April 13, 2005 - Top Stories
A former Miss Valley Center and current anchor at an area TV station, Tamara Damante, will be the MC at Saturday night’s Miss Valley Center Pageant.
Eight contestants will compete in the Scholarship Pageant which begins at 7 p.m. at the Valley Center Middle School.
Over $5,000 in scholarships will be awarded.
The theme this year is “Rock this Country” - it is sure to be an exciting night.
Contestants are Jenaye Arbelo, Emily Richardson, Catherine Cunningham, Ashley Nigro, Brittany Byler, Alida Diaz, Darcy Gray and Danyelle Barner.
Tickets are $10 pre-sale, available from the contestants or by calling Karen Greene at 749-1863 or emailing vcpagassoc@valleycenterinternet.com.
Tickets are $15 at the door. Doors open at 6:30 and the curtain opens at 7 p.m. sharp.
Several hundred are expected to come out to support each of the contestants as they vie for the crown and admiration of Valley Center.
Valley Center has five of the county’s 17 Indian tribes within ten miles, including three tribal casinos.
That fact was the inspiration for a reception April 21, 5-7 p.m. at Valley View Casino to bring together tribal representatives along with elected representatives of the federal, state and local governments.
The reception is being organized by the tribal liaison subcommittee of the VC planning group, chaired by Larry Glavinic, and including Jon Vick and Terry Van Koughnett.
Invitations have been sent to U.S. senators Boxer and Feinstein, Congressman Darrell Issa, State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, Supervisor Bill Horn, State Assemblyman Ray Haynes, Escondido Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler, Rincon Tribal Chairman John Currier, San Pasqual Tribal Chairman Allen Lawson, Pauma Tribal Chairman Christobal Devers, Pala Tribal Chairman Robert Smith, and Pala Pauma Sponsor Group Chairman Joe Chisolm.
According to Glavinic, “Impacts due to our own growth and the recent addition of casinos have stretched the infrastructure to the limits. Because it is a cross jurisdictional issue, there is no long term vision or forum to address it.”
Thus was born a meeting that will bring all these “stakeholders” together.
The VC Community Planning Group’s Indian Liaison Subcommittee has been working for a year to understand the opportunity and build mutually beneficial relationships with the tribes.
According to Glavinic, “It has become apparent that for a mutually beneficial future more than a reactive posture is needed.
“It has become apparent that a joint (city, county, state, and federal) framework is needed to affect not just a short term but for the long term. What appears to be missing is a dynamic framework for this vision to be developed and changed.
“There is no forum where all the interested parties can meet to establish and refine the policy and direction. The current environment is too adversarial and fraught with jurisdictional issues. A group, task force and/or advocacy needs to be formed to work for a uniform planning process. We believe that there a similar concerns in other communities. We believe that WIN-WIN solutions are possible,” he said.
Local officials appear receptive to an agenda that would help with better common planning of issues that are common to everyone.
By DAVID ROSS
Showing, once again, that though they share many public facilities, Hidden Meadows and Valley Center are separate communities—the water district board turned down a request to provide free water to a landscaped median on VC Road.
The proposal was killed when Merle Aleshire, who represents Hidden Meadows, said he didn’t see why ratepayers money from that community should support a landscaped median in VC.
The board did leave open the possibility, when it becomes available, of reclaimed water for the median.
Sandy Smith, former chairman of the planning group, made the request at the April 4 meeting. She is a member of the group of private citizens, Citizens for VC Parkway, who have been working with the County to try to get a landscaped median for the road, once it is widened.
She noted that, although the County is moving to use $1.5 million in TransNet funding to build the median, and although the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians has committed to spend $50,000 annually for maintenance, that the facility still needs water—So far there’s no funding to pay for that.
The county’s Dept. of Public Works estimates that the median will require about 3.3 acre feet of water a year. It would need ten water meters.
