You may have already noticed the orange signs going around town. If you want to avoid 30 minute traffic delays at night, you should pay them some heed.
They warn that from Sunday, July 6-Friday, Aug. 29 the VC Municipal Water District will be replacing 1500 feet of aging water main pipeline near the intersection of Cole Grade & Valley Center Roads.
The workweek will be from Sunday night, starting at 9 p.m. and ending at Friday morning at 5 a.m. The workday will start at 9 p.m. and end at 5 a.m. each day.
The cost of the project is $451,050.
Motorists can expect up to 30 minute delays during the nighttime work hours.
According to district engineer Patric Jewell, the contractor, Tiger Equipment Co., is expected to begin work on July 7.
The cost to do the work at night is $50,000-$100,000 more than it would cost normally, but the County Dept. of Public Works and the water district felt that the disruption to traffic warranted it.
Water District Gen. Mgr. Gary Arant told The Roadrunner, “We really had hoped to coordinate all of the pipeline improvements with the County’s Valley Center Road project, but we can’t wait for this any longer. It’s still uncertain when that will happen.”
The water main replacement project has been part of the Valley Center Road Improvement Project since the 1980s.
And, even though the district will only be replacing this section of pipeline now, it still plans to replace the lions share of old water main when the County does the road project.
The district has had several leaks over the years along this stretch of pipe, including a major break on June 16, 2002 which shut down three businesses for several weeks.
Estimates of the cost to the community of that break was about $100,000, including $75,000 in damages paid to the three businesses and $25,000 to repair the leak.
“In the interests of protecting the surrounding properties from main breaks, we need to do the work now,” Arant said. “We are doing it at night to minimize the inconvenience to motorists.”
The County won’t let the water district declare detours, but the district will be putting up signs suggesting alternate routes.
“Hopefully, we’ll get in and out in a month to 45 days,” said Arant.
Jewell conceded that the roadwork may inconvenience motorists who are on the roads at night. “The reason we are doing it at night is to minimize interruption to the local business and what we see as the local traffic. We decided if we were going to impact people that we’d prefer to impact people who don’t live here.”
The replacement project was delayed until summer in order to minimize the effects on school traffic. There will be summer school traffic, but nothing like what is experienced between fall and spring.
Some traffic slowing may occur during the day because of the trench plates, but no workers will be out at that time.
Alternate routes include:
Miller road
North Lake Wohlford
Sunset or Mac Tan
Woods Valley Road
People who have comments or complaints about the project are encouraged to call project manager Mike Pumar at 749-1600.
When you see 100 American flags waving along Valley Center Road to celebrate Independence Day, you can say thank you to Donna Jorgensen, the VC Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors Club, Scout Troop 673 and the dozens of people who donated money to make this a reality.
To give credit where credit is due, it was Chamber member Donna Jorgensen who first conceived the idea of reviving a tradition that was in place in Valley Center two decades ago.
“It’s a takeoff from years ago when they used to line Valley Center Road with flags,” recalls Jorgensen. “When I was president of the Chamber the people who had been doing it couldn’t do it anymore. They dropped off the flags at the Chamber office.”
Unfortunately, in the ensuing years, the Chamber lost track of the flags.
Jorgensen first suggested the idea to the Chamber Ambassadors in the spring of 2002. She became chairman of the project and the Ambassadors began soliciting sponsors for the flag at $7 a flag and pole. The first 50 flags were purchased.
The Chamber started drilling holes, with members Tom Bumgardner, Eric Laventure, and Brian Jolliffe doing the work.
Unfortunately, after the holes were drilled, the plastic pieces were stolen from the holes.
“That’s when I ran into Jim Marx and Mark Thornton of Boy Scout Troop 673, who said their troop was interested in putting the flags out.”
When the Scouts planted the flags, they drilled holes as they went, instead of trying to reinsert the plastic pieces. They did a test run for Memorial Day.
Now the project has sponsors for another 50 flags, for a total of 100. Meantime, Troop 673 is looking for other troops to help it place the flags before July 4.
“We had a totally outstanding reaction,” Jorgensen recalls with satisfaction. “We’ve had people come by and donate money to the scouts. We’ve had donations come in for the Chamber and Scouts. Everyone is real impressed to see them out on the patriotic holidays.”
The flags will be out again on July 4.
This week officials began releasing sterile Mexian fruit flies to combat the infestation first noted here least winter.
Efforts to eradicate a Mexican fruit fly infestation in Valley Center have progressed successfully to date, allowing officials to cease aerial treatments of the approved organic presticide Naturalyte and begin releasing sterile Mexican fruit flies.
