This year’s Western Days rodeo will have something new: royalty.
For its third year the VC Rodeo is holding a rodeo queen contest, which will select a queen and two princesses.
The contestants are Alexis Boles, 15, a student at Valley Center High School; Elisabeth “Beth” Tupper, 16, VCHS; Mackenzie Cayford, 15, VCHS; Danyelle Barner, 18, Palomar College; Rachael Kelley, 17, Christian Life Academy; Emily Richardson, 18, VCHS and Palomar College; Samantha Smith, 15, VCHS; Lindsey Turner, 17, VCHS; Kalyn Peirce, 14, VCHS and Keira Campbell, 16, VCHS.
According to rodeo queen contest committee chairman Theresa Trogdon, “Most rodeos have queen contests. It steps our rodeo up to the next caliber. It makes the statement that our rodeo is getting better.”
The rodeo queen will have several ceremonial duties during the two rodeo nights.
She will ride in the grand entry parade with the American flag, and lead the pledge of allegiance from horseback, and ride in patterns on horseback. She will also give a speech on both nights of the rodeo.
Contestants must be qualified horsewomen, be upstanding, have good grades and be involved in extracurricular activities in the community.
Contestants are judged primarily on their horsemanship, and awarded points from 1-10.
They must excel in a riding pattern. They have to know how to carry a flag on horseback. They have to know how to tack up their horse, dress the horse, and be able to make the horse stop and carry out commands.
They are also judged for public speaking and for being photogenic.
The winner will be eligible to enter the California State Rodeo Queen competition. She will also receive a $500 scholarship and many donated prizes.
This year’s judges are Dave Archer, a well-known VC trainer; Honorary Mayor Kim Laventure Jennifer LaVine of Tri-City Carpet, a former Miss VC from the 1970s and a hobbyist photographer.
The competition will be held April 24 at Aerie Park, 1-4 p.m. Admission is fee.
An awards dinner will be held April 30, 6 p.m. at VC Community Hall. The affair will be catered by Rotisserie Affair of San Diego.
It will be followed by a dance at 7 p.m. on the community center stage with live music by the Working Cowboy Band.
Tickets for the dinner are $10 and $10 for the dance. They are available through the VC Chamber office, from every committee member, The Roadrunner, Bear Valley Farm Supply. Terry’s Hay & Grain, VC Feed, Krueger Realty and Gina’s Salon.
The rodeo queen committee, which has been meeting since last August, includes Theresa Trogdon, chairman; Kristi Bruner, co-chairman; Erin Hagen, Suzanne Quellette and Tina Ossana.
“We’re all Valley Center cowgirls!” says Trogdon.
By DAVID ROSS
Friday night the VC shopping center subcommittee redesigned Herb Schaffer’s Village Square project for him.
Or at least that’s how Schaffer feels about it.
Schaffer, whose Weston Valley Center LLC proposes a supermarket mall and 71 unit condo on land bounded by VC and Cole Grade Roads, was not at the meeting. However, when he heard about it he didn’t appreciate the recommendation to the VC planning group (and the County) that he use landscape architect John Ruggieri’s design for his project.
“It’s a major modification, which I will not do,” Schaffer told The Roadrunner Monday.
Sandy Smith, chairman of the subcommittee, and chairman of the planning group, tells a different story.
“We took a look at an option from John Ruggieri that he had been working on for the Villages Subcommittee. It was a high level village design that could be applied to the project,” she said.
Ruggieri is a VC resident, and a local landscape architect who is senior vice president of planning for ProjectDesign Consultants, and the most recent appointment to the VC Design Review Board.
The subcommittee’s motion was to “recommend to the VCCPG that they support a plan similar to the plans presented by John Ruggieri and, if adopted by proponent, community will facilitate a streamlined entitlement process.”
Ruggieri’s plan is not as detailed as Schaffer’s existing plan. It is more conceptual, she said.
Ruggieri’s design “pulls some of the buildings away from the wings, into a grid pattern that is more like a traditional village square,” she said.
Under the proposed design the parking lot would be more like a village main street than a parking lot. It would have more retail and commercial square footage.
A major change would have the road coming out of the shopping center onto Cole Grade at the stoplight at the entrance to the school complex.
Schaffer doesn’t like the plan.
“It’s a different kind of design. It isolates the major parts of the center. It puts a lot of parking behind the little stores. People don’t want to park behind little stores and look at their backs,” he said.
Smith told The Roadrunner: “Herb’s been asking John for the design.”
Asked about Schaffer’s complaint that the design is being forced on him, she said, “We’re not in a position to do that. It’s his project and it’s not our job to tell him what to do. I’d just appreciate him being open to other ideas.”
That’s not how Larry Glavinic, the subcommittee member who abstained from the vote, sees it.
