The “Get Out the Vote” committee for the Parks & Recreation tax initiative proposition has begun meeting.
According to Chairman Morgan Rogers, the July 28 meeting, “went very well. We have a great group of people working on this proposition. . . . We are off to a great start.”
The group is keeping the date Oct. 6 in mind. That’s when absentee ballots will be mailed out. The other date they are keeping their eye on, of course, is election day itself, Nov. 2.
Various members were assigned tasks.
• Rick Landavazo will coordinate the efforts to obtain ballot endorsements so as to avoid numerous calls to specific individuals. He will be given recommendations on which community members to approach.
• Bill Layne will update the draft phone script from the previous tax election.
• Members will be encouraged to submit letters to area newspapers supporting the proposition.
• Faith Much will coordinate the phone banks to include identifying locations and coordinating volunteers to make the phone calls. The calls will focus on registered voters.
• Presentations will be given by members who include Much, Layne, Rogers and others. They will develop presentations that can be given by any member of the team.
• Parks & Rec Pres. Eric Jockinsen will work with Rec Inc to ensure that donations funneled to the committee from Rec Inc. complies with election contribution laws.
• In coming days the group will obtain the final wording on the proposition to distribute and use in the campaign’s marketing effort.
The committee’s next meeting will be Wednesday, Aug. 4, 7 p.m., upstairs at VC Community Hall.
Volunteers are welcome to attend.
With just a few days to go before the filing deadline, local prospective candidates either are playing things close to the vest, intending to go into the Registrar of Voters office at the last minute— Or else there’s considerable ennui about public office this year.
Friday, 5 p.m. is the deadline to file to run for a variety of public offices in and around Valley Center.
Seats are available on the VC planning group, VC-P school board, fire, water and parks & rec boards.
School Board
With two seats up for election on the VC-P school board, incumbent Wendy Zeugschmidt has filed. So has challenger Don Martin, recently retired as ag teacher at the high school. The other incumbent, Patrick Simpson, had not pulled papers at press time.
VC Fire Board
Incumbent Stan Johnson has pulled papers. Incumbent Patrick Garcia has not yet indicated his intentions.
Water Board
In Div. 1, incumbent Robert Polito has filed. In Div. 4, Doug J. Ohara has filed. Chuck Stone is the incumbent in that division.
Only residents of those particular divisions can run. Call the VCMWD at 749-1600 if you are unsure what division you are in.
VC Parks & Rec
On the VC Parks & Recreation District, the seats held by Ron Lamb and John Scibilia are up for election. So far, Earl Brown, a retired businessman, has filed.
VC Planning Group
Other seats open on the planning group are currently held by Mike Morasco, Andy Washburn, Jim Yerdon, Carol Prime, Don Martin, Frank Shoemaker, Rich Rudolf and Sandy Smith. Any VC resident can run for any of these seats.
So far, Shoemaker and Rudolf have filed. Washburn has taken out papers, but not filed. Leon Schwartz and Roger Ingraham have taken out papers but not yet filed.
Because Don Martin has filed to run for the school board, he is not allowed to run for the planning group under a little known provision that says that an individual cannot appear more than once on a particular ballot.
Deers Springs Fire Board
Jean F. Slaughter, incumbent, has filed papers for one of two seats open on this fire district that serves parts of VC and the I-15 Corridor.
Yuima Water District
Four candidates have filed for the four divisions of this water district that serves Pauma Valley. The seats are open in Div. 1 (incumbent is Doug Anderson), 2 (incumbent is Mike Fitzsimmons), 3 (incumbent is John Lyttle) and 5, which is currently vacant. Call the district at 742-3704, if you are uncertain which division you are in.
In Div. 1, Douglas K. Anderson has filed.
In Div. 2, Mike Fitzsimmons has filed.
In Div. 3, John Lyttle has filed.
In Div. 5, George Stockton has filed.
Candidates can obtain and turn in paperwork at the San Diego County Registrar of Voters Office 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. M-F at 5201 Ruffin Road Ste. 1, San Diego, CA 92123.
Although the deadline to file is Aug. 6 at 5 p.m. that may be extended to Aug. 11 if at least one incumbent in a particular district doesn’t file.
For more information on candidate filing call (858) 694-3405 or log onto www.sdvote.com.
By DAVID ROSS
Leon Schwartz and Robert Hancock, who, when last seen, resigned from the design review board because they couldn’t vote on the Weston shopping center, since it was alleged that they had a conflict of interest, returned July 27 to challenge member who had challenged them— also on ethical grounds.
They called on design review member John Ruggieri to recuse himself from voting on the shopping center, because, at one time, apparently within the last year or so, he was turned down for employment by the Weston corporation.
Ruggieri responded by recusing himself for that meeting, although it is unclear whether he will do so from future meetings.