The first round of sterile releases occurred Thursday, June 12, with subsequent releases planned every week. About 28 million sterile flies will be released each week over the 28 square-mile eradication zone (one million per square mile).
“With this transition to the sterile release program, we are taking an important step toward eradication of this infestation,” said CDFA Secretary William (Bill) J. Lyons, Jr. “I’d like to thank the community for their cooperation on a successful aerial treatment program. As a farmer, I understand the hardship that comes with a quarantine. We are pleased with our progress, and we remain committed to eradicating this infestation as quickly as possible.”
Pesticide applications and sterile fly releases have been used successfully in tandem to eradicate past fruit fly infestations in California. Once a series of pesticide treatments substantially reduces an infestation, sterile male flies are released to ensure that any fertile female flies still in the area will be unable to find a wild mate.
The Valley Center infestation was detected on November 21, 2002. The Mexican fruit fly is native to southern and central Mexico. The fly attacks over 40 different kinds of fruits, including citrus and avocado. Damage occurs when the female fly lays eggs in the fruit. The eggs hatch into maggots which make the fruit unfit for human consumption.
A just released study by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture showing that Hass avocados don’t appear to serve as hosts for the Mexican fruit fly has allowed 40 growers in the quarantine’s core to pick and market their crops.
The Hass growers received word around noon on Monday from the state Dept. of Food & Agriculture, according to Jay Van Rein, a spokesman for the state agency.
Hass growers have long maintained that the skins of their fruit, which resembles that of a crocodile, are too tough for the Mexfly to pierce with its ovipositor and deposit eggs. Now they have research to back them up in the form of a report by the USDA entitled Importation of ‘Hass’ Avocado Fruit (Persea americana) from Mexico: A Risk Analysis.
According to Van Rein, spokesman for the California Dept. of Food & Agriculture, the reports findings led to about 40 growers, representing 700 acres, being allowed to pick and sell their fruit, although under enhanced inspections to ensure that the avocados are not infested. This includes cutting open a certain percentage of the Hass avos to inspect them for signs of fruit fly larvae and only allowing fruit picked directly off the trees to be harvested, but the growers would be able to harvest and get their fruit to market in time.”
“It seems to be pretty strong research,” Van Rein told The Roadrunner this week.
All over the state, school districts are firing teachers, making drastic cuts, and, in general creating panic among teachers, parents, and occasionally students.
One school district that has not taken part in the mass hysteria is Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District. Is this because other districts are operating like grasshoppers when the Valley Center district is operating like an ant?
The Roadrunner interviewed Supt. Karen Jobe and Assistant Supt. Sarah Clayton to find out.
Q: We see school districts throughout the county handing out pink slips and cutting positions. Why hasn’t Valley Center done that?
CLAYTON: “A lot of districts give pink slips to cover themselves in the event they need to lay people off. We only give pink slips when we are actually going to lay people off, because it harms morale. We do this as a philosophy of the district.”
JOBE: “I think the philosophy part of it is, if you can, to run your district in the bad times the way you run it in the good times. We don’t make business decisions any different in the years when the money is good than we do when the money is bad. It’s like a good investment plan: no matter what the market is doing you hang in there.”
CLAYTON: “For example, a lot of districts will spend down to the 3 percent reserve that is required for economic uncertainties. They will run it down to whatever the states says they can. We don’t do that.”
Q:What do you do about reserves?
JOBE: It’s always very difficult because salaries are 80% of every budget. We do not, to my knowledge, have any classroom teacher that is working outside of their assigned classes. If you look at some districts whose teachers are being laid off, they may do a reading class over and above their normal assignments. You now pay two people to do the same jobs. Our teachers have classrooms assignments as opposed to TOSA (teachers on special assignments). A lot of districts do that to do wonderful things and there’s nothing wrong with doing it that way.
Q: Are you saying that perhaps some other school districts are making a bigger deal out of their cutbacks than the reality?
CLAYTON: No, the reality is that they have committed to staff and parents with theses programs. That’s why you will see things like extra counselors being added. We try to avoid getting to that point by avoiding hiring additional personnel, even in the good years.
Q: What are some other areas where you feel you have more control over the budget and are not held hostage in the years when the budget is worse?
CLAYTON: The big one is we’ve actively pursued bonds instead of going into debt with COPs (certificates of participation), which can drain your budget when you have to pay them off, because they cost an additional 5 percent interest. We don’t have that kind of indebtedness. Kudos to our community for supporting our middle school, our primary school and our high school by voting for bonds. That allowed to pay out of the general fund for our continuation school.