“Herb from the get go has been willing to make minor modifications,” said Glavinic. “However, what was proposed on Friday was major. Changing the footprint of where the buildings go and the street orientation is why I consider it major.”
“Personally,” said Schaffer, “I just think they are trying to kill it. As they say, justice delayed is justice denied. County planners approved this conceptually over a year ago. With these changes it would take another six to nine months to get approvals.”
This, extra fees, interest and taxes on property without knowing whether the project will eventually be approved, makes Schaffer think that if the planning group supports the subcommittee’s recommendation, his project is dead.
Glavinic agrees: “They are doing the committee kill. ‘Let’s study it. Let’s give it another six months.’ These guys have no idea that time is money, especially if it’s someone else’s.”
The project has been plagued with delays, which has included the Dept. of Planning & Land Use asking Schaffer to contribute over $7 million to widening Cole Grade Road.
“I will now have to go through a two-year environmental impact report and then at the end depend upon ‘overriding considerations,’ which means it will go to the Board of Supervisors,” said Schaffer.
For the supervisors to override other objections to a project and approve in for “overriding considerations,” is rare. In the last five years it has occurred once.
“It’s a high risk situation and a huge cost over six to seven years. Now, if they want a complete change . . .” said Schaffer.
He insists that he can’t keep changing his design to suit new casts of characters.
“New people come in with new ideas and everyone wants to cook a different hamburger. I won’t go through with this, I’ll just drop out. If that happens, there won’t be a supermarket until there is a sewer.”
He adds that his design is not a shopping center so much as it is a “town center.”
“It’s a community, If they want some minor changes within the context of what i’ve submitted that’s fine. The basic structure I cannot change. The die is cast. The Rubicon is crossed.”
Special Meeting
VC planners discussed the Village Square proposal at Monday night’s special meeting.
Ruggieri explained what he was trying to accomplish with the design suggestions.
The shopping center is part of a larger picture, i.e. what “the village is and what you want it to be. What do we want it to be for our grandchildren. I tried to bring people out 20 or 30 years out into the future and to look back at it.”
He tried to look at Schaffer’s current proposal and to “make it work,” in the context of three sets of options that he had presented to the Villages Subcommittee.”
“This works,” said Ruggieri. “It may not be exactly what the proponent wants to build out there, but it works. I’ve talked to people in the industry. They feel that Valley Center is a good place to do it.”
Planner Craig Adams grilled Ruggieri about his proposal.
“I’m concerned that this man has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and you’re saying that your design is better than his.”
“Herb has designed a perfectly good shopping center,” said Ruggieri. “It would work very well in Scripps Ranch, Sabre Springs and Carmel Mountain.”
“That’s your opinion,” countered Adams.
“No sir, it’s a fact. That shopping center is designed all over suburbia and the United States.”
“That’s your opinion,” interrupted Adams.
“OK, in my professional opinion. The question for the planning group and village shopping center, is, what kind of village do you want, an urban style village or a suburban style?”
Most people in opinion surveys such as the Village Subcommittee has conducted, prefer the traditional “Main Street” look, he said.
Planner Ron Adair asked for examples of suburban, or even rural type villages.
Old Town Ramona, Julian, Fallbrook, are all such places, said Ruggieri.
“Either design can be very successful. They are just two different forms,” he added. “In my mind this is not an antagonistic process. It’s a way of getting people to talk about the problems. If the real issue is how to create a village 20 years from now, there has to be a lot of dialogue.”
* * *
The Villages subcommittee next meets April 5, VC Community Hall.
“I admit I’ve been in shock for the last 36 or 48 hours,” VC planning group Chairman Sandy Smith told fellow planners at Monday night’s special meeting.
“You should have seen my face when they showed me these maps.”
On the meeting’s agenda was reaction to the County Dept. of Planning & Land Use’s latest map for General Plan 2020. It would, according to some calculations, put 20,000 people into the two nodes of VC’s country town.
The County has finished making adjustments to areas outside of the country town. For the most part, the planning group, and most property owners who made objections, got their wishes.
But the north and south village areas were held until last, “subject to further refinements.”
Now, it appears that the refinement the County has in mind follow the precepts of “smart growth” and concentrates large numbers of residents, as many as half of the residents of VC, at ultimate build-out, into the north and south nodes.
Under this proposal, VC’s population at ultimate build-out (if every lot is developed that could legally be developed) would be about 40,000. About half would be in the two “nodes.”
Mrs. Smith recalled that last year the County asked if the planners were willing to “put a little bubble” over the villages and study them in depth later.
“We said OK.”
In August of 2003 DPLU presented the map to the supervisors. They asked for a transportation study. They will get that study on May 19. From there the map will go out to the public for about a year as part of an environmental impact report.