While conflict of interest rules clearly state that office holders who own property within 500 ft. of a project under review cannot vote on it if they would be materially affected, it does not say that applying for a job, or bidding on a project and being turned down, constitutes conflict of interest.
Since his resignation Schwartz had been researching various regulations pertaining to the design board, and felt that he could say “gotcha” for some members overstepping their bounds in how they have handled the Village Square shopping center.
He promised to attend future design review board meetings to make sure the group follows the rules.
“I talked to County Counsel, which said that the board is doing some things wrong,” Schwartz told The Roadrunner. “We came in with paragraph and verse of actions that took place that are not consistent with design review guidelines.”
Schwartz referred to Page 2 of the guidelines, which, he says, “says the group is responsible for reviews of applications of rezones, subdivisions, major use permits and other discretionary permits. There’s no mention of redesigns.”
Some design board members, he noted, have been attempting to get the proponent to agree to a redesign.
Schwartz’s second point was that on Page 14 of the Design Guidelines it says, “Evaluation of the project by the review board is limited to the topics contained in this manual. The review board makes recommendations to the director of planning, citing specific guidelines to which the project conforms or doesn’t conform.”
“There’s no mention of independent meetings with the applicant, and to the contrary, board members are held to a stricter standard than ordinary citizens,” he said.
“Any meetings between design board members and applicants has to have approval of the chairman in writing,” said Schwartz. He says that some members of the board have met independently with the developer to try to work out deals in advance of the board meetings. “That’s the sort of thing that we are being nailed on all the time. But they have held illegal supermarket subcommittee meetings with no proper notification.”
At the time that Schwartz and Hancock made their presentations, Ruggieri stepped down. This left the five person board without a quorum.
Hancock and Schwartz recommended to representatives of Weston that they skip the design review process and talk directly with the Dept. of Planning and Land Use.
“I told them that since they are not getting timely review that the County probably wouldn’t have a problem reviewing it,” said Schwartz.
Lael Montgomery, who is apparently temporary chairman of the board until elections can be held to fill the positions vacated by Hancock, chairman, and Schwartz, secretary, said she was disappointed to see them go. But she defended previous meetings she and Ruggieri held with the developer.
“I’ve talked to Susie Vaughn (the County staffer in charge of design review boards) about it,” she said. “I feel I wasn’t representing the design review board or anyone else. I wasn’t making a private deal. A lot of people who care about this project responded.”
Regarding Hancock: “I’ve known Robert for several years and he has an important body of knowledge to bring. I still don’t understand them. If they resign they can’t vote on anything. I can understand what they are saying but I don’t share the logic.”
At presstime, The Roadrunner had contacted Ruggieri to get his comments, but hadn’t heard back from him.
By DAVID ROSS
They are soft-spoken. They are tenacious. They are effective. The husband and wife team of Terry & Mimi Van Koughnett are the guardian angels of VC’s fire survivors.
Note the word: “survivors.” They are adamant that those they help are survivors, not victims.
They operate the Paradise Fire Relief Committee. Its mission, according to its web site (www.paradisefire.com), is, “Serving the needs of our community in the aftermath of the Paradise fire. . .individual and family case management, connecting fire victims to resources, taking care of unmet needs.”
The web site, by the way, is a rich mother lode of resources for those affected by fire.
“Our job,” Terry Van Koughnett told The Roadrunner, “is to connect clients with resources. None of the resources provide one hundred percent, but together they can help.”
The Van Koughnetts are certainly not the only local fire recovery volunteers, but they are among an honored few who have been at it from the very first days of last October’s disaster.
In the first weeks they worked with the VC Fire Relief Fund, a consortium of businesses and churches.
As Terry describes it, “She (Mimi) was bringing families that needed helped and I was writing checks.” That didn’t suit him, so he quit and started to get into the work of directly helping families.
His enthusiasm didn’t go unnoticed. He was hired by Interfaith Community Services to manage the Transitional Housing Project that placed 33 families (over 100 people) in trailers at Rancho Corrido, an RV and trailer park in Pauma Valley. The trailers are given free and clear to the families. As originally defined, the project was funded to find transitional housing for 30 families. But it expanded as more people applied.
Most families who have been given trailers say they want to stay at Rancho Corrido. According to Terry, “Basically they like it there. Rancho Corrido is a well-managed, no-nonsense park. It has paved roads, street lights, a children’s playground with basketball and volleyball areas, a swimming pool, laundry facilities, meeting rooms, a catch-and-release fishing pond, hiking trails and basic groceries.”
The clients received financial assistance with utilities paid for the first six months.
Some have improved their circumstances to the point where they are paying all of their rent, which averages $423.
Today the Van Koughnetts operate the Paradise Fire Relief Committee from their house.