Q: Isn’t a bond, indebtedness, too?
CLAYTON: It’s still money. It’s still a debt. But a bond is a long term loan, while a COP is a short term loan and you pay interest on it out of the general fund. The critical element is that we’ve had 70-80 percent support on these bonds because the people know that we really need the money before we approach them for money.”
JOBE: We try not to build unless the community supports it, like in the case of the high school theater.
CLAYTON: One of the little things we do is we don’t plan the budget based on growth. We also hire new teachers to the profession that are less expensive. We really try to capitalize on categorical funds s much as possible keep the general fund money that doesn’t have strings attached to it. Our administrative staff, compared to other districts is average to small.
JOBE: When I was working on unification, I surveyed 27 districts in California that are in our size range, K-12. The range was huge. I was hoping to find some typical administrative and office staffing comparisons. What I found was that no matter how you look at it, from office staff to the number of administrators, we are somewhat lean.
CLAYTON: We do have a lean administration. I go to meetings with other districts and they will have an assistant superintendent of business, or an assistant superintendent of curriculum or personnel. We have one assistant superintendent.
JOBE: We have directors of these programs, but on the salary schedule they are less money (below Sarah). Our administrators wear a lot of hats.
CLAYTON: A lot of our vice principals handle things that might be handled by our administrators. For example, Jim Bachman handles GATE and advanced learners; while Leiani Osugi handles the safe and drug free schools grants and curriculum.
JOBE: That is how Sarah and I learned both learned so much about the district. Early on you get a chance to do things that are normally put off until later levels of management.
Q: So you have kind of an administrative apprentice program going on?
JOBE: Yes, and deliberately so.
Q: Do they get paid extra?
CLAYTON: No, they do it to get the experience.
JOBE: What has developed has been a board philosophy that the most important place to put money is into the classroom. The board has a philosophy that reflects the community value.
CLAYTON: The continuity on the board has been great. We haven’t had board members who have had personal agendas. They let us administer the programs without inflicting their biases.
Q: This year we haven’t seen much in the way of drastic cuts for VC, but what abut next year?
JOBE: The way we handled some cuts weren’t even visible. We picked up five teachers without increasing class sizes. They left the system and we did not replace them. Some took early retirements. We will not be funding them next year unless we get more enrollment.
Q: How much does that save?
K: If each teacher is paid $50,000, that’s a quarter of a million dollars, although the first year we won’t save quite as much due to early retirement incentives. The other part was in K-8 where we averaged what we spent on children at the various sites and gave the principals a per pupil allocation, so that all sites are on the same playing field. We’re giving principals a little more autonomy but also more responsibility for some things that they used to send up to the district office. We’re doing some things in the budget area that will give them a better idea of what they have and what they actually spend.
Q: In other words, you’re putting them on a budget.
JOBE: They’ve been on a budget but it hasn’t been the same from site to site. And because the board has been so good about buying textbooks, that will help in the next couple of years because we won’t have a big purchase.
Q: Typically what would a large textbook purchase cost?
CLAYTON: Anywhere from $150,000 to $500,000, depending on the subject matter and components.
JOBE: Summer school savings will also be realized in this year.
Michael Crews Development will present the fourth annual 4th of July Fireworks at the Valley Center High School Football Stadium.
Festivities begin at 5 p.m. with fun and games. This year you can come climb the largest outdoor rock wall in San Diego County or have your children participate in the children’s games.
There will be dunking booths, cotton candy, corn on the cob, snow cones, kettle corn, hamburgers, bratwurst and more available from vendors.
The Valley Center band Hot Pursuit will provide live music, beginning at 5 p.m.
You are also welcome to bring a picnic basket and spread out a blanket on the lawn to enjoy your own dinner with family and friends.
Alcohol and tobacco are forbidden on the school campus.
The fireworks will begin promptly at 9 p.m. According to Crews, this is the second largest fireworks display in North San Diego County. More than 8,000 people attended last year.
You can arrive early for the best parking and if you like, stay late to help clean up.
“The evening is in your hands and we look forward to meeting all of you at the celebration,” said a spokesman for Crews Development.
Volunteer Opportunities
Greeters are need for one-hour slots each.
Support staff are needed for rock wall climbing.
The organizers want to hear from you! Who would you like to see in the dunking booth?
Call the main office at Crews Development to give your suggestion or to volunteer: 749-1919
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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