Water district Gen. Mgr. Gary Arant noted that the San Diego County Water Authority, which sells water to VC, is considering raising its capacity fees (meter fees), possibly doubling them.
In the past the district has had a policy of waiving capacity fees for other VC districts, such as the fire, school and parks districts.
However, he noted that the County, which would own the median, has never cut the water district any slack on fees.
“I guarantee you that the county of San Diego charges us fees,” he said. “The waiver of the fee would be on the basis that this is a community-based program.”
Mrs. Smith passed around artist’s renderings of what the median will look like.
“We haven’t really found anyone in Valley Center who absolutely hates landscaped medians,” said Mrs. Smith.
Medians will skip business areas whose owners have said they don’t want them. The only exception is the business area that includes the bank. The County insists that a median is needed here for safety reasons. That median strip will not be landscaped. A total of 12 medians are planned, with ten being landscaped.
Final funding authorization for the roadwork, including the median, is going to the Board of Supervisors in May.
“This contract is definitely going to bid,” said Mrs. Smith. “The County is sort of setting a precedent by funding a median with Transnet funding. We’ve made the case that landscaped medians are not just pretty but safety enhancing. With the road not enhanced, it looks like a freeway. That carried a lot of weight.” Although County will do the maintenance, it won’t pay for it.
Aleshire made his motion not to provide anything for free for the median after explaining that there is a median in Hidden Meadows that the country club has stopped watering. “Obviously if we approve this, we’ll be back requesting similar consideration to the Hidden Meadows community. I’m not recommending that we provide anything free to either one.”
Arant asked: “What would happen if at the end of the ten years the Indians decided not to support the maintenance?”
“There’s a smart growth initiative funding that are called transportation enhancement funds that are not allowed to be used for roads, but for enhancement,” said Mrs. Smith. “If we had to, ten years for now we could go to SANDAG for that.”
Aleshire commented, “It’s important to recognize too that this particular expenditure would benefit people that use VC Road, such as Welk and Hidden Meadows. On the other hand if you provide it to Hidden Meadows there would be no benefit out here. So the policy that no one gets free water is probably a good policy.”
He added that since the residents of his area almost universally opposed the park district’s Prop. CC, “you probably wouldn’t see much support for this out there.”
Board Pres. Gary Broomell said the district should look at giving reclaimed water, which has already been paid for, to the median, when it’s available. “Most people have a problem getting rid of their reclaimed water. I’d like to look at the possibility of doing that.”
“You have to contain reclaimed water,” said Arant. “You have to be very careful about where you use reclaimed water. There may be restrictions. Most of the reclaimed water will be from Woods Valley golf course.” Woods Valley Ranch golf course is anticipating using that water on its links, he noted.
He recommended that the pipes to the median including reclaimed water pipes.
Aleshire concluded, “I hate to be negative on this thing, but I see these isolated benefits to an isolated population and you’re assessing everybody for it. I wouldn’t ask you to provide free water to Hidden Meadows. I think we’re a ways from reclaimed water. If they put in the pipes we might be able to provide it in the future.
The motion passed 4-1 (with Broomell voting no, was to deny the request for water but to encourage installation of reclaimed piping for possible use in the future.
“I would have preferred that you said yes and then I would be supportive of landscape medians in Hidden Meadows,” commented Mrs. Smith.
“How much free water would we be be providing?” Arant asked.
“As much as your conscience could bear,” she shot back.
“Well, a lot of us pay a lot already,” said commented director Randy Haskell.
Patric Jewell has always been a man who keeps his priorities straight: Family, Fishing, Friends and Work.
Friday night the family, co-workers and friends of Jewell (the fish were absent, except a stuffed representative) sent one of the most enduring members of the VC water district off to a well-deserved retirement.
They joked about his legendary parsimony, about his staid lifestyle, even his manner of speaking. What came through was a universal respect and affection for a man for whom quality and integrity were always (to borrow a phrase from GM), job one.