They also work out of the Salvation Army Resource Center, located at 29010 Cole Grade Rd., between the Post Office and the Library, across from Fruitvale. The new Assistance Hotline is 751-3066. Or call Mimi or Terry at 751-8692 during evenings or weekends, either in English or Spanish.
The Paradise Fire Relief Committee was formed by Faith Much, Geri Geis, the Van Koughnetts, and Laura Zimmerman. Each had their own support group, including churches, the Teacher Parent Club, and Interfaith.
Recovery is lengthy process
In April they began working with the local Salvation Army to identify new clients.
If you think that most people whose homes burned are fully recovered by now, you’re wrong.
It takes an average of three years to rebuild. It may take much longer for their lives to return to “normal.”
“We thought we’d volunteer for a couple of months. I thought I’d be done by the end of December. ” says Terry.
Although referrals have slowed, the Van Koughnetts still get names from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), Red Cross, local churches and the school district’s Migrant Education Office.
“Through the cracks”
Most are Hispanic and lower income. Most come from the Rincon or San Pasqual Indian reservations or Lake Wohlford.
The term used by many relief organizations to describe such situations is is that they have “fallen through the cracks.” They didn’t qualify for FEMA funding, often they are renters, mainly migrant workers, with a sprinkling of casino and construction workers.
“We go back and forth trying to find anybody who didn’t get help. It’s hard sometimes to get information. They keep to themselves,” says Terry.
Diverse Resources
Funding is provided by diverse sources such as the San Diego Foundation and Interfaith and numerous gifts from individuals and organizations.
“Funding is never from one pot,” says Terry. “You have to go around to the various organizations.”
Mimi gives an example of a underinsured family who came to their office. She asked about their needs and then got the Salvation Army and Red Cross involved. Both gave some money. St. Francis Episcopal Church made up the rest.
“That’s how we got these people taken care of,” she said.
One out-of-VC church that got involved heavily was the Church of Rancho Bernardo, one of 254 churches that make up Interfaith.
“At one of our meetings early on, they came along and asked what they could do,” says Terry. “I asked them to consider an adopt a family program. They decided to adopt the community. They ran resource fair every two months. They gave out clothing and non-perishable foods, but also brought out a mobile trailer to provide medical checkups and even haircuts.”
During the transitional housing project, while representing Interfaith, Terry began attending meetings of the Community Recovery Team, a countywide consortium of fire recovery organizations. He discovered that VC’s relief efforts have been better organized and more effective than in many other communities.
More and more of the Van Koughnetts’ relief efforts concentrate on rebuilding or transitioning survivors from temporary trailers into permanent housing.
Everyone is underinsured
“We’re getting more into insurance issues and construction,” says Terry.
They were also asked by FEMA to help transition people out of their trailers.
FEMA provided the trailers for several months, and the time has run out for many. Some people have also run out of the money that FEMA gave them.
NOTE: The Interfaith program in December gave the trailers outright. It is separate from FEMA’s program.
“We deal very closely with FEMA. Whenever we hear about somebody, we first check with FEMA,” he says.
The central fact of insurance as it relates to fire, says Terry, is that everybody is underinsured. “The second fact is that a lot of people don’t realize it.
“Insurance companies want to settle real fast and cheap. A lot of people take the money. They sign non-disclosure forms. It is big machine insurance companies against these individuals. They think they are doing the right thing. Often they are not.”
He works with two groups, one to help the underinsured and the other to work with the uninsured.
For the underinsured, the problem is making up the difference between the cost of rebuilding and the money from insurance.
“If we can put the money into the material and provide volunteer labor, we can make up the difference,” says Terry.
Some survivors still have debris on their property. Some started construction before they realized how much they had spent, and how short they were.
The Van Koughnetts are working with a group (as yet unnamed) to get funding for such situations. This is a lengthy process and requires considerable grant-writing expertise.
As Terry observes dryly, “It takes a certain level of sophistication before someone will hand over a check for $5 million.”
The uninsured are in a different situation. “No one is going to be made whole,” says Terry, who is the project coordinator for this effort for the Community Recovery Team (CRT). Yes, fire relief volunteers do find themselves wearing a variety of hats.
Estimates for the whole recovery of uninsured fire survivors countywide have been estimated at $30 million.
Terry recommends that people interested in insurance issues (even if you aren’t a fire survivor) attend sessions that will given by George Kehrer of Community Assisting Recovery (CARe) to get free information about disaster recovery, particularly consumer insurance and construction issues.
Kehrer, a fire survivor himself, lost his home in the Oakland fires of 1991. Since then he has worked with multitudes of disaster victims. These sessions will be announced in the paper.
A Day in the Life
During a single day, the Van Koughnetts will be involved in a variety of problems.
