farmer and her baby about 2:30 p.m. when an accident occurred.
Mrs. Killion accidentally slammed the hatchback of their Ford Expedition on Sarah’s foot, slicing it badly.
“Sarah was kind of in the back and I didn’t realize she had gotten back over the seat,” recalls her mother.
The little girl was bleeding, so the mother rushed her to their home behind St. Stephen’s Church to look at the wound.
“We didn’t want to overreact, but we decided that Sarah had to go to urgent care.”
Mrs. Killion held Sarah in her arms while Mrs. Farmer drove the Expedition. It was about 3 p.m.
On Valley Center Road near Pepperoni’s the traffic started to slow, and by the time they reached Papa Bear’s it was backed up.
Mrs. Killion told her sister-in-law, “There has to be an accident. I’ve never been in this situation before.”
It took 40 minutes to get down to the bottom of the grade.
“There was nothing we could do. Once you’re stuck you can’t get out anyway. It was very slow and seemed like an eternity because I wanted to get my daughter there as soon as possible.”
At the bottom nothing was going on. No accident. Nothing to account for the slowing.
Sarah was at the hospital for five hours. She needed stitches, and to keep her from messing with the stitches, they put on a cast.
Lela Killion is angry.“I have always supported the casinos. But I was so angry in that situation. It can’t be like this. They should have prepared for this. The problem is the casinos came all at once and they created this situation.”
Somebody has to do something, “right away,” says the young mother. “What can I do if I can’t get my child to the doctor.
“I was scared. I’ve never seen so much blood coming out of a foot. My daughter was hysterical in the car and we weren’t moving.”
The main problem, she says, is that there is no way to get off “the luge” once you’re in it. “You can’t turn around.”
Someone should have been posted near the entrance to the grade to warn motorists that there might be a long delay.
One thing she knows.”If anything like this ever occurs again, I need to have a better plan!”
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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