At the end of his water career, Jewell said he was struck by “How vital the water is to the community and how people take it for granted. Because they are able to take it for granted, that really shows us our success.”
Jewell, who was the district engineer for 26 years, earned a reputation during that time for hard work, humor, often blunt honesty and a deep caring for the people who worked for him.
He has also been a man of courage, and an inspiration to his fellow workers, evidenced when he faced down some severe health problems with steely resolve and grace under pressure.
He has overseen and planned many significant capital projects over nearly three decades, but he probably spent the most work and creativity on a project that never actually happened, the Central Valley Sewer Project.
Unlike many government agencies, the VC water district has always striven to cut red tape. “That’s one of our efforts, to reduce the bureaucracy to the barest minimum,” Jewell told The Roadrunner in an interview last week as he was getting ready to clean out his desk.
Although the district regularly conducts a customer satisfaction survey sent out with its bills, Jewell has also received a lot of positive feedback directly over the years.
“People will just make comments to me about people that I supervise and how they have been treated well by them,” he said.
About his reputation for blunt honesty, Jewell commented, “One of the things I’ve found is that the issues being brought out in the open and put on the table makes it more easy to solve, rather than dance around the issues. The manager is very good at cutting to the chase, perhaps more than I am.”
Gen. Mgr. Gary Arant who was asked to make a few comments about Jewell, added, “It is hard to imagine that there is more honest, kind and caring individual than Pat Jewell. Over the years, I often accused him of being honest to a fault. If he had a problem as a supervisor, it was his keen sense of caring and sensitivity for the needs of his employees that sometime got in the way.”
In the mid-1980’s Jewell spent most of his creative energies on the Central Valley Sewer, a massive utility that would have cost nearly $30 million (in government grants, mostly) to build, but which was eventually killed by a vote of the district’s ratepayers.
According Arant, “Though the project ultimately met public opposition and was abandoned, Pat’s talent and creativity was made evident by the project. The insights he gained then have been very valuable as the District of the new century still deals with the same wastewater treatment problems in the same parts of our service area.”
. Today the water district is working on individual sewers for projects such as Woods Valley Ranch.
“At the time I felt as though we failed,” said Jewell. “But it’s kind of like buying an automobile. If you wait until the next year’s model you are going to get a better car. But does that mean that you should never buy a car?
“We struggle with that philosophy about almost anything we do. Do we wait or do it now? Anything having to do with technology today will be last year’s model. I look at the sewer system in that way. We’re going to be better but does mean it would have been wrong to go forward with it at the time? I don’t think so.”
After 36 years of “living and breathing water” (he also worked a decade at Los Angeles Water & Power), Jewell expects to cut back a little bit in retirement.
“My goals are to cut back but I still intend to do some contracting.”
He will continue to live in Valley Center with his wife, Sylvia. He is looking at several options in retirement, including teaching at a local college, doing volunteer work with church missions in underdeveloped countries and, of course, fishing.
“I’m going to do some fishing and I have some grandchildren for whom it is absolutely valuable to show them how to do it. I’d like to go to Alaska and see the sights and take photos.”
He also plans to climb Mountain Whitney, which, he says, “is challenging but achievable.”
One of his hobbies is doing photos and videos and he is working on a longtime project: a family history that he collects old photos for. In May he and his sister will go to Wales where their great-grandmother’s family came from.
He will stay an active member of the Valley Center Kiwanis Club, which he helped found.
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In the last three years the water district has seen off its top three executives (under the general manager) to retirement: Jere Jarrell, head of the finance department; Chuck Dacus, director of operations, and now Jewell.
Arant says that it shows what a good job all three men did that the transition from them to their successors occured so smoothly.
The largest ever crowd attended Saturday night’s Jaguar Auction, and raised the largest sum for high school education: over $70,000.
“This is the best we’ve ever done,” Julie Stroh, chairman of the event, told The Roadrunner. She will have a full accounting for next week’s issue of the paper.
The Valley Roadrunner
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Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
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