On a recent Wednesday they started the day with a call from FEMA. They needed an update on which fire survivors, who had been renters would be returning to the Rincon reservation to live.
To find this out they had to call someone on the Rincon tribal council to see if the tribe had decided about whether to reinstall utilities to these sites.
Then Terry got a phone call from an underinsured person who needed to install a fire hydrant before he could rebuild. He wondered if funding was available. Terry made the calls to find out.
Around noon, Mimi and Terry spent a little bit of family time together. “We have four kids and they need to eat,” she observed.
Later Terry worked one of the volunteers from an international relief effort.
Mimi then gave a tour of the burned areas and Rancho Corrido to a representative of Episcopal Social Services. “They wanted to know if we had some unmet needs,” she said
“When people see the burned area they have a better idea of what questions to ask,” she said.
“We like people to see that there is a lot of construction going on. People leave with a nice feeling, knowing there are areas where they can help.”
She also worked to put together a camp for fire survivor children in Ramona. Forty-two children from VC will go to this Salvation Army camp, all expenses paid.
Then Terry spent about an hour on the phone with an organization that wanted to help. “Lots of help is being given and you don’t want to duplicate efforts,” observed Terry.
Then he checked their e-mails.
“It’s all little issues: propane at Rancho Corrido, trying to arrange volunteers from the carpenters’ union to work on a Habitat for Humanity project at San Pasqual,” he says.
He was at a meeting until 10 p.m.
She was writing a letter until 1:30 a.m., trying to find some help for some people in Ramona.
Then it was to bed and up early to start all over again.
But you don’t hear either of them complaining about the hours. The only thing they complain about is people and bureaucracies that stand in the way of helping people.
But mainly they talk about the generosity of people.
“The best thing that happens to me is when people stop me on the street and give me a check for fire relief,” says Terry with a smile.
Last week Morgan Rogers stepped forward to chair an effort to ask voters to give the parks & rec. board an untouchable tax base (see related story, this page).
“Sometimes, when there’s a good cause, someone needs to step out,” said Rogers, who found himself putting his hand up on Thursday when parks president Eric Jockinsen asked if anyone was interested in leading the election campaign.
“I realized that my children are very active in the parks system, including softball, soccer, Little League and 4-H,” Rogers told The Roadrunner. “Having used the facilities and seen facilities in other communities, we know what improvements need to be done.”
Sometimes it’s just the little things that are needed. At the same meeting his wife, Janeen Dell’Acqua, observed that it would be nice for the girls’ softball field to have a drinking fountain.
They have three children, ages 7-14. The family has lived in Valley Center for two years. Previously they lived in Rancho Penasquitos for 15 years.
“I have a personal stake in this parks district and this election,” said Rogers. “I want to make sure this proposition passes. I am starting a girls’ lacrosse team in the fall, and I’ve had trouble finding a place to play. We need more parks in Valley Center. As Valley Center grows there’s going to be a greater demand for facilities and space.”
So far the committee doesn’t have a name yet, although it has a core of about a dozen workers. They will have their organizational meeting Wednesday, July 28, 7 p.m. at VC Community Hall.
The game plan for that meeting will be to assign tasks for the coming months.
The proposition hasn’t yet been given a name by the Registrar of Voters. When it does, the committee will probably be called something like The Committee for Yes or Prop. Whatever or maybe Friends of Parks & Rec.
Currently Rogers has the time to devote to getting Prop. X (or whatever they call it) passed.
Up until March he was a civil service employee with the Navy. He was a project manager working for the privatization of military housing for the U.S. Marine Corps.
“I decided I was tired of the commute and was ready for a change.” Now, self-employed, Rogers is developing a rental property business.
With 2/3 vote required to pass the proposition, Rogers will need all the spare time he can muster.
At Wednesday’s organizational meeting the core group will form a marketing committee, whose job it will be to put presentations on for local groups, produce signs, brochures and mailers.
Another committee will be devoted to educating the public about what the proposition will do. These members will man the phone banks, have tables at various locations in town to register voters and hand out information.
A third committee will raise funds to pay for all of the election activities mentioned above.
There’s not time to waste, according to Rogers. “Absentee ballots go out the first of October. We need to have everything out by then, and then follow up during the last weeks of the election season.”
The committee will have a website, linked to the Parks & Rec. website. The complete text of the proposition will be there as well as frequently asked questions. These questions will be updated periodically. The website may also contain a list of endorsements from local residents.
“I’m pretty confident we can pull this off,” said Rogers. “Nobody likes taxes but this is a tax where we keep the money. We can’t lose. Even people who don’t use the facilities can only see their property values increased by this measure.”
Two years ago a similar measure lost in a squeaker. What’s different this time?
“There was a feeling that a lot of people didn’t understand what the proposition meant. With the effort we are going to do people will be better informed and it will pass,” he said.
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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