“What they did significantly changes the villages area,” said Mrs. Smith. “The good news for us is that we have the bubbles over us to work out in detail., and possibly to include the equity proposals.”
Equity proposals, also known as TDRs (transfer of development rights), are way of compensating land owners for having the density of their property cut.
So far the County has not indicated that it will include such a proposal. The head of DPLU, Gary Prior, has said that GP2020 works without them.
However, the Interest Group, an advisory group composed of representatives of building and environmental lobby groups, recently voted to support TDRs.
As much as the planners may dislike these increased population figures, the County has indicated they are stuck with them.
According to Mrs. Smith, “Ivan [Holler, the planner in charge of GP2020], said it’s a little late in the process to change the population problems. To tell you the truth I don’t think they are paying much attention to it anyway.”
Planner Larry Glavinic commented, “It’s a little cheap of them at this late date to give us the higher numbers, to say they are going to add 2,000 to our village.”
This change would lead to Valley Center “losing its community character,” he said. “All of the worst nightmares of Ramona will be in Valley Center.”
Planner Jim Yerdon commented, “The law says that all alternatives must be considered. If we come back with an alternative to the County’s plan, they have to consider it.”
Audience member Jon Vick said the planning group is itself to blame for the County using higher ultimate population figures than the 32,000 that the planners said they wanted.
He said the planning group went on record three years ago asking for 45,000 so that the County would include more infrastructure. According to Vick, the group never rescinded that action. The DPLU is acting on this assumption, he says.
When he brought this up at Monday’s planning group, the chairman, Mrs. Smith, said “I don’t want to go there.”
According to Glavinic, this action would ultimately mandate a sewer, since that’s the only way such high density could be supported.
Mrs. Smith noted that “smart growth” says to have the infrastructure in before the population. “It seems to me that the problem is to pull off a sewer. It won’t happen with public funding, so it will have to be private. There will have to be enough payback, you have to have some magical number to make it worth that person’s while. In order to have sewer, you have to have the density. But if you don’t want the sewer, you won’t get any village at all.”
The map the County presented VC with last weekend was considerably denser in the villages than one she saw a month before.
“They said they could make the boundaries of the village smaller, but only if we were willing to accept higher density.”
Adding to the problem is that while the County has said that the group should make recommendations as to what the Village Limit Line is, i.e. the boundaries, it hasn’t said exactly what that means.
One definition says that village limit lines encompass areas that can be or are being sewered.
If that’s true, said Yerdon, why isn’t the area around the Moosa sewer plant in the Old Castle area put inside this line.
If it was, the villages in Valley Center wouldn’t have to be as dense, he said.
“How do they expect us to intelligently act when they won’t tell us what we need to know,” complained planner Rich Rudolf. “Do you just throw density out there and hope that it will create such as mess that there’s no other way to deal with it besides a sewer?”
The group voted to follow Yerdon’s suggestion and ask the County to include the area around the Moosa plant with the Village Limit Line.
Valley Center’s road widening project has been chosen for a pilot program that will create a lane for Dean Kamen’s futuristic pedestrian vehicle, the Segway.
Segways are those odd-looking, single passenger, two-wheeled contraptions that don’t fall over, and go for miles and miles on a charge of electricity.
San Diego County has decided to be in the forefront of this revolution in urban travel.
Unfortunately, there were no cities or urban areas that were willing to add one of the lanes to their existing roads, which is why the Dept. of Public Works decided to convert one of the planned four-lanes of the Valley Center road widening to a Segway lane.
This will mean that the widening won’t be as effective at dealing with congested traffic as before. In fact, the road will probably be subject to gridlock almost from the beginning because of the Segway lane.
But the upside is that the Segway lane will provide virtually unlimited access to anyone who has one of the vehicles. That’s almost no one right now, but as consumers become aware of the fact that nearly empty lanes await them, the County expects that they will buy the vehicle.
A DPW official who asked not to be named admitted that Valley Center probably won’t benefit from the new lane “right away.”
“Well, the fact is that Valley Center has had an ongoing traffic problem for nearly three decades. We figured that another 20 years or so wouldn’t cause that much more of a fuss. Besides, there’s not as many votes in Valley Center as there are in places like Ramona and Escondido, which definitely didn’t want the thing.”
If no one besides Valley Center wants a Segway lane, where will this one go?
“Well, it won’t go anywhere,” admitted the anonymous official. “But that’s the way it goes, or, in this case, doesn’t go. It’s kind of like horse trails. They don’t go anywhere either.”
So what are the actual benefits of the Segway lane.
“Well, it’s a good way to experiment on people who basically have no political power, which means no real negative ramifications for us bureaucrats. And it puts us in real good with the environmentalists, who have all the real power anyway.”
April Fool.
The Valley Roadrunner
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